Part 23 (2/2)
[Sidenote: Developments of the Ridolfi plot]
They had also been on the alert over the Ridolfi plot. In the spring, Ridolfi was concocting with Alva designs for an invasion; in the summer he was in Spain. In the meantime, the capture of an agent, and the liberal use of spies and of the rack, placed important clues in Burghley's hands. At this juncture the famous seaman Sir John Hawkins, in collusion with Burghley, placed himself at the service of Mary and Philip, in the character of an ill-used and revengeful servant of Elizabeth. Yet it was only by another accidental capture, and more use of the rack, that complicity was actually brought home to Norfolk, who was arrested in September. Norfolk once arrested, traitors and spies soon did what else was necessary to reveal the whole plot, in which invasion and a.s.sa.s.sination were combined. It was no longer possible to account Spain and the Spanish King as anything but mortal enemies to England and the English Queen. Don Guerau was ordered to leave the country; his parting move was a plot for Burghley's a.s.sa.s.sination, duly detected by spies, Norfolk was convicted for treason, and condemned to a death which was deferred for some months. Mary Stewart expected a like fate. Elizabeth however still rejected the extreme measure. But the _Detectio_ of George Buchanan--in other words a complete _ex parte_ statement of the case against Mary, including the contents of the Casket Letters--was published.
[Sidenote: 1572 Parliament and Mary (May)]
The effect was seen when a new Parliament met in May. The people of England believed with an absolute conviction in the truth of the whole indictment against the Scots Queen. Nor was there any question that she had appealed both to France and Spain to liberate her; so far at least she was implicated in the Ridolfi plot, even if the a.s.sa.s.sination proposals had not come within her ken. She was believed to be a criminal, who had forfeited all right to sympathy and consideration; she was palpably a standing menace to the internal peace of the realm, a standing incitement to its enemies abroad. The Commons therefore demanded her attainder; as for the technical right, no sovereign at the time or in the past would have hesitated to ignore or evade the point. The question was outside the range of technicalities. The plea that England had no right to detain her, or to judge her, that she had a right to seek her own release by any available means, was perfectly sound; the counter-plea that the safety of the State forbade her release, and her attempts to procure war against it justified her destruction, was equally unanswerable. But Elizabeth could not resolve to act upon either plea, ignoring the other. So Mary remained a prisoner, and the centre of intrigue. Even an alternative Bill, supposed to have Elizabeth's approval, which merely excluded Mary from the succession, never reached the statute book.
[Sidenote: Lepanto; April Revolt of the Netherlands]
A notable triumph had recently been achieved for Philip's arms, in the crus.h.i.+ng defeat of the Turks at Lepanto by the combined Venetian and Spanish fleets commanded by the Spanish King's half-brother, Don John of Austria. To this perhaps may be attributed the less defiant tone of communications with Spain. The narrow seas were swarming not only with English privateering craft, but with Dutchmen commanded by the privateer De la Marck on behalf of William of Orange, who were habitually succoured in English harbours. But though these were now ordered to depart, and the English mariners aboard them were commanded to leave them, there is no doubt that their privy equipment was deliberately connived at, in the flattest possible contradiction to the public declarations. At the close of March, De la Marck's fleet sailed from Dover to fall upon a Spanish convoy; a few days later, it appeared in the Meuse before Brille. The town promptly surrendered. The whole of the Netherlands was seething under Alva's savage rule; trade, already in a fair way to be ruined by the cessation of commerce with England since the seizure of the treasure s.h.i.+ps, was being throttled also by the system of taxation which Alva had recently inst.i.tuted. The capture of Brille fired the train. City after city raised the standard of revolt. The rebellion which Alva fancied he had utterly stamped out was suddenly in full blaze once more; and on the south, Mons, like Brille, was seized by a rapid dash of Lewis of Na.s.sau, operating from French territory.
