Elizabeth temporises with AlenÇon pending the King’s reply—AlenÇon’s joy at the false news of his brother’s yielding—Elizabeth throws upon Henry III. the blame for the failure of the match—Fall of Oudenarde—AlenÇon’s ultimatum to Elizabeth—Salcedo’s plot—Henry III. more pliable—AlenÇon again hopeful—New exigencies of Elizabeth—She again declares she will marry AlenÇon—Is generally disbelieved—La Mothe’s interview with her—AlenÇon’s treacherous attempt to seize the garrisons—Elizabeth’s jealousy of the French in the Netherlands—AlenÇon’s flight to Vilvorde and Dunkirk—His flight to Calais—-His interview with his mother—Reconciliation with Henry III.—Preparations for a new expedition—Elizabeth offers her co-operation too late—Death of AlenÇon—Disappearance of the last serious suitor for Elizabeth’s hand and end of the negotiations for her marriage.

The Queen’s bold game of brag succeeded. Castelnau wrote to his King urging him to give way and not to drive Elizabeth into the arms of Spain on the one hand or of the Huguenots on the other.

On the same day, May 4, 1582, the Queen wrote, from Greenwich to AlenÇon a reply full of vague professions of affection, and with not a word about his coming to marry her. God knows it is not her fault! She is ready, as she always was, to carry out the contract “according to my last promise on the conditions, which you alone know—very difficult ones I confess.”160 It is entirely the King’s fault. She is thoroughly ashamed of writing to him so often about it. He (Henry) only repeats that he can go no further than the conditions sent by Pinart. “Jugez sur ce, mon tres cher, que puis je plus faire? Considerez mon tres cher ... si tout l’univers ne s’ebahist comment la reine d’Angleterre ayt tant oubliÉ l’Angleterre pour amener nouveaux voisins sur le continent prez de son pais ... et puis voyez si de ma part je n’ay rien hazardÉ pour vous; m’estant l’amour de ma nation plus cher que la vie,”161 and so on, but not a word to cause him to come to England. Almost at the same time as he received this letter false news came to AlenÇon from his sister Margaret that the King had consented to the whole of Elizabeth’s demands. He was almost beside himself for joy; a letter, which is now at Hatfield,162 was instantly sent off to the Queen, containing the most exuberant expressions of pleasure and relief. There never was happiness equal to his, which he can conceal no longer. He has no further care now than to order the clothes and everything necessary for the nuptials. But she must more than ever fulfil her promise to him, for now that he is to be her husband she would not like to see him perish for want of assistance so solemnly promised by her. “I have been sorry hitherto,” he says, “to importune you so much, being uncertain of the King’s intentions; but now that I am sure of sleeping in the great bed and being your husband, I claim, as the fulfilment of the treaty between us, the payment of the whole sum of money you were good enough to promise me at your own instance.” He begs her to send her proxy over for the marriage contract, and he will authorise Castelnau to enter into the engagement in his name; and concludes, “Adieu ma femme par immagination que jespere sera bientost par effet. Celuy qui brulle de dessir FranÇoys.” But a few days afterwards he was informed that his sister’s news was untrue, and wrote in heartbroken strain to the Queen: “Quand je pense les affayres du mariage en bon aytre je suys gai, et quand je connois le contrere la mort nest plus hideuze que moy.” From the happy assurance that he would soon be her husband he has now become “froit et transi de tristesse” because of the doubt she casts on the King’s surety. “Mon Dieu, Madame,” he writes, “en quoi esse que je vous ay estÉ si desagreeable pour ne pouvoir tirer nulle resolution de vostre MajestÉ?”163 Before this letter was received by the Queen she had anticipated its contents, and wrote a very long communication to her suitor, casting great doubt upon Queen Margaret’s news. The delay, she said, was entirely owing to the King of France. She, Heaven knows! had done enough, even to the verge of impropriety. “Et pense que le Roy pour telle me reputera, que je suis la rÉcherchante, qui sera tousjour une belle reputation pour une femme.” But she still kept tight hold of the money and did not send him the aid he so confidently requested. She was, she said, a poor hand at financial affairs and had but little love for playing the economist. She was fain, therefore, to leave money matters in the hands of those who understood them better than she did, and the answer would be given to Marchaumont. This meant that she would send him no money until the position of his brother was made clear, but she reminds him that she has risked much already for him, and that England has nothing to gain by the marriage and very much to lose if the French should become masters of Flanders.164 This letter was cool enough, and contrasts greatly with a short note written by AlenÇon the next day—May 25th—brought by one of the English courtiers who was returning. He winds up this note by bidding her farewell: “avecque autant dafection que je me souhet vostre mari couchÉ entre deus dras dedans vos beaus bras.”

