e oppressed cut to pieces at their gates. When will God grant me grace
to place me among those who are doing their duty, and afar from those who
do nothing, and who ought to know that the cause is a common one. If I am
ever caught dancing the German cotillon, or playing the German flute, or
eating pike with German sauce, I hope it may be flung in my teeth."

The great league of the Pope and Philip was steadily consolidating
itself, and there were but gloomy prospects for the counter-league in
Germany. There was no hope but in England and France. For the reasons
already indicated, the Prince of Orange, taking counsel with the Estates,
had resolved to try the French policy once more. The balance of power in
Europe, which no man in Christendom so well understood as he, was to be
established by maintaining (he thought) the equilibrium between France
and Spain. In the antagonism of those two great realms lay the only hope
for Dutch or European liberty. Notwithstanding the treason of Anjou,
therefore, it had been decided to renew negociations with that Prince. On
the death of the Duke, the envoys of the States were accordingly
instructed to make the offer to King Henry III. which had been intended
for his brother. That proposition was the sovereignty of all the
Netherlands, save Holland and Zeeland, under a constitution maintaining
the reformed religion and the ancient laws and privileges of the
respective provinces.

But the death of Francis of Anjou had brought about a considerable change
in French policy. It was now more sharply defined than ever, a
right-angled triangle of almost mathematical precision. The three Henrys
and their partizans divided the realm into three hostile
camps--threatening each other in simulated peace since the treaty of
Fleig (1580), which had put an end to the "lover's war" of the preceding
year,--Henry of Valois, Henry of Guise, and Henry of Navarre.

Henry III., last of the Valois line, was now thirty-three years of age.
Less than king, less even than man, he was one of those unfortunate
personages who seem as if born to make the idea of royalty ridiculous,
and to test the capacity of mankind to eat and drink humiliation as if it
were wholesome food. It proved how deeply engraved in men's minds of that
century was the necessity of kingship, when the hardy Netherlanders, who
had abjured one tyrant, and had been fighting a generation long rather
than return to him, were now willing to accept the