Title: History of the United Netherlands, 1590b
Author: Motley, John Lothrop
Language: English
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609

By John Lothrop Motley



History of the United Netherlands, 1590(b)


CHAPTER XXIII.

     Philip's scheme of aggrandizement--Projected invasion of France--
     Internal condition of France--Character of Henry of Navarre--
     Preparation for action--Battle of Ivry--Victory of the French king
     over the League--Reluctance of the King to attack the French
     capital--Siege of Paris--The pope indisposed towards the League--
     Extraordinary demonstration of ecclesiastics--Influence of the
     priests--Extremities of the siege--Attempted negotiation--State of
     Philip's army--Difficult position of Farnese--March of the allies to
     the relief of Paris--Lagny taken and the city relieved--Desertion of
     the king's army--Siege of Corbeil--Death of Pope Sixtus V.--
     Re-capture of Lagny and Corbeil--Return of Parma to the Netherlands
     --Result of the expedition.

The scene of the narrative shifts to France.  The history of the United
Netherlands at this epoch is a world-history.  Were it not so, it would
have far less of moral and instruction for all time than it is really
capable of affording.  The battle of liberty against despotism was now
fought in the hop-fields of Brabant or the polders of Friesland, now in
the: narrow seas which encircle England, and now on the sunny plains of
Dauphiny, among the craggy inlets of Brittany, or along the high roads
and rivers which lead to the gates of Paris.  But everywhere a noiseless,
secret, but ubiquitous negotiation was speeding with never an instant's
pause to accomplish the work which lansquenettes and riders, pikemen and
carabineers were contending for on a hundred battle-fields and amid a din
of arms which for a quarter of a century had been the regular hum of
human industry.  For nearly a generation of mankind, Germans and
Hollanders, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen, Spaniards and
Italians seemed to be born into the world mainly to fight for or against
a system of universal monarchy, conceived for his own benefit by a quiet
old man who passed his days at a writing desk in a remote corner of
Europe.  It must be confessed that Philip II. gave the world work enough.
Whether--had the peoples governed themselves--their energies might not
have been exerted in a different direction, and on the whole have
produced more of good to the human race than came of all this blood and
awoke, may be questioned.

But the divine right of kings, associating itself with the power supreme
of the Church, was struggling to maintain that old mastery of mankind
which awakening reason was inclined to dispute.  Countries and nations
being regarded as private property to be inherited or bequeathed by a few
favoured individuals--provided always that those individuals were
obedient to the chief-priest--it had now become right and proper for the
Spanish monarch to annex Scotland, England, and France to the very
considerable possessions which were already his own.  Scotland he claimed
by virtue of the expressed wish of Mary to the exclusion of her heretic
son.

France, which had been unjustly usurped by another family in times past
to his detriment, and which only a mere human invention--a "pleasantry"
as Alva had happily termed it, called the "Salic law"--prevented from
passing quietly to his daughter, as heiress to her mother, daughter of
Henry II., he was now fully bent upon making his own without further loss
of time.  England, in consequence of the mishap of the year eighty-eight,
he was inclined to defer appropriating until the possession of the French
coasts, together with those of the Netherlands, should enable him to risk
the adventure with assured chances of success.

The Netherlands were fast slipping beyond his control, to be sure, as he
engaged in these endless schemes; and ill-disposed people of the day said
that the king was like Aesop's dog, lapping the river dry in order to get
at the skins floating on the surface.  The Duke of Parma was driven to
his wits' ends for expedients, and beside himself with vexation, when
commanded to withdraw his ill-paid and mutinous army from the Provinces
for the purpose of invading France.  Most importunate were the appeals
and potent the arguments by which he attempted to turn Philip from his
purpose.  It was in vain.  Spain was the great, aggressive, overshadowing
power at that day, before whose plots and whose violence the nations
alternately trembled, and it was France that now stood in danger of being
conquered or dismembered by the common enemy of all.  That unhappy
kingdom, torn by intestine conflict, naturally invited the ambition and
the greediness of foreign powers.  Civil war had been its condition, with
brief intervals, for a whole generation of mankind.  During the last few
years, the sword had been never sheathed, while "the holy Confederacy"
and the Bearnese struggled together for the mastery.  Religion was the
mantle under which the chiefs on both sides concealed their real designs
as they led on their followers year after year to the desperate conflict.
And their followers, the masses, were doubtless in earnest.  A great
principle--the relation of man to his Maker and his condition in a future
world as laid down by rival priesthoods--has in almost every stage of
history had power to influence the multitude to fury and to deluge the
world in blood.  And so long as the superstitious element of human nature
enables individuals or combinations of them to dictate to their fellow-
creatures those relations, or to dogmatize concerning those conditions--
to take possession of their consciences in short, and to interpose their
mummeries between man and his Creator--it is, probable that such scenes
as caused the nations to shudder, throughout so large a portion of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries will continue to repeat themselves at
intervals in various parts of the earth.  Nothing can be more sublime
than the self-sacrifice, nothing more demoniac than the crimes, which
human creatures have seemed always ready to exhibit under the name of
religion.

It was and had been really civil war in France.  In the Netherlands it
had become essentially a struggle for independence against a foreign
monarch; although the germ out of which both conflicts had grown to their
enormous proportions was an effort of the multitude to check the growth
of papacy.  In France, accordingly, civil war, attended by that gaunt
sisterhood, murder, pestilence, and famine, had swept from the soil
almost everything that makes life valuable.  It had not brought in its
train that extraordinary material prosperity and intellectual development
at which men wondered in the Netherlands, and to which allusion has just
been made.  But a fortunate conjunction of circumstances had now placed
Henry of Navarre in a position of vantage.  He represented the principle
of nationality, of French unity.  It was impossible to deny that he was
in the regular line of succession, now that luckless Henry of Valois
slept with his fathers, and the principle of nationality might perhaps
prove as vital a force as attachment to the Roman Church.  Moreover, the
adroit and unscrupulous Bearnese knew well how to shift the mantle of
religion from one shoulder to the other, to serve his purposes or the
humours of those whom he addressed.

"The King of Spain would exclude me from the kingdom and heritage of my
father because of my religion," he said to the Duke of Saxony; "but in
that religion I am determined to persist so long as I shall live."  The
hand was the hand of Henry, but it was the voice of Duplessis Mornay.

"Were there thirty crowns to win," said he, at about the same time to the
States of France, "I would not change my religion on compulsion, the
dagger at my throat.  Instruct me, instruct me, I am not obstinate."
There spoke the wily freethinker, determined not to be juggled out of
what he considered his property by fanatics or priests of either church.
Had Henry been a real devotee, the fate of Christendom might have been
different.  The world has long known how much misery it is in the power
of crowned bigots to inflict.

On the other hand, the Holy League, the sacred Confederacy, was catholic
or nothing.  Already it was more papist than the pope, and loudly
denounced Sixtus V. as a Huguenot because he was thought to entertain a
weak admiration both for Henry the heretic and for the Jezebel of
England.

But the holy confederacy was bent on destroying the national government
of France, and dismembering the national domain.  To do this the pretext
of trampling out heresy and indefinitely extending the power of Rome, was
most influential with the multitude, and entitled the leaders to enjoy
immense power for the time being, while maturing their schemes for
acquiring permanent possession of large fragments of the national
territory.  Mayenne, Nemours, Aumale, Mercoeur longed to convert
temporary governments into independent principalities.  The Duke of
Lorraine looked with longing eyes on Verdun, Sedan, and, the other fair
cities within the territories contiguous--to his own domains.  The
reckless house of Savoy; with whom freebooting and landrobbery seemed
geographical, and hereditary necessities, was busy on the southern
borders, while it seemed easy enough for Philip, II., in right of his
daughter, to secure at least the duchy of Brittany before entering on
the sovereignty of the whole kingdom.

To the eyes of the world at large: France might well seem in a condition
of hopeless disintegration; the restoration of its unity and former
position among the nations, under the government of a single chief, a
weak and wicked dream.  Furious and incessant were the anathemas hurled
on the head of the Bearnese for his persistence in drowning the land in
blood in the hope of recovering a national capital which never could be
his, and of wresting from the control of the confederacy that power.
which, whether usurped or rightful, was considered, at least by the
peaceably inclined, to have become a solid fact.

The poor puppet locked in the tower of Fontenay, and entitled Charles X.;
deceived and scared no one.  Such money as there was might be coined, in
its name, but Madam League reigned supreme in Paris.  The confederates,
inspired by the eloquence of a cardinal legate, and supplied with funds
by the faithful, were ready to dare a thousand  deaths rather than submit
to the rule of a tyrant and heretic.

What was an authority derived from the laws of the land and the history
of the race compared with the dogmas of Rome and the trained veterans of
Spain?  It remained to be seen whether nationality or bigotry would
triumph.  But in the early days of 1590 the prospects of nationality were
not encouraging.

Francois de Luxembourg, due de Pincey, was in Rome at that moment,
deputed by such catholic nobles of France as were friendly to Henry of
Navarre.  Sixtus might perhaps be influenced as to the degree of respect
to be accorded to the envoy's representations by the events of the
campaign about to open.  Meantime the legate Gaetano, young, rich,
eloquent, unscrupulous, distinguished alike for the splendour of his
house and the brilliancy of his intellect, had arrived in Paris.

Followed by a great train of adherents he had gone down to the House of
Parliament, and was about to seat himself under the dais reserved for the
king, when Brisson, first President of Parliament, plucked him back by
the arm, and caused him to take a seat immediately below his own.

Deeply was the bold president to expiate this defence of king and law
against the Holy League.  For the moment however the legate contented
himself with a long harangue, setting forth the power of Rome, while
Brisson replied by an oration magnifying the grandeur of France.

Soon afterwards the cardinal addressed himself to the counteraction
of Henry's projects of conversion.  For, well did the subtle priest
understand that in purging himself of heresy, the Bearnese was about to
cut the ground from beneath his enemies' feet.  In a letter to the
archbishops and bishops of France, he argued the matter at length.
Especially he denied the necessity or the legality of an assembly of all
the prelates of France, such as Henry desired to afford him the requisite
"instruction" as to the respective merits of the Roman and the reformed
Church.  Certainly, he urged, the Prince of Bearne could hardly require
instruction as to the tenets of either, seeing that at different times he
had faithfully professed both.

