History of the United Netherlands, 1584-85 | Page 2

States had caused
much anxiety among the foreign envoys in France. Don Bernardino de

Mendoza, who had recently returned from Spain after his compulsory
retreat from his post of English ambassador, was now established in
Paris, as representative of Philip. He succeeded Tasais--a Netherlander
by birth, and one of the ablest diplomatists in the Spanish service--and
his house soon became the focus of intrigue against the government to
which he was accredited--the very head-quarters of the League. His
salary was large, his way of living magnificent, his insolence
intolerable.
"Tassis is gone to the Netherlands," wrote envoy Busbecq to the
Emperor, "and thence is to proceed to Spain. Don Bernardino has
arrived in his place. If it be the duty of a good ambassador to expend
largely, it would be difficult to find a better one than he; for they say
'tis his intention to spend sixteen thousand dollars yearly in his embassy.
I would that all things were in correspondence; and that he were not in
other respects so inferior to Tassis."
It is, however, very certain that Mendoza was not only a brave soldier,
but a man of very considerable capacity in civil affairs, although his
inordinate arrogance interfered most seriously with his skill as a
negotiator. He was, of course, watching with much fierceness the
progress of these underhand proceedings between the French court and
the rebellious subjects of his master, and using threats and
expostulations in great profusion. "Mucio," too, the great stipendiary of
Philip, was becoming daily more dangerous, and the adherents of the
League were multiplying with great celerity.
The pretender of Portugal, Don Antonio, prior of Crato, was also in
Paris; and it was the policy of both the French and the English
governments to protect his person, and to make use of him as a rod
over the head of Philip. Having escaped, after the most severe
sufferings, in the mountains of Spain, where he had been tracked like a
wild beast, with a price of thirty thousand crowns placed upon his head,
he was now most anxious to stir the governments of Europe into
espousing his cause, and into attacking Spain through the recently
acquired kingdom of Portugal. Meantime, he was very desirous of
some active employment, to keep himself from starving, and conceived
the notion, that it would be an excellent thing for the Netherlands and
himself, were he to make good to them the loss of William the Silent.
"Don Antonio," wrote Stafford, "made a motion to me yesterday, to

move her Majesty, that now upon the Prince of Orange's death, as it is a
necessary thing for them to have a governor and head, and him to be at
her Majesty's devotion, if her Majesty would be at the means to work it
for him, she should be assured nobody should be more faithfully tied in
devotion to her than he. Truly you would pity the poor man's case, who
is almost next door to starving in effect."
A starving condition being, however, not the only requisite in a
governor and head to replace the Prince of Orange, nothing came of
this motion. Don Antonio remained in Paris, in a pitiable plight, and
very much environed by dangers; for the Duke of Guise and his brother
had undertaken to deliver him into the hands of Philip the Second, or
those of his ministers, before the feast of St. John of the coming year.
Fifty thousand dollars were to be the reward of this piece of work,
combined with other services; "and the sooner they set about it the
better," said Philip, writing a few months later, "for the longer they
delay it, the less easy will they find it."'
The money was never earned, however, and meantime Don Antonio
made himself as useful as he could, in picking up information for Sir
Edward Stafford and the other opponents of Spanish policy in Paris.
The English envoy was much embarrassed by the position of affairs.
He felt sure that the French monarch would never dare to enter the lists
against the king of Spain, yet he was accurately informed of the secret
negotiations with the Netherlands, while in the dark as to the ultimate
intentions of his own government.
"I was never set to school so much," he wrote to Walsingham (27th
July, 1584), "as I have been to decipher the cause of the deputies of the
Low Countries coming hither, the offers that they made the King here,
and the King's manner of dealing with them!"
He expressed great jealousy at the mystery which enveloped the whole
transaction; and much annoyance with Noel de Caron, who "kept very
secret, and was angry at the motion," when he endeavoured to discover
the business in which they were engaged. Yet he had