uis XIV, and Mazarin were
Cromwellians too for the nonce, faithful to the memory of the great
man whose alliance they had courted, and ready to lend the armed aid
of France, if necessary, to the support of his dynasty. No one had
been watching the course of events in England more coolly than M. de
Bordeaux, the French Ambassador in London; and through. May and part
of June 1659 his letters to Mazarin show amply the nature of his
communications with Richard and Thurloe. "I have frequently renewed
my offers of the King's assistance," he wrote to the Cardinal on the
16th of May, nine days after the first meeting of the Restored Rump
and eleven days before Richard's abdication; and again, more
distinctly, on the 19th, "Having yesterday contrived to get an
interview with him [Thurloe] in the country, I assured him that the
King would spare neither money nor troops in order to re-establish
the Protector, if there were any likelihood of success," The
Ambassador, it is true, had conceived the bold private idea that
Louis XIV, and the Cardinal might do better by using such a fine
opportunity for an invasion and conquest of England by France on her
own account; and he had hinted as much to the Cardinal. The idea was
not encouraged; and so the position of M. de Bordeaux in London
remained that of a secret partisan of the Cromwellians, offering them
all help from France if they should engage in a civil war with the
Rumpers.[1]

[Footnote 1: Guizot, I. 141-146, with Letters of M. de Bordeaux in
the Appendix to the volume (where the dates are by the French
reckoning)--especially Letters 46, 47, 48, and 49 (pp, 381-402);
Baillie, III. 430; Phillips, 647-648.]

Before the middle of June it was evident that such a Civil War was
not to be feared. Richard himself had been quite inert in Whitehall,
and his abdication was a signal to all his partisans to give up the
cause. Even after that there were efforts or protests in his behalf
here and there, but they died away.--Monk, about whose conduct in the
crisis there had been great anxiety among the Rumpers, and who had
sulkily wanted to know at first what this "Good Old Cause" was that
they were so enthusiastic about in London, had already sounded the
Army in Scotland sufficiently to find that they would not oppose
their English brethren. A letter of adhesion to the Restored
Commonwealth by Monk and the Scottish Army had, accordingly, been
received May 18, and read in the House with great