Henry III. King of France—Escape of Alen?on—Rising of the Huguenots—Revival of the marriage negotiations—Suggested marriage of Queen Elizabeth and Don John of Austria—Efforts of Henry III. and Catharine to provide for Alen?on abroad—Alen?on’s negotiations with the Flemings—Flight of Alen?on from Paris—Elizabeth’s distrust of French interference in Flanders—Her negotiations with Alen?on on the subject—De Bacqueville and De Quincy’s mission to England—L’Aubespine and Rambouillet sent by the King—Spanish fears of the Alen?on match—Alen?on enters Flanders and clamours for English aid.

For the first year after the new King’s arrival in France, he and his brother seemed to hold rival Courts. The King’s, perhaps, was the more horribly and shamelessly licentious, but both were filled with quarrelsome, dissolute, and utterly unscrupulous young men, who gloried in their vices. Those who surrounded the King were mostly Catholics, whilst Alen?on’s courtiers were oftener Huguenots and moderates. Between the two Courts quarrels, duels, and secret murders were incessant, and a fresh civil war was the inevitable outcome of such a rivalry.

At last matters came to a crisis, and Alen?on, on the evening of September 15, 1575, walked out of the Louvre with his face covered, and accompanied only by a single attendant. Outside, in a quiet spot near the Porte Ste. Honoré, his faithful courtier,183 Jehan Simier, of whom more anon, was waiting with a fair lady’s carriage into which Alen?on mounted, and was carried as fast as the horses could gallop to where a body of three hundred horsemen were ready to serve as his escort. They got two hours’ start before the King learnt of his brother’s flight, and orders were given in rage and panic to bring him back at any cost. But Alen?on was the heir to the crown, and the courtiers did not care to risk his future displeasure by too much zeal, and he reached Dreux unharmed. There he issued his proclamation, demanding reform of abuses but taking care not to identify himself too closely with the Huguenot cause.

From town to town through Central France the Queen-mother followed her flying son, but he always escaped her. At last she had the boldness to appeal for aid to the moderates, and released their chief, Montmorenci, from the Bastille for the purpose of influencing Alen?on. By this time the Huguenots were in arms everywhere. Wilkes, the clerk of Elizabeth’s Council, was sent to Condé and Montmorenci’s son, Meru, at Strasburg, with a large sum of money, and thence across the Rhine to raise, through Duke Casimir, “one of the finest armies that for twenty years has issued from Germany” to enable Alen?on to hold his own against Henry III. and the Guises. But before reinforcements could reach him Marshal Montmorenci had induced him to patch up a six months’ truce with his brother at the end of November, and for the moment the danger of civil war was averted. But Henry III. found, as his brother Charles had found before him, that France was not large enough184 to hold both him and Alen?on. The latter must be got rid of somehow. The Duke himself said that an attempt was made to poison him, but in any case his mother suggested to him that now that Elizabeth had been so ready to help him with money would be a good opportunity for reviving the marriage negotiations. Alen?on, nothing loath, sent one of his friends, named La Porte, with two letters of thanks to Elizabeth dated at Montreuil on November 28, 1575.94 They contain no word about marriage, but La Porte was instructed to co-operate with Castelnau de la Mauvissière, who was now the ambassador in England, in bringing it forward. Elizabeth insisted, however, as a preliminary, that a complete reconciliation should take place between the brothers and peace made with the Huguenots before she would again entertain the matter. The best way, said Catharine to Dale, to bring that about is for your mistress to desist from helping the rebels; and again the negotiations were shelved. Elizabeth’s new coolness is easily explained. Convinced, probably, of the inutility of an alliance with France in its present divided and unstable condition, she was for the moment actively engaged in making friends with Spain. Granvelle’s brother Champigny, who had come from Flanders as an envoy from Philip’s governor of the Netherlands to treat for a resumption of friendly relations, had been received with effusive civility. Philip’s fleet, under Pedro de Valdes, had been hospitably entertained at Plymouth, and Corbet had been sent to Flanders to arrange a commercial treaty between England and the Spanish States. Elizabeth had, moreover185 hastily recalled the English levies serving with Orange, although but few obeyed the call; and finally she had despatched young Henry Cobham as an envoy to Philip himself, in order to smooth matters over between them. In Philip’s notes of his interview with Cobham,95 he says that the latter told him that Elizabeth had seen a letter from the King of France to the Prince of Orange, “making him many fine promises”; and then he said something about a marriage which I did not very well understand.” We shall probably not be far out if we guess that Cobham’s vague hint about marriage, which was so lost upon Philip, was not altogether unconnected with certain approaches which at the same time were made on Elizabeth’s behalf to Don John of Austria, Philip’s natural brother, the heroic young victor of Lepanto, who at that very time was dreaming of a marriage with the captive Queen of Scots. Don John, writing to his brother, says: “She (Elizabeth) has sent an agent to me, who has hinted at a marriage. I am, in my replies, putting the matter aside, but I beg your Majesty to tell me if I am to follow it up. Although I may be led thus to restore a Queen and her realm to the true faith, I would not for all the world make a dishonourable choice. I blush whilst I write this to think of accepting advances from a woman whose life and example furnish so much food for gossip.”96 Philip told his brother that such an approach should not be neglected; but events marched quickly, and before anything could come of it another turn of the kaleidoscope made it impossible.