But while benches of bishops and doctors of the Sorbonne were burnishing
all the arms in ecclesiastical and legal arsenals for the approaching
fray, the sound of louder if not more potent artillery began to be heard
in the vicinity of Paris.  The candid Henry, while seeking ghostly
instruction with eagerness from his papistical patrons, was equally
persevering in applying for the assistance of heretic musketeers and
riders from his protestant friends in England, Holland, Germany, and
Switzerland.

Queen Elizabeth and the States-General vied with each other in generosity
to the great champion of protestantism, who was combating the holy league
so valiantly, and rarely has a great historical figure presented itself
to the world so bizarre of aspect, and under such shifting perplexity of
light and shade, as did the Bearnese in the early spring of 1590.

The hope of a considerable portion of the catholic nobility of his realm,
although himself an excommunicated heretic; the mainstay of Calvinism
while secretly bending all his energies to effect his reconciliation with
the pope; the idol of the austere and grimly puritanical, while himself a
model of profligacy; the leader of the earnest and the true, although
false as water himself in every relation in which human beings can stand
to each other; a standardbearer of both great branches of the Christian
Church in an age when religion was the atmosphere of men's daily lives,
yet finding his sincerest admirer, and one of his most faithful allies,
in the Grand Turk,

     [A portion of the magnificently protective letter of Sultan Amurath,
     in which he complimented Henry on his religious stedfastness, might
     almost have made the king's cheek tingle.]

the representative of national liberty and human rights against regal and
sacerdotal absolutism, while himself a remorseless despot by nature and
education, and a believer in no rights of the people save in their
privilege to be ruled by himself; it seems strange at first view that
Henry of Navarre should have been for centuries so heroic and popular an
image.  But he was a soldier, a wit, a consummate politician; above all,
he was a man, at a period when to be a king was often to be something
much less or much worse.

To those accustomed to weigh and analyse popular forces it might well
seem that he was now playing an utterly hopeless game.  His capital
garrisoned by the Pope and the King of Spain, with its grandees and its
populace scoffing at his pretence of authority and loathing his name;
with an exchequer consisting of what he could beg or borrow from Queen
Elizabeth--most parsimonious of sovereigns reigning over the half of a
small island--and from the States-General governing a half-born, half-
drowned little republic, engaged in a quarter of a century's warfare with
the greatest monarch in the world; with a wardrobe consisting of a dozen
shirts and five pocket-handkerchiefs, most of them ragged, and with a
commissariat made up of what could be brought in the saddle-bags of his
Huguenot cavaliers who came to the charge with him to-day, and to-morrow
were dispersed again to their mountain fastnesses; it did not seem likely
on any reasonable theory of dynamics that the power of the Bearnese was
capable of outweighing Pope and Spain, and the meaner but massive
populace of France, and the Sorbonne, and the great chiefs of the
confederacy, wealthy, long descended, allied to all the sovereigns of
Christendom, potent in territorial possessions and skilful in wielding
political influences.

"The Bearnese is poor but a gentleman of good family," said the cheerful
Henry, and it remained to-be seen whether nationality, unity, legitimate
authority, history, and law would be able to neutralise the powerful
combination of opposing elements.

The king had been besieging Dreux and had made good progress in reducing
the outposts of the city.  As it was known that he was expecting
considerable reinforcements of English ships, Netherlanders, and Germans,
the chiefs of the league issued orders from Paris for an attack before he
should thus be strengthened.

For Parma, unwillingly obeying the stringent commands of his master, had
sent from Flanders eighteen hundred picked cavalry under Count Philip
Egmont to join the army of Mayenne.  This force comprised five hundred
Belgian heavy dragoons under the chief nobles of the land, together with
a selection, in even proportions, of Walloon, German, Spanish, and
Italian troopers.

Mayenne accordingly crossed the Seine at Mantes with an army of ten
thousand foot, and, including Egmont's contingent, about four thousand
horse.  A force under Marshal d'Aumont, which lay in Ivry at the passage
of the Eure, fell back on his approach and joined the remainder of the
king's army.  The siege of Dreux was abandoned; and Henry withdrew to the
neighbourhood of Nonancourt.  It was obvious that the duke meant to offer
battle, and it was rare that the king under any circumstances could be
induced to decline a combat.

On the night of the 12th-13th March, Henry occupied Saint Andre, a
village situated on an elevated and extensive plain four leagues from
Nonancourt, in the direction of Ivry, fringed on three sides by villages
and by a wood, and commanding a view of all the approaches from the
country between the Seine and Eure.  It would have been better had
Mayenne been beforehand with him, as the sequel proved; but the duke was
not famed for the rapidity of his movements.  During the greater part of
the night, Henry was employed in distributing his orders for that
conflict which was inevitable on the following day.  His army was drawn
up according to a plan prepared by himself, and submitted to the most
experienced of his generals for their approval.  He then personally
visited every portion of the encampment, speaking words of encouragement
to his soldiers, and perfecting his arrangements for the coming conflict.
Attended by Marshals d'Aumont and Biron he remained on horseback during a
portion of the night, having ordered his officers to their tents and
reconnoitred as well as he could the position of the enemy.  Towards
morning he retired to his headquarters at Fourainville, where he threw
himself half-dressed on his truckle bed, and although the night was
bitterly cold, with no covering but his cloak.  He was startled from his
slumber before the dawn by a movement of lights in the enemy's camp, and
he sprang to his feet supposing that the duke was stealing a march upon
him despite all his precautions.  The alarm proved to be a false one, but
Henry lost no time in ordering his battle.  His cavalry he divided in
seven troops or squadrons.  The first, forming the left wing, was a body
of three hundred under Marshal d'Aumont, supported by two regiments of
French infantry.  Next, separated by a short interval, was another troop
of three hundred under the Duke of Montpensier, supported by two other
regiments of foot, one Swiss and one German.  In front of Montpensier was
Baron Biron the younger, at the head of still another body of three
hundred.  Two troops of cuirassiers, each four hundred strong, were on
Biron's left, the one commanded by the Grand Prior of France, Charles
d'Angouleme, the other by Monsieur de Givry.  Between the Prior and Givry
were six pieces of heavy artillery, while the battalia, formed of eight
hundred horse in six squadrons, was commanded by the king in person, and
covered on both sides by English and Swiss infantry, amounting to some
four thousand in all.  The right wing was under the charge of old Marshal
Biron, and comprised three troops of horse, numbering one hundred and
fifty each, two companies of German riders, and four regiments of French
infantry.  These numbers, which are probably given with as much accuracy
as can be obtained, show a force of about three thousand horse and twelve
thousand foot.

The Duke of Mayenne, seeing too late the advantage of position which he
might have easily secured the day before, led his army forth with the
early light, and arranged it in an order not very different from that
adopted by the king, and within cannon-shot of his lines.  The right wing
under Marshal de la Chatre consisted of three regiments of French and one
of Germans, supporting three regiments of Spanish lancers, two cornets of
German riders under the Bastard of Brunswick, and four hundred
cuirassiers.  The battalia, which was composed of six hundred splendid
cavalry, all noblemen of France, guarding the white banner of the Holy
League, and supported by a column of three thousand Swiss and two
thousand French infantry, was commanded by Mayenne in person, assisted by
his half-brother, the Duke of Nemours.  In front of the infantry was a
battery of six cannon and three culverines.  The left wing was commanded
by Marshal de Rene, with six regiments of French and Lorrainers, two
thousand Germans, six hundred French cuirassiers, and the mounted
troopers of Count Egmont.  It is probable that Mayenne's whole force,
therefore, amounted to nearly four thousand cavalry and at least thirteen
thousand foot.

Very different was the respective appearance of the two armies, so far,
especially, as regarded the horsemen on both sides.  Gay in their gilded
armour and waving plumes, with silken scarves across their shoulders, and
the fluttering favours of fair ladies on their arms or in their helmets,
the brilliant champions of the Holy Catholic Confederacy clustered around
the chieftains of the great house of Guise, impatient for the conflict.
It was like a muster for a brilliant and chivalrous tournament.  The
Walloon and Flemish nobles, outrivalling even the self-confidence of
their companions in arms, taunted them with their slowness.  The,
impetuous Egmont, burning to eclipse the fame of his ill-fated father at
Gravelines and St. Quintin in the same holy cause, urged on the battle
with unseemly haste, loudly proclaiming that if the French were faint-
hearted he would himself give a good account of the Navarrese prince
without any assistance from them.

A cannon-shot away, the grim puritan nobles who had come forth from their
mountain fastnesses to do battle for king and law and for the rights of
conscience against the Holy League--men seasoned in a hundred battle-
fields, clad all in iron, with no dainty ornaments nor holiday luxury of
warfare--knelt on the ground, smiting their mailed breasts with iron
hands, invoking blessings on themselves and curses and confusion on their
enemies in the coming conflict, and chanting a stern psalm of homage to
the God of battles and of wrath.  And Henry of France and Navarre,
descendant of Lewis the Holy and of Hugh the Great, beloved chief of the
Calvinist cavaliers, knelt among his heretic brethren, and prayed and
chanted with them.  But not the staunchest Huguenot of them all, not
Duplessis, nor D'Aubigne, nor De la Noue with the iron arm, was more
devoted on that day to crown and country than were such papist supporters
of the rightful heir as had sworn to conquer the insolent foreigner on
the soil of France or die.

When this brief prelude was over, Henry made an address to his soldiers,
but its language has not been preserved.  It is known, however, that he
wore that day his famous snow-white plume, and that he ordered his
soldiers, should his banner go down in the conflict, to follow wherever
and as long as that plume should be seen waving on any part of the field.
He had taken a position by which his troops had the sun and wind in their
backs, so that the smoke rolled toward the enemy and the light shone in
their eyes.  The combat began with the play of artillery, which soon
became so warm that Egmont, whose cavalry--suffering and galled--soon
became impatient, ordered a charge.  It was a most brilliant one.  The
heavy troopers of Flanders and Hainault, following their spirited
chieftain, dashed upon old Marshal Biron, routing his cavalry, charging
clean up to the Huguenot guns and sabring the cannoneers.  The shock was
square, solid, irresistible, and was followed up by the German riders
under Eric of Brunswick, who charged upon the battalia of the royal army,
where the king commanded in person.

