Ten Tudor Statesmen

by Arthur D. Innes

III
AMBASSADOR AT PARIS

In the interval, an ingenious solution of several problems had suggested itself to the Huguenot leaders, and found favour with the Queen-Mother. This was that Anjou should drop the idea of marrying Mary and should instead marry Elizabeth herself. He was her junior by seventeen years, but that was a small matter. If he wedded the Protestant Queen, he would be definitely detached from the Guises, toleration for both religions would be assured both in England and France, and the two countries could join in the liberation of the Netherlands. The problem would be to arrange the marriage on terms which would give the parties who were favourably disposed to it security for the carrying out of those parts of the programme which were from their several points of view essential.

Prima facie the plan was acceptable to the Huguenots, to the Politiques, to the English Council, and to Walsingham himself. To the Guises, it was very much the reverse, and they tried, with a degree of success, to frighten the Duke with the old scandals about the Virgin Queen and Leicester. The Spaniards were much perturbed. Their Ambassador first tried to draw the French into engagements with them against Orange; and, failing in that attempt, began making overtures to Walsingham which he appreciated at their true value. He knew all about the overtures to France—to which, as the Englishman wrote drily to Cecil, “the answers falling not out to his contentment, maketh him, as I suppose, to think that the friendship of England is worth the having.” The same letter notes information that the Pope has a “practice in hand for England, which would not be long before it brake forth”—no doubt in connexion with the Ridolfi plot, which was now maturing.

Side by side with the business of the Anjou marriage, Walsingham was much engaged in gathering information as to the suspected Spanish expedition to Ireland; in respect of which he held much diplomatic conversation with the ex-Archbishop of Cashel and heard many tales of Stukely’s doings and sayings. Walsingham suspected his good faith, and remarked significantly to Cecil—who had just been “ordered to write William Burleigh” instead of William Cecil, but had still some difficulty in remembering the new signature—“I have placed some especially about him, to whom he repaireth, as also who repairs unto him.” The suspicions were not dissipated as time went on.

The Ambassador’s situation was one of singular difficulty. For a dozen years past, Elizabeth had played fast and loose with so many suitors that any lack of straightforwardness on her part was certain to be construed as meaning that she intended to play with Anjou in the same way; while she was absolutely incapable of being straightforward. As a matter of fact, she was probably merely playing her usual game. So long as the match was on the tapis, but only on the tapis, Philip would be afraid to move lest he should precipitate it. Meantime, Orange was making ready to renew the struggle in the Netherlands, and she might presently find that she could afford to manœuvre herself out of the marriage, and would have skill enough to make the rupture of negotiations come from the other side. Burghley and Leicester both wanted the match—the former being satisfied that it would result in the Burgundian dominions being separated from Spain without being absorbed by France, while Protestantism would be generally much strengthened. But in his private correspondence with Walsingham, he warned the Ambassador very plainly that neither he nor Leicester knew what the Queen meant to do—it was as likely as not that she wished in the long run to get the match broken off by Anjou on the score of the English stipulations for his conforming to the English law in matters of religion. Walsingham, who was a Protestant with his heart and soul as well as his head, and believed that the Protestant cause was the national cause much more uncompromisingly than Burghley, was more zealous on behalf of the marriage than the Secretary himself, being convinced that it would bring about the victory of Protestantism, in alliance with England, both in France and the Netherlands.

It was not Burghley nor Walsingham, but Elizabeth, who controlled the situation; and however strongly the ministers might express their private feelings to each other, they had to do as she told them. Her trickery met with its usual success. In due course, Henry of Anjou found that he could not accede to the demand for conformity, and in spite of his mother’s entreaties withdrew his suit; yet the business was so successfully managed that the French court, instead of being offended, very soon began to hint that the French king had yet another brother, the Duke of Alençon, whose hand and heart were not yet disposed of. So the play began again.

