History of the United Netherlands, 1588-89 | Page 9

defying either or both those boastful generals to
single combat. Next day the English army took the field, but the
Spaniards retired before them; and nothing came of this exchange of
cartels, save a threat on the part of Fuentes to hang the trumpeter who
had brought the messages. From the execution of this menace he
refrained, however, on being assured that the deed would be avenged
by the death of the Spanish prisoner of highest rank then in English
hands, and thus the trumpeter escaped.
Soon afterwards the fleet set sail from the Tagus, landed, and burned
Vigo on their way homeward, and returned to Plymouth about the
middle of July.
Of the thirteen thousand came home six thousand, the rest having
perished of dysentery and other disorders. They had braved and
insulted Spain, humbled her generals, defied her power, burned some
defenceless villages, frightened the peasantry, set fire to some shipping,
destroyed wine, oil, and other merchandize, and had divided among the
survivors of the expedition, after landing in England, five shillings a
head prize-money; but they had not effected a revolution in Portugal.
Don Antonio had been offered nothing by his faithful subjects but a

dish of plums--so that he retired into obscurity from that time
forward--and all this was scarcely a magnificent result for the death of
six or seven thousand good English and Dutch soldiers, and the outlay
of considerable treasure.
As a free-booting foray--and it was nothing else--it could hardly be
thought successful; although it was a splendid triumph compared with
the result of the long and loudly heralded Invincible Armada.
In France, great events during the remainder of 1588 and the following
year, and which are well known even to the most superficial student of
history, had much changed the aspect of European affairs. It was
fortunate for the two commonwealths of Holland and England, engaged
in the great struggle for civil and religious liberty, and national
independence, that the attention of Philip became more and more
absorbed- as time wore on--with the affairs of France. It seemed
necessary for him firmly to establish his dominion in that country
before attempting once more the conquest of England, or the recovery
of the Netherlands. For France had been brought more nearly to
anarchy and utter decomposition than ever. Henry III., after his fatal
forgiveness of the deadly offence of Guise, felt day by day more keenly
that he had transferred his sceptre--such as it was--to that dangerous
intriguer. Bitterly did the King regret having refused the prompt offer
of Alphonse Corse on the day of the barricades; for now, so long as the
new generalissimo should live, the luckless Henry felt himself a
superfluity in his own realm. The halcyon days were for ever past,
when, protected by the swords of Joyeuse and of Epernon, the monarch
of France could pass his life playing at cup and ball, or snipping images
out of pasteboard, or teaching his parrots- to talk, or his lap-dogs to
dance. His royal occupations were gone, and murder now became a
necessary preliminary to any future tranquillity or enjoyment.
Discrowned as he felt himself already, he knew that life or liberty was
only held by him now at the will of Guise. The assassination of the
Duke in December was the necessary result of the barricades in May;
and accordingly that assassination was arranged with an artistic
precision of which the world had hardly suspected the Valois to be
capable, and which Philip himself might have envied.
The story of the murders of Blois--the destruction of Guise and his
brother the Cardinal, and the subsequent imprisonment of the

Archbishop of Lyons, the Cardinal Bourbon, and the Prince de Joinville,
now, through the death of his father, become the young Duke of
Guise--all these events are too familiar in the realms of history, song,
romance, and painting, to require more than this slight allusion here.
Never had an assassination been more technically successful; yet its
results were not commensurate with the monarch's hopes. The deed
which he had thought premature in May was already too late in
December. His mother denounced his cruelty now, as she had, six
months before, execrated his cowardice. And the old Queen, seeing that
her game was played out--that the cards had all gone against her--that
her son was doomed, and her own influence dissolved in air, felt that
there was nothing left for her but to die. In a week she was dead, and
men spoke no more of Catharine de' Medici, and thought no more of
her than if--in the words of a splenetic contemporary--"she had been a
dead she-goat." Paris howled with rage when it learned the murders of
Blois, and the sixteen quarters became more furious than ever against
the Valois. Some wild talk