There was a panic.  The whole royal cavalry wavered, the supporting
infantry recoiled, the day seemed lost before the battle was well begun.
Yells of "Victory!  Victory!  up with the Holy League, down with the
heretic Bearnese," resounded through the Catholic squadrons.  The king
and Marshal Biron, who were near each other, were furious with rage, but
already doubtful of the result.  They exerted themselves to rally the
troops under their immediate command, and to reform the shattered ranks.

The German riders and French lancers under Brunswick and Bassompierre
had, however, not done their work as thoroughly as Egmont had done.  The
ground was so miry and soft that in the brief space which separated the
hostile lines they had not power to urge their horses to full speed.
Throwing away their useless lances, they came on at a feeble canter,
sword in hand, and were unable to make a very vigorous impression on the
more heavily armed troopers opposed to them.  Meeting with a firm
resistance to their career, they wheeled, faltered a little and fell a
short distance back.  Many of the riders being of the reformed religion,
refused moreover to fire upon the Huguenots, and discharged their
carbines in the air.

The king, whose glance on the battle-field was like inspiration, saw the
blot and charged upon them in person with his whole battalia of cavalry.
The veteran Biron followed hard upon the snow-white plume.  The scene was
changed, victory succeeded to impending defeat, and the enemy was routed.
The riders and cuirassiers, broken into a struggling heap of confusion,
strewed the ground with their dead bodies, or carried dismay into the
ranks of the infantry as they strove to escape.  Brunswick went down in
the melee, mortally wounded as it was believed.  Egmont renewing the
charge at the head of his victorious Belgian troopers, fell dead with a
musket-ball through his heart.  The shattered German and Walloon cavalry,
now pricked forward by the lances of their companions, under the
passionate commands of Mayenne and Aumale, now fading back before the
furious charges of the Huguenots, were completely overthrown and cut to
pieces.

Seven times did Henry of Navarre in person lead his troopers to the
charge; but suddenly, in the midst of the din of battle and the cheers of
victory, a message of despair went from lip to lip throughout the royal
lines.  The king had disappeared.  He was killed, and the hopes of
Protestantism and of France were fallen for ever with him.  The white
standard of his battalia had been seen floating wildly and purposelessly
over the field; for his bannerman, Pot de Rhodes, a young noble of
Dauphiny, wounded mortally in the head, with blood streaming over his
face and blinding his sight, was utterly unable to control his horse, who
gallopped hither and thither at his own caprice, misleading many troopers
who followed in his erratic career.  A cavalier, armed in proof, and
wearing the famous snow-white plume, after a hand-to-hand struggle with
a veteran of Count Bossu's regiment, was seen to fall dead by the side of
the bannerman: The Fleming, not used to boast, loudly asserted that he
had slain the Bearnese, and the news spread rapidly over the battle-
field.  The defeated Confederates gained new courage, the victorious
Royalists were beginning to waver, when suddenly, between the hostile
lines, in the very midst of the battle, the king gallopped forward,
bareheaded, covered with blood and dust, but entirely unhurt.  A wild
shout of "Vive le Roi!"  rang through the air.  Cheerful as ever, he
addressed a few encouraging words to his soldiers, with a smiling face,
and again led a charge.  It was all that was necessary to complete the
victory.  The enemy broke and ran away on every side in wildest
confusion, followed by the royalist cavalry, who sabred them as they
fled.  The panic gained the foot-soldiers, who should have supported the
cavalry, but had not been at all engaged in the action.  The French
infantry threw away their arms as they rushed from the field and sought
refuge in the woods.  The Walloons were so expeditious in the race, that
they never stopped till they gained their own frontier.  The day was
hopelessly lost, and although Mayenne had conducted himself well in the
early part of the day, it was certain that he was excelled by none in the
celerity of his flight when the rout had fairly begun.  Pausing to draw
breath as he gained the wood, he was seen to deal blows with his own
sword among the mob of fugitives, not that he might rally them to their
flag and drive them back to another encounter, but because they
encumbered his own retreat.

The Walloon carbineers, the German riders, and the French lancers,
disputing as to the relative blame to be attached to each corps, began
shooting and sabring each other, almost before they were out of the
enemy's sight.  Many were thus killed.  The lansquenets were all put to
the sword.  The Swiss infantry were allowed to depart for their own
country on pledging themselves not again to bear arms against Henry IV.

It is probable that eight hundred of the leaguers were either killed on
the battle-field or drowned in the swollen river in their retreat.  About
one-fourth of that number fell in the army of the king.  It is certain
that of the contingent from the obedient Netherlands, two hundred and
seventy, including their distinguished general, lost their lives.  The
Bastard of Brunswick, crawling from beneath a heap of slain, escaped with
life.  Mayenne lost all his standards and all the baggage of his army,
while the army itself was for a time hopelessly dissolved.

Few cavalry actions have attained a wider celebrity in history than the
fight of Ivry.  Yet there have been many hard-fought battles, where the
struggle was fiercer and closer, where the issue was for a longer time
doubtful, where far more lives on either side were lost, where the final
victory was immediately productive of very much greater results, and
which, nevertheless, have sunk into hopeless oblivion.  The, personal
details which remain concerning the part enacted by the adventurous king
at this most critical period of his career, the romantic interest which
must always gather about that ready-witted, ready-sworded Gascon, at the
moment when, to contemporaries, the result of all his struggles seemed so
hopeless or at best so doubtful; above all, the numerous royal and
princely names which embellished the roll-call of that famous passage of
arms, and which were supposed, in those days at least, to add such lustre
to a battle-field, as humbler names, however illustrious by valour or
virtue, could never bestow, have made this combat for ever famous.

Yet it is certain that the most healthy moral, in military affairs, to be
derived from the event, is that the importance of a victory depends less
upon itself than on the use to be made of it.  Mayenne fled to Mantes,
the Duke of Nemours to Chartres, other leaders of the League in various
directions, Mayenne told every body he met that the Bearnese was killed,
and that although his own army was defeated, he should soon have another
one on foot.  The same intelligence was communicated to the Duke of
Parma, and by him to Philip.  Mendoza and the other Spanish agents went
about Paris spreading the news of Henry's death, but the fact seemed
woefully to lack confirmation, while the proofs of the utter overthrow
and shameful defeat of the Leaguers were visible on every, side.  The
Parisians--many of whom the year before had in vain hired windows in the
principal streets, in order to witness the promised entrance of the
Bearnese, bound hand and foot, and with a gag in his mouth, to swell the
triumph of Madam League--were incredulous as to the death now reported to
them of this very lively heretic, by those who had fled so ignominiously
from his troopers.

De la None and the other Huguenot chieftains, earnestly urged upon Henry
the importance of advancing upon Paris without an instant's delay, and it
seems at least extremely probable that, had he done so, the capital would
have fallen at once into his hands.  It is the concurrent testimony of
contemporaries that the panic, the destitution, the confusion would have
made resistance impossible had a determined onslaught been made.  And
Henry had a couple of thousand horsemen flushed with victory, and a dozen
thousand foot who had been compelled to look upon a triumph in which they
had no opportunity of sharing: Success and emulation would have easily
triumphed over dissension and despair.

But the king, yielding to the councils of Biron and other Catholics,
declined attacking the capital, and preferred waiting the slow, and in
his circumstances eminently hazardous, operations of a regular siege.
Was it the fear of giving a signal triumph to the cause of Protestantism
that caused the Huguenot leader--so soon to become a renegade--to pause
in his career?  Was it anxiety lest his victorious entrance into Paris
might undo the diplomacy of his catholic envoys at Rome? or was it simply
the mutinous condition of his army, especially of the Swiss mercenaries,
who refused to advance a step unless their arrears of pay were at once
furnished them out of the utterly empty exchequer of the king?  Whatever
may have been the cause of the delay, it is certain that the golden fruit
of victory was not plucked, and that although the confederate army had
rapidly dissolved, in consequence of their defeat, the king's own forces
manifested as little cohesion.

And now began that slow and painful siege, the details of which are as
terrible, but as universally known, as those of any chapters in the
blood-stained history of the century.  Henry seized upon the towns
guarding the rivers Seine and Marne, twin nurses of Paris.  By
controlling the course of those streams as well as that of the Yonne and
Oise--especially by taking firm possession of Lagny on the Marne, whence
a bridge led from the Isle of France to the Brie country--great
thoroughfare of wine and corn--and of Corbeil at the junction of the
little river Essonne with the Seine-it was easy in that age to stop the
vital circulation of the imperial city.

By midsummer, Paris, unquestionably the first city of Europe at that day,
was in extremities, and there are few events in history in which our
admiration is more excited by the power of mankind to endure almost
preternatural misery, or our indignation more deeply aroused by the
cruelty with which the sublimest principles of human nature may be made
to serve the purposes of selfish ambition and grovelling superstition,
than this famous leaguer.

Rarely have men at any epoch defended their fatherland against foreign
oppression with more heroism than that which was manifested by the
Parisians of 1590 in resisting religious toleration, and in obeying a
foreign and priestly despotism.  Men, women, and children cheerfully laid
down their lives by thousands in order that the papal legate and the king
of Spain might trample upon that legitimate sovereign of France who was
one day to become the idol of Paris and of the whole kingdom.

A census taken at the beginning of the siege had showed a populace of two
hundred thousand souls, with a sufficiency of provisions, it was thought,
to last one month.  But before the terrible summer was over--so
completely had the city been invested--the bushel of wheat was worth
three hundred and sixty crowns, rye and oats being but little cheaper.
Indeed, grain might as well have cost three thousand crowns the bushel,
for the prices recorded placed it beyond the reach of all but the
extremely wealthy.  The flesh of horses, asses, dogs, cats, rats had
become rare luxuries.  There was nothing cheap, said a citizen bitterly,
but sermons.  And the priests and monks of every order went daily about
the streets, preaching fortitude in that great resistance to heresy, by
which Paris was earning for itself a crown of glory, and promising the
most direct passage to paradise for the souls of the wretched victims
who fell daily, starved to death, upon the pavements.  And the monks and
priests did their work nobly, aiding the general resolution by the
example of their own courage.  Better fed than their fellow citizens,
they did military work in trench, guard-house and rampart, as the
population became rapidly unfit, from physical exhaustion, for the
defence of the city.

