History of the United Netherlands, 1584-1609 Part 56

"Signor Ruggieri," said he, "you have propounded unto me speeches of two sorts: the one proceeds from Doctor Ruggieri, the other from the lord amba.s.sador of the most serene Queen of England. Touching the first, I do give you my hearty thanks for your G.o.dly speeches, a.s.suring you that though, by reason I have always followed the wars, I cannot be ignorant of the calamities by you alleged, yet you have so truly represented the same before mine eyes as to effectuate in me at this instant, not only the confirmation of mine own disposition to have peace, but also an a.s.surance that this treaty shall take good and speedy end, seeing that it hath pleased G.o.d to raise up such a good instrument as you are."

"Many are the causes," continued the Duke, "which, besides my disposition, move me to peace. My father and mother are dead; my son is a young prince; my house has truly need of my presence. I am not ignorant how ticklish a thing is the fortune of war, which--how victorious soever I have been--may in one moment not only deface the same, but also deprive me of my life. The King, my master, is now, stricken in years, his children are young, his dominions in trouble. His desire is to live, and to leave his posterity in quietness. The glory of G.o.d, the honor of both their Majesties, and the good of these countries, with the stay of the effusion of Christian blood, and divers other like reasons, force him to peace."

Thus spoke Alexander, like an honest Christian gentleman, avowing the most equitable and pacific dispositions on the part of his master and himself. Yet at that moment he knew that the Armada was about to sail, that his own nights and days were pa.s.sed in active preparations for war, and that no earthly power could move Philip by one hair's-breadth from his purpose to conquer England that summer.

It would be superfluous to follow the Duke or the Doctor through their long dialogue on the place of conference, and the commissions. Alexander considered it "infamy" on his name if he should send envoys to a place of his master's held by the enemy. He was also of opinion that it was unheard of to exhibit commissions previous to a preliminary colloquy.

Both propositions were strenuously contested by Rogers. In regard to the second point in particular, he showed triumphantly, by citations from the "Polonians, Prussians, and Lithuanians," that commissions ought to be previously exhibited. But it was not probable that even the Doctor's learning and logic would persuade Alexander to produce his commission; because, unfortunately, he had no commission to produce. A comfortable argument on the subject, however, would, none the less, consume time.

Three hours of this work brought them, exhausted and hungry; to the hour of noon and of dinner Alexander, with profuse and smiling thanks for the envoy's plain dealing and eloquence, a.s.sured him that there would have been peace long ago "had Doctor Rogers always been the instrument," and regretted that he was himself not learned enough to deal creditably with him. He would, however, send Richardot to bear him company at table, and chop logic with him afterwards.

Next day, at the same, hour, the Duke and Doctor had another encounter.

So soon as the envoy made his appearance, he found himself "embraced most cheerfully and familiarly by his Alteza," who, then entering at once into business, asked as to the Doctor's second point.

The Doctor answered with great alacrity.

"Certain expressions have been reported to her Majesty," said he, "as coming both from your Highness and from Richardot, hinting at a possible attempt by the King of Spain's forces against the Queen. Her Majesty, gathering that you are going about belike to terrify her, commands me to inform you very clearly and very expressly that she does not deal so weakly in her government, nor so improvidently, but that she is provided for anything that might be attempted against her by the King, and as able to offend him as he her Majesty."

Alexander--with a sad countenance, as much offended, his eyes declaring miscontentment--asked who had made such a report.

"Upon the honour of a gentleman," said he, "whoever has said this has much abused me, and evil acquitted himself. They who know me best are aware that it is not my manner to let any word pa.s.s my lips that might offend any prince." Then, speaking most solemnly, he added, "I declare really and truly (which two words he said in Spanish), that I know not of any intention of the King of Spain against her Majesty or her realm."

At that moment the earth did not open--year of portents though it was--and the Doctor, "singularly rejoicing" at this authentic information from the highest source, proceeded cheerfully with the conversation.

"I hold myself," he exclaimed, "the man most satisfied in the world, because I may now write to her Majesty that I have heard your Highness upon your honour use these words."

"Upon my honour, it is true," repeated the Duke; "for so honourably do I think of her Majesty, as that, after the King, my master, I would honour and serve her before any prince in Christendom." He added many earnest a.s.severations of similar import.

