CHAP. XXVII.] PEACE OF VERVINS. 9 of his distress Henry applied to Elizabeth to make a diversion by laying siege to Calais, offering now to pledge that town to her if she took it; but this time it was Elizabeth who refused. Henry, however, met his difficulties with vigour and resolution. He sent Biron with 4,000 or 5,000 men to blockade Amiens, and that body was soon converted into a regular army by recruits from all parts of the kingdom. Henry's success against the Duke of Savoy and in Brittany has been already related. After a siege of several months Amiens submitted (September 19th, 1597). Albert made an ineffectual attempt to relieve it: he was but ill supported by Philip II., who towards the end of 1596 had made another bankruptcy, which had shaken credit and commerce throughout Europe. During the siege Prince Maurice had also gained several advantages in the Netherlands. The fall of Amiens and the ill success of his attempts upon France turned the thoughts of the Spanish King to peace. Pope Clement VIII. had long been desirous of putting an end to the war between France and Spain, which, besides preventing Philip from succouring Austria against the Turks, promoted the cause of heresy in the Netherlands and elsewhere. In 1596, Cardinal Alexander de' Medici, the Papal Legate in France, made advances to the French King which Henry did not repulse; and Fra Buonaventura Calatagirona, the General of the Franciscans, was despatched to Madrid to try the ground. The negotiations were long protracted; but the reverses just mentioned caused Philip to reflect that he was now old and infirm, and that his son would be incompetent to pursue the vast designs which his ambition had chalked out. Philip made indirect offers of peace to England, and even to the United Provinces, but Henry IV. alone showed any inclination to treat. He sent an envoy extraordinary to London to represent to Elizabeth the necessity of peace for France, and he tried to persuade the Dutch to enter into the negotiations; while on the other hand, Cecil, the English ambassador, and Justin of Nassau and Barneveldt, the Dutch envoys at Paris, did all they could to divert Henry from his design, but without effect. In February, 1598, the French and Spanish plenipotentiaries met at Vervins, and on the 2nd of May a treaty was signed. By the PEACE OF VERVINS the Spaniards restored to France Calais, Ardres, Dourlens, La Capelle, and Le Câtelet in Picardy, and Blavet (Port-Louis) in Brittany, of all their conquests retaining only the citadel of Cambray. The rest of the 1 Matthieu, ap. Martin, t. x. p. 411. 10 ISABELLA CLARA EUGENIA. [CHAP. XXVII. conditions were referred to the treaty of Câteau-Cambrésis, which Henry had stipulated should form the basis of the negotiations.' The Duke of Savoy was included in the peace. Thus Philip at length acknowledged the heretic Sovereign, against whom his arms had been so long employed and such vast resources squandered. By the treaty concluded with England and the Dutch in 1596 Henry had bound himself to make no separate peace without the consent of those Powers; but he seems to have availed himself of a technical flaw in that treaty, purposely contrived by Du Vair, one of the negotiators on the part of France. One of the articles stipulated that the ratifications should be exchanged within six months, and Henry had delayed his signature till December 31st, more than seven months. Such a subterfuge could hardly have been allowed had the contracting parties found it expedient to contest the treaty of Vervins; but Henry succeeded in convincing Elizabeth and the Dutch that the peace was indispensable to him, and the good understanding with those Powers was not interrupted.2 The great political drama of which Philip II. had so long been the protagonist was now drawing to a close. Philip, who felt his end approaching, determined to abdicate, before he died, the sovereignty of the Netherlands in favour of his daughter, thus destroying with his own hands the unity of those provinces for which he had so long been contending. On the 14th of August, 1598, the States-General of the southern or Catholic provinces took the oath of allegiance to the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, and to her destined husband, the Archduke Albert, who had now resigned the cardinalate. The Infanta was also proclaimed in the County of Burgundy (Franche-Comté). Isabella and her heirs were to recognize the King of Spain as lord paramount; any future Prince of the Netherlands was forbidden to marry without the consent of that monarch; and should he fall from the orthodox faith he was, ipso facto, to lose all his rights. The Netherlands were to have the same friends and the same enemies as Spain; to abstain from all commerce with the East and West Indies; and to admit Spanish garrisons into Antwerp, Ghent, and Cambray. Albert wrote to the several States of the United Provinces requiring them to acknowledge their lawful Prince, and offering to guarantee them in the maintenance of their religion, 1 Dumont, t. v. pt. i. p. 561. 2 Life of Egerton, p. 292; Camden, Elizabeth, vol. ii. p. 169. CHAP. XXVII.] DEATH OF PHILIP II. 11 But to this and the order of things established among them. communication the States did not even vouchsafe an answer. Philip did not live to see his daughter's marriage. He expired at his palace of the Escorial, September 13th, 1598, aged seventyone years, of which he had reigned forty-two. Death was a relief to him. Consumed with ulcers and devoured by vermin, his body had become loathsome to himself and offensive to others; yet he bore his tortures with that sombre resignation which had characterized him through life, and it may be added, with the same gloomy devotion. During his last illness, taking from a coffer a whip stained with blood and shaking it on high, he observed that his own blood and that of his father was upon it, and that he bequeathed it to his children for the same purpose of holy mortification. After his return to Spain in 1559, Philip had chiefly resided at Madrid; making rare excursions to Aranjuez or the wood of Segovia, and visiting more frequently the gloomy pile of the Escorial in a dreary, stony valley, the abode of the monks of St. Jerome. Even here he was mostly shut up in his apartments; and in these dismal solitudes he contracted an air of imperturbable tranquillity which froze all who approached him. indeed, is one which makes the blood creep. diplomatists were disconcerted in his