Part 97 (1/2)

Such; in brief, was the substance of the long Latin harangue by which it was thought possible to induce those st.u.r.dy republicans and Calvinists to renounce their vigorous national existence and to fall on their knees before the most Catholic king. This was understood to be mediation, statesmans.h.i.+p, diplomacy, in deference to which the world was to pause and the course of events to flow backwards. Truly, despots and their lackeys were destined to learn some rude lessons from that vigorous little commonwealth in the North Sea, before it should have accomplished its mission on earth.

The States-General dissembled their disgust, however, for it was not desirable to make open enemies of Sigismund or Rudolph. They refused to accept a copy of the oration, but they promised to send him a categorical answer to it in writing. Meantime the envoy had the honour of walking about the castle with the stadholder, and, in the course of their promenade, Maurice pointed to the thirty-eight standards taken at the battle of Turnhout, which hung from the cedarn rafters of the ancient banquetting hall. The mute eloquence of those tattered banners seemed a not illogical reply to the diplomatic Paul's rhetoric in regard to the hopelessness of a contest with Spanish armies.

Next, Van der Werken--pensionary of Leyden, and a cla.s.sical scholar--waited upon the envoy with a Latin reply to his harangue, together with a courteous letter for Sigismund. Both doc.u.ments were scathing denunciations of the policy pursued by the King of Spain and by all his aiders and abettors, and a distinct but polished refusal to listen to a single word in favour of mediation or of peace.

Paul Dialyn then received a courteous permission to leave the territory of the republic, and was subsequently forwarded in a States' vessel of war to England.

His reception, about a month later, by Queen Elizabeth is an event on which all English historians are fond of dwelling. The pedant, on being presented to that imperious and accomplished sovereign, deported himself with the same ludicrous arrogance which had characterised him at the Hague. His Latin oration, which had been duly drawn up for him by the Chancellor of Sweden, was quite as impertinent as his harangue to the States-General had been, and was delivered with the same conceited air.

The queen replied on the instant in the same tongue. She was somewhat in a pa.s.sion, but spoke with majestic moderation?

”Oh, how I have been deceived!” she exclaimed. ”I expected an amba.s.sador, and behold a herald! In all my life I never heard of such an oration.

Your boldness and unadvised temerity I cannot sufficiently admire. But if the king your master has given you any such thing in charge--which I much doubt--I believe it is because, being but a young man, and lately advanced to the crown, not by ordinary succession of blood, but by election, he understandeth not yet the way of such affairs.” And so on--for several minutes longer.

Never did envoy receive such a setting down from sovereign.

”G.o.d's death, my lords!” said the queen to her ministers; as she concluded, ”I have been enforced this day to scour up my old Latin that hath lain long in rusting.”

This combination of ready wit, high spirit, and good Latin, justly excited the enthusiasm of the queen's subjects, and endeared her still more to every English heart. It may, however, be doubted whether the famous reply was in reality so entirely extemporaneous as it has usually been considered. The States-General had lost no time in forwarding to England a minute account of the proceedings of Paul Dialyn at the Hague, together with a sketch of his harangue and of the reply on behalf of the States. Her Majesty and her counsellors therefore, knowing that the same envoy was on his way to England with a similar errand, may be supposed to have had leisure to prepare the famous impromptu. Moreover, it is difficult to understand, on the presumption that these cla.s.sic utterances were purely extemporaneous, how they have kept their place in all chronicles and histories from that day to the present, without change of a word in the text. Surely there was no stenographer present to take down the queen's words as they fell from her lips.

The military events of the year did not testify to a much more successful activity on the part of the new league in the field than it had displayed in the sphere of diplomacy. In vain did the envoy of the republic urge Henry and his counsellors to follow up the crus.h.i.+ng blow dealt to the cardinal at Turnhout by vigorous operations in conjunction with the States' forces in Artois and Hainault. For Amiens had meantime been taken, and it was now necessary for the king to employ all his energy and all his resources to recover that important city. So much damage to the cause of the republic and of the new league had the little yellow Spanish captain inflicted in an hour, with his bags of chestnuts and walnuts. The siege of Amiens lasted nearly six months, and was the main event of the campaign, so far as Henry was concerned. It is true--as the reader has already seen, and as will soon be more clearly developed--that Henry's heart had been fixed on peace from the moment that he consented in conjunction with the republic to declare war, and that he had entered into secret and separate negotiations for that purpose with the agents of Philip so soon as he had bound himself by solemn covenant with Elizabeth to have no negotiations whatever with him except with her full knowledge and consent.

The siege of Amiens, however, was considered a military masterpiece, and its whole progress showed the revolution which the stadholder of Holland had already effected in European warfare. Henry IV. beleaguered Amiens as if he were a pupil of Maurice, and contemporaries were enthusiastic over the science, the patience, the inventive ingenuity which were at last crowned with success. The heroic Hernan Tello de Porto Carrero was killed in a sortie during the defence of the place which he had so gallantly won, and when the city was surrendered to the king on the 19th of September it was stipulated in the first article of the capitulation that the tomb, epitaph, and trophies, by which his memory was honoured in the princ.i.p.al church, should not be disturbed, and that his body might be removed whenever and whither it seemed good to his sovereign. In vain the cardinal had taken the field with an army of eighteen thousand foot and fifteen hundred light cavalry. The king had learned so well to entrench himself and to moderate his ardour for inopportune pitched battles, that the relieving force could find, no occasion to effect its purpose. The archduke retired. He came to Amiens like a soldier, said Henry, but he went back like a priest. Moreover, he was obliged to renounce, besides the city, a most tempting prize which he thought that he had secured within the city. Alexander Farnese, in his last French campaign, had procured and sent to his uncle the foot of St. Philip and the head of St.