[Sidenote: The Alencon marriage]
In the meantime also the Alencon marriage project seemed to be advancing, and in April a defensive treaty was struck between England and France, where it appeared that Coligny was paramount at court. Both English and French volunteers were fighting in the Netherlands. Small wonder that Burghley and Walsingham believed that a French marriage would clinch matters, make France a virtually Huguenot Power, and secure a combination which would bring the Pope and the King of Spain to their knees. The approaching marriage of the French King's sister, Margaret, to young Henry of Navarre--now standing next after the King's brothers in the line of succession--pointed emphatically in the same direction.
Walsingham however also knew that, to achieve the desired end, the Huguenots must at once have convincing proofs that they could depend on the English alliance. The marriage, and concerted armed intervention in the Netherlands, were the conditions. But Alencon [Footnote: He was singularly ugly, and Elizabeth who had nicknames for many of her Court, used to call him her ”Frog” when he was wooing her, later.] was an incredibly distasteful husband; and however near Elizabeth might suffer herself to be brought to the brink of war, she hung back when the time came. There was very good reason [Footnote: _State Papers: Spanish,_ ii., 338.] for believing that even now she was secretly negotiating with Alva, and in a very short time the English and French volunteer contingents in Flus.h.i.+ng [Footnote: _S.P., Foreign,_ x., 491, 530.] were on the verge of hostilities. The power of the Huguenots was on the surface; fanatics themselves when their religion was not merely political, they were the objects of savagely fanatical hatred. The queen-mother, who had always striven to preserve her own domination by holding the balance between Guises and Huguenots, saw Charles falling more and more under Coligny's influence instead of her own. It may be that if she had felt sure of Elizabeth, she would have gone through with the proposed policy; distrusting the English Queen she resolved to end it. She made a desperate and successful attempt to recover her ascendancy over her weak-minded son. She played upon his terrors, and prepared for one of the most appalling tragedies in all history.
[Sidenote: Aug. St. Bartholomew]
A plot for the a.s.sa.s.sination of Coligny failed, the Admiral being but slightly wounded. Paris was full of Huguenots, who had gathered for the celebration of Navarre's marriage on August 18th; the attempt on Coligny led to threatening language against the Guises. Katharine stirred her son into a sudden panic. The attack on the Admiral had taken place on August 22nd; with the booming of a bell on the early morning of the 24th, St.
Bartholomew's day, the most recklessly devastating mob in the world found itself let loose on its prey, headed and urged on by the Guises and other Catholic chiefs. The Huguenots, utterly surprised, were slaughtered from house to house; with the taste of blood the populace went mad; Paris was a shambles. How many thousands were ma.s.sacred in that awful frenzy none can tell. The tale of the tragedy flew from end to end of France; all over the country, wherever the Catholics were in a majority, like scenes were enacted. The total of the victims has been computed as high as a hundred thousand; a fourth of that number would certainly not be an exaggerated estimate. In England, all the martyrs for religion in the century did not amount to a thousand, on both sides; in France, twenty thousand at least were slain in a few days' orgy of fanaticism. And the new Pope Gregory sang _Te Deum_ in solemn state; and the morose monarch of Spain laughed aloud in unwonted glee; but Charles of France, men said, was haunted to the hour of his death by red visions of that ghastly carnival of blood.
CHAPTER XIX
ELIZABETH (iv), 1572-78--VARIUM ET MUTABILE
[Sidenote: The Queen's diplomacy]
The picture of Elizabeth and of her surroundings. .h.i.therto presented in these pages has been one which rouses rather a reluctant admiration for a combination of good fortune and dexterity than a moral enthusiasm.
Statesmen, in fact, had to pick their way with such extreme wariness through such a labyrinth of intrigues that little play was permitted to their more generous instincts; and it is undeniable that Elizabeth herself loved intricate methods, and made it quite unnecessarily difficult for her ministers to pursue a straightforward course. This is the aspect of the national life which is inevitably forced on our attention--the diplomatic aspect in an age when diplomacy was playing an immense part in public affairs. For England, it might almost be said that diplomatic methods had been created by Henry VII., maintained by Wolsey, dropped again for thirty years, and then re-created by Elizabeth. As Wolsey had played France and the Empire against each other, to make England the arbiter of Europe, so Elizabeth played France and Spain against each other, so that neither could afford to go beyond empty threats against her in her own territory; while both governments had recalcitrant Protestant subjects who were a good deal more hampering and disquieting to them than were Elizabeth's Catholic subjects to her. In Scotland, Elizabeth's policy, like her father's, was that of maintaining factions which kept the country divided.