The young Duke of Nemours, governor of the place, manifested as much
resolution and conduct in bringing his countrymen to perdition as if the
work in which he was engaged had been the highest and holiest that ever
tasked human energies.  He was sustained in his task by that proud
princess, his own and Mayenne's mother, by Madame Montpensier, by the
resident triumvirate of Spain, Mendoza, Commander Moreo, and John Baptist
Tasais, by the cardinal legate Gaetano, and, more than all, by the
sixteen chiefs of the wards, those municipal tyrants of the unhappy
populace.

Pope Sixtus himself was by no means eager for the success of the League.
After the battle of Ivry, he had most seriously inclined his ear to the
representations of Henry's envoy, and showed much willingness to admit
the victorious heretic once more into the bosom of the Church.  Sixtus
was not desirous of contributing to the advancement of Philip's power.
He feared his designs on Italy, being himself most anxious at that time
to annex Naples to the holy see.  He had amassed a large treasure, but he
liked best to spend it in splendid architecture, in noble fountains, in
magnificent collections of art, science, and literature, and, above all,
in building up fortunes for the children of his sister the washerwoman,
and in allying them all to the most princely houses of Italy, while never
allowing them even to mention the name of their father, so base was his
degree; but he cared not to disburse from his hoarded dollars to supply
the necessities of the League.

But Gaetano, although he could wring but fifty thousand crowns from his
Holiness after the fatal fight of Ivry, to further the good cause, was
lavish in expenditures from his own purse and from other sources, and
this too at a time when thirty-three per cent. interest was paid to the
usurers of Antwerp for one month's loan of ready money.  He was
indefatigable, too, and most successful in his exhortations and ghostly
consolations to the people.  Those proud priests and great nobles were
playing a reckless game, and the hopes of mankind beyond the grave were
the counters on their table.  For themselves there were rich prizes for
the winning.  Should they succeed in dismembering the fair land where
they were enacting their fantastic parts, there were temporal
principalities, great provinces, petty sovereignties, to be carved out
of the heritage which the Bearnese claimed for his own.  Obviously then,
their consciences could never permit this shameless heretic, by a
simulated conversion at the critical moment, to block their game and
restore the national unity and laws.  And even should it be necessary to
give the whole kingdom, instead of the mere duchy of Brittany, to Philip
of Spain, still there were mighty guerdons to be bestowed on his
supporters before the foreign monarch could seat himself on the throne of
Henry's ancestors.

As to the people who were fighting, starving, dying by thousands in
this great cause, there were eternal rewards in another world profusely
promised for their heroism instead of the more substantial bread and
beef, for lack of which they were laying down their lives.

It was estimated that before July twelve thousand human beings in Paris
had died, for want of food, within three months.  But as there were no
signs of the promised relief by the army of Parma and Mayenne, and as the
starving people at times appeared faint-hearted, their courage was
strengthened one day by a stirring exhibition.

An astonishing procession marched through the streets of the city, led by
the Bishop of Senlis and the Prior of Chartreux, each holding a halberd
in one hand and a crucifix in the other, and graced by the presence of
the cardinal-legate, and of many prelates from Italy.  A lame monk,
adroitly manipulating the staff of a drum major, went hopping and limping
before them, much to the amazement of the crowd.  Then came a long file
of monks-Capuchins, Bernardists, Minimes, Franciscans, Jacobins,
Carmelites, and other orders--each with his cowl thrown back, his long
robes trussed up, a helmet on his head, a cuirass on his breast, and a
halberd in his hand.  The elder ones marched first, grinding their teeth,
rolling their eyes, and making other ferocious demonstrations.  Then came
the younger friars, similarly attired, all armed with arquebusses, which
they occasionally and accidentally discharged to the disadvantage of the
spectators, several of whom were killed or wounded on the spot.  Among
others a servant of Cardinal Gaetano was thus slain, and the even caused
much commotion, until the cardinal proclaimed that a man thus killed in
so holy a cause had gone straight to heaven and had taken his place among
the just.  It was impossible, thus argued the people in their simplicity,
that so wise and virtuous a man as the cardinal should not know what was
best.

The procession marched to the church of our Lady of Loretto, where they
solemnly promised to the blessed Virgin a lamp and ship of gold--should
she be willing to use her influence in behalf of the suffering city--to
be placed on her shrine as soon as the siege should be raised.

But these demonstrations, however cheering to the souls, had
comparatively little effect upon the bodies of the sufferers.  It was
impossible to walk through the streets of Paris without stumbling over
the dead bodies of the citizens.  Trustworthy eye-witnesses of those
dreadful days have placed the number of the dead during the summer at
thirty thousand.  A tumultuous assemblage of the starving and the forlorn
rushed at last to the municipal palace, demanding peace or bread.  The
rebels were soon dispersed however by a charge, headed by the Chevalier
d'Aumale, and assisted by the chiefs of the wards, and so soon as the
riot was quelled, its ringleader, a leading advocate, Renaud by name, was
hanged.

Still, but for the energy of the priests, it is doubtful whether the city
could have been held by the Confederacy.  The Duke of Nemours confessed
that there were occasions when they never would have been able to sustain
a determined onslaught, and they were daily expecting to see the Prince
of Bearne battering triumphantly at their gates.

But the eloquence of the preachers, especially of the one-eyed father
Boucher, sustained the fainting spirits of the people, and consoled the
sufferers in their dying agonies by glimpses of paradise.  Sublime was
that devotion, superhuman that craft; but it is only by weapons from the
armoury of the Unseen that human creatures can long confront such horrors
in a wicked cause.  Superstition, in those days at least, was a political
force absolutely without limitation, and most adroitly did the agents of
Spain and Rome handle its tremendous enginery against unhappy France.
For the hideous details of the most dreadful sieges recorded in ancient
or modern times were now reproduced in Paris.  Not a revolutionary
circumstance, at which the world had shuddered in the accounts of the
siege of Jerusalem, was spared.  Men devoured such dead vermin as could
be found lying in the streets.  They crowded greedily around stalls in
the public squares where the skin, bones, and offal of such dogs, cats
and unclean beasts as still remained for the consumption of the wealthier
classes were sold to the populace.  Over the doorways of these flesh
markets might be read "Haec runt munera pro iis qui vitam pro Philippo
profuderunt."  Men stood in archways and narrow passages lying in wait
for whatever stray dogs still remained at large, noosed them, strangled
them, and like savage beasts of prey tore them to pieces and devoured
them alive.  And it sometimes happened, too, that the equally hungry dog
proved the more successful in the foul encounter, and fed upon the man.
A lady visiting the Duchess of Nemours--called for the high pretensions
of her sons by her two marriages the queen-mother--complained bitterly
that mothers in Paris had been compelled to kill their own children
outright to save them from starving to death in lingering agony.  "And if
you are brought to that extremity," replied the duchess, "as for the sake
of our holy religion to be forced to kill your own children, do you think
that so great a matter after all?  What are your children made of more
than other people's children?  What are we all but dirt and dust?"  Such
was the consolation administered by the mother of the man who governed
Paris, and defended its gates against its lawful sovereign at the command
of a foreigner; while the priests in their turn persuaded the populace
that it was far more righteous to kill their own children, if they had no
food to give them, than to obtain food by recognising a heretic king.

It was related too, and believed, that in some instances mothers had
salted the bodies of their dead children and fed upon them, day by day,
until the hideous repast would no longer support their own life.  They
died, and the secret was revealed by servants who had partaken of the
food.  The Spanish ambassador, Mendoza, advised recourse to an article of
diet which had been used in some of the oriental sieges.  The counsel at
first was rejected as coming from the agent of Spain, who wished at all
hazards to save the capital of France from falling out of the hands of
his master into those of the heretic.  But dire necessity prevailed, and
the bones of the dead were taken in considerable quantities from the
cemeteries, ground into flour, baked into bread, and consumed.  It was
called Madame Montpensier's cake, because the duchess earnestly
proclaimed its merits to the poor Parisians.  "She was never known to
taste it herself, however," bitterly observed one who lived in Paris
through that horrible summer.  She was right to abstain, for all who ate
of it died, and the Montpensier flour fell into disuse.

Lansquenets and other soldiers, mad with hunger and rage, when they could
no longer find dogs to feed on, chased children through the streets, and
were known in several instances to kill and devour them on the spot.   To
those expressing horror at the perpetration of such a crime, a leading
personage, member of the Council of Nine, maintained that there was less
danger to one's soul in satisfying one's hunger with a dead child, in
case of necessity, than in recognizing the heretic Bearnese, and he added
that all the best theologians and doctors of Paris were of his opinion.

As the summer wore on to its close, through all these horrors, and as
there were still no signs of Mayenne and Parma leading their armies to
the relief of the city, it became necessary to deceive the people by a
show of negotiation with the beleaguering army.  Accordingly, the Spanish
ambassador, the legate, and the other chiefs of the Holy League appointed
a deputation, consisting of the Cardinal Gondy, the Archbishop of Lyons,
and the Abbe d'Elbene, to Henry.  It soon became evident to the king,
however, that these commissioners were but trifling with him in order to
amuse the populace.  His attitude was dignified and determined throughout
the interview.  The place appointed was St. Anthony's Abbey, before the
gates of Paris.  Henry wore a cloak and the order of the Holy Ghost, and
was surrounded by his council, the princes of the blood, and by more than
four hundred of the chief gentlemen of his army.  After passing the
barricade, the deputies were received by old Marshal Biron, and conducted
by him to the king's chamber of state.  When they had made their
salutations, the king led the way to an inner cabinet, but his progress
was much impeded by the crowding of the nobles about him.  Wishing to
excuse this apparent rudeness, he said to the envoys: "Gentlemen, these
men thrust me on as fast to the battle against the foreigner as they now
do to my cabinet.  Therefore bear with them."  Then turning to the crowd,
he said: "Room, gentlemen, for the love of me," upon which they all
retired.