The fear that the French might after all dominate the Netherlands or make terms with Spain, was not only tightening her purse-strings but had led her to consider an entirely new combination of the European powers, by which the North was brought in to redress the balance of the South. Eric of Sweden had a fair daughter of fourteen, whom it was proposed to marry to AlenÇon: a confederacy between England, Scotland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Russia, and Poland being formed; the reversion of the elective crown of Poland being secured to Eric, and a northern fleet being placed at AlenÇon’s disposal to oppose any naval attack upon him by Spain. AlenÇon and his mother, it was understood, were not indisposed to listen to this arrangement, but the countries were distant, their interests not identical, and whilst the negotiations were slowly dragging, events outstripped them and rendered them nugatory.

Oudenarde fell early in July, and AlenÇon immediately afterwards sent an ultimatum to Elizabeth. He was at the end of his resources. If she did not at once send him the money she had promised he must abandon his task, and Spain would crush Flanders for good and for all under the heel of Alexander Farnese. The time had gone by for high-strained compliments and billing and cooing, and AlenÇon, in his letter to the Queen, says his mind is too full of war to talk about marriage, and he must leave Antwerp and await her answer elsewhere. Leicester and his friends feared he might go to Flushing, and thence run over to England, and were consequently anxious to send him £20,000 at once. Cecil was strongly opposed to this, as at the end of July there was in the Exchequer less than £80,000, which, with the £400,000 in gold in the Tower, formed the whole of the national treasury. Whilst this was being discussed there came news of the discovery of the Salcedo plot, said to have been prompted by Spain, the Pope, and the Guises, to assassinate AlenÇon and the Prince of Orange. The avowals made by Salcedo on the rack satisfied even Henry III. that a vast Catholic conspiracy was in progress, from which he was excluded, and this once more drew him nearer to Elizabeth, and he instructed his ambassador to assure her that he would accede to the conditions she demanded as soon as she had decided upon the marriage. Her answer was that since the King consented to defray the cost of the war she must have it under his own hand, with an undertaking that England under no circumstances should be called upon to contribute anything in case of a war with Spain. The King’s readiness to accede to every demand of Elizabeth was of itself a source of suspicion to her, and was by many attributed to a deep Papist plot to throw the whole responsibility for breaking off the marriage upon her, and so turn AlenÇon against her. To a certain extent it had this effect, for although AlenÇon’s letters to the Queen herself were a mixture of erotics and reproaches, his communications to Sussex were in a different tone. The Queen, he said, was the cause of his ruin, and if she will not at once come to his aid or marry him he must join her enemies, and she will have no cause to complain. Lierre had just been captured by the Spaniards, and all AlenÇon’s prayers for money were ineffectual. A new turn of the screw was applied to the King of France by Elizabeth nearly every day. The last demand was that he was to defend her not against Spain alone, but against all her enemies whatsoever, and that an undertaking to this effect, stamped with the great seal of France, was to be sent her—anything indeed, to drag France into open enmity with Spain before she showed her hand. Events seemed to be working for her. Henry III. was already jealous of the Guises, his mother’s fleet to aid the Portuguese pretender at Terceira against Philip had been destroyed, and Catharine was vowing vengeance, so that Henry was pliable.