186 Alen?on’s six months’ truce had not stopped Duke Casimir’s mercenaries with Condé from crossing the frontier. Navarre, too, had escaped from the Court, and had assumed the leadership of the Huguenots; and then Henry III., sorely against his will, was forced to let his mother make the best terms she could with the insurgents and their allies. Alen?on was bought over with 100,000 livres and the rich duchies of Berri Touraine and Anjou; Casimir got 300,000 crowns, a pension of 40,000 livres a year and rich estates in France; Condé was promised the governorship of Picardy; the Chatillons, Montgomeri, and even poor dead La Mole and Coconas were rehabilitated, the crown jewels were pawned to pay the German troops, and so at last peace was made. But still the necessity for getting Alen?on out of the way existed; and, in despair of Elizabeth, active negotiations were opened for him to marry elsewhere. Catharine of Navarre, a princess of Cleves, and a daughter of the Palatine were all mentioned, but the most tempting and diplomatic project was to marry him to Philip’s eldest daughter and give him the government of the Spanish Netherlands. This would have drawn his claws indeed. The Walloons and Catholic Flemings also approached him with similar suggestions, and Alen?on deserted the Protestant cause entirely, and became suddenly a devout Catholic. He even accepted the command of a force against the Huguenots, upon whom he was implacable in his severity.97

This change of front frightened Elizabeth, who feared that if the Protestants in the Netherlands were187 conquered her turn would come next, and she once more held out the bait of marriage. She expressed sorrow to Castelnau that the Duke had ceased to write to her and had forgotten her. But this time the fish failed to rise, and for the next three years Alen?on remained ostentatiously Catholic, sometimes in arms against Huguenot resistance, sometimes at Court with his brother, with whom he was nominally on good terms. But the personal hatred and jealousy between them continued still, and the duels and murders between their respective courtiers went on as before. The Duke’s turbulent and discontented friends openly scoffed at the painted mignons who surrounded the King, and if they resented the insult, Bussy d’Amboise, the first swordsman in France, was ready to fight any number of them.

At length, at the beginning of 1578, Bussy d’Amboise was waylaid in Paris and nearly murdered by some of the King’s courtiers, and had to seek safety in absence from the Court. Then several other of the Duke’s friends were bought over by favours to the King’s side, and the mignons, emboldened by his isolation, went to the length of sneering at Alen?on himself. This was at a ball at the palace of the Montmorencis to which Catharine had forced her son to go against his will; and fearing that this demonstration of the mignons portended the Bastille or poison for himself, the Duke lost patience, and demanded permission to withdraw himself from Court for a time. The only answer vouchsafed was the rigid searching of his apartments by the Scots guard at midnight, in the presence of the King himself, with every circumstance of contumely. The Duke was arrested, all his papers were seized, and188 the principal friends who remained with him were cast into the Bastille.

It must be confessed that, given Alen?on’s turbulent character, there were circumstances which fully justified the suspicions of Henry III. against his brother. The “Spanish fury” in Antwerp in 1576 had turned even the Walloons and Catholic Flemings against Philip’s rule, and they had made common cause with Orange’s Protestants in the North. It was seen then that all the arms of Spain would be powerless to subdue them; and, hardly pressed as Philip was, he was forced to send his brother Don John on a mission of pacification at all costs. But Don John was a soldier, and it cut him to the heart, as he said, to bend the knee and make terms “with these drunken wineskins of Flemings”; so after swearing the perpetual edict of pacification, he resented the continued exigencies of the States, treacherously seized the citadel of Namur, summoned troops from Italy and elsewhere, and bade the “rebels” do their worst. In order to sow dissension between the two branches of the house of Austria, the Walloon nobles had brought to Flanders as their governor the young Archduke Mathias as an avowed rival of the Protestant Orange. He was a poor creature, but the great Taciturn patriotically persuaded his followers to recognise him as their chief, he, Orange, being his lieutenant. This, after some turmoil and bloodshed, they did, and it was in his name that the hastily gathered levies of the States went out to attack Don John who had betrayed them. The victor of Lepanto with his few veterans met them on the last day of January, 1578, and completely defeated them, and the insurgent189 Flemings once more were at the mercy of the cruel Spanish soldiery, who were speeding back again from Italy eager to shed the blood again of the brave burghers who only a few months before had insisted upon their withdrawal. Mathias was a broken reed—he had no money, no followers, no influence, and no prestige, so the Flemings were fain to look elsewhere for help. Elizabeth had aided the Protestant Hollanders bravely, but the Catholic Flemings did not wish to be merged in and governed by the Dutch States, and had to seek help from a Catholic prince. Conciliation they had tried, and they had been betrayed. A prince of the house of Austria had been chosen, and had turned out useless. Where, then, could they look but to a prince of France, unfettered by Spanish sympathies? So Alen?on was approached, and expressed his willingness to raise his friends, the moderate Catholics and the Huguenots to aid the Flemings in their resistance. This, of course, was known to Catharine and Henry III., and as such an action on the part of Alen?on might have involved France in a war with Spain, there was no doubt good ground for the Duke’s belief that his brother intended to put him out of harm’s way by quietly shutting him up in the Bastille to keep company with his faithful friends who were there already.

Bussy d’Amboise had not been idle outside in the meanwhile. He had sent the fiery cross through the provinces, and men-at-arms and nobles were flocking to the Flemish frontier to join the standard of Alen?on when it should be raised. The gates of Paris, it is true, were closely guarded, and Alen?on himself, with his sister Margaret (who herself tells190 the story so racily), were not allowed out of the sight of the Scottish archers. But the Court was full of nobles who were disgusted with the King’s mode of life, and plans were rife to rescue the captive. Bussy crept back into Paris to plan an escape with Simier, but both were captured and laid by the heels. Then Catharine managed somehow to patch up a reconciliation. Bussy was made to kiss his principal antagonist Quélus in the presence of the whole Court, which he did in so exaggerated a fashion as to make ............