presence. enjoy their confusion; would survey them leisurely from head to foot, and then condescendingly bid them to compose themselves. "No one living," says De Cheverny, who knew him in Spain, "ever spoke to him but on his knees, which he excused on the ground of his short stature and the haughtiness of the Spanish nobility." None dared to speak to him before he was ordered. He gave his commands with only half a phrase; it was necessary to guess the rest. His character, Even practised He seemed to He very rarely showed himself to the people, or even to the grandees, except on fêtes and holidays. His smile, however, is said to have been engaging, perhaps from its rarity; yet it was a saying at Court that there was no great distance between his smile and his dagger. He could long dissemble his resentments till the proper opportunity arrived for gratifying them. Yet with all his gloominess and reserve, Philip was addicted to amorous pleasures, and, besides marrying four wives, often indulged in low and disreputable amours. 2 Mém. de Cheverny, t. ii. p. 48 (ed. 1664). 2 E molto divoto e si confessa e communica più volte all' anno, e sta in ora zione ogni dì, e vuole esser netto di conscienza. Stimandosi che il suo maggior peccato sia quello della carne."-Relat. Venez. ap. Mignet, Ant. Perez. p. 78. 12 ACCESSION OF RODOLPH II. [CHAP. XXVII. The reign of Philip II. was disastrous to his subjects. The lord of both Indies died a bankrupt; Portugal was ruined under his sway; a great part of the Netherlands was lost, while the provinces retained were almost wholly deprived of their commerce and manufactures; Spain itself was impoverished and enslaved. Such were the results of near half a century of busy and ambitious, but misdirected policy. Philip left three children; namely, by his third wife, Elizabeth of France, two daughters, Isabella Clara Eugenia, now sovereign of Flanders, and Catherine, married to the Duke of Savoy; and by his fourth wife, Anne of Austria, a son, who succeeded him with the title of Philip III. He had also had by Anne two sons and a daughter, who died in infancy. With these revolutions of Western Europe the affairs of its eastern regions have afforded but few points of contact and connection, nor do these eastern affairs offer in themselves anything of very striking interest or importance. We shall therefore content ourselves with giving only a brief sketch of them down to the end of the sixteenth century. The death of Maximilian II. in 1576, and the accession of his eldest son Rodolph II. to the Empire, have been already recorded. Born in 1552, Rodolph had been educated by his bigoted mother during the first twelve years of his life in that mechanical devotion which passed for religion among the Roman Catholics of those days. He was then sent to Spain, and under the auspices of his kinsman Philip II. received during the six years that he remained in that country a strictly Spanish education, superintended by the Jesuits. After the death of Don Carlos, Philip had, indeed, for a period designed to make Rodolph his successor on the Spanish thrones, and to give him the hand of his then only daughter in marriage. But these plans came to nothing; Rodolph returned into Germany, and was invested successively, as already recorded, with the Crowns of Hungary and Bohemia, as well as elected King of the Romans. At his father's death, besides the Imperial Crown, he also succeeded to the sole possession of the Austrian lands; for Maximilian established the right of primogeniture in his hereditary dominions. Rodolph, however, intrusted the Austrian administration to his brother, the Archduke Ernest, and took up his own residence for the most part at Prague. His pursuits indisposed him to take any active share in affairs of state. Although of an indolent and phlegmatic temperament, and of a feeble will, which rendered him often the tool of others, Rodolph possessed considerable abilities and acquirements, which, CHAP. XXVII.] CATHOLIC REACTION IN GERMANY. 13 however, were chiefly applied to the idle studies of alchemy and astrology. The latter, which was dignified with the name of astronomy, incidentally proved of some advantage, by leading him to patronize the eminent astronomers Kepler and Tycho Brahe. The bigotry of Rodolph II., and still more of his brother Ernest, formed a striking contrast to the tolerant spirit of their father Maximilian, and may be said to have laid the foundation of the war which in the next century desolated Germany during thirty years. The effects of the new reign were soon visible in Austria, then for the most part Lutheran. Rodolph was zealous in performing all the ceremonies of the Romish Church; especially he was a constant attendant in the religious processions, in which he might be seen in the hardest weather bare-headed and with torch in hand. In 1578 he determined to celebrate Corpus Christi Day at Vienna with more than usual solemnity. As the long-drawn procession was passing over the Peasants' Market it was found necessary to remove a few stalls, when a tumult immediately arose, with cries of "To arms! we are betrayed!" At these menacing symptoms, the clergy and choristers abandoned the Host and fled; they were followed by the guards and halberdiers, and Rodolph found himself in the midst of an infuriated mob, from which he was protected only by the princes and nobles, who drew their swords and closed around him. This incident made a deep impression on the Emperor, whose education had imbued him with a Spanish dignity and stateliness. The suppression of Protestantism at Vienna was immediately resolved Joshua Opitz, a Lutheran of the Flaccian schism, the most popular preacher in that capital, distinguished by his eloquent, but violent, sermons against the Papists, was ordered, together with his assistants in church and school, to leave Vienna that day, and the Austrian dominions within a fortnight. This measure was followed up by restraints on Protestant worship throughout Austria; and in the following year (1579) it was ordained that none but Roman Catholic teachers and books should be allowed in Austrian schools. on. A rapid reaction in favour of the Roman Church also took place in Bavaria after the accession of Duke William II., who succeeded his father Albert III. in 1579. William was a warm supporter of the Jesuits, and erected for them at Munich a college more splendid than his own palace. He employed for the furtherance of the Roman faith all that pomp and that love of art by |