History of the United Netherlands, 1590-1599, Vol. III. Complete

iege to Gertruydenber

ress of the besieging

res-Adventure of Cou

uydenberg-Mutiny amon

retake Coeworden-Suspi

tend-Letter of Queen E

t-Second attempt on

Second adventure of P

ce-Surrender of Gronin

ligious toleration-P

of the "obedient" Ne

Governor-Archduke Ern

s of his position-H

republicans-Triumpha

agnificence of the spe

eat military rebellio

leet-His assassinatio

spiracies against P

on-Proposal of a marr

sion from Henry to the

nd the Staten-Henry o

he States-Council-Anx

ut a war with Spain-As

f the y

dly fading into cloudland there were substantial possessions of t

ithin the territories of what could now be fairly considered

pleted his preparations for a siege, and on

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 sou

rrounding dykes. These afforded means of fortification, which had been well improv

ge of Steenwyk, such as had never before been dreamt of; but he was resolve

ction of military art, nothing, to the gen

o 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 th

it around the place, and his forts, brea

y. 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 fortifica

business; for every man so employed received his ten stivers a day additional wages, punctu

hen he had succeeded in bringing a hundred great guns to bear upon t

towen were no longer cons

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 pro

l; but, as compared with the bloody work which Alva, and Romero, and Requesens, and so many others had done in those

es, came to witness the extraordinary spectacle, and foreign generals repai

ty 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 as

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 gene

dragon. 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

s 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 meddle

cked 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 the

ince Maurice, being a lusty young commander as he is, not come out of his trench

live to be a lusty old commander like your excellency

laughed, rather at the

ithin the lines or within the city to va

erg. On the wide estuary of the Meuse, a chain of war ships encircled the sea-front, in shape of a half moon,

d that feat with tidings of despai

ther hand, the artillery practice from the landbatteries of Maurice and Hohenlo

the city escaped injury. The approaches were brought, every hour, nearer and nearer to the walls. With subterranean l

. 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.

quietly, "that the first man who mo

ulkily acquiescing in the superiority which this stripling-his form

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 s

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,

nks 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

rms and personal baggage, and fifty waggons were lent t

ly became aware of the fact by the salvos of artillery fired in honour of the

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

ired the deeds of daring, the wonders of endurance, in the Dutch cities beleaguere

ous 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

rticipate in the prosperity of the rising and thriving young republic, and to enjo

than such a triumph, nothing less humiliati

the Union was not to admit the hordes of a Spanish commander with the avenging furies of mu

months, and only when the arms and the fraud of the foe without, and of famine within, had done their work, could it have bo

om the siege-guns upon the city, and

and fifty men of all arms, and they lost during the eighty-fi

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 coll

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 o

hose 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

uld prevent it by her warnings, indited with her own hand a characteristic letter to Sir

ill; 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 bold

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 y

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

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 te

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 decide

g places were to be reduced, given a striking exhib

rty-one weeks' inves

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

n 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 Charle

s 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

e 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 t

d 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

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 bee

e a warning to his Excellency. He had repeatedly remonstrated with him, he said, against his reckless exposure of himself to unnece

he 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 Gron

to be recognised as chief magistrate of the whole province, which was thus to retain all its ancient privileges, laws, and rights of self-gover

sed in the province, but that no man should be questioned as to his faith, or troubled in his conscience: Cloisters and ecclesi

nd 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 transpor

ousand florins. Four hundred of the besiegers had been killed, and a much larger number wounded. The army had been further w

s said that eight hundred tons of powder, and plenty of

ggle 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 n

rms of surrender and the spectacle of re-established law and order which succeeded the capture of Groningen furnished a wholeso

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 inter

greements with Henry IV. it had been necessary to provide that monarch with considerable assistance to carry on his new cam

f the obedient Netherlan

in case the post should become vacant. During the year which followed, that testy old campaigner had indulged himself in many petty feuds with

er 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 w

l of ambition that he insists on governing everybody just as he rules hi

ons 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

ed 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 t

ernor of the impoverished, exhausted, half-rebellious, and utterly forlorn little remnant of the Spanish Netherlands, was a d

