ile three hours were required to
make its circuit on horseback. All this martial display was only for
effect. The two kings, at the head of their great armies, stood looking
at each other while the negotiations for, peace were proceeding. An
unimportant skirmish or two at the out-posts, unattended with loss of
life, were the only military results of these great preparations. Early
in the autumn, all the troops were disbanded, while the commissioners of
both crowns met in open congress at the abbey of Cercamp, near Cambray,
by the middle of October. The envoys on the part of Philip were the
Prince of Orange, the Duke of Alva, the Bishop of Arras, Ruy Gomez de
Silva, the president Viglius; on that of the French monarch, the
Constable, the Marshal de Saint Andre, the Cardinal de Lorraine, the
Bishop of Orleans, and Claude l'Aubespine.

There were also envoys sent by the Queen of England, but as the dispute
concerning Calais was found to hamper the negotiations at Cercamp, the
English question was left to be settled by another congress, and was kept
entirely separate from the arrangements concluded between France and
Spain.

The death of Queen Mary, on the 17th November, caused a temporary
suspension of the proceedings. After the widower, however, had made a
fruitless effort to obtain the hand of her successor, and had been
unequivocally repulsed, the commissioners again met in February, 1559, at
Cateau Cambresis. The English difficulty was now arranged by separate
commissioners, and on the third of April a treaty between France and
Spain was concluded.

By this important convention, both kings bound themselves to maintain the
Catholic worship inviolate by all means in their power, and agreed that
an oecumenical council should at once assemble, to compose the religious
differences, and to extinguish the increasing heresy in both kingdoms.
Furthermore, it was arranged that the conquests made by each country
during the preceding eight years should be restored. Thus all the gains
of Francis and Henry were annulled by a single word, and the Duke of
Savoy converted, by a dash of the pen, from a landless soldier of fortune
into a sovereign again. He was to receive back all his estates, and was
moreover to marry Henry's sister Margaret, with a dowry of three hundred
thousand crowns. Philip, on the other hand, now a second time a widower,
was to espouse Henry's daughter Isabella, already betrothed to the Infant
Don Carlos, and t