Henry the Fourth.
From this moment the thought of attack on England, even his own warfare in the Netherlands, was subordinated in the mind of the Spanish king to the need of crushing Henry the Fourth. It was not merely that Henry's Protestantism threatened to spread heresy over the West. Catholic or Protestant, the union of France under an active and enterprising ruler would be equally fatal to Philip's designs. Once gathered round its king, France was a nearer obstacle to the reconquest of the Netherlands than ever England could be. On the other hand, the religious strife, to which Henry's accession gave a fresh life and vigour, opened wide prospects to Philip's ambition. Far from proving a check upon Spain, it seemed as if France might be turned into a Spanish dependency. While the Leaguers proclaimed the Cardinal of Bourbon king, under the name of Charles the Tenth, they recognized Philip as Protector of France. Their hope indeed lay in his aid, and their army was virtually his own. On the other hand Henry the Fourth was environed with difficulties. It was only by declaring his willingness to be "further instructed" in matters of faith, in other words by holding out hopes of his conversion, that he succeeded in retaining the moderate Catholics under his standard. His desperate bravery alone won a victory at Ivry over the forces of the League, which enabled him to again form the siege of Paris in 1590. All recognized Paris as the turning-point in the struggle, and the League called loudly for Philip's aid. To give it was to break the work which Parma was doing in the Netherlands, and to allow the United Provinces a breathing space in their sorest need. But even the Netherlands were of less moment than the loss of France; and Philip's orders forced Parma to march to the relief of Paris. The work was done with a skill which proved the Duke to be a master in the art of war. The siege of Paris was raised; the efforts of Henry to bring the Spaniards to an engagement were foiled; and it was only when the king's army broke up from sheer weariness that Parma withdrew unharmed to the north.
England and Henry.
England was watching the struggle of Henry the Fourth with a keen interest. The failure of the expedition against Lisbon had put an end for the time to any direct attacks upon Spain, and the exhaustion of the treasury forced Elizabeth to content herself with issuing commissions to volunteers. But the war was a national one, and the nation waged it for itself. Merchants, gentlemen, nobles fitted out privateers. The sea-dogs in ever-growing numbers scoured the Spanish Main. Their quest had its ill chances as it had its good, and sometimes the prizes made were far from paying for the cost of the venture. "Paul might plant, and Apollos might water," John Hawkins explained after an unsuccessful voyage, "but it is God only that giveth the increase!" But more often the profit was enormous. Spanish galleons, Spanish merchant-ships, were brought month after month to English harbours. The daring of the English seamen faced any odds. Ten English trading vessels beat off twelve Spanish war-galleys in the Straits of Gibraltar. Sir Richard Grenville in a single bark, the Revenge, found himself girt in by fifty men-of-war, each twice as large as his own. He held out from afternoon to the following daybreak, beating off attempt after attempt to board him; and it was not till his powder was spent, more than half his crew killed, and the rest wounded, that the ship struck its flag. Grenville had refused to surrender, and was carried mortally wounded to die in a Spanish ship. "Here die I, Richard Grenville," were his last words, "with a joyful and a quiet mind, for that I have ended my life as a good soldier ought to do, who has fought for his country and his queen, for honour and religion." But the drift of the French war soon forced Elizabeth back again into the strife. In each of the French provinces the civil war went on: and in Britanny, where the contest raged fiercest, Philip sent the Leaguers a supply of Spanish troops. Normandy was already in Catholic hands, and the aim of the Spanish king was to secure the western coast for future operations against England. Elizabeth pressed Henry the Fourth to foil these projects, and in the winter of 1591 she sent money and men to aid him in the siege of Rouen.
Henry's conversion.
To save Rouen Philip was again forced to interrupt his work of conquest in the Netherlands. Parma marched anew into the heart of France, and with the same consummate generalship as of old relieved the town without giving Henry a chance of battle. But the day was fast going against the Leaguers. The death of their puppet-king, Charles the Tenth, left them without a sovereign to oppose to Henry of Navarre; and their scheme of conferring the crown on Isabella, Philip's daughter by Elizabeth of France, with a husband whom Philip should choose, awoke jealousies in the house of Guise itself, while it gave strength to the national party who shrank from laying France at the feet of Spain. Even the Parliament of Paris, till now the centre of Catholic fanaticism, protested against setting the crown of France on the brow of a stranger. The politicians drew closer to Henry of Navarre, and the moderate Catholics pressed for his reconciliation to the Church as a means of restoring unity to the realm. The step had become so inevitable that even the Protestants were satisfied with Henry's promise of toleration; and in the summer of 1593 he declared himself a Catholic. With his conversion the civil war came practically to an end. It was in vain that Philip strove to maintain the zeal of the Leaguers, or that the Guises stubbornly kept the field. All France drew steadily to the king. Paris opened her gates in the spring of 1594, and the chief of the Leaguers, the Duke of Mayenne, submitted at the close of the year. Even Rome abandoned the contest, and at the end of 1595 Henry received solemn absolution from Clement the Eighth. From that moment France rose again into her old power, and the old national policy of opposition to the House of Austria threw her weight into the wavering balance of Philip's fortunes. The death of Parma had already lightened the peril of the United Provinces, but though their struggle in the Low Countries was to last for years, from the moment of Henry the Fourth's conversion their independence was secure. Nor was the restoration of the French monarchy to its old greatness of less moment to England. Philip was yet to send an armada against her coasts; he was again to stir up a fierce revolt in northern Ireland. But all danger from Spain was over with the revival of France. Even were England to shrink from a strife in which she had held Philip so gloriously at bay, French policy would never suffer the island to fall unaided under the power of Spain. The fear of foreign conquest passed away. The long struggle for sheer existence was over. What remained was the Protestantism, the national union, the lofty patriotism, the pride in England and the might of Englishmen, which had drawn life more vivid and intense than they had ever known before from the long battle with the Papacy and with Spain.