Meantime the complete revelation of the Ridolfi conspiracy brought conclusive proofs of the real hostility of Spain to Elizabeth. In the following spring (1572) the Netherlands were set ablaze once more by La Marck’s capture of Brille, and Alva found his hands full; a timely occurrence, since the crushing defeat of the Turks at Lepanto by Don John in October had greatly strengthened the hands of Philip. In the summer of 1572 Walsingham was more than ever convinced that a French marriage, and support on the most liberal scale to Orange, composed the policy which it was imperative for England to adopt. Everything was pointing to a Huguenot ascendency in France; Marguerite of Valois was on the point of marrying young Henry of Navarre, head of the Bourbons, and next in succession to the throne after the reigning king’s brothers. To play fast and loose with the Alençon marriage would alienate France; to play fast and loose with Orange would be to throw him into the arms of France alienated from England. That Philip, seeing England thus isolated, would cheerfully forgive and forget all that he had suffered, for the sake of an unstable union with her, was almost unthinkable. Yet the months went by, and the Ambassador could get no guidance even from the sympathetic Burghley, who was as much in the dark as ever as to Elizabeth’s real intentions.

But there was a factor in the situation of which on one had taken full account; not Walsingham, nor Burghley, nor Elizabeth; not the Huguenots; not Philip nor Alva. This was Catherine de Medici’s overwhelming lust of personal power, and the passion of jealousy accompanying it. She saw her ascendency over her son Charles IX. slipping away and passing into the hands of Coligny and his associates. For victory and vengeance, she prepared to commit, perhaps, the most appalling crime in the annals of Christian Europe. Paris was crowded with Huguenots gathered to celebrate the pact of amity, to be sealed by the wedding of the Béarnais and the sister of the king. Stealthily and swiftly the plans were laid, the plot organised, the preparations completed. The wedding took place on August 18: three days later, an unsuccessful attempt was made to murder Coligny. It may be that if the assassin had killed the Admiral, the huge tragedy which followed would have been averted; as it was, hours before the sun of St. Bartholomew’s day (August 24) had risen, the floodgates had been opened, and the streets of Paris were running red with rivers of Huguenot blood. During the following days, like scenes were being enacted through the provinces.

For a moment Europe stood breathless, aghast. Whatever this appalling thing meant, it seemed at least an assured portent of developments undreamed of; probably a vast, all-embracing, Catholic conspiracy. England sprang to arms, ready to stand at bay against the united forces of France and Spain. If there was to be a life-and-death struggle between the religions, she would fight to the last gasp. The Englishmen in the French capital had been safeguarded on the night of the massacre, but it was some little time before they could be sure that their turn was not still to come. Yet Walsingham in Paris bore himself with the same lofty sternness that the English Queen and her Council displayed to the French Ambassador in London. It soon became evident that Catherine was frightened at what she had done; that her one desire was to minimise it, to declare that matters had never been intended to go so far, to shelter behind the plea that the victims had been on the verge of effecting a bloody coup d’état and the counter-stroke had only been dealt in self-defence. Walsingham’s reply was in terms of courteous but scathing incredulity. The Queen-Mother tried to win him over by declaring that Coligny had warned Anjou against the machinations of England; he answered that the Admiral had acted therein as a loyal Frenchman.

The diplomatic fabric had collapsed, but at least there was no question of France holding Elizabeth to blame for the rupture; nor was there any question of Catherine turning to a junction with Spain. The Huguenots now were at bay; there would be work enough before they were either crushed or pacified; while the slaughter of their leaders had made the Guises more dangerous than ever. On the other hand, there could be no joint action on behalf of Orange. France had ruled herself out. Walsingham would still have stood boldly for “the Religion,” but the Queen and Burghley were not equally ready to fling themselves single-handed into the struggle on behalf of the Netherlands. The Spaniards deemed the opportunity a good one for seeking reconciliation with England. A more politic and less bloodthirsty Governor was dispatched to the Low Countries to take the place of Alva, who by his own desire was recalled. Walsingham went back to England, and for some time to come Philip and Elizabeth were engaged in an elaborate if insincere ostentation of amicable intentions.