monarchy could not but tempt a Richelieu or a Louis CHAP. the Fourteenth to abolish it! Negotiations for peace with Spain were still proceeding at Vervins. The French plenipotentiaries reached that town on the 7th of February, and were met by those of Spain, accompanied by the Cardinal of Florence and the General of the Franciscans, on the part of the Pope. Had there been but the differences between the two chief belligerents to settle, the task would have been an easy one. For the French came instructed to demand merely the restoration of what the Spaniards still held in Picardy and Britanny.* And these the Spaniards were quite prepared to cede. But there were the interests of the allies on either side to safeguard. The Spaniards asked that passports might be furnished for the envoys of the Duke of Mercœur, and of Savoy, in order to their joining the Congress. These the French king granted for Savoy, but refused to Mercœur, who was not only a subject, but had offered and was negotiating for submission. Henry, who had so lately induced England and Holland to enter into an offensive league with him against Spain, could not treat without at least the appearance of consulting them. They hesitated and delayed to send envoys, scarcely believing him serious, the question of peace and war being fiercely disputed in English councils. He sent De Maisse to England to warn Elizabeth, and cover his defection, but he failed to persuade either her or Cecil that his "chanting of peace," as the latter called it, was more than a lure to obtain more * Instructions to Sillery and Bellievre. Mém. de Duplessis-Mornay. The most frank statement of his reasons for concluding the Peace of Vervins was made by Henry to the German Protestant princes, to whom he sent an envoy in 1598, for the very purpose of conveying these explanations. He had been sincere, he said, in joining the Protestant League with England, Hol land, and the German princes, but XXVII. СНАР. XXVII. men and money from the queen. As to the Dutch, they would not hear of peace, no terms consistent with their independence being likely to be offered. The liberal and spirited politicians in England hesitated to break with such allies for the sake of the hollow friendship of Spain and France, the conservatives in Elizabeth's council taking the opportunity to denounce the democratic Dutch as selfish monopolisers of trade, and foes of aristocracy as well as monarchy. Yet Lord Burleigh, then sinking into the grave with age, was strenuous for peace, and his nephew, Secretary Sir Robert Cecil, was sent to France. Remembering the tricks of the Earl of Essex in former negotiations, he refused to confer with anyone, save the king, with whom his first care was to remonstrate against the peace. But Henry pleaded his utter inability to continue the war, adding that if England and Holland wanted to do so, he could aid them by repaying the sums which he had borrowed much more efficiently than in the field. Sir Robert Cecil, in obedience to his uncle's policy, would have closed with Henry's offer; but Barnevelt, the Dutch envoy, was so resolute in accepting no terms, that Cecil could not abandon him. And he soon learnt that Henry had already concluded his chief conditions of peace with the Spaniard, without waiting for the coming or consultation of his allies. He took his departure therefore in discontent. Henry insisted on a six months' truce being accorded to England, the Archduke Albert with much reluctance granting two. With Savoy the French king hoped to put an end to all dissensions, by refer *Burleigh's letter in Wright's Eliz. De Maisse's long despatch of January 4, 1598, in S. P. France, 119. Prevost-Paradol. Letter of Sir R. Cecil, giving an account of his interviews with the king and the ministers at Angers. S. P. France, 120. His letter despatched from Nantes is in Birch. Henry is said to have encouraged the Dutch at this time to continue the war. See Neville's letter to Cecil, Winwood's Memorials, vol. i. p. 107. Lettres de Henri IV., t. iv. p. 971. 345 XXVII. ring the contested question of the Marquisate of Saluces CHAP. to the arbitrage of the Pope. The duke objected to this, and refused to abandon his claim; and the Spaniards, pressed by the French king to compel their ally of Savoy to submit, declined the invidious task. By the treaty of Vervins, signed on May 22, 1598, France recovered Calais and all the towns of the Low Countries, which it possessed in 1559. The frontier fixed by the treaty of Cateau Cambresis was restored. Cambray was to be given up to its bishop, but the Spaniards refused to evacuate the citadel. Blavet in Britanny was also to be surrendered. During the negotiations, the Archduke Albert had prayed, as a special compliment to himself, the restoration of the county of Charolais with Franche Comté, and with this Henry complied. Thus came to a pause the struggle between the houses of