hese furrows ploughed by the
very genius of discord throughout the unhappy land was the wild and
secret intrigue with which Leopold, Archduke and Bishop, dreaming also of
the crown of Wenzel, was about to tear its surface as deeply as he dared.

Thus constituted were the leading powers of Europe in the earlier part of
1609--the year in which a peaceful period seemed to have begun. To those
who saw the entangled interests of individuals, and the conflict of
theological dogmas and religious and political intrigue which furnished
so much material out of which wide-reaching schemes of personal ambition
could be spun, it must have been obvious that the interval of truce was
necessarily but a brief interlude between two tragedies.

It seemed the very mockery of Fate that, almost at the very instant when
after two years' painful negotiation a truce had been made, the signal
for universal discord should be sounded. One day in the early summer of
1609, Henry IV. came to the Royal Arsenal, the residence of Sully,
accompanied by Zamet and another of his intimate companions. He asked for
the Duke and was told that he was busy in his study. "Of course," said
the King, turning to his followers, "I dare say you expected to be told
that he was out shooting, or with the ladies, or at the barber's. But who
works like Sully? Tell him," he said, "to come to the balcony in his
garden, where he and I are not accustomed to be silent."

As soon as Sully appeared, the King observed: "Well; here the Duke of
Cleve is dead, and has left everybody his heir."

It was true enough, and the inheritance was of vital importance to the
world.

It was an apple of discord thrown directly between the two rival camps
into which Christendom was divided. The Duchies of Cleve, Berg, and
Julich, and the Counties and Lordships of Mark, Ravensberg, and
Ravenstein, formed a triangle, political and geographical, closely wedged
between Catholicism and Protestantism, and between France, the United
Provinces, Belgium, and Germany. Should it fall into Catholic hands, the
Netherlands were lost, trampled upon in every corner, hedged in on all
sides, with the House of Austria governing the Rhine, the Meuse, and the
Scheldt. It was vital to them to exclude the Empire from the great
historic river which seemed destined to form the perpetual frontier of
jealous powers and rival creeds.

Should it fall into heretic hands, the States were vastly strengthened,
the Archduke