History of the United Netherlands, 1590b | Page 4

papistical patrons, was
equally persevering in applying for the assistance of heretic musketeers
and riders from his protestant friends in England, Holland, Germany,
and Switzerland.

Queen Elizabeth and the States-General vied with each other in
generosity to the great champion of protestantism, who was combating
the holy league so valiantly, and rarely has a great historical figure
presented itself to the world so bizarre of aspect, and under such
shifting perplexity of light and shade, as did the Bearnese in the early
spring of 1590.
The hope of a considerable portion of the catholic nobility of his realm,
although himself an excommunicated heretic; the mainstay of
Calvinism while secretly bending all his energies to effect his
reconciliation with the pope; the idol of the austere and grimly
puritanical, while himself a model of profligacy; the leader of the
earnest and the true, although false as water himself in every relation in
which human beings can stand to each other; a standardbearer of both
great branches of the Christian Church in an age when religion was the
atmosphere of men's daily lives, yet finding his sincerest admirer, and
one of his most faithful allies, in the Grand Turk,
[A portion of the magnificently protective letter of Sultan Amurath, in
which he complimented Henry on his religious stedfastness, might
almost have made the king's cheek tingle.]
the representative of national liberty and human rights against regal and
sacerdotal absolutism, while himself a remorseless despot by nature
and education, and a believer in no rights of the people save in their
privilege to be ruled by himself; it seems strange at first view that
Henry of Navarre should have been for centuries so heroic and popular
an image. But he was a soldier, a wit, a consummate politician; above
all, he was a man, at a period when to be a king was often to be
something much less or much worse.
To those accustomed to weigh and analyse popular forces it might well
seem that he was now playing an utterly hopeless game. His capital
garrisoned by the Pope and the King of Spain, with its grandees and its
populace scoffing at his pretence of authority and loathing his name;
with an exchequer consisting of what he could beg or borrow from
Queen Elizabeth--most parsimonious of sovereigns reigning over the
half of a small island--and from the States-General governing a
half-born, half- drowned little republic, engaged in a quarter of a
century's warfare with the greatest monarch in the world; with a
wardrobe consisting of a dozen shirts and five pocket-handkerchiefs,

most of them ragged, and with a commissariat made up of what could
be brought in the saddle-bags of his Huguenot cavaliers who came to
the charge with him to-day, and to-morrow were dispersed again to
their mountain fastnesses; it did not seem likely on any reasonable
theory of dynamics that the power of the Bearnese was capable of
outweighing Pope and Spain, and the meaner but massive populace of
France, and the Sorbonne, and the great chiefs of the confederacy,
wealthy, long descended, allied to all the sovereigns of Christendom,
potent in territorial possessions and skilful in wielding political
influences.
"The Bearnese is poor but a gentleman of good family," said the
cheerful Henry, and it remained to-be seen whether nationality, unity,
legitimate authority, history, and law would be able to neutralise the
powerful combination of opposing elements.
The king had been besieging Dreux and had made good progress in
reducing the outposts of the city. As it was known that he was
expecting considerable reinforcements of English ships, Netherlanders,
and Germans, the chiefs of the league issued orders from Paris for an
attack before he should thus be strengthened.
For Parma, unwillingly obeying the stringent commands of his master,
had sent from Flanders eighteen hundred picked cavalry under Count
Philip Egmont to join the army of Mayenne. This force comprised five
hundred Belgian heavy dragoons under the chief nobles of the land,
together with a selection, in even proportions, of Walloon, German,
Spanish, and Italian troopers.
Mayenne accordingly crossed the Seine at Mantes with an army of ten
thousand foot, and, including Egmont's contingent, about four thousand
horse. A force under Marshal d'Aumont, which lay in Ivry at the
passage of the Eure, fell back on his approach and joined the remainder
of the king's army. The siege of Dreux was abandoned; and Henry
withdrew to the neighbourhood of Nonancourt. It was obvious that the
duke meant to offer battle, and it was rare that the king under any
circumstances could be induced to decline a combat.
On the night of the 12th-13th March, Henry occupied Saint Andre, a
village situated on an elevated and extensive plain four leagues from
Nonancourt, in the direction of Ivry, fringed on three sides by