upon the
necessity of vigorous field operations throughout the spring and summer
thus frittered away in frivolous negotiations. He was for peace, if a
lasting and honourable peace could be procured; but he insisted that the
only road to such a result was through a "good sharp war." His troops were
mutinous for want of pay, so that he had been obliged to have a few of
them executed, although he protested that he would rather have "gone a
thousand miles a-foot" than have done so; and he was crippled by his
government at exactly the time when his great adversary's condition was
most forlorn. Was it strange that the proud Earl should be fretting his
heart away when such golden chances were eluding his grasp? He would
"creep upon the ground," he said, as far as his hands and knees would
carry him, to have a good peace for her Majesty, but his care was to have
a peace indeed, and not a show of it. It was the cue of Holland and
England to fight before they could expect to deal upon favourable terms
with their enemy. He was quick enough to see that his false colleagues at
home were playing into the enemy's hands. Victory was what was wanted;
victory the Earl pledged himself, if properly seconded, to obtain; and,
braggart though he was, it is by no means impossible that he might have
redeemed his pledge. "If her Majesty will use her advantage," he said,
"she shall bring the King, and especially this Prince of Parma, to seek
peace in other sort than by way of merchants." Of courage and confidence
the governor had no lack. Whether he was capable of outgeneralling
Alexander Farnese or no, will be better seen, perhaps, in subsequent
chapters; but there is no doubt that he was reasonable enough in
thinking, at that juncture, that a hard campaign rather than a
"merchant's brokerage" was required to obtain an honourable peace. Lofty,
indeed, was the scorn of the aristocratic Leicester that "merchants and
pedlars should be paltering in so weighty a cause," and daring to send
him a dish of plums when he was hoping half a dozen regiments from the
Queen; and a sorry business, in truth, the pedlars had made of it.

Never had there been a more delusive diplomacy, and it was natural that
the lieutenant-general abroad and the statesman at home should be sad and
indignant, seeing England drifting to utter shipwreck while pursuing that
phantom of a pacific haven. Had Walsingham and himself tampered with the
enemy, as some counsellors he could nam