AlenÇon, writing to the Queen early in August, “thanks God that his brother has at last sent the despatch she asked for, and assures himself now that, having, as all well-bred ladies must, caused herself to be sought, she will really fulfil her promise and receive him as her husband; me fezant jouir du fruit et contantement du mariage a quoy je me prepare, fezant peu decquesersise (d’exercise) me nourisant si bien que je masure que en reserveres plus de contantement que d’autre qui soit sur la terre.” But withal he entreats her again and again for money. He is not, he says, a mercenary soldier, but his honour is at stake, and he cannot obtain a penny elsewhere. The answer to this was a remittance of £20,000 and a fresh body of English auxiliaries, but no fresh word about marriage, the main line of policy now inaugurated being that which was subsequently followed, namely, to nullify the presence of Frenchmen in Flanders by the sending of larger numbers of English volunteers. Catharine de Medici also began to move in order to have her revenge on Spain for her Terceira defeat, and both men and money began to flow over the French frontier to AlenÇon. At the same time the formal document, signed and sealed by the King, was read by Castelnau to Elizabeth. In it Henry bound himself to relieve the Queen of all expense of the war if she married AlenÇon, but would not bind himself to break openly with Spain. Castelnau had instructions in case the Queen were not satisfied with this to drop the fruitless marriage negotiations, and frankly propose an offensive and defensive alliance between the two countries. The Guises were openly discontented, and Paris swarmed with their men-at-arms. It was clear to Henry and his mother that they must cling to England and the Protestants, or the house of Valois was doomed, and France must become subservient to Spain and the bigots. So, marriage or no marriage, Elizabeth must be conciliated.

The task was not an easy one, for she knew the position as well as anybody, and was hard to please. She was dissatisfied with the formal undertaking, which was read to her, and demanded that the King should add a personally binding confirmation in his own handwriting; but this he refused to do. When the Queen again talked about marrying AlenÇon immediately, if certain new conditions were granted, Castelnau besought her to speak frankly and state her final terms, so that, in any case, a firm national alliance might be arranged. She affected to fly into a passion at this, and said she was not such a simpleton as to trust Frenchmen if she did not marry AlenÇon. She then broke into strong language, as was her wont, and called curses down upon her own head if she did not instantly marry the Prince after the King granted her demands. Calling Cecil as witness to her words, she renewed her vows, swearing like a trooper, until, as Castelnau says, it made his blood run cold, and Cecil himself whispered to Lady Stafford as he left the chamber that if the Queen did not fulfil her word this time God would surely send her to hell for such blasphemy.165

The French, however, strongly backed up by Leicester, were now all for a national alliance, having lost belief in a marriage; the Queen for her part stoutly maintaining that one thing was impossible without the other; and when Cobham, early in December, approached the King with regard to the new conditions demanded, he was made clearly to understand that there was no belief whatever in the Queen’s sincerity, and that her object was what we now know it to have been, namely, to pledge France to a war with Spain, whilst her own hands were free. The “monk” Marchaumont, too, was equally undeceived and sick of the whole affair; blamed by AlenÇon for his ill-success, and ceaselessly begging for his recall. Indeed, by this time there was not a soul who believed any more in the marriage negotiations, and Elizabeth began to grow angry that the trusty weapon which had served her well for so many years had lost its point. So when La Mothe FÉnÉlon, on his way to Scotland, spoke to her about the relations between France and England, she gave him a piece of her mind. She told him that, notwithstanding all his professions, the King of France was the worst enemy she had. The Dauphin and Marshal de Biron, she said, although on the frontier of Flanders with troops, had tarried long there, and had refused to go to the aid of the States; besides which France, Spain, and the Pope, were all intriguing against her in Scotland and elsewhere; and the King was making friends with the Guises again. Having thus tried to alarm La Mothe, a desperate attempt was made once more to drag up the marriage. Walsingham assured him that the Queen really was in earnest, and a suggestion was made that if the King of France would break with Spain and help AlenÇon, the Queen would declare the latter heir to the English crown. As all this was obviously only to delay La Mothe, and after some days the Queen was peremptorily told that if she did not allow him to proceed at once to Scotland, he would return to France, and another ambassador would be sent by sea. She was very angry, and came to high words with La Mothe, threatening Mary Stuart, in whose behalf she said she knew all these plots were being carried on. But as La Mothe was leaving she gave him a last message for the King about the marriage, saying that if she were exonerated from expense in the Flemish war, and a regular donation was given to AlenÇon, she would marry him. La Mothe replied that they had no longer the slightest belief in her sincerity, either about the marriage or the Netherlands, and the King was not much concerned on those points; but if she sent a single man into Scotland, or interfered there in any way, he would send four times as many, and take the matter up strongly. He softened this somewhat by saying that, although the King would not openly make war upon Spain, the Queen-mother would do so; but all this fencing ended in talk alone, and La Mothe proceeded on his way to Scotland, leaving matters in their former condition.