Austria and Bourbon, which, with few intermissions, had occupied the sixteenth century. Personally and territorially the result was null. frontier, which bounded France at the commencement, continued to mark it at the close. Neither empire had achieved superiority in this respect, and the expenditure during an hundred years of two of the chief nations and dynasties of Europe in efforts, in treasure, and in life, seemed to have been made in vain. If, however, apart from acquisition of territory, it be enquired, which of the contending kingdoms made its principles prevail, and which succeeded in giving the tone to the other's politics and religion, then no doubt Spain must be admitted to have been triumphant. The Philip the Second succumbed a few months after the peace of Vervins, to a complication of physical suffering and loathsome disease; but his last moments were radiant with satisfaction and rendered glorious by success. His treasure might be exhausted, his armies powerless, and his name abhorred as that of one who had suborned more murders, inflicted more tortures, CHAP. XXVIL and spread more misery over the breadth of two continents, than had ever before been in the power of man to do. Yet this apt personification of the genius of evil left the world exultant that he had not only preserved and defended the possessions of his wide inheritance, scattered as it was over the face of Europe and of the world, but stamped his creed and established his régime, not alone throughout these, but even upon his great antagonist, France. The most extreme sect of Protestantism had taken birth in France, and at one time had overrun the country and mastered the court. That it would have prevailed and kept its hold over the land, had not Spain flung its powerful support into the balance with the House of Guise, cannot be asserted certainly; but had Philip not interfered, the struggle would have been more equal, and France continued to maintain that neutral ground in politics and regimen, between the north and south, which seemed natural to its character and geographical position. Instead of this, the arms and presence of Spain forced upon Henry the Fourth the necessity of adopting its religion as well as its principles of government. Henry may have accepted more apparent obstructions to his authority than the Spanish monarch. He allowed towns and parliaments and the holders of fiefs to keep many rights, and refused to promulgate the ultraCatholic intolerance of the Council of Trent; but he not the less assimilated his government of France to that of Spain, separating it from the north and its sympathies, and making it a member of the absolutist and intolerant League of the South. This was, no doubt, far from Henry's intention, and from that of Sully. Whilst adopting Catholicism, his design was to resume his hostility to the House of Austria, and to continue his aid to the liberties and independence of the Protestant north. So fixed was he in this view, that he censured the plenipotentiaries at Vervins for making it necessary for him to swear to abandon all pratiques et intelligences against Spain.* He owned he preferred loose bonds. He afterwards shook them off, and prepared to lead if not a Protestant crusade, at least a common force of Protestants, against Catholic Austria. Fate ordered it otherwise. After his death, Richelieu found it necessary to revive the king's policy in humbling the House of Austria, and rescuing from its grasp the Protestant princes of North Germany. This, however, was an exception to the political line which the French monarchy pursued in the main-a line which was a complete continuance of that of Philip the Second, in propagating absolutism and Catholicism by tyranny and by the sword. It was no longer, indeed, Spain that took the lead in the defence and manifestation of these principles. France came forward as their representative, and thrust Spain into the second rank. But it was still the Spanish and the southern ideas that inspired French rulers, and history bears marks all through the seventeenth century of how completely France was Hispanified in its first opening years. Richelieu was a Ximenes, and Louis the Fourteenth but a magnificent and somewhat civilised Philip the Second. During the ten or twelve years which Henry reigned after the pacification of Vervins and of Nantes, history has little to record, beyond the successive failures of attempts to break the treaty and renew the struggle. First came the zealots and the parliaments which resisted and refused to register the Edict of Nantes. That of Paris objected to the number of Protestant judges in the mixed court, and ended by admitting only one. objection to the admission of the religionists to all office was only overcome by the promise of the king to be very chary of such appointments. He insisted * Mémoires et Correspondance de Duplessis-Mornay, tom. viii. The XXVII. |