Lawrence; but what was Albert's delight when he learned that in Amiens cathedral there was a large piece of the head of John the Baptist! ”There will be a great scandal about it in this kingdom,” he wrote to Philip, ”if I undertake to transport it out of the country, but I will try to contrive it as your Majesty desires.”

But the military events of the year prevented the cardinal from gratifying the king in regard to these choice curiosities.

After the reduction of the city Henry went a considerable distance with his army towards the frontier of Flanders, in order to return, as he said, ”his cousin's visit.” But the recovery of Amiens had placed too winning a card in the secret game which he was then playing to allow him to push his nominal adversary to extremities.

The result, suspected very early in the year by the statesmen of the republic, was already very plainly foreshadowing itself as the winter advanced.

Nor had the other two members of the league affected much in the field.

Again an expedition had been fitted forth under Ess.e.x against the Spanish coast to return the compliment which Philip had intended with the unlucky armada under Santa Gadea; and again Sir Francis Vere, with two thousand veterans from the Netherlands, and the Dutch admirals, with ten s.h.i.+ps of war and a large number of tenders and transports, had faithfully taken part in the adventure.

The fleet was tempest-tossed for ten days, during which it reached the threatened coast and was blown off again. It returned at last into the English ports, having accomplished nothing, and having expended superfluously a considerable amount of money and trouble. Ess.e.x, with a few of the vessels, subsequently made a cruise towards the Azores, but, beyond the capture of a Spanish merchantman or two, gained no glory and inflicted no damage.

Nothing could be feebler than the military operations of the three confederated powers ever since they had so solemnly confederated themselves.

Sick at heart with the political intrigues of his allies which had--brought a paralysis upon his arms which the blows of the enemy could hardly have effected, Maurice took the field in August: for an autumnal campaign on the eastern frontier of the republic. Foiled in his efforts for a combined attack by the whole force of the league upon Philip's power in the west, he thought it at least expedient to liberate the Rhine, to secure the important provinces of Zutphen, Gelderland, and Overyssel from attack, and to provide against the dangerous intrigues and concealed warfare carried on by Spain in the territories of the mad Duke of Juliers, Clever and Berg. For the seeds of the Thirty Years' War of Germany were already sown broadcast in those fatal duchies, and it was the determination of the agents of Spain to acquire the mastery of that most eligible military position, that excellent 'sedes belli,' whenever Protestantism was to be a.s.sailed in England, the Netherlands, or Germany.

Meantime the Hispaniolated counsellors of Duke John had strangled--as it was strongly suspected--his d.u.c.h.ess, who having gone to bed in perfect health one evening was found dead in her bed next morning, with an ugly mark on her throat; and it was now the purpose of these statesmen to find a new bride for their insane sovereign in the ever ready and ever orthodox house of Lorrain. And the Protestant brothers-in-law and nephews and nieces were making every possible combination in order to check such dark designs, and to save these important territories from the ubiquitous power of Spain.

The stadholder had also family troubles at this period. His sister Emilia had conceived a desperate pa.s.sion for Don Emmanuel, the pauper son of the forlorn pretender to Portugal, Don Antonio, who had at last departed this life. Maurice was indignant that a Catholic, an outcast, and, as it was supposed, a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, should dare to mate with the daughter of William of Orange-Na.s.sau; and there were many scenes of tenderness, reproaches, recriminations, and 'hysterica pa.s.sio,' in which not only the lovers, the stadholder and his family, but also the high and mighty States-General, were obliged to enact their parts. The chronicles are filled with the incidents, which, however, never turned to tragedy, nor even to romance, but ended, without a catastrophe, in a rather insipid marriage. The Princess Emilia remained true both to her religion and her husband during a somewhat obscure wedded life, and after her death Don Emmanuel found means to reconcile himself with the King of Spain and to espouse, in second nuptials, a Spanish lady. On the 4th of August, Maurice arrived at Arnhem with a force of seven thousand foot and twelve hundred horse.

Hohenlo was with him, and William Lewis, and there was yet another of the ill.u.s.trious house of Na.s.sau in the camp, Frederick Henry, a boy in his thirteenth year, the youngest born of William the Silent, the grandson of Admiral de Coligny, now about; in this his first campaign, to take the first step in a long and n.o.ble career.

Having reduced the town and castle of Alphen, the stadholder came before Rheinberg, which he very expeditiously invested. During a preliminary skirmish William Lewis received a wound in the leg, while during the brief siege Maurice had a narrow escape from death, a cannon-ball pa.s.sing through his tent and over his head as he lay taking a brief repose upon his couch.

On the 19th, Rheinberg, the key to that portion of the river, surrendered. On the 31st the stadholder opened his batteries upon the city of Meurs, which capitulated on the 2nd of September; the commandant, Andrew Miranda, stipulating that he should carry off an old fifty-pounder, the only piece of cannon in the place. Maurice gave his permission with a laugh, begging Miranda not to batter down any cities with his big gun.

On the 8th September the stadholdet threw a bridge over the Rhine, and crossing that river and the Lippe, came on the 11th before Grol. There was no Christopher Mondragon now in his path to check his progress and spoil his campaign, so that in seventeen days the city, being completely surrounded with galleries and covered ways up to its walls, surrendered.