ehend it and maintain it. Charles I., tossed about between the
haughty caprices of his favorite Buckingham and the religious or
political passions of his people, did not long remain attached to the
great idea which had predominated in the alliance of the two crowns.
Proud and timid, imperious and awkward, all at the same time, he did not
succeed, in the first instance, in gaining the affections of his young
wife, and early infractions of the treaty of marriage; the dismissal of
all the queen's French servants, hostilities between the merchant navies
of the two nations, had for some time been paving the way for open war,
when the Duke of Buckingham, in the hope of winning back to him the House
of Commons (June, 1626), madly attempted the expedition against the
Island of Re. What was the success of it, as well as of the two attempts
that followed it, has already been shown.

Three years later, on the 24th of April, 1629, the King of England
concluded peace with France without making any stipulation in favor of
the Reformers whom hope of aid from him had drawn into rebellion. "I
declare," says the Duke of Rohan, "that I would have suffered any sort of
extremity rather than be false to the many sacred oaths we had given him
not to listen to any treaty without him, who had many times assured us
that he would never make peace without including us in it." The English
accepted the peace "as the king had desired, not wanting the King of
Great Britain to meddle with his rebellious Huguenot subjects any more
than he would want to meddle with his Catholic subjects if they were to
rebel against him." [_Memoires de Richelieu,_ t. iv. p. 421.] The
subjects of Charles I. were soon to rebel against him: and France kept
her word and did not interfere.

The Hollanders, with more prudence and ability than distinguished
Buckingham and Charles I., had done better service to the Protestant
cause without ever becoming entangled in the quarrels that divided
France; natural enemies as they were of Spain and the house of Austria,
they readily seconded Richelieu in the struggle he maintained against
them; besides, the United Provinces were as yet poor, and the cardinal
always managed to find money for his allies; nearly all the treaties he
concluded with Holland were treaties of alliance and subsidy; those of
1641 and 1642 secured to them twelve hundred thousand livres a year out
of the coffers of France. Once only the Hollanders were fait