testant princes of
Germany, the French agents were in even more active conference. In the
Netherlands there was a possibility of securing some high position for
Anjou or Alencon, in Germany a chance to divert the imperial crown from
the Hapsburg to the Valois family, it may reasonably be doubted whether
the project was ever distinctly entertained, as the historian De Thou
asserts,[1335] of conferring upon Anjou the command in chief of the
confederates in Flanders, where it was expected that he would have a well
equipped fleet at his disposition; for the correspondence of Gaspard de
Schomberg, the French agent, contains no allusion to the proposal.
Certainly, however, France was, at least, anxious that England should gain
no advantage over her in this part of Europe. In fact, nothing but the
natural fear entertained of the great power and apparently limitless
resources of Spain deterred both Elizabeth and Charles from attempting to
secure the sovereignty of the revolted Netherlands.

[Sidenote: Intrigues with the German princes.]

In Germany the field for intrigue was more open. The imperial dignity had
not yet become purely hereditary. In choosing a new King of the Romans,
the presumptive heir of the German Empire, the three Protestant Electors,
if they could but secure the concurrence of one of the four Roman Catholic
Electors, might have it in their power to correct the mistake committed by
Frederick the Wise of Saxony, a half-century earlier, in declining the
crown in favor of Charles of Spain. Schomberg was therefore instructed to
recommend to the Protestants of Germany and the Low Countries, that one of
their own number should be placed in the line of succession to the Empire,
or, if they could find no German Protestant prince sufficiently powerful
to oppose the Hapsburgs, that the dignity should be offered to the King of
France. This was a somewhat startling suggestion to emanate from a king
who, but a brief twelvemonth before had been butchering his Protestant
subjects by tens of thousands. But the sixteenth century furnishes not a
few paradoxes equally remarkable. Both Protestants and Roman Catholics
often found it convenient to have very short memories. In this case,
however, the proposal to set aside the son of the tolerant Maximilian the
Second in behalf of a son of Catharine de' Medici met with little favor
at the hands of one at least of the Protestant leaders. The Landgrave of
Hesse declared he would have