XXVII. CHAP. seemed unaltered; and when James the First ascended the English throne, it was at once feared that his love of peace and want of money would overrule his Protestantism, and prompt him to accept such terms of peace as Spain might offer. Sully was sent over soon after the death of Elizabeth. His high character and sententious wisdom made a great impression upon James, and even persuaded that monarch to renew the old league between France and England for the maintaining of the states of Holland against Spain. But the arrival of a solemn embassy from the courts of Madrid and Brussels soon effaced the results of Sully's eloquence. Fashion had its influence in those days as in later ones; and the Spaniards were then considered a nobler, a wealthier, and a more romantic people than the French. Ladies, especially, preferred the Don to the Monsieur; and James's queen openly set the example of a preference for Spanish over French. This predilection of policy and of taste led inevitably to a reconciliation between England and Spain, and to an abandonment of that Dutch commonwealth which Elizabeth had fostered. Nor did the Protestant party in England exert itself as it might have done to oppose such a course. The Cecils had always mistrusted France and Henry; and notwithstanding the disinterestedness preached by Sully, it was suspected in England that Henry the Fourth cherished the old design of the Valois to render France mistress of the Low Countries.* The existing arrangement by which these provinces had been assigned to a prince of the German House of Austria, was more satisfactory to the English politician than any other. Franche Comté having been joined to them, it was a resuscitation of the old house and empire of Burgundy, which might prove the best check * It is indeed manifest from the royal instructions to his envoy Reaux, that Henry looked at one time to replace Spain as sovereign of Holland. See Jeannin, Negotiations. to French, and the best sedative to Spanish, ambition. Henry thus lost the English alliance, not having known how to make use of it when a spirited queen held the British sceptre. Nor was he more successful in procuring that of the German Protestants. His conversion, his coquetting with Rome, his preference of Catholics in France, and even of the Jesuits, inspired his oldest allies beyond the Rhine with lukewarmness, if not suspicion. Yet he had gone the length of inspiring one of their principal sovereigns, the Landgrave of Hesse, with hopes of his again avowing himself Protestant*; and this was accompanied by his resumption of the old scheme of Francis the First to be elected Emperor of Germany. The proposal was universally scouted, and Henry transferred his patronage to the House of Bavaria, which he hoped to raise up as the competitor of that of Austria. But this scheme also failed; and though Henry succeeded in maintaining the League of Protestant princes beyond the Rhine, and his position of protector thereof, he still allowed many opportunities to pass for strengthening the Protestant cause in the north. Disputes had arisen between competitors to the archiepiscopal dignities of Cologne and of Strasburg, as well as for toleration in Aix-la-Chapelle, in any of which Henry might have taken a prominent, a decisive, and necessarily a successful part.† But he was too much a political Roman Catholic to adopt such a course, and his conduct with regard to Germany was thus vacillating, uninfluential, and feeble. A disgusting monument of the smallness, trickiness, * This declaration of Henry's to the landgrave that he was still a Protestant at heart (Rommel), coupled with what he observed to his queen, Marie of Medicis, that his conversion had been a feigned one until the time of the controversy between Duperron and Duplessis-Mornay, VOL. III. BB which made him a sincere Catholic † Jeannin. CHAP. XXVII. CHAP. insincerity, and dishonesty of the politicians of the age, XXVII. survives in the Negotiations of President Jeannin, the French plenipotentiary to the states of Holland, which reveal the petty manoeuvres and unworthy aims of all parties in settling the terms of peace between Spain and Holland. The Dutch were the last allies whom Henry had to depend upon for support in resisting Spain. He was therefore mortified to find that, although these republicans had warned him of their intentions, they had still concluded an eight months' truce without waiting his approval or advice. He interfered immediately with proffers and reproaches. The Dutch replied simply and plainly, that if France and England would support them strenuously in continuing the war with Spain, they would prefer that alternative; but that if those countries would neither of them come forward, they must make peace. France and England, however, no longer agreed. Each suspected his ally of seeking