To avoid the catastrophe of an alliance between Henry, Philip, and the Pope against Holland and England, it was a pressing necessity for Holland and England to force Henry into open war against Philip.  To this end the Dutch statesmen were bending all their energies.  Meantime Elizabeth regarded the campaign in Artois and Hainault with little favour.

As he took leave on departing for France, La Varenne had requested Mendoza to write to King Henry, but the Spaniard excused himself—­although professing the warmest friendship for his Majesty—­on the ground of the impossibility of addressing him correctly.  “If I call him here King of Navarre, I might as well put my head on the block at once,” he observed; “if I call him King of France, my master has not yet recognized him as such; if I call him anything else, he will himself be offended.”

And the vision of Philip in black on his knees, with his children about him, and a rapier at his side, passed with the contemporary world as the only phenomenon of this famous secret mission.

But Henry, besides this demonstration towards Spain, lost no time in despatching a special minister to the republic and to England, who was instructed to make the most profuse, elaborate, and conciliatory explanations as to his recent conversion and as to his future intentions.  Never would he make peace, he said, with Spain without the full consent of the States and of England; the dearest object of his heart in making his peace with Rome having been to restore peace to his own distracted realm, to bring all Christians into one brotherhood, and to make a united attack upon the grand Turk—­a vision which the cheerful monarch hardly intended should ever go beyond the ivory gate of dreams, but which furnished substance enough for several well-rounded periods in the orations of De Morlans.

That diplomatist, after making the strongest representations to Queen Elizabeth as to the faithful friendship of his master, and the necessity he was under of pecuniary and military assistance, had received generous promises of aid both in men and money—­three thousand men besides the troops actually serving in Brittany—­from that sagacious sovereign, notwithstanding the vehement language in which she had rebuked her royal brother’s apostasy.  He now came for the same purpose to the Hague, where he made very eloquent harangues to the States-General, acknowledging that the republic had ever been the most upright, perfect, and undisguised friend to his master and to France in their darkest days and deepest affliction; that she had loved the king and kingdom for themselves, not merely hanging on to their prosperity, but, on the contrary, doing her best to produce that prosperity by her contributions in soldiers, ships, and subsidies.  “The king,” said De Morlans, “is deeply grieved that he can prove his gratitude only in words for so many benefits conferred, which are absolutely without example, but he has commissioned me to declare that if God should ever give him the occasion, he will prove how highly he places your friendship.”