Rome. He flattered Henry with the conquest of Naples; he gained by his address, the Guises, the queen, and even the famous Diana of Poictiers, duchess of Valentinois, the king's mistress; and they easily swayed the king himself, who already leaned to that side, towards which they wished to incline him. All Montmorency's prudent remonstrances were disregarded. The nuncio, by powers from Rome, absolved Henry from his oath of truce; and that A. D. 1556. rash prince signed a new treaty with the pope, which rekindled with fresh violence the flames of war, both in Italy and the Low Countries. No sooner was Paul made acquainted with the success of this negociation, than he proceeded to the most indecent extremities against Philip II. He ordered the Spanish ambassador to be imprisoned; he excommunicated the Colonnas, because of their attachment to the imperial house; and he considered Philip as guilty of high treason, and to have forfeited his right to the kingdom of Naples, which he was supposed to hold of the Holy See, for afterward affording them a retreat in his dominions12. Alarmed at a quarrel with the pope, whom he had been taught to regard with the most superstitious veneration, as the vicegerent of Christ, and the common father of Christendom, Philip tried every gentle method before he made use of force. He even consulted some Spanish divines on the lawfulness of taking arms against a person so sacred. They decided in his favour; and Paul continuing inexorable, the duke of Alva, to whom the conduct of the negociation as well as of the war had been committed, entered the Ecclesiastical State at the head of ten thousand veterans, and carried terror to the gates of Rome. The haughty pontiff, though still obstinate and undaunted himself, was forced to give way to the fears of the cardinals, and a truce was concluded for forty days. Meantime the 12. Pallav. lib. xiii. duke duke of Guise arriving with an army of twenty thousand French troops, Paul became more arrogant than A. D. 1557. ever, and banished from his mind all thoughts but those of war and revenge. The duke of Guise, however, who is supposed to have given his voice for this war, chiefly from a desire of acquiring a field where he might display his military talents, was able to perform nothing in Italy worthy of his former fame. He was obliged to abandon the siege of Civetella; he could not bring the duke of Alva to a general engagement; his army perished by diseases, and the pope neglected to furnish the necessary reinforcements. He begged to be recalled: and France stood in need of his abilities. Philip II. though willing to have avoided a rupture, was no sooner informed that Henry had violated the truce of Vaucelles, than he determined to act with such vigour as should convince all Europe, that his father had not erred in resigning to him the reins of government. He immediately assembled in the Low Countries a body of fifty thousand men; he obtained a supply of ten thousand from England, which he had engaged, as we have seen, in this quarrel: and not being ambitious of military fame, he gave the command of his army to Emanuel Philibert, duke of Savoy, one of the greatest generals of that warlike age. The duke of Savoy kept the enemy for a time in utter ignorance of his destination. At length he seemed to threaten Champagne, toward which the French drew all their troops; a motion which he no sooner perceived, than, turning suddenly to the right, he advanced by rapid marches into Picardy, and laid siege to St. Quintin. It was deemed in that age, a place of considerable strength, but the fortifications had been much neglected, and the garrison did not amount to a fifth part of the number requisite for its defence; it must therefore have surrendered in a few days, if the admiral de Coligny had not taken the gallant resolution of throwing himself into it with such a body of men as could be be suddenly collected for that purpose. He effected his design in spite of the enemy, breaking through their main body with seven hundred horse, and two hundred foot. The town, however, was closely invested; and the constable Montmorency, anxious to extricate his nephew out of that perilous situation, in which his zeal for the public good had engaged him, as well as to save a place of great importance, rashly advanced to its relief with forces one half inferior to those of the enemy. was cut in pieces, and he himself made prisoner13. AUG. 10. His army The cautious temper of Philip, on this occasion, saved France from devastation, if not from ruin. The duke of Savoy proposed to overlook all inferior objects, and march directly to Paris; of which, in its present consternation, he could not have failed to make himself master. But the Spanish monarch, afraid of the consequences of such a bold enterprize, desired him to continue the siege of St. Quintin, in order to secure a safe retreat, in