"I do not deny, however," continued Alexander, "that I have heard of certain ships having been armed by the King against that Draak"--he p.r.o.nounced the "a" in Drake's name very broadly, or "Doric"--"who has committed so many outrages; but I repeat that I have never heard of any design against her Majesty or against England."

The Duke then manifested much anxiety to know by whom he had been so misrepresented. "There has been no one with me but Dr. Dale," said, he, "and I marvel that he should thus wantonly have injured me."

"Dr. Dale," replied Ropers, "is a man of honour, of good years, learned, and well experienced; but perhaps he unfortunately misapprehended some of your Alteza's words, and thought himself bound by his allegiance strictly to report them to her Majesty."

"I grieve that I should be misrepresented and injured," answered Farnese, "in a manner so important to my honour. Nevertheless, knowing the virtues with which her Majesty is endued, I a.s.sure myself that the protestations I am now making will entirely satisfy her."

He then expressed the fervent hope that the holy work of negotiation now commencing would result in a renewal of the ancient friendship between the Houses of Burgundy and of England, a.s.serting that "there had never been so favourable a time as the present."

Under former governments of the Netherlands there had been many mistakes and misunderstandings.

"The Duke of Alva," said he, "has learned by this time, before the judgment-seat of G.o.d, how he discharged his functions, succeeding as he did my mother, the d.u.c.h.ess of Parma who left the Provinces in so flourishing a condition. Of this, however, I will say no more, because of a feud between the Houses of Farnese and of Alva. As for Requesens, he was a good fellow, but didn't understand his business. Don John of Austria again, whose soul I doubt not is in heaven, was young and poor, and disappointed in all his designs; but G.o.d has never offered so great a hope of a.s.sured peace as might now be accomplished by her Majesty."

Finding the Duke in so fervent and favourable a state of mind, the envoy renewed his demand that at least the first meeting of the commissioners might be held at Ostend.

"Her Majesty finds herself so touched in honour upon this point, that if it be not conceded--as I doubt not it will be, seeing the singular forwardness of your Highness"--said the artful Doctor with a smile, "we are no less than commanded to return to her Majesty's presence."

"I sent Richardot to you yesterday," said Alexander; "did he not content you?"

"Your Highness, no," replied Ropers. "Moreover her Majesty sent me to your Alteza, and not to Richardot. And the matter is of such importance that I pray you to add to all your graces and favours heaped upon me, this one of sending your commissioners to Ostend."

His Highness could hold out no longer; but suddenly catching the Doctor in his arms, and hugging him "in most honourable and amiable manner," he cried--

"Be contented, be cheerful; my lord amba.s.sador. You shall be satisfied upon this point also."

"And never did envoy depart;" cried the lord amba.s.sador, when he could get his breath, "more bound to you; and more resolute to speak honour of your Highness than I do."

"To-morrow we will ride together towards Bruges;" said the Duke, in conclusion. "Till then farewell."

Upon, this he again heartily embraced the envoy, and the friends parted for the day.

Next morning; 28th March, the Duke, who was on his way to Bruges and Sluys to look after his gun-boats, and, other naval, and military preparations, set forth on horseback, accompanied by the Marquis del Vasto, and, for part of the way, by Rogers.

They conversed on the general topics of the approaching negotiations; the Duke, expressing the opinion that the treaty of peace would be made short work with; for it only needed to renew the old ones between the Houses of England and Burgundy. As for the Hollanders and Zeelanders, and their accomplices, he thought there would be no cause of stay on their account; and in regard to the cautionary towns he felt sure that her Majesty had never had any intention of appropriating them to herself, and would willingly surrender them to the King.

Rogers thought it a good opportunity to put in a word for the Dutchmen; who certainly, would not have thanked him for his a.s.sistance at that moment.

"Not, to give offence to your Highness," he said, "if the Hollanders and Zeelanders, with their confederates, like to come into this treaty, surely your Highness would not object?"

Alexander, who had been riding along quietly during this conversation; with his right, hand, on, his hip, now threw out his arm energetically:

"Let them come into it; let them treat, let them conclude," he exclaimed, "in the name of Almighty G.o.d! I have always been well disposed to peace, and am now more so than ever. I could even, with the loss of my life, be content to have peace made at this time."

Nothing more, worthy of commemoration, occurred during this concluding interview; and the envoy took his leave at Bruges, and returned to Ostend.