The deputies then stated that they had been sent by the authorities of
Paris to consult as to the means of obtaining a general peace in France.
They expressed the hope that the king's disposition was favourable to
this end, and that he would likewise permit them to confer with the Duke
of Mayenne.  This manner of addressing him excited his choler.  He told
Cardinal Gondy, who was spokesman of the deputation, that he had long
since answered such propositions.  He alone could deal with his subjects.
He was like the woman before Solomon; he would have all the child or none
of it.  Rather than dismember his kingdom he would lose the whole.  He
asked them what they considered him to be.  They answered that they knew
his rights, but that the Parisians had different opinions.  If Paris
would only acknowledge him to be king there could be no more question of
war.  He asked them if they desired the King of Spain or the Duke of
Mayenne for their king, and bade them look well to themselves.  The King
of Spain could not help them, for he had too much business on hand; while
Mayenne had neither means nor courage, having been within three leagues
of them for three weeks doing nothing.  Neither king nor duke should have
that which belonged to him, of that they might be assured.  He told them
he loved Paris as his capital, as his eldest daughter.  If the Parisians
wished to see the end of their miseries it was to him they should appeal,
not to the Spaniard nor to the Duke of Mayenne.  By the grace of God and
the swords of his brave gentlemen he would prevent the King of Spain from
making a colony of France as he had done of Brazil.  He told the
commissioners that they ought to die of shame that they, born Frenchmen,
should have so forgotten their love of country and of liberty as thus to
bow the head to the Spaniard, and--while famine was carrying off
thousands of their countrymen before their eyes--to be so cowardly as not
to utter one word for the public welfare from fear of offending Cardinal.
Gaetano, Mendoza, and Moreo.  He said that he longed for a combat to
decide the issue, and that he had charged Count de Brissac to tell
Mayenne that he would give a finger of his right hand for a battle, and
two for a general peace.  He knew and pitied the sufferings of Paris, but
the horrors now raging there were to please the King of Spain.  That
monarch had told the Duke of Parma to trouble himself but little about
the Netherlands so long as he could preserve for him his city of Paris.
But it was to lean on a broken reed to expect support from this old,
decrepit king, whose object was to dismember the flourishing kingdom of
France, and to divide it among as many tyrants as he had sent viceroys to
the Indies.  The crown was his own birthright.  Were it elective he
should receive the suffrages of the great mass of the electors.  He hoped
soon to drive those red-crossed foreigners out of his kingdom.  Should he
fail, they would end by expelling the Duke of Mayenne and all the rest
who had called them in, and Paris would become the theatre of the
bloodiest tragedy ever yet enacted.  The king then ordered Sir Roger
Williams to see that a collation was prepared for the deputies, and the
veteran Welshman took occasion to indulge in much blunt conversation with
the guests.  He informed them that he, Mr. Sackville, and many other
strangers were serving the king from the hatred they bore the Spaniards
and Mother League, and that his royal mistress had always 8000 Englishmen
ready to maintain the cause.

While the conferences were going on, the officers and soldiers of the
besieging army thronged to the gate, and had much talk with the townsmen.
Among others, time-honoured La None with the iron arm stood near the gate
and harangued the Parisians.  "We are here," said he, "five thousand
gentlemen; we desire your good, not your ruin.  We will make you rich:
let us participate in your labour and industry.  Undo not yourselves to
serve the ambition of a few men."  The townspeople hearing the old
warrior discoursing thus earnestly, asked who he was.  When informed that
it was La Noue they cheered him vociferously, and applauded his speech
with the greatest vehemence.  Yet La Noue was the foremost Huguenot that
the sun shone upon, and the Parisians were starving themselves to death
out of hatred to heresy.  After the collation the commissioners were
permitted to go from the camp in order to consult Mayenne.

Such then was the condition of Paris during that memorable summer of
tortures.  What now were its hopes of deliverance out of this Gehenna?
The trust of Frenchmen was in Philip of Spain, whose legions, under
command of the great Italian chieftain, were daily longed for to save
them from rendering obedience to their lawful prince.

For even the king of straw--the imprisoned cardinal--was now dead, and
there was not even the effigy of any other sovereign than Henry of
Bourbon to claim authority in France.  Mayenne, in the course of long
interviews with the Duke of Parma at Conde and Brussels, had expressed
his desire to see Philip king of France, and had promised his best
efforts to bring about such a result.  In that case he stipulated for
the second place in the kingdom for himself, together with a good rich
province in perpetual sovereignty, and a large sum of money in hand.
Should this course not run smoothly, he would be willing to take the
crown himself, in which event he would cheerfully cede to Philip the
sovereignty of Brittany and Burgundy, besides a selection of cities to be
arranged for at a later day.  Although he spoke of himself with modesty,
said Alexander, it was very plain that he meant to arrive at the crown
himself: Well had the Bearnese alluded to the judgment of Solomon.  Were
not children, thus ready to dismember their mother, as foul and unnatural
as the mother who would divide her child?

And what was this dependence on a foreign tyrant really worth?  As we
look back upon those dark days with the light of what was then the almost
immediate future turned full and glaring upon them, we find it difficult
to exaggerate the folly of the chief actors in those scenes of crime.
Did not the penniless adventurer, whose keen eyesight and wise
recklessness were passing for hallucination and foolhardiness in the eyes
of his contemporaries, understand the game he was playing better than did
that profound thinker, that mysterious but infallible politician, who sat
in the Escorial and made the world tremble at every hint of his lips,
every stroke of his pen?

The Netherlands--that most advanced portion of Philip's domain, without
the possession of which his conquest of England and his incorporation of
France were but childish visions, even if they were not monstrous
chimeras at best--were to be in a manner left to themselves, while their
consummate governor and general was to go forth and conquer France at the
head of a force with which he had been in vain attempting to hold those
provinces to their obedience.  At that very moment the rising young
chieftain of the Netherlands was most successfully inaugurating his
career of military success.  His armies well drilled, well disciplined,
well paid, full of heart and of hope, were threatening their ancient
enemy in every quarter, while the veteran legions of Spain and Italy,
heroes of a hundred Flemish and Frisian battle-fields, were disorganised,
starving, and mutinous.  The famous ancient legion, the terzo viejo, had
been disbanded for its obstinate and confirmed unruliness.  The legion of
Manrique, sixteen hundred strong, was in open mutiny at Courtray.
Farnese had sent the Prince of Ascoli to negotiate with them, but his
attempts were all in vain.  Two years' arrearages--to be paid, not in
cloth at four times what the contractors had paid for it, but in solid
gold--were their not unreasonable demands after years of as hard fighting
and severe suffering as the world has often seen.  But Philip, instead of
ducats or cloth, had only sent orders to go forth and conquer a new
kingdom for him.  Verdugo, too, from Friesland was howling for money,
garrotting and hanging his mutinous veterans every day, and sending
complaints and most dismal forebodings as often as a courier could make
his way through the enemy's lines to Farnese's headquarters.  And
Farnese, on his part, was garrotting and hanging the veterans.

Alexander did not of course inform his master that he was a mischievous
lunatic, who upon any healthy principle of human government ought long
ago to have been shut up from all communion with his species.  It was
very plain, however, from his letters, that such was his innermost,
thought, had it been safe, loyal, or courteous to express it in plain
language.

He was himself stung almost to madness moreover by the presence of
Commander Moreo, who hated him, who was perpetually coming over from
France to visit him, who was a spy upon all his actions, and who was
regularly distilling his calumnies into the ears of Secretary Idiaquez
and of Philip himself.  The king was informed that Farnese was working
for his own ends, and was disgusted with his sovereign; that there never
had been a petty prince of Italy that did not wish to become a greater
one, or that was not jealous of Philip's power, and that there was not a
villain in all Christendom but wished for Philip's death.  Moreo followed
the prince about to Antwerp, to Brussels, to Spa, whither he had gone to
drink the waters for his failing health, pestered him, lectured him,
pried upon him, counselled him, enraged him.  Alexander told him at last
that he cared not if the whole world came to an end so long as Flanders
remained, which alone had been entrusted to him, and that if he was
expected to conquer France it would be as well to give him the means of
performing that exploit.  So Moreo told the king that Alexander was
wasting time and wasting money, that he was the cause of Egmont's
overthrow, and that he would be the cause of the loss of Paris and of
the downfall of the whole French scheme; for that he was determined to
do nothing to assist Mayenne, or that did not conduce to his private
advantage.

Yet Farnese had been not long before informed in sufficiently plain
language, and by personages of great influence, that in case he wished to
convert his vice-royalty of the Netherlands into a permanent sovereignty,
he might rely on the assistance of Henry of Navarre, and perhaps of Queen
Elizabeth.  The scheme would not have been impracticable, but the duke
never listened to it for a moment.

If he were slow in advancing to the relief of starving, agonising
Paris, there were sufficient reasons for his delay.  Most decidedly and
bitterly, but loyally, did he denounce the madness of his master's course
in all his communications to that master's private ear.

He told him that the situation in which he found himself was horrible.
He had no money for his troops, he had not even garrison bread to put in
their mouths.  He had not a single stiver to advance them on account.
From Friesland, from the Rhine country, from every quarter, cries of
distress were rising to heaven, and the lamentations were just.  He was
in absolute penury.  He could not negotiate a bill on the royal account,
but had borrowed on his own private security a few thousand crowns which
he had given to his soldiers.  He was pledging his jewels and furniture
like a bankrupt, but all was now in vain to stop the mutiny at Courtray.
If that went on it would be of most pernicious example, for the whole
army was disorganised, malcontent, and of portentous aspect.  "These
things," said he, "ought not to surprise people of common understanding,
for without money, without credit, without provisions, and in an
exhausted country, it is impossible to satisfy the claims, or even to
support the life of the army."  When he sent the Flemish cavalry to
Mayenne in March, it was under the impression that with it that prince
would have maintained his reputation and checked the progress of the
Bearnese until greater reinforcements could be forwarded.  He was now
glad that no larger number had been sent, for all would have been
sacrificed on the fatal field of Ivry.

The country around him was desperate, believed itself abandoned, and was
expecting fresh horrors everyday.  He had been obliged to remove portions
of the garrisons at Deventer and Zutphen purely to save them from
starving and desperation.  Every day he was informed by his garrisons
that they could feed no longer on fine words or hopes, for in them they
found no sustenance.