case of any disastrous event. The town, long and gallantly defended by Coligny, was at last taken by storm; but not before France was in a state of defence. Philip was now sensible he had lost an opportunity, that could never be recalled, of distressing his enemy, and contented himself with reducing Horn and Catelet: two petty towns, which, together with St. Quintin, were the sole fruits of one of the most decisive victories gained in the sixteenth century. The Catholic king, however, continued in high exultation on account of his success; and as all his passions were tinged with superstition, he vowed to build a church, a monastery, and a palace, in honour of St. Lawrence, on the day sacred to whose memory the battle of St. Quintin had been fought. He accordingly laid the foundation of an edi. fice, in which all these buildings were included, and which he continued to forward at vast expence, for twenty-two VOL. II. 13. Thuan. lib. xix. 3 E years, years. The same principle that dictated the vow, directed the construction of the fabric. It was so formed as to resemble a gridiron!-on which culinary instrument, according to the legendary tale, St. Lawrence suffered martyrdom'4. Such, my dear Philip, is the origin of the famous Escurial, near Madrid, the royal residence of the kings of Spain. The earliest account of that fatal blow which France had received at St. Quintin, was carried to Rome by the courier whom Henry had sent to recal the duke of Guise. Paul remonstrated warmly against the departure of the French army; but Guise's orders were peremptory. The arrogant pontiff therefore found it necessary to accommodate his conduct to the exigency of his affairs, and to employ the mediation of the Venetians, and of Cosmo of Medicis, in order to obtain peace from Spain. The first overtures to this purpose were easily listened to by the Catholic king, who still doubted the justice of his cause, and considered it as his greatest misfortune to be obliged to contend with the pope. Paul agreed to renounce his league with France; and Philip stipulated on his part, that the duke of Alva should repair in person to Rome, and after asking pardon of the Holy Father in his own name, and in that of his master, for having invaded the patrimony of the church, should receive obsolution from that crime !-Thus the pope, through the superstitious timidity of Philip, not only finished an unpropitious war without any detriment to the apostolic see, but saw his conqueror humbled at his feet: and so excessive was the veneration of the Spaniards in that age for the papal character, that the duke of Alva, the proudest man perhaps of his time, and accustomed from his infancy to converse with princes, acknowledged that when he approached Paul, he was so much overawed, that his voice failed, and his presence of mind forsook him15. 14. Colmenar. Annal. d'Espagn. tom. ii. 15. Pallav. lib. xiii. But But although this war, which, at its commencement, threatened mighty revolutions, was terminated without occasioning any alteration in those states which were its immediate object, it produced effects of considerable consequence in other parts of Italy. In order to detach Octavio Farnese, duke of Parma, from the French interest, Philip restored to him the city of Placentia and its territory, which had been seized, as we have seen, by Charles V. and he granted to Cosmo of Medicis the investiture of Siena, as an equivalent for the sums due to him. By these treaties the balance of power among the Italian states was poised more equally, and rendered less variable than it had been since it received the first violent shock from the invasion of Charles VIII. and Italy henceforth ceased to be the theatre on which, the sovereigns of Spain, France, and Germany, contended for fame and dominion. Their hostilities, excited by new objects, stained other regions of Europe with blood, and made other states feel, in their turn, the calamities of war. The duke of Guise, who left Rome the same day that his adversary the duke of Alva made his humiliating submission to the pope, was received in France as the guardian angel of the kingdom. He was appointed commander in chief, with a jurisdiction almost unlimited; and, eager to justify the extraordinary confidence which the king had reposed in him, as well as to perform something suitable to the high expectations of his countrymen, he unA. D. 1558. dertook the siege of Calais. The extraordinary success of that enterprize, and its different effects upon the English and French nations, we have already had occasion to observe. Guise next invested Thionville, in the duchy of Luxembourg, one of the strongest towns on the frontier of the Netherlands, and forced it to capitulate after a siege of three weeks. But the advantages in this quarter were more than balanced by an event which happened in another part of 16. Thuan. lib. xviii. the |