Now the persons with whom Elizabeth had to deal were for the most part perfectly unscrupulous. The Queen-mother in France, the Scots lords, Philip of Spain, and the Spanish amba.s.sadors with the exception of De Silva, were as ready to make and ignore promises and professions as was Elizabeth herself. If they found her fully a match for them at their own game, we can hardly reproach her if we cannot applaud. But it is notable that in England, the arch-dissembler is Elizabeth herself. It is she who manages the undignified but eminently successful trickery of the marriage negotiations. It is she who evades committing herself irrevocably to the Huguenots or to the Prince of Orange. It is she who preserves Mary's restoration as a possibility, to be held _in terrorem_ over Scotland after publis.h.i.+ng her accusers' evidence against her.
[Sidenote: The Queen's subjects]
But the success of this supreme wiliness, a quality in which perhaps Elizabeth's one rival was Lethington, was due to the presence in her ministers and in her people of moral qualities which she did not herself display. First and foremost was their loyalty to her. They acted boldly on secret instructions, with entire certainty that they must take the whole responsibility upon themselves; that to be pardoned for success was the highest official recognition they could hope for; that flat repudiation and probable ruin would follow failure. Burghley in particular repeatedly risked favour to save the Queen from herself, when her vacillation, calculated or not, was on the verge of being carried too far; nor was he alone in speaking his mind; yet in spite of merciless snubs his fidelity was unimpaired; none of her enemies ever dreamed for an instant that he could be tampered with. Nor did it ever appear that more than a very few even among the most discontented of her subjects would lend themselves to open disloyalty. In England, there were almost none who would have anything to say to the political a.s.sa.s.sinations which repeatedly stained the annals of the nations of the Continent and of Scotland: a peculiarity remarked on in the Spanish correspondence.
Again, the religious tone and temper of the country were in striking contrast to those prevailing where the Reformation a.s.sumed the Calvinistic model. In France and in Scotland, Protestants and Catholics were ready to fly at each other's throats; in England that inclination was confined to extremists of either party. The bulk of the population was quite content with conformity to a compromise, and was tolerant of a very considerable theoretical disagreement, and even of actual nonconformity, so long as it was not actively aggressive. It was not till Jesuits on one side, and ultra-puritans on the other, developed an active propaganda directed against the established order, that there was any general desire to strike hard at either; nor did even the puritan parliaments display any violent anti-Catholic animus till roused by the insult to the nation of the Bull of Deposition.
[Sidenote: Development of Protestantism]
While the characteristically English love of compromise and devotion to conventions kept the bulk of the population loyal to the established Forms of religion, acquiescent but not enthusiastic, their normal conservatism also disposed them more favourably to teachers of the old than of the innovating school; but other forces were at work, which encouraged the growth of what may be called the Old Testament spirit of militant religiosity directed against Rome and all that savoured of Rome. Stories of the doings of the Inquisition, the enormities perpetrated by Alva in the Netherlands, the fate of English sailors who might, not without justice, have been punished for piracy, but were in fact made to suffer on the ground of heresy, the crowning horror of St.
Bartholomew, appealed luridly to the popular imagination. The country was threatened with internal discord by the presence of a Catholic aspirant to the throne, which concentrated the forces of disorganisation on the Catholic side. Protestantism, thereby at once extended and intensified, took its colour from the most active and energetic of the religious teachers, and developed a vehement popular sympathy with the French Huguenots and the revolting Netherlanders; and however politicians might evade official entanglement, English sentiment--at any rate after St. Bartholomew--was always ready to take arms openly in the Protestant cause.
[Sidenote: Katharine de Medici]
When Katharine and the Guises let the Paris mob loose on the Huguenots, they had doubtless no intention of perpetrating so vast a slaughter.
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