But Philip told him that he must proceed forthwith to France, where he
was to raise the siege of Paris, and occupy Calais and Boulogne in order
to prevent the English from sending succour to the Bearnese, and in order
to facilitate his own designs on England.  Every effort was to be made
before the Bearnese climbed into the seat.  The Duke of Parma was to talk
no more of difficulties, but to conquer them; a noble phrase on the
battle field, but comparatively easy of utterance at the writing-desk!

At last, Philip having made some remittances, miserably inadequate for
the necessities of the case, but sufficient to repress in part the
mutinous demonstrations throughout the army, Farnese addressed himself
with a heavy heart to the work required of him.  He confessed the deepest
apprehensions of the result both in the Netherlands and in France.  He
intimated a profound distrust of the French, who had, ever been Philip's
enemies, and dwelt on the danger of leaving the provinces, unable to
protect themselves, badly garrisoned, and starving.  "It grieves me to
the soul, it cuts me to the heart," he said, "to see that your Majesty
commands things which are impossible, for it is our Lord alone that can
work miracles.  Your Majesty supposes that with the little money you have
sent me, I can satisfy all the soldiers serving in these provinces,
settle with the Spanish and the German mutineers--because, if they are
to be used in the expedition, they must at least be quieted--give money
to Mayenne and the Parisians, pay retaining wages (wartgeld) to the
German Riders for the protection of these provinces, and make sure of the
maritime places where the same mutinous language is held as at Courtray.
The poverty, the discontent, and the desperation of this unhappy
country," he added, "have, been so often described to your Majesty that I
have nothing to add.  I am hanging and garrotting my veterans everywhere,
only because they have rebelled for want of pay without committing any
excess.  Yet under these circumstances I am to march into France with
twenty thousand troops--the least number to effect anything withal.  I am
confused and perplexed because the whole world is exclaiming against me,
and protesting that through my desertion the country entrusted to my care
will come to utter perdition.  On the other hand, the French cry out upon
me that I am the cause that Paris is going to destruction, and with it
the Catholic cause in France.  Every one is pursuing his private ends.
It is impossible to collect a force strong enough for the necessary work.
Paris has reached its extreme unction, and neither Mayenne nor any one of
the confederates has given this invalid the slightest morsel to support
her till your Majesty's forces should arrive."

He reminded his sovereign that the country around Paris was eaten bare of
food and forage, and yet that it was quite out of the question for him to
undertake the transportation of supplies for his army all the way--
supplies from the starving Netherlands to starving France.  Since the
king was so peremptory, he had nothing for it but to obey, but he
vehemently disclaimed all responsibility for the expedition, and, in case
of his death, he called on his Majesty to vindicate his honour, which his
enemies were sure to assail.

The messages from Mayenne becoming daily more pressing, Farnese hastened
as much as possible those preparations which at best were so woefully
inadequate, and avowed his determination not to fight the Bearnese if it
were possible to avoid an action.  He feared, however, that with totally
insufficient forces he should be obliged to accept the chances of an
engagement.

With twelve thousand foot and three thousand horse Farnese left the
Netherlands in the beginning of August, and arrived on the 3rd of that
month at Valenciennes.  His little army, notwithstanding his bitter
complaints, was of imposing appearance.  The archers and halberdiers of
his bodyguard were magnificent in taffety and feathers and surcoats of
cramoisy velvet.  Four hundred nobles served in the cavalry.  Arenberg
and Barlaymont and Chimay, and other grandees of the Netherlands, in
company with Ascoli and the sons of Terranova and Pastrana, and many more
great lords of Italy and Spain were in immediate attendance on the
illustrious captain.  The son of Philip's Secretary of State, Idiaquez,
and the nephew of the cardinal-legate, Gaetano, were among the marshals
of the camp.

Alexander's own natural authority and consummate powers of organisation
had for the time triumphed over the disintegrating tendencies which, it
had been seen, were everywhere so rapidly destroying the foremost
military establishment of the world.  Nearly half his forces, both
cavalry and infantry, were Netherlanders; for--as if there were not
graves enough in their own little territory--those Flemings, Walloons,
and Hollanders were destined to leave their bones on both sides of every
well-stricken field of that age between liberty and despotism.  And thus
thousands of them had now gone forth under the banner of Spain to assist
their own tyrant in carrying out his designs upon the capital of France,
and to struggle to the death with thousands of their own countrymen who
were following the fortunes of the Bearnese.  Truly in that age it was
religion that drew the boundary line between nations.

The army was divided into three portions.  The vanguard was under the
charge of the Netherland General, Marquis of Renty.  The battalia was
commanded by Farnese in person, and the rearguard was entrusted to that
veteran Netherlander, La Motte, now called the Count of Everbeck.  Twenty
pieces of artillery followed the last division.  At Valenciennes
Farnese remained eight days, and from this place Count Charles Mansfeld
took his departure in a great rage--resigning his post as chief of
artillery because La Motte had received the appointment of general-
marshal of the camp--and returned to his father, old Peter Ernest
Mansfeld, who was lieutenant-governor of the Netherlands in Parma's
absence.

Leaving Valenciennes on the 11th, the army proceeded by way of Quesney,
Guise, Soissons, Fritemilon to Meaux.  At this place, which is ten
leagues from Paris, Farnese made his junction, on the 22nd of August,
with Mayenne, who was at the head of six thousand infantry--one half of
them Germans under Cobalto, and the other half French--and of two
thousand horse.

On arriving at Meaux, Alexander proceeded straightway to the cathedral,
and there, in presence of all, he solemnly swore that he had not come
to France in order to conquer that kingdom or any portion of it, in the
interests of his master, but only to render succour to the Catholic cause
and to free the friends and confederates of his Majesty from violence and
heretic oppression.  Time was to show the value of that oath.

Here the deputation from Paris--the Archbishop of Lyons and his
colleagues, whose interview with Henry has just been narrated--were
received by the two dukes.  They departed, taking with them promises of
immediate relief for the starving city.  The allies remained five days at
Meaux, and leaving that place on the 27th, arrived in the neighbourhood
of Chelles, on the last day but one of the summer.  They had a united
force of five thousand cavalry and eighteen thousand foot.

The summer of horrors was over, and thus with the first days of autumn
there had come a ray of hope for the proud city which was lying at its
last gasp.  When the allies, came in sight of the monastery of Chellea
they found themselves in the immediate neighbourhood of the Bearnese.

The two great captains of the age had at last met face to face.  They
were not only the two first commanders of their time, but there was not a
man in Europe at that day to be at all compared with either of them.  The
youth, concerning whose earliest campaign an account will be given in the
following chapter, had hardly yet struck his first blow.  Whether that
blow was to reveal the novice or the master was soon to be seen.
Meantime in 1590 it would have been considered a foolish adulation to
mention the name of Maurice of Nassau in the same breath with that of
Navarre or of Farnese.

The scientific duel which was now to take place was likely to task the
genius and to bring into full display the peculiar powers and defects of
the two chieftains of Europe.  Each might be considered to be still in
the prime of life, but Alexander, who was turned of forty-five, was
already broken in health, while the vigorous Henry was eight years
younger, and of an iron constitution.  Both had passed then lives in the
field, but the king, from nature, education, and the force of
circumstances, preferred pitched battles to scientific combinations,
while the duke, having studied and practised his art in the great Spanish
and Italian schools of warfare, was rather a profound strategist than a
professional fighter, although capable of great promptness and intense
personal energy when his judgment dictated a battle.  Both were born with
that invaluable gift which no human being can acquire, authority, and
both were adored and willingly obeyed by their soldiers, so long as
those soldiers were paid and fed.

The prize now to be contended for was a high one.  Alexander's complete
success would tear from Henry's grasp the first city of Christendom, now
sinking exhausted into his hands, and would place France in the power of
the Holy League and at the feet of Philip.  Another Ivry would shatter
the confederacy, and carry the king in triumph to his capital and his
ancestral throne.  On the approach of the combined armies under Parma and
Mayenne, the king had found himself most reluctantly compelled to suspend
the siege of Paris.  His army, which consisted of sixteen thousand foot
and five thousand horse, was not sufficiently numerous to confront at the
same time the relieving force and to continue the operations before the
city.  So long, however, as he held the towns and bridges on the great
rivers, and especially those keys to the Seine and Marne, Corbeil and
Lagny, he still controlled the life-blood of the capital, which indeed
had almost ceased to flow.

On the 31st August he advanced towards the enemy.  Sir Edward Stafford,
Queen Elizabeth's ambassador, arrived at St. Denis in the night of the
30th August.  At a very early hour next morning he heard a shout under
his window, and looking down beheld King Henry at the head of his troops,
cheerfully calling out to his English friend as he passed his door.
"Welcoming us after his familiar manner," said Stafford, "he desired us,
in respect of the battle every hour expected, to come as his friends to
see and help him, and not to treat of anything which afore, we meant,
seeing the present state to require it, and the enemy so near that we
might well have been interrupted in half-an-hour's talk, and necessity
constrained the king to be in every corner, where for the most part we
follow him."

That day Henry took up his headquarters at the monastery of Chelles, a
fortified place within six leagues of Paris, on the right bank of the
Marne.  His army was drawn up in a wide valley somewhat encumbered with
wood and water, extending through a series of beautiful pastures towards
two hills of moderate elevation.  Lagny, on the left bank of the river,
was within less than a league of him on his right hand.  On the other
side of the hills, hardly out of cannon-shot, was the camp of the allies.
Henry, whose natural disposition in this respect needed no prompting, was
most eager for a decisive engagement.  The circumstances imperatively
required it of him.  His infantry consisted of Frenchmen, Netherlanders,
English, Germans, Scotch; but of his cavalry four thousand were French
nobles, serving at their own expense, who came to a battle as to a
banquet, but who were capable of riding off almost as rapidly, should the
feast be denied them.  They were volunteers, bringing with them rations
for but a few days, and it could hardly be expected that they would
remain as patiently as did Parma's veterans, who, now that their mutiny
had been appeased by payment of a portion of their arrearages, had become
docile again.  All the great chieftains who surrounded Henry, whether
Catholic or Protestant--Montpensier, Nevers, Soissons, Conti, the Birons,
Lavradin, d'Aumont, Tremouille, Turenne, Chatillon, La Noue--were urgent
for the conflict, concerning the expediency of which there could indeed
be no doubt, while the king was in raptures at the opportunity of dealing
a decisive blow at the confederacy of foreigners and rebels who had so
long defied his authority and deprived him of his rights.

