The match with Alençon had been proposed six years before. It had lately slumbered. But there was no difficulty in whistling him back, and making it appear that the renewed overture came from his side. After tedious negotiations, protracted over twelve months, he at length paid his first visit to Elizabeth (August 1579). He was an under-sized man with an over-sized head, villainously ugly, with a face deeply seamed by smallpox, a nose ending in a knob that made it look like two noses, and a croaking voice. Elizabeth’s liking for big handsome men is well known. But as she had not the least intention of marrying Alençon, it cost her nothing to affirm that she was charmed with his appearance, and that he was just the sort of man she could fancy for a husband. The only agreeable thing about him was his conversation, in which he shone, so that people who did not thoroughly know him always at first gave him credit for more ability than he possessed. Elizabeth, who had a pet name for all favourites, dubbed him her “frog”; and “Grenouille” he was fain to subscribe himself in his love-letters. This first visit was a short one, and he went away hopeful of success.
The English people could only judge by appearances, and for the first time in her reign Elizabeth was unpopular. The Puritan Stubbs published his Discovery of a Gaping Gulf wherein England is like to be swallowed by another French Marriage. But the excitement was by no means confined to the Puritans. Hatred of Frenchmen long remained a ruling sentiment with most Englishmen. Elizabeth vented her rage on Stubbs, who had been so rude as to tell her that childbirth at her age would endanger her life. He was sentenced to have his hand cut off. “I remember,” says Camden, “being then present, that Stubbs, after his right hand was cut off, put off his hat with his left, and said with a loud voice, ‘God save the Queen,’ The multitude standing about was deeply silent.”
Not long after Alençon’s visit, a treaty of marriage was signed (November 1579), with a proviso that two months should be allowed for the Queen’s subjects to become reconciled to it. If, at the end of that time, Elizabeth did not ratify the treaty, it was to be null and void. The appointed time came and went without ratification. Burghley, as usual, predicted that the jilted suitor would become a deadly enemy, and drew an alarming picture of the dangers that threatened England, with the old exhortation to his mistress to form a Protestant league and subsidise the Scotch Anglophiles. But in 1572 she had slipped out of the Anjou marriage, and yet secured a French alliance. She confided in her ability to play the same game now. Though she had not ratified the marriage treaty, she continued to correspond with Alençon and keep up his hopes, urging him at the same time to lead an army to the help of the States. This, however, he was unwilling to do till he had secured the marriage. The French King was ready, and even eager, to back his brother. But he, too, insisted on the marriage, and that Elizabeth should openly join him in war against Spain.
In the summer of 1580, Philip conquered Portugal, thus not only rounding off his Peninsular realm, but acquiring the enormous transmarine dominions of the Portuguese crown. All Europe was profoundly impressed and alarmed by this apparent increase of his power. Elizabeth incessantly lectured Henry on the necessity of abating a preponderance so dangerous to all other States, and tried to convince him that it was specially incumbent on France to undertake the enterprise. But she preached in vain. Henry steadily refused to stir unless England would openly assist him with troops and money, of which the marriage was to be the pledge. He did not conceal his suspicion that, when Elizabeth had pushed him into war, she would “draw her neck out of the collar” and leave him to bear the whole danger.
This was, in fact, her intention. She believed that a war with France would soon compel Philip to make proper concessions to the States; whereupon she would interpose and dictate a peace. “Marry my brother,” Henry kept saying, “and then I shall have security that you will bear your fair share of the fighting and expenses.” “If I am to go to war,” argued Elizabeth, “I cannot marry your brother; for my subjects will say that I am dragged into it by my husband, and they will grudge the expense. Suppose, instead of a marriage, we have an alliance not binding me to open war; then I will furnish you with money underhand. You know you have got to fight. You cannot afford to let Philip go on increasing his power.”
Henry remained doggedly firm. No marriage, no war. At last, finding she could not stir him, Elizabeth again concluded a treaty of marriage, but with the extraordinary proviso that six weeks should be left for private explanations by letter between herself and Alençon. It soon appeared what this meant. In these six weeks Elizabeth furnished her suitor with money, and incited him to make a sudden attack on Parma, who was then besieging Cambray, close to the French frontier. Alençon, thinking himself now sure of the marriage, collected 15,000 men; and Henry, though not openly assisting him, no longer prohibited the enterprise. But, as soon as Elizabeth thought they were sufficiently committed, she gave them to understand that the marriage must be again deferred, that her subjects were discontented, that she could only join in a defensive alliance, but that she would furnish money “in reasonable sort” underhand.