separate interests, and the states saw that a close alliance with one would draw on the enmity of the other. Peace with Spain therefore predominated in Dutch councils, provided it could be had on honourable terms. The aim of Henry was either to induce the Dutch not to make peace, or to conclude it on such terms, and in such a spirit, as should leave them free to break it at any convenient time, and join with him in a renewal of war. He even proposed, in the midst of the negotiations for peace, a treaty of the Protestant powers and himself, directed eventually against Spain. England would not join in it; and Holland merely made use of French support to remain firm in its demand of full rights and recognition from its former dominators. Though anxious for peace, and indeed compelled to it, * His letter to La Boderie, April 1607. For the negotiations of the epoch, see La Boderie's despatches, which are published, as well as the negotiations of Jeannin. The despatches of De Beaumont, who preceded La Boderie, are in the Bib. Imperiale. MSS. Sup. Français. XXVII. the Court of Spain shrank from the humiliation of CHAP. granting all they asked to the Dutch. It despatched one of its chief nobles, Don Pedro de Toledo, to France. The overtures which he made were the double marriage of the second son of the Spanish king with a daughter of Henry, and of the infanta with the dauphin. As the present ruler of the Low Countries had no issue, they might be settled on the Spanish prince in reversion. And France should undertake to oblige the Dutch to submit, after the expiration of the truce, to the same sovereign as Flanders. The king and even Villeroy rejected these insidious and unscrupulous proposals. The latter was not indeed opposed to the Spanish marriages. But he joined the king fully in avoiding any act that would alienate the Dutch, fling them into the arms of England, and destroy the influence which Henry still flattered himself he held as head of the Protestant League.* From the complicated efforts and intrigues of their allies the Dutch managed to extricate themselves as successfully as from the great military struggle, and peace was concluded between Holland and Spain the 29th of May, 1609, on the great condition of national independence, and a freedom of trade equal to that granted to other countries. Neither did the Dutch cede what France joined Spain in demanding, the admission of Catholics and Jesuits to their country. This accord put an end to the long struggle between the two religions in the north-west of Europe, and removed the principal scene of their antagonism from Flanders to Germany, whither, in order to watch its progress, we must proceed beyond the Rhine. At this point it is natural to pause, and cast a retrospect over the field occupied by the contending religions during half a century. In the course of the * Henry's letter of July, 1608, to De Breves. MSS. Bethune, 8965. XXVII. CHAP. narrative, the many and various circumstances which influenced the decline of Protestantism have been noted. It may now be observed how different the struggle was at its commencement from what it became towards the close. In 1560 the Reformation was a mental protest against falsehood and abuse. It was a strong and conscientious conviction that rushed to combat, because it was treated as criminal, without calculating the means or providing the resources for a lengthened contest. At the close, the spirit-at least the religious spirit-had evaporated. The antagonism was that of political, personal, and class interests. What began as a spiritual, ended as a material combat; and the true statement of the result is, that Protestantism succumbed to Catholicism, because the French monarch succumbed to the Spanish. The military decision implied and drew after it the religious. If the Protestants were the losers, their creed had little to do with it. Their inferiority lay in their not developing their true strength, and in never marshalling or sending forth either their peasants or their citizens to the field. That duty was left to the nobles, who gradually deserted the poor camp for the rich, the simple for the gentle, the cause of freedom and of the commons for that of aristocracy and authority. They formed, unfortunately, the only French soldiers of the time. Henry had no infantry, save such as he could borrow from abroad; and hence he was unable to cope with the Spaniards, prevent the Prince of Parma from raising his sieges, or compel him to battle. Henry was thus, what Napoleon styles him, merely a brilliant captain of cavalry. Hence he was defeated as a general in the field, and compelled, in consequence, to give up his creed and party as a politician. It is revolting and humiliating to think, that the prevalence of religious opinion should depend on the fortune of arms, the success of a general, or the |