I have furnished the reader with a minute account of these conversations, drawn entirely, from the original records; not so much because the interviews were in themselves of vital importance; but because they afford a living and breathing example--better than a thousand homilies--of the easy victory which diplomatic or royal mendacity may always obtain over innocence and credulity.

Certainly never was envoy more thoroughly beguiled than the excellent John upon this occasion. Wiser than a serpent, as he imagined himself to be, more harmless than a dove; as Alexander found him, he could not, sufficiently congratulate himself upon the triumphs of his eloquence and his adroitness; and despatched most glowing accounts of his proceedings to the Queen.

His ardour was somewhat damped, however, at receiving a message from her Majesty in reply, which was anything but benignant. His eloquence was not commended; and even his preamble, with its touching allusion to the live mothers tendering their offspring--the pa.s.sage: which had brought the tears into the large eyes of Alexander--was coldly and cruelly censured.

"Her Majesty can in no sort like such speeches"--so ran the return-despatch--"in which she is made to beg for peace. The King of Spain standeth in as great need of peace as her self; and she doth greatly mislike the preamble of Dr. Rogers in his address to the Duke at Ghent, finding it, in very truth quite fond and vain. I am commanded by a particular letter to let him understand how much her Majesty is offended with him."

Alexander, on his part, informed his royal master of these interviews, in which there had been so much effusion of sentiment, in very brief fashion.

"Dr. Rogers, one of the Queen's commissioners, has been here," he said, "urging me with all his might to let all your Majesty's deputies go, if only for one hour, to Ostend. I refused, saying, I would rather they should go to England than into a city of your Majesty held by English troops. I told him it ought to be satisfactory that I had offered the Queen, as a lady, her choice of any place in the Provinces, or on neutral ground. Rogers expressed regret for all the bloodshed and other consequences if the negotiations should fall through for so trifling a cause; the more so as in return for this little compliment to the Queen she would not only restore to your Majesty everything that she holds in the Netherlands, but would a.s.sist you to recover the part which remains obstinate. To quiet him and to consume time, I have promised that President Richardot shall go and try to satisfy them. Thus two or three weeks more will be wasted. But at last the time will come for exhibiting the powers. They are very anxious to see mine; and when at last they find I have none, I fear that they will break off the negotiations."

Could the Queen have been informed of this voluntary offer on the part of her envoy to give up the cautionary towns, and to a.s.sist in reducing the rebellion, she might have used stronger language of rebuke. It is quite possible, however, that Farnese--not so attentively following the Doctor's eloquence as he had appeared to do-had somewhat inaccurately reported the conversations, which, after all, he knew to be of no consequence whatever, except as time-consumers. For Elizabeth, desirous of peace as she was, and trusting to Farnese's sincerity as she was disposed to do, was more sensitive than ever as to her dignity.

"We charge you all," she wrote with her own hand to the commissioners, "that no word he overslipt by them, that may, touch our honour and greatness, that be not answered with good sharp words. I am a king that will be ever known not to fear any but G.o.d."

