- 588 Court gives up Broussel and withdraws from Paris Condé brings Troops to Paris and mediates The King and Queen retire to St. Germains, whilst Condé The Prince liberated from Prison, and Mazarin obliged to quit Queen attempts a Reconciliation with Condé Turenne takes the Command of the King's Forces against Condé 619 Negotiation for Peace - The Daughter of the Duke of Orleans opens the Gates and fires the Guns of the Bastille on the Royalists Court revokes Parliament The Duke of Lorraine marches to ris Is again baffled by Turenne; Kingenters Paris; End of the Parliament compelled to submit to the g; Leaders of the - 635 By affecting to negotiate a Marriage with the House of Savoy, - Louis had determined to go to War in 1671; Reasons for his first Capture of Naarden; The Sluices opened by the Dutch - 679 First Assault on the De Witts; Dutch make Offers of Sub- Treaty for the Defence of Holland urged by the Emperor, and Murder of the De Witts; The Prince of Orange rejects all - The Emperor's General captures Bonn; Desertion of England Arrest of the Prince of Furstenberg HISTORY OF FRANCE. CHAPTER XXIII. FROM THE ACCESSION OF FRANCIS THE SECOND TO THE 1559-1563. XXIII. THE history of France and of adjoining countries, CHAP. hitherto, has concerned their physical and political rather than their intellectual development. It has been narrated how each country grew strong and battled for superiority with its neighbours, and how each class, within the national limits, struggled for ascendency and authority, won, lost, or maintained them. With the exception of the crusades and their era, these contests, whether domestic or international, were for dominion and power, the result of individual ambition, or of a national thirst for aggrandisement. No higher motive impelled to war, or animated the conflict. The rivalry between Charles and Francis, which fills the earlier half of the 16th century, and attracts interest as the first great and general strife of European nations, was but a contest for personal superiority, and, notwith CHAP. standing its vicissitudes, a bootless one. XXIII. We now enter upon a period in which the antagonism is not merely between persons or countries, but between ideas, and where political and religious sentiments are arrayed and engaged in hostile conflict. One of these principles, briefly expressed as that of absolutism in politics and religion, was enthroned in the south, in Spain and Italy, over which the unvarying policy and the inflexible will of Philip the Second, and of the Popes subservient to him, reigned uncontrolled. In opposition to his stern and stolid purpose of enchaining the world to its most unenlightened past, arose in the north the antagonistic principle of the right and expediency of the people taking part, in proportion to their intelligence and capacity, both in the choice of religious belief and in the guidance of political action. The historian who undertakes to depict the struggle between these principles would facilitate his task, and heighten its interest, by taking his stand upon one side or upon the other, and being thus able either to select for the prominent figure of his narrative the gloomy but grandiose Philip, or demand sympathy for the heroic characters of Queen Elizabeth and the Prince of Orange. This is denied to the historian of France, a country interposed as a kind of neutral ground between North and South; and serving at one time as an obstacle to any decisive collision between the contending parties, at another, as the battlefield on which they fought. So divided were the French, that religious differences soon assumed amongst them the shape of civil war, although fanaticism was more often the pretext than the motive, political and personal interest, more than conscientious belief, inspiring Catholic and Huguenot leaders, and expediency, rather than philosophy or humanity, suggesting at last the wisdom of toleration. The principal difference of the great protest against |