In the meanwhile AlenÇon’s position was getting more and more unpleasant. He had succeeded in alienating his Protestant subjects, the backbone of resistance to Spain; Orange was disgusted with and tired of him, and was praying Elizabeth and her councillors to have him back in England, or anything to rid him, Orange, of a profitless burden. The Dutchmen hated the French more than ever, and AlenÇon himself was chafing in impotent fury at his lack of means, his failure, and the undignified figure he cut before the world. By the aid of his mother, a number of Frenchmen flocked over the frontier during the winter of 1582–3, and at length Marshal de Biron himself joined the Prince, and the plot that had long been hatching was attempted. This was nothing less than by a coup-de-main to seize and garrison all the strong places in Flanders with Frenchmen. If this succeeded, AlenÇon might demand his own terms, either from Philip or Elizabeth, and the combined attempt was made on the 16th of January, 1583. AlenÇon himself took charge of the affair at Antwerp, wherein one thousand additional Frenchmen had secretly entered. This being noticed by the burghers aroused suspicion, and certain despatches from AlenÇon to Marchaumont in England having been intercepted and read by Orange, the latter gave timely warning to the Antwerpers. A large body of Frenchmen arrived suddenly before the town, and an excuse was made that AlenÇon was to review them outside the Burgerhout gate. As he sallied from the gate of the town with his Swiss and French Guard of four hundred men, he was joined by three hundred French horsemen, and turning towards the gate he cried to his countrymen, “Courage, comrades, Antwerp is yours!” This was the signal, and the Flemings at the gate were massacred. The slight resistance overcome, the main force of the French, with banners flying, entered the town with cries of “The Duke and the mass.” The burghers, unaware at first what the tumult meant, were taken by surprise, and sought refuge in their houses. But soon pillage and murder began to remind them of the “Spanish fury” of six years before. AlenÇon and Biron, however, were very different men from Sancho de Avila and Julian Romero; and the stout Antwerpers turned upon their false friends, blocked the streets, mustered their companies, and fought like the heroes they were in defence of their homes. Fire-eating Fervaques was taken prisoner, as were du Fargis, le Rieux, and Bodin. Biron’s son, the nephew of Cardinal Rambouillet, the Duke of St. Aignan, and his son, and two hundred and fifty other gentlemen were killed; the French loss altogether reaching two thousand men, one-half of their entire force, whilst the burghers lost only about one hundred. AlenÇon, from afar, outside the town, watched with sinking heart the failure of his treachery, and when he saw that all was lost, fled with difficulty, by the swollen rivers hotly pursued until he arrived at Vilvorde, where the French had succeeded in gaining the upper hand, as they also had at Ostend, Dixmunde, Alost, and Dunkirk, whilst they had failed at Antwerp, Ghent and Bruges.