It would have been better, however, had the Queen more thoroughly understood that the day for scolding had quite gone by, and that something sharper than the sharpest words would soon be wanted to protect England and herself from impending doom. For there was something almost gigantic in the frivolities with which weeks and months of such precious time were now squandered. Plenary powers--"commission bastantissima"--from his sovereign had been announced by Alexander as in his possession; although the reader has seen that he had no such powers at all. The mission of Rogers had quieted the envoys at Ostend for a time, and they waited quietly for the visit of Richardot to Ostend, into which the promised meeting of all the Spanish commissioners in that city had dwindled. Meantime there was an exchange of the most friendly amenities between the English and their mortal enemies. Hardly a day pa.s.sed that La Motte, or Renty, or Aremberg, did not send Lord Derby, or Cobham, or Robert Cecil, a hare, or a pheasant, or a cast of hawks, and they in return sent barrel upon barrel of Ostend oysters, five or six hundred at a time. The Englishmen, too; had it in their power to gratify Alexander himself with English greyhounds, for which he had a special liking. "You would wonder," wrote Cecil to his father, "how fond he is of English dogs." There was also much good preaching among other occupations, at Ostend. "My Lord of Derby's two chaplains," said Cecil, "have seasoned this town better with sermons than it had been before for a year's apace." But all this did not expedite the negotiations, nor did the Duke manifest so much anxiety for colloquies as for greyhounds. So, in an unlucky hour for himself, another "fond and vain" old gentleman--James Croft, the comptroller who had already figured, not much to his credit, in the secret negotiations between the Brussels and English courts--betook himself, unauthorized and alone; to the Duke at Bruges. Here he had an interview very similar in character to that in which John Rogers had been indulged, declared to Farnese that the Queen was most anxious for peace, and invited him to send a secret envoy to England, who would instantly have ocular demonstration of the fact. Croft returned as triumphantly as the excellent Doctor had done; averring that there was no doubt as to the immediate conclusion of a treaty. His grounds of belief were very similar to those upon which Rogers had founded his faith. "Tis a weak old man of seventy," said Parma, "with very little sagacity. I am inclined to think that his colleagues are taking him in, that they may the better deceive us. I will see that they do nothing of the kind." But the movement was purely one of the comptroller's own inspiration; for Sir James had a singular facility for getting himself into trouble, and for making confusion. Already, when he had been scarcely a day in Ostend, he had insulted the governor of the place, Sir John Conway, had given him the lie in the hearing of many of his own soldiers, had gone about telling all the world that he had express authority from her Majesty to send him home in disgrace, and that the Queen had called him a fool, and quite unfit for his post. And as if this had not been mischief-making enough, in addition to the absurd De Loo and Bodman negotiations of the previous year, in which he had been the princ.i.p.al actor, he had crowned his absurdities by this secret and officious visit to Ghent. The Queen, naturally very indignant at this conduct, reprehended him severely, and ordered him back to England. The comptroller was wretched. He expressed his readiness to obey her commands, but nevertheless implored his dread sovereign to take merciful consideration of the manifold misfortunes, ruin, and utter undoing, which thereby should fall upon him and his unfortunate family. All this he protested he would "nothing esteem if it tended to her Majesty's pleasure or service," but seeing it should effectuate nothing but to bring the aged carcase of her poor va.s.sal to present decay, he implored compa.s.sion upon his h.o.a.ry hairs, and promised to repair the error of his former proceedings. He avowed that he would not have ventured to disobey for a moment her orders to return, but "that his aged and feeble limbs did not retain sufficient force, without present death, to comply with her commandment." And with that he took to his bed, and remained there until the Queen was graciously pleased to grant him her pardon.

At last, early in May--instead of the visit of Richardot--there was a preliminary meeting of all the commissioners in tents on the sands; within a cannon-shot of Ostend, and between that place and Newport. It was a showy and ceremonious interview, in which no business was transacted. The commissioners of Philip were attended by a body of one hundred and fifty light horse, and by three hundred private gentlemen in magnificent costume. La Motte also came from Newport with one thousand Walloon cavalry while the English Commissioners, on their part were escorted from Ostend by an imposing array of English and Dutch troops.'

As the territory was Spanish; the dignity of the King was supposed to be preserved, and Alexander, who had promised Dr. Rogers that the first interview should take place within Ostend itself, thought it necessary to apologize to his sovereign for so nearly keeping his word as to send the envoys within cannon-shot of the town. "The English commissioners," said he, "begged with so much submission for this concession, that I thought it as well to grant it."

The Spanish envoys were despatched by the Duke of Parma, well provided with full powers for himself, which were not desired by the English government, but unfurnished with a commission from Philip, which had been p.r.o.nounced indispensable. There was, therefore, much prancing of cavalry, flourishing of trumpets, and eating of oysters; at the first conference, but not one stroke of business. As the English envoys had now been three whole months in Ostend, and as this was the first occasion on which they had been brought face to face with the Spanish commissioners, it must be confessed that the tactics of Farnese had been masterly. Had the haste in the dock-yards of Lisbon and Cadiz been at all equal to the magnificent procrastination in the council-chambers of Bruges and Ghent, Medina Sidonia might already have been in the Thames.

But although little ostensible business was performed, there was one man who had always an eye to his work. The same servant in plain livery, who had accompanied Secretary Garnier, on his first visit to the English commissioners at Ostend, had now come thither again, accompanied by a fellow-lackey. While the complimentary dinner, offered in the name of the absent Farnese to the Queen's representatives, was going forward, the two menials strayed off together to the downs, for the purpose of rabbit-shooting. The one of them was the same engineer who had already, on the former occasion, taken a complete survey of the fortifications of Ostend; the other was no less a personage than the Duke of Parma himself.