“But to give a Spanish province to the duke of Orleans,” argued the queen mother, blinded by maternal affection, “would be the same then as giving it to his own brother.”
Alva taxed the queen with maintaining a heretic, L’Hôpital, in the chancellorship, and of opposing the Tridentine decrees. Catherine emphatically denied the first charge, although her daughter again supported Alva’s indictment by declaring that even during the life of her father, L’Hôpital had passed for a Huguenot; as to the second, she said the crown of France objected to the political application of certain findings of the Council of Trent, which she hoped to have adjusted. Alva saw the vulnerable point in her reply and inquired if she aimed to call another assembly like the Colloquy of Poissy.
“I recognize the danger of such assemblies,” said Catherine, “but the king, my son, is strong enough to compel discussion only of those subjects which he may designate.”
“Was it so at Poissy?” sneered Alva.
The queen’s reply was a tirade against the cardinal of Lorraine, whom she blamed for the failure of the colloquy.
In the end there was a promise given by the queen mother at Bayonne. But it was verbal, not written, and so governed by circumstances that the edge of Spain’s intentions was dulled. Compromising the agreement certainly was; convicting it is not, for, aside from the fact that its fulfilment was dependent upon an impossible condition of things, Catherine never permitted herself to express in writing what the terms of this promise were. Our knowledge of it is dependent upon Alva’s letters of June 15 and July 4; upon Philip II’s construction of it in a letter addressed by him to the cardinal Pacheco[976] on August 24, 1565, and the dispatch of the Venetian ambassador Suriano, who was with the French queen, to the senate on July 22, supplemented by what information St. Sulpice picked up during the last days of his mission in Spain.
It is evident from the careful reading of these documents that the real triumph at Bayonne was scored by the papacy; that Spain won a sterile victory, and France met an indecisive defeat. Spain and France, being unable to carry their own purpose through as each desired, compromised on a course which was an intermediate plane of agreement to them, but which, according to the letter, was a supreme triumph for Rome, and would have been a complete victory for Rome if the terms had ever been executed. The man of the hour was the cardinal Santa Croce, nuncio in France. His services are thus reported by the Venetian ambassador in France on July 2:
On the eve of departure, the queen, perceiving the discontent of the duke of Alva, summoned the nuncio, who was not far away, to Bayonne, in order to have him at hand. It is he who has found a solution; he has satisfied both parties. I shall be able to inform you shortly as to the nature of his solution.[977]
Three weeks later (July 22) the promised word was sent to Venice in the form of a cipher dispatch,[978] the information in which had been communicated to him in strictest secrecy.[979] This intensely important document reads as follows: