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.