Stafford came up with the king, according to his cordial invitation, on
the same day, and saw the army all drawn up in battle array.  While Henry
was "eating a morsel in an old house," Turenne joined him with six or
seven hundred horsemen and between four and five thousand infantry.
"They were the likeliest footmen," said Stafford, "the best
countenanced, the best furnished that ever I saw in my life; the best
part of them old soldiers that had served under the king for the Religion
all this while."

The envoy was especially enthusiastic, however, in regard to the French
cavalry.  "There are near six thousand horse," said he, "whereof
gentlemen above four thousand, about twelve hundred other French, and
eight hundred reiters.  I never saw, nor I think never any man saw, in
prance such a company of gentlemen together so well horsed and so well
armed."

Henry sent a herald to the camp of the allies, formally challenging them
to a general engagement, and expressing a hope that all differences might
now be settled by the ordeal of battle, rather than that the sufferings
of the innocent people should be longer protracted.

Farnese, on arriving at Meaux, had resolved to seek the enemy and take
the hazards of a stricken field.  He had misgivings as to the possible
result, but he expressly announced this intention in his letters to
Philip, and Mayenne confirmed him in his determination.  Nevertheless,
finding the enemy so eager and having reflected more maturely, he saw no
reason for accepting the chivalrous cartel.  As commanderin-chief--for
Mayenne willingly conceded the supremacy which it would have been absurd
in him to dispute--he accordingly replied that it was his custom to
refuse a combat when a refusal seemed advantageous to himself, and to
offer battle whenever it suited his purposes to fight.  When that moment
should arrive the king would find him in the field.  And, having sent
this courteous, but unsatisfactory answer to the impatient Bearnese, he
gave orders to fortify his camp, which was already sufficiently strong.
Seven days long the two armies lay face to face--Henry and his chivalry
chafing in vain for the longed-for engagement--and nothing occurred
between those forty or fifty thousand mortal enemies, encamped within a
mile or two of each other, save trifling skirmishes leading to no result.

At last Farnese gave orders for an advance.  Renty, commander of the
vanguard, consisting of nearly all the cavalry, was instructed to move
slowly forward over the two hills, and descending on the opposite side,
to deploy his forces in two great wings to the right and left.  He was
secretly directed in this movement to magnify as much as possible the
apparent dimensions of his force.  Slowly the columns moved over the
hills.  Squadron after squadron, nearly all of them lancers, with their
pennons flaunting gaily in the summer wind, displayed themselves
deliberately and ostentatiously in the face of the Royalists.  The
splendid light-horse of Basti, the ponderous troopers of the Flemish
bands of ordnance under Chimay and Berlaymont, and the famous Albanian
and Italian cavalry, were mingled with the veteran Leaguers of France who
had fought under the Balafre, and who now followed the fortunes of his
brother Mayenne.  It was an imposing demonstration.

Henry could hardly believe his eyes as the much-coveted opportunity,
of which he had been so many days disappointed, at last presented itself,
and he waited with more than his usual caution until the plan of attack
should be developed by his great antagonist.  Parma, on his side, pressed
the hand of Mayenne as he watched the movement, saying quietly, "We have
already fought our battle and gained the victory."  He then issued orders
for the whole battalia--which, since the junction, had been under command
of Mayenne, Farnese reserving for himself the superintendence of the
entire army--to countermarch rapidly towards the Marne and take up a
position opposite Lagny.  La Motte, with the rearguard, was directed
immediately to follow.  The battalia had thus become the van, the
rearguard the battalia, while the whole cavalry corps by this movement
had been transformed from the vanguard into the rear.  Renty was
instructed to protect his manoeuvres, to restrain the skirmishing as much
as possible, and to keep the commander-in-chief constantly informed of
every occurrence.  In the night he was to entrench and fortify himself
rapidly and thoroughly, without changing his position.

Under cover of this feigned attack, Farnese arrived at the river side on
the 15th September, seized an open village directly opposite Lagny, which
was connected with it by a stone bridge, and planted a battery of nine
pieces of heavy artillery directly opposite the town.  Lagny was
fortified in the old-fashioned manner, with not very thick walls, and
without a terreplain.  Its position, however, and its command of the
bridge, seemed to render an assault impossible, and De la Fin, who lay
there with a garrison of twelve hundred French, had no fear for the
security of the place.  But Farnese, with the precision and celerity
which characterized his movements on special occasions, had thrown
pontoon bridges across the river three miles above, and sent a
considerable force of Spanish and Walloon infantry to the other side.
These troops were ordered to hold themselves ready for an assault, so
soon as the batteries opposite should effect a practicable breach.  The
next day Henry, reconnoitering the scene, saw, with intense indignation,
that he had been completely out-generalled.  Lagny, the key to the Marne,
by holding which he had closed the door on nearly all the food supplies
for Paris, was about to be wrested from him.  What should he do?  Should
he throw himself across the river and rescue the place before it fell?
This was not to be thought of even by the audacious Bearnese.  In the
attempt to cross the river, under the enemy's fire, he was likely to lose
a large portion of his army.  Should he fling himself upon Renty's
division which had so ostentatiously offered battle the day before?  This
at least might be attempted, although not so advantageously as would have
been the case on the previous afternoon.  To undertake this was the
result of a rapid council of generals.  It was too late.  Renty held the
hills so firmly entrenched and fortified that it was an idle hope to
carry them by assault.  He might hurl column after column against those
heights, and pass the day in seeing his men mowed to the earth without
result.

His soldiers, magnificent in the open field, could not be relied upon to
carry so strong a position by sudden storm; and there was no time to be
lost.  He felt the enemy a little.  There was some small skirmishing, and
while it was going on, Farnese opened a tremendous fire across the river
upon Lagny.  The weak walls soon crumbled; a breach was effected, the
signal for assault was given, and the troops posted on the other side,
after a brief but sanguinary straggle, overcame all, resistance, and were
masters of the town.  The whole garrison, twelve hundred strong, was
butchered, and the city thoroughly sacked; for Farnese had been brought
up in the old-fashioned school of Alva; and Julian Romero and Com-.
wander Requesens.

Thus Lagny was seized before the eyes of Henry, who was forced to look
helplessly on his great antagonist's triumph.  He had come forth in full
panoply and abounding confidence to offer battle.  He was foiled of his
combat; and he had lost the prize.  Never was blow more successfully
parried, a counter-stroke more ingeniously planted.  The bridges of
Charenton and St. Maur now fell into Farnese's hands without a contest.
In an incredibly short space of time provisions and munitions were poured
into the starving city; two thousand boat-loads arriving in a single day.
Paris was relieved.  Alexander had made his demonstration, and solved the
problem.  He had left the Netherlands against his judgment, but he had at
least accomplished his French work as none but he could have done it.
The king was now in worse plight than ever.  His army fell to pieces.
His cavaliers, cheated of their battle; and having neither food nor
forage, rode off by hundreds every day.  "Our state is such," said
Stafford; on the 16th September, "and so far unexpected and wonderful,
that I am almost ashamed to write, because methinks everybody should
think I dream.  Myself seeing of it methinketh that I dream.  For, my
lord, to see an army such a one I think as I shall never see again--
especially for horsemen and gentlemen to take a mind to disband upon the
taking of such a paltry thing as Lagny, a town no better indeed than
Rochester, it is a thing so strange to me that seeing of it I can scarce
believe it.  They make their excuses of their want, which I know indeed
is great--for there were few left with one penny in their purses--but yet
that extremity could not be such but that they might have tarried ten
days or fifteen at the most that the king desired of them . . . . . From
six thousand horse that we were and above, we are come to two thousand
and I do not see an end of our leave-takers, for those be hourly.

"The most I can see we can make account of to tarry are the Viscount
Turenne's troops, and Monsieur de Chatillon's, and our Switzers, and
Lanaquenettes, which make very near five thousand.  The first that went
away, though he sent word to the king an hour before he would tarry, was
the Count Soissons, by whose parting on a sudden and without leave-taking
we judge a discontentment."

The king's army seemed fading into air.  Making virtue of necessity he
withdrew to St. Denis, and decided to disband his forces, reserving to
himself only a flying camp with which to harass the enemy as often as
opportunity should offer.

It must be confessed that the Bearnese had been thoroughly out-
generalled.  "It was not God's will," said Stafford, who had been in
constant attendance upon Henry through the whole business; "we deserved
it not; for the king might as easily have had Paris as drunk, four or
five times.  And at the last, if he had not committed those faults that
children would not have done, only with the desire to fight and give the
battle (which the other never meant), he had had it in the Duke of
Parma's eight as he took Lagny in ours."  He had been foiled of the
battle on which he had set his heart, and, in which he felt confident of
overthrowing the great captain of the age, and trampling the League under
his feet.  His capital just ready to sink exhausted into his hands had
been wrested from his grasp, and was alive with new hope and new
defiance.  The League was triumphant, his own army scattering to the four
winds.  Even a man of high courage and sagacity might have been in
despair.  Yet never were the magnificent hopefulness, the wise audacity
of Henry more signally manifested than now when he seemed most blundering
and most forlorn.  His hardy nature ever met disaster with so cheerful a
smile as almost to perplex disaster herself.

Unwilling to relinquish his grip without a last effort, he resolved on a
midnight assault upon Paris.  Hoping that the joy at being relieved, the
unwonted feasting which had succeeded the long fasting, and the
conciousness of security from the presence of the combined armies of the
victorious League, would throw garrison and citizens off their guard, he
came into the neighbourhood of the Faubourgs St. Jacques, St. Germain,
St. Marcel, and St. Michel on the night of 9th September.  A desperate
effort was made to escalade the walls between St. Jacques and St.
Germain.  It was foiled, not by the soldiers nor the citizens, but by the
sleepless Jesuits, who, as often before during this memorable siege, had
kept guard on the ramparts, and who now gave the alarm.  The first
assailants were hurled from their ladders, the city was roused, and the
Duke of Nemours was soon on the spot, ordering burning pitch hoops,
atones, and other missiles to be thrown down upon the invaders.  The
escalade was baffled; yet once more that night, just before dawn, the
king in person renewed the attack on the Faubourg St. Germain.  The
faithful Stafford stood by his side in the trenches, and was witness to
his cool determination, his indomitable hope.  La None too was there,
and was wounded in the leg--an accident the results of which were soon
to cause much weeping through Christendom.  Had one of those garlands of
blazing tar which all night had been fluttering from the walls of Paris
alighted by chance on the king's head there might have been another
history of France.  The ladders, too, proved several feet too short,
and there were too few, of them.  Had they been more numerous and longer,
the tale might have been a different one.  As it was, the king was forced
to retire with the approaching daylight.

