XXVII caused several of those implicated in the late plots to CHAP. be arrested. Amongst these were the brothers Lucques, agents of Spain. A court was held at Limoges, called that of the grand jours, where, as well as at Toulouse, some of the guilty were decapitated. The Duc de Bouillon had large domains and important towns in Poitou. Turenne, from whence he took his name, was of the number. He forbade resistance anywhere, and all submitted to the king. The most serious portion of the plots of the reign had been a design to deliver up Marseilles to the Spaniards, who had long desired to possess that port, and were ready to risk a war for the purpose. A captain, who had entered into the intrigue with the Spanish envoy Zuniga, was tried, condemned, and executed in Paris for the act in the last days of 1605. Henry then ordered his forces to march in the direc tion of Sedan, Sully bringing a formidable park of artillery, with which he promised to batter down the walls in a few days. Powerful intercessions were, however, at work for De Bouillon. Elizabeth was no more, but Cecil was still in office; and he, who believed less in De Bouillon's treason than in Henry's hatred to him as a Protestant, joined in the general opinion of the religionists, that the present expedition was against them.* The German princes held the same sentiments, and expressed them so strongly, that Henry, as he approached Sedan, wrote to the Landgrave of Hesse that he was ready to give assurance, under his hand, if necessary, that if De Bouillon would submit he should lose neither rights nor sovereignty.† Villeroy, who wished to save De Bouillon, because he was the rival of Sully, was sent forward to treat, whilst Sully him * Queen Elizabeth, at Cecil's suggestion, had formerly interfered for De Bouillon, at which Henry was as much enraged as Elizabeth had been at Henry's previous inter- † Rommel. Letter of Henry to XXVII. CHAP. self was, under one pretext or another, kept away from the negotiations. They succeeded, and De Bouillon, assured of pardon, came to the king's quarters and made his full submission. Henry and his queen made their solemn entry into Sedan, and gave for a time the government to an officer in whom De Bouillon had full confidence. The principal penalty inflicted on him was the deprival of the large amount of customs which he raised on commodities passing through the frontier town of Sedan. The king set up barriers and established officers of his own, which were not removed till the next reign. Thus were dissipated the mutual enmities between the king and his most powerful Huguenot subject, founded upon a vague suspicion rather than upon any real antagonism of views or interests. Duplessis-Mornay expresses a doubt as to which was most mortified, the duke at being compelled to make submission, or Sully, disappointed in the vaunted display of his artillery. Having humbled all domestic or semi-domestic foes, and established what no French monarch had ever done, the uniformity and supremacy of his rule from the Flemish to the Spanish and Italian frontier, having introduced economy and order into his finances, some regularity in his system of justice, and efficiency at least in one branch of military service, the ordnance, Henry had leisure to turn his views to foreign relations, and to the state of Europe in general. What chiefly aroused his attention and awakened his anxiety was the malevolent hostility of the House of Austria, which had never ceased since the peace of Vervins to support the foreign and suborn the domestic enemies of France. Henry himself, at the time of the conclusion of this peace, was not indeed more serious in his stipulations. He was not satisfied with having the dominions and the forces of the House of Austria to XXVII. the north, to the south, and to the east of him. And CHAP. whilst accepting and signing a treaty of peace he urged England and Holland not to follow his example, purporting, at a more favourable opportunity, to come to their succour and renew the war. In the meantime he indulged with his favourite Sully in raving and imagining a more normal and more happy state of Europe. The principle which they laid down-a principle long known and acted upon in Italy, and now transferred from that narrow theatre to the wider one of Europe -was the balance of power. Spain had dominions too exclusive and too vast. Philip the Second had acknowledged, not the injustice, but the inconvenience of this, by making over the Netherlands to the German branch of his house, in the person of the archduke. This created no division of interest or affection; and the most obvious care of a monarch of France must have been to free himself from the pressure of a power which environed him. Nor was Henry the first or the only sovereign to feel this necessity. Queen Elizabeth pointed it out at the time of the treaty of Vervins, making use of an argument and a truth which has never ceased to be felt and acted upon, that the first policy of an independent sovereign ought to be to put down those princes who aimed at universal empire. Henry fully admitted the justice of the assertion, but the disarray and the impoverishment of his kingdom were such as to allow him no alternative save that of peace. His withdrawal from the war was a serious injury to the Protestant cause. The Spaniards took advantage of it to pour their troops into the Duchy of Cleves, and those districts of the Rhine which lie between Holland and Germany, which had embraced the doctrines of the Reformation, and which they sought 1 CHAP. to conjoin with their dukedom of Burgundy.* XXVII. The estates and Prince Maurice, indeed, gallantly resisted. To divert the Spanish forces from the Rhine, they seized and fortified Ostend, and obtained from Queen Elizabeth some thousand English, with Sir Francis Vere as a governor. Elizabeth, then expecting a Spanish invasion in Ireland, begged of Henry to succour Ostend. This was the occasion upon which he sent Biron to her, and he himself came to Calais. He was peculiarly jealous of English attempts to get possession of ports on the continent. They already had Flushing, and he was doubtful whether he ought to succour the English in Ostend. Elizabeth, at the same time, came to Dover, and hoped for an interview with the French king; but he, knowing she would importune him to break with Spain, or at least succour Ostend, and reimburse, perhaps, the past loans, avoided the interview. He, however, sent Sully across the channel without any overt mission; and that minister has recorded his conversation with Elizabeth. The queen pointed out to Sully how much it was the policy and duty of France, as well as England, to humble Spain. She pressed an offensive and defensive alliance for the purpose, on the condition that neither France nor England should seek any territorial aggrandisement by the war; at least, that neither should appropriate any part of Flanders. Sully fully agreed with this, and represented it as his own view and that of his sovereign, that the balance of power should be maintained in Europe, dividing it into some fifteen states, whose delegates should meet in a kind of Amphictyonic council, to settle differences and avoid war. And that of these the seventeen provinces of Holland should form one constituted as a republic; whilst the * Discours de Cleves. MS. Colbert, 35. This document represents the Duke of Cleves as a chill in mind and body, and his wife, a princess of Lorraine, all in favour of the Jesuits. XXVII. Swiss cantons, augmented by the addition of Alsace, CHAP. Franche Comté, and Tyrol, should form another. This scheme Sully completed by the establishment of three religions-the Lutheran, the Calvinist, and the Catholic. The more serious question of internal government was to be solved by monarchs "governing amicably, and demanding merely what their subjects might willingly and cheerfully obey." It is much to be doubted that Henry, however he may have humoured his friend Sully in such imagination, sincerely adopted, or seriously proposed, these as aims. Certainly, at Calais, instead of hearkening to the proposals which Sully brought him from Elizabeth, he, on the contrary, took Villeroy's advice, hastily returned to Paris without seeing the envoy from the states, and left Ostend to its own fate and Elizabeth.* There were at the time, unfortunately, many causes of estrangement between France and England, of which a French monarch, inimical to the latter, might avail himself. By the peace with Spain the French came to enjoy and to monopolise the trade between the north and south of Europe. English ships and captains, now acccustomed to prey upon Spanish vessels and to interrupt the galleons, failed often in respecting the French flag, and exercised the right of search in an overhand and unwarrantable manner. The French made loud complaints, to which the English admiralty did not always pay due attention. The French retaliated by a measure which had the indirect effect. of preventing the sale of English cloth, at which the manufacturers complained. Added to this, Elizabeth's constant demands for repayment of sums lent, and the French king's coquetting with the Scotch, and it may be conceived that the relations between the courts were not at all amicable. Still the ill-will of Philip the Third towards France * Winwood's correspondence of this period. |