with complaints and insinuations as
to the cleanness of the chancellor's hands, was able to cancel the
operation. The day was fast approaching when the universal impoverishment
of the great nobles and landholders--the result of the long, hideous,
senseless massacres called the wars of religion--was to open the way for
the labouring classes to acquire a property in the soil. Thus that famous
fowl in every pot was to make its appearance, which vulgar tradition
ascribes to the bounty of a king who hated everything like popular
rights, and loved nothing but his own glory and his own amusement. It was
not until the days of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren that
Privilege could renew those horrible outrages on the People, which were
to be avenged by a dread series of wars, massacres, and crimes, compared
to which even the religious conflicts of the sixteenth century grow pale.

Meantime De Bethune comforted his master with these financial plans, and
assured him in the spirit of prophecy that the King of Spain, now
tottering as it was thought to his grave, would soon be glad to make a
favourable peace with France even if he felt obliged to restore not only
Amiens but every other city or stronghold that he had ever conquered in
that kingdom. Time would soon show whether this prediction were correct
or delusive; but while the secret negotiations between Henry and the Pope
were vigorously proceeding for that peace with Spain which the world in
general and the commonwealth of the Netherlands in particular thought to
be farthest from the warlike king's wishes, it was necessary to set about
the siege of Amiens.

Henry assembled a force of some twelve or fifteen thousand men for that
purpose, while the cardinal-archduke, upon his part, did his best to put
an army in the field in order to relieve the threatened city so recently
acquired by a coarse but successful artifice.

But Albert was in even a worse plight than that in which his great
antagonist found himself. When he had first arrived in the provinces, his
exchequer was overflowing, and he was even supposed to devote a
considerable portion of the military funds to defray the expenses of his
magnificent housekeeping at Brussels. But those halcyon days were over. A
gigantic fraud, just perpetrated by Philip; had descended like a
thunderbolt upon the provinces and upon all commercial Europe, and had
utterly blasted the unfortunate viceroy. In the latter days of the
prece