All this is very unscrupulous, very shameless, even for that shameless age. Hardened liars like Henry and Alençon thought it too bad. They were ready for violence as well as fraud, and availed themselves of whichever method came handiest. Elizabeth also used the weapon which nature had given her. Being constitutionally averse from any but peaceful methods, she made up for it by a double dose of fraud. Dente lupus, cornu taurus. It would have been useless for a male statesman to try to pass himself off as a fickle impulsive, susceptible being, swayed from one moment to another in his political schemes by passions and weaknesses that are thought natural in the other sex. This was Elizabeth’s advantage, and she made the most of it. She was a masculine woman simulating, when it suited her purpose, a feminine character. The men against whom she was matched were never sure whether they were dealing with a crafty and determined politician, or a vain, flighty, amorous woman. This uncertainty was constantly putting them out in their calculations. Alençon would never have been so taken in if he had not told himself that any folly might be expected from an elderly woman enamoured of a young man.
On this occasion Elizabeth scored, if not the full success she had hoped from her audacious mystification, yet no inconsiderable portion of it. Henry managed to draw back just in time, and was not let in for a big war. But Alençon, at the head of 15,000 men, and close to Cambray, could not for very shame beat a retreat. Parma retired at his approach, and the French army entered Cambray in triumph (August 1581). Alençon therefore had been put in harness to some purpose.
Though Henry III. had good reason to complain of the way he had been treated, he did not make it a quarrel with Elizabeth. His interests, as she saw all along, were too closely bound up with hers to permit him to think of such a thing. On the contrary, he renewed the alliance of 1572 in an ampler form, though it still remained strictly defensive. Alençon, after relieving and victualling Cambray, disbanded his army, and went over to England again to press for the marriage (Nov. 1581). Thither he was followed by ambassadors from the States. By the advice of Orange they had resolved to take him as their sovereign, and they were now urgently pressing him to return to the Netherlands to be installed. Elizabeth added her pressure; but he was unwilling to leave England until he should have secured the marriage. For three months (Nov. 1581—Feb. 1582) did Elizabeth try every art to make him accept promise for performance. She was thoroughly in her element. To win her game in this way, not by the brutal arbitrament of war, or even by the ordinary tricks of vicarious diplomacy, but by artifices personally executed, feats of cajolery that might seem improbable on the stage,—this was delightful in the highest degree. The more distrustful Alençon showed himself, the keener was the pleasure of handling him. One day he is hidden behind a curtain to view her elegant dancing; not, surely, that he might be smitten with it, but that he might think she desired him to be smitten. Another day she kisses him on the lips (en la boca) in the presence of the French ambassador. She gives him a ring. She presents him to her household as their future master. She orders the Bishop of Lincoln to draw up a marriage service. It is a repulsive spectacle; but, after all, we are not so much disgusted with the elderly woman who pretends to be willing to marry the young man, as with the young man who is really willing to marry the elderly woman. Unfortunately for Elizabeth, her acting was so realistic that it not only took in contemporaries, but has persuaded many modern writers that she was really influenced by a degrading passion.
Henry III. himself was at last induced to believe that Elizabeth was this time in earnest. But he could not be driven from his determination to risk nothing till he saw the marriage actually concluded. Pinart, the French Secretary of State, was accordingly sent over to settle the terms. Elizabeth demanded one concession after another, and finally asked for the restitution of Calais. There was no mistaking what this meant. Pinart, in the King’s name, formally forbade Alençon to proceed to the Netherlands except as a married man, and tried to intimidate Elizabeth by threatening that his master would ally himself with Philip. But she laughed at him, and told him that she could have the Spanish alliance whenever she chose, which was perfectly true. Alençon himself gave way. He felt that he was being played with. He had come over here, with a fatuité not uncommon among young Frenchmen, expecting to bend a love-sick Queen to serve his political designs. He found himself, to his intense mortification, bent to serve hers. Ashamed to show his face in France without either his Belgian dominions or his English wife, he was fain to accept Elizabeth’s solemn promise that she would marry him as soon as she could, and allowed himself to be shipped off under the escort of an English fleet to the Netherlands (Feb. 1582).