Brave old La Noue, with the iron arm, noblest of Frenchmen and Huguenots—­who had just spent five years in Spanish bondage, writing military discourses in a reeking dungeon, filled with toads and vermin, after fighting the battle of liberty for a life-time, and with his brave son already in the Netherlands emulating his father’s valour on the same field—­denounced at a little later day, the lukewarmness of Protestant Germany with whimsical vehemence:—­“I am astounded,” he cried, “that these princes are not ashamed of themselves; doing nothing while they see the oppressed cut to pieces at their gates.  When will God grant me grace to place me among those who are doing their duty, and afar from those who do nothing, and who ought to know that the cause is a common one.  If I am ever caught dancing the German cotillon, or playing the German flute, or eating pike with German sauce, I hope it may be flung in my teeth.”

The great league of the Pope and Philip was steadily consolidating itself, and there were but gloomy prospects for the counter-league in Germany.  There was no hope but in England and France.  For the reasons already indicated, the Prince of Orange, taking counsel with the Estates, had resolved to try the French policy once more.  The balance of power in Europe, which no man in Christendom so well understood as he, was to be established by maintaining (he thought) the equilibrium between France and Spain.  In the antagonism of those two great realms lay the only hope for Dutch or European liberty.  Notwithstanding the treason of Anjou, therefore, it had been decided to renew negociations with that Prince.  On the death of the Duke, the envoys of the States were accordingly instructed to make the offer to King Henry III. which had been intended for his brother.  That proposition was the sovereignty of all the Netherlands, save Holland and Zeeland, under a constitution maintaining the reformed religion and the ancient laws and privileges of the respective provinces.

But the death of Francis of Anjou had brought about a considerable change in French policy.  It was now more sharply defined than ever, a right-angled triangle of almost mathematical precision.  The three Henrys and their partizans divided the realm into three hostile camps—­threatening each other in simulated peace since the treaty of Fleig (1580), which had put an end to the “lover’s war” of the preceding year,—­Henry of Valois, Henry of Guise, and Henry of Navarre.

Henry III., last of the Valois line, was now thirty-three years of age.  Less than king, less even than man, he was one of those unfortunate personages who seem as if born to make the idea of royalty ridiculous, and to test the capacity of mankind to eat and drink humiliation as if it were wholesome food.  It proved how deeply engraved in men’s minds of that century was the necessity of kingship, when the hardy Netherlanders, who had abjured one tyrant, and had been fighting a generation long rather than return to him, were now willing to accept the sovereignty of a thing like Henry of Valois.