History of the United Netherlands, 1603-04 | Page 6

down even to the very grooms of the chambers.
"You must show your teeth to the Spaniard," said Henry to Aerssens,
"if you wish for a quiet life."
Here was unsophisticated diplomacy; for the politic Henry, who could
forgive assassins and conspirators, crowned or otherwise, when it
suited his purpose to be lenient, knew that it was on this occasion very
prudent to use the gift of language, not in order to conceal, but to
express his thoughts.
"I left the king as red as a turkey-cock," said Tassis, as soon as he got
home that morning, "and I was another turkey-cock. We have been
talking a little bit of truth to each other."
In truth, it was impossible, as the world was then constituted, that
France and Spain, in spite of many secret sympathies, should not be
enemies; that France, England, and the Dutch commonwealth, although
cordially disliking each other, should not be allies.
Even before the death of Elizabeth a very remarkable interview had
taken place at Dover, in which the queen had secretly disclosed the
great thoughts with which that most imperial brain was filled just
before its boundless activity was to cease for ever.
She had wished for a personal interview with the French king, whose
wit and valour she had always heartily admired, Henry, on his part,
while unmercifully ridiculing that preterhuman vanity which he fed
with fantastic adulation, never failed to do justice to her genius, and
had been for a moment disposed to cross the channel, or even to hold
council with her on board ship midway between the two countries. It
was however found impracticable to arrange any such meeting, and the
gossips of the day hinted that the great Henry, whose delight was in
battle, and who had never been known to shrink from danger on dry
land, was appalled at the idea of sea-sickness, and even dreaded the
chance of being kidnapped by the English pirates.
The corsairs who drove so profitable a business at that period by
plundering the merchantmen of their enemy, of their Dutch and French
allies, and of their own nation, would assuredly have been pleased with
such a prize.
The queen had confided to De Bethune that she had some thing to say

to the king which she could never reveal to other ears than his, but
when the proposed visit of Henry was abandoned, it was decided that
his confidential minister should slip across the channel before Elizabeth
returned to her palace at Greenwich.
De Bethune accordingly came incognito from Calais to Dover, in
which port he had a long and most confidential interview with the
queen. Then and there the woman, nearly seventy years of age, who
governed despotically the half of a small island, while the other half
was in the possession of a man whose mother she had slain, and of a
people who hated the English more than they hated the Spaniards or the
French--a queen with some three millions of loyal but most turbulent
subjects in one island, and with about half-a-million ferocious rebels in
another requiring usually an army of twenty thousand disciplined
soldiers to keep them in a kind of subjugation, with a revenue
fluctuating between eight hundred thousand pounds sterling, and the
half of that sum, and with a navy of a hundred privateersmen--disclosed
to the French envoy a vast plan for regulating the polity and the
religion of the civilized world, and for remodelling the map of Europe.
There should be three religions, said Elizabeth--not counting the
dispensation from Mecca, about which Turk and Hun might be
permitted to continue their struggle on the crepuscular limits of
civilization. Everywhere else there should be toleration only for the
churches of Peter, of Luther, and of Calvin. The house of Austria was
to be humbled --the one branch driven back to Spain and kept there, the
other branch to be deprived of the imperial crown, which was to be
disposed of as in times past by the votes of the princely electors. There
should be two republics--the Swiss and the Dutch--each of those
commonwealths to be protected by France and England, and each to
receive considerable parings out of the possessions of Spain and the
empire.
Finally, all Christendom was to be divided off into a certain number of
powers, almost exactly equal to each other; the weighing, measuring,
and counting, necessary to obtain this international equilibrium, being
of course the duty of the king and queen when they should sit some day
together at table.
Thus there were five points; sovereigns and politicians having always a
fondness for a neat summary in five or six points. Number one, to

remodel the electoral system of the holy Roman empire. Number two,
to establish the republic of the United Provinces.