The news came to England confusedly and in fragments at first, and the Queen was inclined to bring her suitor over to England for safety; but when full accounts came from the Prince of Orange, and the treason was thoroughly understood, all England growled at the falseness of Frenchmen in general and AlenÇon in particular. Orange sought to fasten some of the responsibility upon Elizabeth, because, in answer to all remonstrances as to his action and the increased number of Frenchmen with him, AlenÇon had invariably said that he was there as the Queen of England’s lieutenant, and was acting with her full connivance. She was, moreover, he said, already his wife before God and man, and on this plea had obtained large sums of money from her adherents for his own purposes. Orange was strongly of opinion that AlenÇon was acting in concert with the Spaniards, with the ultimate object of avenging himself upon the English Queen; and entreated her to help the States in the trouble that had befallen them mainly through their attachment to her, which had led them to trust AlenÇon. On the other hand, Marchaumont tried his best to stem the torrent that was setting in against his master, and to persuade the Queen that he was forced to take the step he did; and Elizabeth, who could not yet entirely turn against him, sent Captain the Honourable John Russell to inquire into the real facts of the case, and, if necessary, to offer AlenÇon a refuge in England. But the Prince’s power, such as it was, had fled, and with it his spirit and his health. Biron kept command of the French garrisons in the conquered towns, whilst AlenÇon wandered from Vilvorde to Dendremond and thence to Dunkirk, disavowed by his brother, and cursed even by his mother for his perversity.

Whilst AlenÇon was at Dendremond, in March, the Queen made an attempt through Darcy, whom she sent, to patch up a reconciliation between him and the States. She made an elaborate pretence of disavowing and threatening Sir John Norris and the Englishmen who had abandoned him when he attempted to assail the Flemings; but when he asked her to withdraw them all and leave him to deal with the States alone, she thought better of it, and the attempts at reconciliation fell through. But all this time not a word of the marriage. Letter after letter came from the Prince reproaching the Queen for leaving him unsuccoured in his misery, and complaining of Norris, who disregarded his authority; but even he apparently was undeceived now. By the time he arrived at Dunkirk he was humble indeed. The very sight of the coast ruled by his “belle MajestÉ” revives him, and he beseeches her favour: “a mins jointes avecques les petits dois.” He feels a sweet and gracious air from her proximity, which he has not experienced since his sad parting from her; and finally, on the 30th of May, when the dreaded Farnese was already approaching his refuge, he ventures to remind her of her “promise and contract with him, and throws himself on her favour.”166 But all to no purpose; he had served her turn, and was now useless to her. A month later he was forced to fly to Calais, and from thence went to Chaulnes, where his mother saw him for the first time since his adventure. She had gone with anger on her lips, but found her son with death in his heart, and had nothing but loving words for him and consolation for his disappointment. Once more for a short time an attempt was made by Catharine to maintain an appearance of keeping up the idea of marriage with Elizabeth, to prevent a closer approach between England and Spain; but it was only momentary and meant nothing. A cold, almost severe letter was written by the Queen to AlenÇon on the 10th of September, 1583, which really sounds the death-knell of the marriage.167 She has not, she says, been favoured with his letters for a very long time, but now M. de Reaux had visited her from him. She is much surprised at his message asking what help she will give him to hold the Netherlands. “My God, Monsieur!” she says, “is this the way to keep our friends—to be always draining them? Is the King your brother so weak that he cannot defend his own blood without the help of his neighbours?” ... It is not her fault, she says, that things have turned out as they have, and she will not bear the blame; and she ends the cruel letter with: “God save you from painted counsels, and enable you to follow those who respect you more than you respect yourself.”

In January, 1584, Catharine sought her son at Chateau-Thierry, and at last persuaded him to a reconciliation with his brother, and took him to Paris with her. There, with tears and repentance on both sides, the brothers embraced each other, and the King promised his help towards another expedition to Flanders. AlenÇon returned to Chateau-Thierry to make his preparations, and there fell gravely ill. Guise, the Spaniards, and the Archbishop of Glasgow in Paris, were busy at the time planning the invasion of England and the liberation of Mary Stuart; and Catharine, in April, hastened to AlenÇon with a new project—that he should share in the plot and marry his sister-in-law, the Scottish Queen. But his health was broken. For the next two months he was battling with approaching death, though still actively preparing for his new expedition. But Elizabeth could not afford to allow the French to go alone to Flanders, and when she saw that Henry III. was helping his brother, she suddenly proposed to Castelnau to join her aid with that of the King. By the time the offer reached Paris AlenÇon was dying, and shortly afterwards, on the 11th of June, 1584, he breathed his last. Catharine cursed the Spaniards, and swore to be revenged upon them for her dead son, though how they were to blame for his death is not very clear; but the messages, both from the King and his mother to Elizabeth, kept up to the last the fiction of the love and marriage negotiations between her and the dead Prince. Catharine, indeed, sent to the English Queen the mourning which she wore for her so-called affianced husband; and the letter in which Elizabeth sent her condolence to Catharine is carefully conceived in the same strain. “Your sorrow,” she says, “cannot exceed mine, although you were his mother. You have another son, but I can find no other consolation than death, which I hope will soon enable me to rejoin him. If you could see a picture of my heart, you would see a body without a soul; but I will not trouble you with my grief, as you have enough of your own.”168

