r been. This is the return they render for the good received from me,
which is such as every one knows."

Gaspar de Schomberg, the adroit and honorable agent of Charles in
Germany, had at a very early day warned his royal master of the ill
effect of the massacre upon all the schemes which he had been pursuing,
and especially upon those which referred to the crowns of the Empire and
of Poland. The first project was destined to be soon abandoned. It was
reserved neither for Charles nor Philip to divert the succession in
Germany from the numerous offspring of Maximilian; yet it is instructive
to observe the unprincipled avidity with which the prize was sought by
both. Each was willing to effect its purchase by abjuring what were
supposed his most cherished principles. Philip of Spain, whose mission
was to extirpate heresy throughout his realms, and who, in pursuance of
that mission, had already perpetrated more crimes, and waded more deeply
in the blood of his subjects, than monarch had often done before; Philip,
for whom his apologists have never found any defence, save that he
believed it his duty to God rather to depopulate his territories than to
permit a single heretic within their limits--now entered into secret
negotiations with the princes of the Empire. He pledged himself, if they
would confer the crown upon him, that he would withdraw the Spaniards
from the Netherlands; that he would tolerate in those provinces the
exercise of the Reformed religion; that he would recognize their union
with the rest of the German Empire, and their consequent claim to the
benefits of the Passau treaty; that he would restore the Prince of Orange
"and all his accomplices" to their former possessions, dignities, and
condition; and that he would cause to be observed, throughout every realm
incorporated with the Empire, all the edicts and ordinances which had
been constructed to secure religious freedom in Germany. In brief, Philip
was willing, in case the crown of Charlemagne should be promised him, to
undo the work of his life, to reinstate the arch-rebel whom he had hunted
and proscribed, and to bow before that Reformation whose disciples he had
so long burned, and butchered. So much extent and no more had that
religious, conviction by which he had for years had the effrontery to
excuse the enormities practised in the Netherlands. God would never
forgive him so long as one heretic remained unburned in the provinces;
yet give him the I