the blood of his subjects, than monarch had often done before; Philip,
for whom his apologists have never found any defence, save that he
believed it his duty to God rather to depopulate his territories than to
permit a single heretic within their limits--now entered into secret
negotiations with the princes of the Empire. He pledged himself, if they
would confer the crown upon him, that he would withdraw the Spaniards
from the Netherlands; that he would tolerate in those provinces the
exercise of the Reformed religion; that he would recognize their union
with the rest of the German Empire, and their consequent claim to the
benefits of the Passau treaty; that he would restore the Prince of Orange
"and all his accomplices" to their former possessions, dignities, and
condition; and that he would cause to be observed, throughout every realm
incorporated with the Empire, all the edicts and ordinances which had
been constructed to secure religious freedom in Germany. In brief, Philip
was willing, in case the crown of Charlemagne should be promised him, to
undo the work of his life, to reinstate the arch-rebel whom he had hunted
and proscribed, and to bow before that Reformation whose disciples he had
so long burned, and butchered. So much extent and no more had that
religious, conviction by which he had for years had the effrontery to
excuse the enormities practised in the Netherlands. God would never
forgive him so long as one heretic remained unburned in the provinces;
yet give him the Imperial sceptre, and every heretic, without forswearing
his heresy, should be purged with hyssop and become whiter than snow.

Charles IX., too, although it was not possible for him to recal to life
the countless victims of the Parisian wedding, was yet ready to explain
those murders to the satisfaction of every unprejudiced mind. This had
become strictly necessary. Although the accession of either his Most
Christian or Most Catholic Majesty to the throne of the Caesars was a
most improbable event, yet the humbler elective, throne actually vacant
was indirectly in the gift of the same powers. It was possible that the
crown of Poland might be secured for the Duke of Anjou. That key unlocks
the complicated policy of this and the succeeding year. The Polish
election is the clue to the labyrinthian intrigues and royal
tergiversations during the period of the interregnum. Sigismund Augustus,
last of the Jagellons, had died on the 7th July; 1572. T