In very truth the farce of marriage by this time had been played out to the bitter end. Elizabeth was now fifty years of age and there were no princes left in Europe marriage with whom would have given her any advantage. From the far-off Ivan the Terrible, who had been dismissed with a gibe, to the youngest of the Valois, with whom she had played for years, every marriageable prince in Christendom had, in his turn, been suggested as a suitor for Elizabeth’s hand. The long juggle she had carried on had resulted in so much advantage to her country that she was in any case strong enough now to discard the pretence. Her old enemy, Philip, was a sad and broken recluse, sorely pressed even to hold his own, unable to avenge his ruined commerce, swept from the seas by the ubiquitous Drake, whilst his destined successor was too young to be feared, and he had no man of his house to second him. One more despairing effort was he to make in which he was to risk his all and lose it on the hazard of regaining the paramount position from which he had allowed himself to be ousted by the bold chicanery of the English Queen. But the armada was beaten by anticipation years before it was launched amid so much pompous mummery; for the English seamen knew full well that fast, well-handled ships that would sail close to the wind could harass the cumbrous galleons of Philip as they pleased, and the victory for England was a foregone conclusion. The King of France was a childless cipher, incapable of great designs or important action; his mother, whose busy brain had for so long been the dominant factor in France, was rapidly sinking to her rest. Protestantism was now firmly rooted in England, and had nothing to fear from within during the life of the great Queen, whose popularity was unbounded amongst all sections of her subjects, whilst in the rest of Europe it was evidently a waxing rather than a waning power. The Huguenot Henry of Navarre was next heir to the French crown, and could be trusted to give a good account of the Pope, the Guises, and the league; the strong Protestant princes of Germany rendered the Emperor harmless as a Catholic force, whilst the stubborn determination of the brave Dutchmen to hold to their faith at all costs, gave to their sympathetic English neighbours the certainty of a guiding voice in their affairs.

Elizabeth had, in fact, begun her long marriage juggle in 1559 in hourly danger of being overwhelmed and crushed by her own Catholic subjects, in union with one or the other of her great Continental neighbours; she ended it in 1583, triumphant all along the line, with both her rivals crippled and distracted, whilst she really held the balance of peace and war in Europe in her hands.

So at length the elaborate pretence of marriage negotiations, which for many years had been her great card, always ready to be played in the interests of England, could safely be abandoned. But it was too much to expect an elderly woman of Elizabeth’s temperament, who for the whole of her adult lifetime had fed her colossal vanity with the tradition of her irresistible beauty, who had gained great ends and derived the keenest enjoyment from the comedy of love-making, to give up entirely what for so long had brought her pleasure, profit, and power.

It was no longer a question of marriage, of course, but many gallant gentlemen, Raleigh, Essex, Blount, Harrington, and the rest of them, were yet to keep her hand in at the courtly old game, and bow their handsome heads before the perennial beauty which had now become an article of the national faith. With these one-sided courtships, the vain amusements of the Queen in her declining age, we have nought to do in these pages. The death of FranÇois de Valois, Duke of Anjou, and AlenÇon, removed from the scene the last serious suitor for the Queen’s hand in marriage; and his passing bell rang down the curtain upon the longest and most eventful comedy in the history of England.

THE END.