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, an

intensely devoted to the interests of the Roman Church

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. Moreove

lemen, pages, and cooks, and five hundred and thirty-four horses, not to

ot 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

imed 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 mos

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 costum

should be proposed to supersede the old fighting Portuguese, Verdugo, as governor and commander-in-chief for the king in Friesland, by Fr

trolling influence of Fuentes, the most unscrupulous and dangerous Spaniard of them all, while his every proceeding was closely watched not only b

rity 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 runn

rave mistakes of administration were lost upon Ernest, or made almost impossible by his peculiar temper

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 w

al 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 a

deur 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 mo

to foreign oppression. It was something, at the same period, to lay the foundation of a system 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 acade

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 amon

ut 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 obed

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 carri

rom 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, ha

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

ghts 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, statu

iverer. 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 Eng

. All the pedagogues of Brussels and Antwerp had been at work for months, determined to

es 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

d 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

t "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, the

invalid as Apollo, as Perseus, as the feather-heeled M

held that it was all a truth and no vision. Ernest was really about to enter the Netherlands, and with him the millennium. The pedant

nes in it, and not a line

, Bellona, and all such objectionable divinities, were requested to disappear for ever from the Low Countries; w

vated nature of this portion of a people who had lost everything for which men cherish their fatherland, but who could still

destined to endure. Three phenomena chiefly marked his reign, but his own part in the three was rather a passive than an

utterly inadequate machinery, to conquer the world has been sufficiently dilated upon. The Spanish and Italian and Walloon soldiers

apid 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

he 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

ion, 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 cam

ze for that period all the royal operations in the Netherlands. In December the rebellious troops

st 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 fr

ploits of the podagric Perseus i

h 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 sa

ntained 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, churc

ith reasonable success, but hardly at the beck of a Spanish king sitting in his

ing this administration were on a far more e

uired 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

arra, 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 diplo

f 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

ot, 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

so greedy to perform it that he would ask Ferrara every day, 'When will the mo

co 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 bot

-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

ther 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 h

m that he was requested by the archduke to kill Prince Maurice of Nassau. For this piece of work he was to receive one hun

e 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 fo

sent to Leyden in order to entice away and murder the young brother of Maurice, Frederic Henry, then at school at that pla

d with letters from Berlaymont. He was, however, arrested on suspicion not long after his arrival there, and upon trial the whole plot was discovered. Hav

e 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 mom

e 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

a Motte, and Assonleville. It was also announced, on behalf of Ernest, that some one else, fraudulently impersonating his H

ent Netherlands were now administered. Poison and pistols in the hands of obscure priests and deserters were relied on to bring about great political triump

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 aristo

attempts at negotiation to characterize the Ernestian epoch at

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 o

tion in which the same protestations of good will and hopes of future good-fellowship were distended to formidable dimensions by much windy rhetoric. The a

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 w

ood people of the Netherlands were deceived, and how difficult it was for the State

tch against the stealthy proceedings of the Spanish council of state-bearing in mind the late execra

derous and hostile proceedings, still it was necessary for the States t

hroughout 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

s 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, a

ssinate 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

quet had originally been a cook in the service of Madame Catherine, and was famous for his talent for larding poultry, but he had sub

adame Catherine on on

oulets de men frere,

. vi. p. 296, note 6.

ified pursuits-having

annual amount of sixty

ies to his daughters

ich is the more remar

ices wherein he is em

zano for his loves; th

the kitchen of Madam

als, i

airs of an ambassador, while Henry took great pains to contradict the r

f 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, h

land and the republic against Philip, as such a step was hardly compatible with the abandonment of England and the republic and the es

esent 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, a

essing necessity for Holland and England to force Henry into open war against Philip. To this end the Dutch statesme

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

en about him, and a rapier at his side, passed with the contemp

e 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

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, o

pt 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

Queen of England, and the stout Dutch Calvinists who had so long stood by him, were most noble. It was pi

ty 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

rovinces, that the king should divide his army into three parts, and renew the military

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

y, now agreed to recognise Henry's authority, in consideration of sixty-s

arters. 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

er 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

e, 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 exi

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 gran

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

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