From Dinant the French advanced to Namur. When Namur should have fallen, Brussels was the next aim; and there was nothing, as it seemed, which could stop them. The imperial army under the Prince of Savoy could but hover, far outnumbered, on their skirts. The reinforcements from Spain had not arrived, and a battle lost was the loss of Belgium.
In the critical temper of England, a decisive superiority obtained by France would be doubly dangerous; and Charles, seeing Philibert perplexed into uncertain movements which threatened misfortune, disregarding the remonstrances of his physicians, his ministers, and his generals, started from his sick bed, flew to the head of his troops, and brought them to Namur, in the path of the advancing French. Men said that he was rushing upon destruction. The headstrong humour which had already worked him so heavy injury was again dragging him into ruin.[345] But fortune had been disarmed by the greatness with which Charles had borne up against calamity, or else his supposed rashness was the highest military wisdom. Before Henry came up he had seized a position at an angle of the Meuse, where he could defend Namur, and could not be himself attacked, except at a disadvantage. The French approached only to retire, and, feeling themselves unable to force the imperial lines, fell back towards the Boullonnois. Charles followed cautiously. An attack on Renty brought on an action in which the French claimed the victory; but the emperor held his ground, and the town could not be taken; and Henry's army, from which such splendid results had been promised, fell back on the frontier and dispersed. The voices which had exclaimed against the emperor's rashness were now as loud in his praise, and the disasters which he was accused of provoking, it was now found that he only had averted.[346] Neither the French nor the Imperialists, in their long desperate struggle, can claim either approval or sympathy; the sufferings which they inflicted upon mankind were not the less real, the selfishness of their rivalry none the less reprehensible, because the disunion of the Catholic powers permitted the Reformation to establish itself. Yet, in this perplexed world the deeds of men may be without excuse, while, nevertheless, in the men themselves there may be something to love, and something more to admire.[(Back to Content)]
CHAPTER III.
RECONCILIATION WITH ROME.
Mary had restored Catholic orthodoxy, and her passion for Philip had been gratified. To complete her work and her happiness, it remained to bring back her subjects to the bosom of the Catholic Church. Reginald Pole had by this time awoke from some part of his delusions. He had persuaded himself that he had but to appear with a pardon in his hand to be welcomed to his country with acclamation: he had ascertained that the English people were very indifferent to the pardon, and that his own past treasons had created especial objections to himself. Even the queen herself had grown impatient with him. He had fretted her with his importunities; his presence in Flanders had chafed the parliament, and made her marriage more difficult; while he was supposed to share with the English nobles their jealousy of a foreign sovereign. So general was this last impression about him, that his nephew, Lord Stafford's son, who was one of the refugees, went to seek him in the expectation of countenance and sympathy: and, farther, he had been in correspondence with Gardiner, and was believed to be at the bottom of the chancellor's religious indiscretions.[347] Thus his anxiety to be in England found nowhere any answering desire; and Renard, who dreaded his want of wisdom, never missed an opportunity of throwing difficulties in the way. In the spring of 1554 Pole had gone to Paris, where, in an atmosphere of so violent opposition to the marriage, he had not thought it necessary to speak in favour of it. The words which Dr. Wotton heard that he had used were reported to the emperor; and, at last, Renard went so far as to suggest that the scheme of sending him to England had been set on foot at Rome by the French party in the Consistory, with a view of provoking insurrection and thwarting the Imperial policy.[348]
The emperor, taught by his old experiences of Pole, acquiesced in the views of his ambassador. If England was to be brought back to its allegiance, the negotiation would require a delicacy of handling for which the present legate was wholly unfit; and Charles wrote at last to the pope to suggest that the commission should be transferred to a more competent person. Impatient language had been heard of late from the legate's lips, contrasting the vexations of the world with the charms of devotional retirement. To soften the harshness of the blow, the emperor said that he understood Pole was himself weary of his office, and wished to escape into privacy.
The respect of Julius for the legate's understanding was not much larger than the emperor's; but he would not pronounce the recall without giving him an opportunity of explaining himself. Cardinal Morone wrote to him to inquire whether it was true that he had thought of retirement; he informed him of the emperor's complaints; and, to place his resignation in the easiest light (while pointing, perhaps, to the propriety of his offering it), he hinted at Pole's personal unpopularity, and at the danger to which he would be exposed by going to England.
But the legate could not relinquish the passionate desire of his life; while, as to the marriage, he was, after all, unjustly suspected. He requested Morone, in reply, to assure the pope that, much as he loved retirement, he loved duty more. He appealed to the devotion of his life to the church as an evidence of his zeal and sincerity; and, although he knew, he said, that God could direct events at his will and dispense with the service of men, yet, so long as he had strength to be of use, he would spend it in his Master's cause. In going to England he was venturing upon a stormy sea; he knew it well;[349] but, whatever befell him, his life was in God's hands.
A fortnight after (May 25), he wrote again, replying more elaborately to the emperor's charges. It was true, he admitted, that in his letters to the queen he had dwelt more upon her religious duties than upon her marriage: it was true that he had been backward in his demonstrations of pleasure, because he was a person of few words. But, so far from disapproving of that marriage, he looked upon it as the distinct work of God; and when his nephew had come with complaints to him, he had forbidden him his presence. He had spoken of the rule of a stranger in England as likely to be a lesson to the people; but he had meant only that, as their disasters had befallen them through their own king Henry, their deliverance would be wrought for them by one who was not their own. When the late parliament had broken up without consenting to the restoration of union, he had consoled the queen with assuring her that he saw in it the hand of Providence; the breach of a marriage between an English king and a Spanish princess had caused the wound which a renewed marriage of a Spanish king and an English queen was to heal.[350]
The defence was elaborate, and, on the whole, may have been tolerably true. The pope would not take the trouble to read it, or even to hear it read;[351] but the substance, as related to him by Morone, convinced him that the emperor's accusations were exaggerated: to recall a legate at the instance of a secular sovereign was an undesirable precedent;[352] and the commission was allowed to stand. Julius wrote to Charles, assuring him that he was mistaken in the legate's feelings, leaving the emperor at the same time, however, full power to keep him in Flanders or to send him to England at his own discretion.
Pole was to continue the instrument of the reconciliation; the conditions under which the reconciliation could take place were less easy to settle. The popes, whose powers are unlimited where the exercise of them is convenient for the interests of the Holy See, have uniformly fallen back upon their inability where they have been called on to make sacrifices. The canons of the church forbade, under any pretext, the alienation of ecclesiastical property; and until Julius could relinquish ex animo all intention of disturbing the lay holders of the English abbey lands, there was not a chance that the question of his supremacy would be so much as entertained by either Lords or Commons.