and deceit, produced by the union of the Medicis and the Valois, could not, like Philip II., plead bigotry as an excuse; they were guided solely by the selfishness of the unprincipled politician. But if bigotry did not actuate the royal family, greed of power was with them a passion equally strong. Catherine had gratified this ruling passion by playing one party of the state against another. But the danger of such a system was losing influence over both. Her sons had fully discerned this, and strove both of them to be foremost by placing themselves at the head of parties which were most active and dominant for the time. Charles, for the reasons already assigned, was anxious during 1571 to conciliate the Huguenots. And he appears in this not to have been more insincere than the nature of his policy implied. His character was one more given to outbursts of ferocity than the practice of dissimulation. His chief passion was the chase, in which he pursued wild beasts, more with the fury of their species than the excitement of man. He cut off the heads of donkeys, embowelled pigs, and took a pleasure in arranging their entrails butcher-fashion. He introduced Spanish bull-fights into France. When the first account of the victory of Montcontour reached him, the admiral was said to have been taken. Charles instantly wrote to his brother that Gaspard de Coligny and the other heretics should be sent him.* Papyrius Massa's portrait of him harmonises with the idea of his ferocity. "The king was tall, but bent in stature, pale of complexion, eyes menacing and yellow with bile, his nose aquiline, and his neck somewhat awry."† But however sinister his visage, fickle and ferocious his temper, MS. Colbert, v. 24, f. 211. The scrawl is as ferocious as the idea which dictated it. It is one of the few autographs of Charles, his letters being more generally those of his mother or his secretaries. † He may have been here sketched after St. Bartholomew's XXIV. XXIV. CHAP. Charles seems, through 1571, to have been more actuated by the ambition of playing the hero and the conqueror of the Low Countries, by the aid of the Protestants, than meditating what seems to be the needless ferocity of sacrificing the lives of the men whose alliance and support he courted. But if Charles was sincere, Catherine was misgiving, and Anjou jealous. The queen mother had evidently lost the supreme direction of affairs. She no doubt approved of the peace of St. Germains, and to a certain degree of the accord with Elizabeth*, but she was anxious to observe her one great rule, never to make such concessions for dissolving a Protestant league as must necessarily give rise to a Catholic association and party in the kingdom far more formidable. She was little inclined to Spain, whose monarch had pertinaciously refused either marriage or appanage for her sons, and who threatened the Medici in Florence. But the policy of rushing into a war with Philip the Second and a campaign against Alva, by the aid and counsel of a power so limited and a fortune so seldom prosperous as that of the admiral now appeared to be, called forth her decided opposition. Many will think, indeed, that she was opposed to Coligny from the first, and that her reception of him at Blois, her cordial sympathy with and promise to him afterwards, up to the quarrel and explanation recorded by Alava, were feigned. So apparently thought Walsingham, the highest of authorities, who wrote as follows, on the 10th of October, to his friend Herbert. Immediate action becoming deferred, "the admiral," wrote Walsingham, "retires to his home with all the appearance of favour from the king and others. I have no doubt of the sincerity of the king, but I suspect that of the others. There is some secret tragedy, which I believe will not fail shortly to * La Mothe. disclose itself."* I cannot but repeat what was said before; that Catherine and her sons kept the two alternatives before them, and wavered between them, Catherine becoming decidedly hostile to Coligny after their open breach, Charles retaining for a much longer period the hopes, though not the firm resolution, of carrying on the war with Spain and conquering the Low Countries. Catherine of Medicis was not the only queen whose fickle and feminine nature contributed to defeat the king's schemes for conquering the Low Countries in conjunction with the Protestants. Elizabeth's policy during these critical years of 1571 and 1572 was a tissue of variations. To be sure, her proposed husband was equally fickle. Anjou, the moment he perceived that his brother had seized the position which he had ambitioned for himself, at the head of the Protestants, recoiled, as far as he could without offending Charles, from his marriage with Elizabeth†, and rallied back to reseize that station at the head of the Catholics and the league which the king, after having first disputed with him, had at last abandoned. The duke could not now oppose the marriage of his sister with Navarre, the best means of winning the latter from Coligny and the Huguenots, but he made peace with Guise, and again became the champion of the Church, whose pay he largely received.† It thus became necessary, in January 1572, to substitute the name and pretensions of the Duke d'Alençon CHAP. XXIV. CHAP. as a suitor to Elizabeth for that of his brother, an awkward and difficult task with that princess, who objected to his age, his nullity, and his smallpox.* The Huguenot chiefs and Montmorency strongly recommended him, as did Sir T. Smith, Elizabeth's envoy in Paris. Walsingham wrote in March that the enterprise of Flanders altogether depended on the success of the marriage. Cecil proposed he should pay a visit to England. But whilst the accord between the French court and the Huguenots became completed by the contract of marriage between the King of Navarre and Margaret, a treaty concluded at the same time between France and England was evidently more for form's sake than with any real purpose.† Soon after, Elizabeth demanded Calais, the admiral dissuading her, and seeking to prove that Flushing would be a more valuable acquisition to England. In a word the scheme was not prosperous, nor did the Protestant alliance bear the rich fruit which Charles had been led to expect. Threatened by Spain and Alva at the time, Elizabeth was indeed delighted at the negotiation proceeding with France, which promised her an ally, but she would go no farther than defensive alliance, if either was attacked, and which by no means answered the hopes and purposes of Charles or of Coligny. Schomberg had not been more successful beyond the Rhine; and in the spring of 1572 Charles found himself pressed to enter upon a campaign in Flanders against the Duke of Alva, without any efficient aid or alliance from abroad. His financial resources, too, were more crippled than augmented. The Catholics were prepared to offer passive resistance, and the Guises were in close communication and alliance with Spain. The * English Council to Walsingham. S. P. France, 53. It was merely for mutual defence, writes Charles the Ninth. His letter, Cot. MSS. Ves. f. 6. For the admiral's share in this. negotiation, see the letter of H. Middleton to a Right Honorable, in Cottonian. MSS. ibid. Parisians murmured. Florence, which Catherine had asked to lend money to the king, had on the contrary sent its contributions to Alva. Rome and the Church, which had contributed so largely to the late campaign against the Huguenots, were now prepared to give what supplies they could afford to the hostile camp. Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre, had obeyed the solicitation of the admiral and joined the court at Blois in March, not yet bringing her son with her,—a cause of congratulation when she perceived the extreme laxity of morals which prevailed, the contagion of which her Henry might not escape. The king was cordial: but Catherine, who undertook to negotiate with her, was the reverse; throwing every impediment in the way, and stickling for much that Jeanne could with difficulty be brought to consent to.* The court would have the marriage performed exclusively according to Catholic rites, and in Paris too. Jeanne objected, but could not obstruct by her own scruples a marriage which her party seemed to desire. Her death, which took place early in June, removed whatever delays her persistence might have caused. The Huguenots attributed the event to poison, but the accusation rests on no tenable grounds. at At the same time with Jeanne came to Paris the Cardinal Alexandrini, despatched by the Pope, and empowered by Spain to break off those heretic marriages, and bring back Charles to the terms of the Catholic league. The cardinal had overcome Madrid some of that pertinacity with which Philip the Second repudiated any further marriage between his family and the Valois. He consented, and the cardinal brought his consent to the marriage of Margaret with the Prince of Portugal. And he, on the same occasion, made splendid offers to Anjou and Alençon. The latter *Several letters of Jeanne D'Albret to her son, at this time are preserved in MSS. Dupuy, CHAP. XXIV. |