The characteristics of the great commander of the Huguenots and of the
Leaguers' chieftain respectively were well illustrated in several
incidents of this memorable campaign.  Farnese had been informed by
scouts and spies of this intended assault by Henry on the walls of Paris.
With his habitual caution he discredited the story.  Had he believed it,
he might have followed the king in overwhelming force and taken him
captive.  The penalty of Henry's unparalleled boldness was thus remitted
by Alexander's exuberant discretion.

Soon afterwards Farnese laid siege to Corbeil.  This little place--owing
to the extraordinary skill and determination of its commandant, Rigaut,
an old Huguenot officer, who had fought with La Noue in Flanders--
resisted for nearly four weeks.  It was assaulted at last, Rigaut killed,
the garrison of one thousand French soldiers put to the sword, and the
town sacked.  With the fall of Corbeil both the Seine and Marne were re-
opened.

Alexander then made a visit to Paris, where he was received with great
enthusiasm.  The legate, whose efforts and whose money had so much
contributed to the successful defence of the capital had returned to
Italy to participate in the election of a new pope.  For the "Huguenot
pope," Sixtus V., had died at the end of August, having never bestowed
on the League any of his vast accumulated treasures to help it in its
utmost need.  It was not surprising that Philip was indignant, and had
resorted to menace of various kinds against the holy father, when he
found him swaying so perceptibly in the direction of the hated Bearnese.
Of course when he died his complaint was believed to be Spanish poison.
In those days, none but the very obscure were thought capable of dying
natural deaths, and Philip was esteemed too consummate an artist to allow
so formidable an adversary as Sixtus to pass away in God's time only.
Certainly his death was hailed as matter of great rejoicing by the
Spanish party in Rome, and as much ignominy bestowed upon his memory as
if he had been a heretic; while in Paris his decease was celebrated with
bonfires and other marks of popular hilarity.

To circumvent the great Huguenot's reconciliation with the Roman Church
was of course an indispensable portion of Philip's plan; for none could
be so dull as not to perceive that the resistance of Paris to its heretic
sovereign would cease to be very effective, so soon as the sovereign had
ceased to be heretic.  It was most important therefore that the successor
of Sixtus should be the tool of Spain.  The leading confederates were
well aware of Henry's intentions to renounce the reformed faith, and to
return to the communion of Rome whenever he could formally accomplish
that measure.  The crafty Bearnese knew full well that the road to Paris
lay through the gates of Rome.  Yet it is proof either of the privacy
with which great public matters were then transacted, or of the
extraordinary powers of deceit with which Henry was gifted, that the
leaders of protestantism were still hoodwinked in regard to his attitude.
Notwithstanding the embassy of Luxembourg, and the many other indications
of the king's intentions, Queen Elizabeth continued to regard him as the
great champion of the reformed faith.  She had just sent him an emerald,
which she had herself worn, accompanied by the expression of her wish
that the king in wearing it might never strike a blow without demolishing
an enemy, and that in his farther progress he might put all his enemies
to rout and confusion.  "You will remind the king, too," she added, "that
the emerald has this virtue, never to break so long as faith remains
entire and firm."

And the shrewd Stafford, who was in daily attendance upon him, informed
his sovereign that there were no symptoms of wavering on Henry's part.
"The Catholics here," said he, "cry hard upon the king to be a Catholic
or else that he is lost, and they would persuade him that for all their
calling in the Spaniards, both Paris and all other towns will yield to
him, if he will but assure them that he will become a Catholic.  For my
part, I think they would laugh at him when he had done so, and so I find
he believeth the same, if he had mind to it, which I find no disposition
in him unto it."  The not very distant future was to show what the
disposition of the bold Gascon really was in this great matter, and
whether he was likely to reap nothing but ridicule from his apostasy,
should it indeed become a fact.  Meantime it was the opinion of the
wisest sovereign in Europe, and of one of the most adroit among her
diplomatists, that there was really nothing in the rumours as to the
king's contemplated conversion.

It was, of course, unfortunate for Henry that his staunch friend and
admirer Sixtus was no more.  But English diplomacy could do but little in
Rome, and men were trembling with apprehension lest that arch-enemy of
Elizabeth, that devoted friend of Philip, the English Cardinal Allen,
should be elected to the papal throne.  "Great ado is made in Rome," said
Stafford, "by the Spanish ambassador, by all corruptions and ways that
may be, to make a pope that must needs depend and be altogether at the
King of Spain's devotion.  If the princes of Italy put not their hands
unto it, no doubt they will have their wills, and I fear greatly our
villainous Allen, for, in my judgment, I can comprehend no man more with
reason to be tied altogether to the King of Spain's will than he.
I pray God send him either to God or the Devil first.  An evil-minded
Englishman, tied to the King of Spain by necessity, finding almost four
millions of money, is a dangerous beast for a pope in this time."

Cardinal Allen was doomed to disappointment.  His candidacy was not
successful, and, after the brief reign--thirteen days long--of Urban VII,
Sfondrato wore the triple tiara with the title of Gregory XIV.  Before
the year closed, that pontiff had issued a brief urging the necessity of
extirpating heresy in France, and of electing a Catholic king, and
asserting his determination to send to Paris--that bulwark of the
Catholic faith--not empty words alone but troops, to be paid fifteen
thousand crowns of gold each month, so long as the city should need
assistance.  It was therefore probable that the great leader of the
Huguenots, now that he had been defeated by Farnese, and that his
capital was still loyal to the League, would obtain less favour--however
conscientiously he might instruct himself--from Gregory XIV. than he had
begun to find in the eyes of Sixtus after the triumph of Ivry.

Parma refreshed his army by a fortnight's repose, and early in November
determined on his return to the Netherlands.  The Leaguers were aghast at
his decision, and earnestly besought him to remain.  But the duke had
given them back their capital, and although this had been accomplished
without much bloodshed in their army or his own, sickness was now making
sad ravages among his troops, and there was small supply of food or
forage for such large forces as had now been accumulated, in the
neighbourhood of Paris.  Moreover, dissensions were breaking out.
between the Spaniards, Italians, and Netherlanders of the relieving army
with their French allies.  The soldiers and peasants hated the foreigners
who came there as victors, even although to assist the Leaguers in
overthrowing the laws, government, and nationality of France.  The
stragglers and wounded on Farnese's march were killed by the country
people in considerable numbers, and it was a pure impossibility for him
longer to delay his return to the provinces which so much against his
will he had deserted.

He marched back by way of Champagne rather than by that of Picardy, in
order to deceive the king.  Scarcely had he arrived in Champagne when he
heard of the retaking of Lagny and Corbeil.  So soon as his back was
turned, the League thus showed its impotence to retain the advantage
which his genius had won.  Corbeil, which had cost him a month of hard
work, was recaptured in two days.  Lagny fell almost as quickly.
Earnestly did the confederates implore him to return to their rescue,
but he declined almost contemptuously to retrace his steps.  His march
was conducted in the same order and with the same precision which--had
marked his advance.  Henry, with his flying camp, hung upon his track,
harassing him now in front, now in rear, now in flank.  None of the
skirmishes were of much military importance.  A single cavalry combat,
however, in which old Marshal Biron was nearly surrounded and was in
imminent danger of death or capture, until chivalrously rescued by the
king in person at the head of a squadron of lancers, will always possess
romantic interest.  In a subsequent encounter, near Baroges on the Yesle,
Henry had sent Biron forward with a few companies of horse to engage some
five hundred carabineers of Farnese on their march towards the frontier,
and had himself followed close upon the track with his usual eagerness to
witness or participate in every battle.  Suddenly Alphonse Corse, who
rode at Henry's aide, pointed out to him, not more than a hundred paces
off, an officer wearing a felt hat, a great ruff, and a little furred
cassock, mounted on a horse without armour or caparisons, galloping up
and down and brandishing his sword at the carabineers to compel them to
fall back.

This was the Duke of Parma, and thus the two great champions of the
Huguenots and of the Leaguers--the two foremost captains of the age--had
met face to face.  At that moment La Noue, riding up, informed the king
that he had seen the whole of the enemy's horse and foot in battle array,
and Henry, suspecting the retreat of Farnese to be a feint for the
purpose of luring him on with his small force to an attack, gave orders
to retire as soon as possible.

At Guise, on the frontier, the duke parted with Mayenne, leaving with him
an auxiliary force of four thousand foot and five hundred horse, which he
could ill spare.  He then returned to Brussels, which city he reached on
the 4th December, filling every hotel and hospital with his sick
soldiers, and having left one-third of his numbers behind him.  He had
manifested his own military skill in the adroit and successful manner in
which he had accomplished the relief of Paris, while the barrenness of
the result from the whole expedition vindicated the political sagacity
with which he had remonstrated against his sovereign's infatuation.

Paris, with the renewed pressure on its two great arteries at Lagny and
Corbeil, soon fell into as great danger as before; the obedient
Netherlands during the absence of Farnese had been sinking rapidly to
ruin, while; on the other hand, great progress and still greater
preparations in aggressive warfare had been made by the youthful general
and stadtholder of the Republic.



ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Alexander's exuberant discretion
Divine right of kings
Ever met disaster with so cheerful a smile
Future world as laid down by rival priesthoods
Invaluable gift which no human being can acquire, authority
King was often to be something much less or much worse
Magnificent hopefulness
Myself seeing of it methinketh that I dream
Nothing cheap, said a citizen bitterly, but sermons
Obscure were thought capable of dying natural deaths
Philip II. gave the world work enough
Righteous to kill their own children
Road to Paris lay through the gates of Rome
Shift the mantle of religion from one shoulder to the other
Thirty-three per cent. interest was paid (per month)
Under the name of religion (so many crimes)





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