the operation of his whole
political system. The Emperor and conqueror, who had been warring all his
lifetime, had attempted, as the last act of his reign, to improvise a
peace. But it was not so easy to arrange a pacification of Europe as
dramatically as he desired, in order that he might gather his robes about
him, and allow the curtain to fall upon his eventful history in a grand
hush of decorum and quiet. During the autumn and winter of 1555,
hostilities had been virtually suspended, and languid negotiations
ensued. For several months armies confronted each other without engaging,
and diplomatists fenced among themselves without any palpable result. At
last the peace commissioners, who had been assembled at Vaucelles since
the beginning of the year 1556, signed a treaty of truce rather than of
peace, upon the 5th of February. It was to be an armistice of five years,
both by land and sea, for France, Spain, Flanders, and Italy, throughout
all the dominions of the French and Spanish monarchs. The Pope was
expressly included in the truce, which was signed on the part of France
by Admiral Coligny and Sebastian l'Aubespine; on that of Spain, by Count
de Lalain, Philibert de Bruxelles, Simon Renard, and Jean Baptiste
Sciceio, a jurisconsult of Cremona. During the precious month of
December, however, the Pope had concluded with the French monarch a
treaty, by which this solemn armistice was rendered an egregious farce.
While Henry's plenipotentiaries had been plighting their faith to those
of Philip, it had been arranged that France should sustain, by subsidies
and armies, the scheme upon which Paul was bent, to drive the Spaniards
entirely out of the Italian peninsula. The king was to aid the pontiff,
and, in return, was to carve thrones for his own younger children out of
the confiscated realms of Philip. When was France ever slow to sweep upon
Italy with such a hope? How could the ever-glowing rivalry of Valois and
Habsburg fail to burst into a general conflagration, while the venerable
vicegerent of Christ stood thus beside them with his fan in his hand?

For a brief breathing space, however, the news of the pacification
occasioned much joy in the provinces. They rejoiced even in a temporary
cessation of that long series of campaigns from which they could
certainly derive no advantage, and in which their part was to furnish
money, soldiers, and battlefields, without prospect of benefit from any
victory, however brillia