drid, had promoted the marriage of Louis XIII. with the Infanta Anne
of Austria, eldest daughter of Philip III., King of Spain, and that of
Philip, Infante of Spain, who was afterwards Philip IV., with Princess
Elizabeth of France, sister of Louis XIII. Henry IV., in his plan for
the pacification of Europe, had himself conceived this idea, and
testified a desire for this double marriage, but without taking any
trouble to bring it about. It was after his death that, on the 30th of
April, 1612, Villeroi, minister of foreign affairs in France, and Don
Inigo de Caderiias, ambassador of the King of Spain, concluded this
double union by a formal deed. They signed on the same day, at
Fontainebleau, between the King and Queen-regent of France on one side
and the King, of Spain on the other, a treaty of defensive alliance to
the effect "that those sovereigns should give one another mutual succor
against such as should attempt anything against their kingdoms or revolt
against their authority; that they should, in such case, send one to the
other, at their own expense for six months, a body of six thousand foot
and twelve hundred horse; that they should not assist any criminal
charged with high treason, and should even give them over into the hands
of the ambassadors of the king who claimed them." It is quite certain
that Henry IV. would never have let his hands be thus tied by a treaty so
contrary to his general policy of alliance with Protestant powers, such
as England and the United Provinces; he had no notion of servile
subjection to his own policy, but he would have taken good care not to
abandon it; he was of those, who, under delicate circumstances, remain
faithful to their ideas and promises without systematic obstinacy and
with a due regard for the varying interests and requirements of their
country and their age. The two Spanish marriages were regarded in France
as an abandonment of the national policy; France was, in a great
majority, Catholic, but its Catholicism differed essentially from the
Spanish Catholicism: it affirmed the entire separation of the temporal
power and the spiritual power, and the inviolability of the former by the
latter; it refused assent, moreover, to certain articles of the council
of Trent. It was Gallican Catholicism, determined to keep a pretty large
measure of national independence, political and moral, as opposed to
Spanish Catholicism, essentially devoted to the cause of the papacy and