The fact was, however, that the list of casualties in the cardinal’s camp during the six weeks’ siege amounted to six hundred, while the losses within the city were at least as many.  There was no attempt to relieve the place; for the States, as before observed, had been too much cramped by the strain upon their resources and by the removal of so many veterans for the expedition against Cadiz to be able to muster any considerable forces in the field during the whole of this year.

For a vast war in which the four leading powers of the earth were engaged, the events, to modern eyes, of the campaign of 1596 seem sufficiently meagre.  Meantime, during all this campaigning by land and sea in the west, there had been great but profitless bloodshed in the east.  With difficulty did the holy Roman Empire withstand the terrible, ever-renewed assaults of the unholy realm of Ottoman—­then in the full flush of its power—­but the two empires still counterbalanced each other, and contended with each’other at the gates of Vienna.

As the fighting became more languid, however, in the western part of Christendom, the negotiations and intrigues grew only the more active.  It was most desirable for the republic to effect, if possible, a formal alliance offensive and defensive with France and England against Spain.  The diplomacy of the Netherlands had been very efficient in bringing about the declaration of war by Henry against Philip, by which the current year had opened, after Henry and Philip had been doing their best to destroy each other and each other’s subjects during the half-dozen previous years.  Elizabeth, too, although she had seen her shores invaded by Philip with the most tremendous armaments that had ever floated on the seas, and although she had herself just been sending fire and sword into the heart of Spain, had very recently made the observation that she and Philip were not formally at war with each other.  It seemed, therefore, desirable to the States-General that this very practical warfare should be, as it were, reduced to a theorem.  In this case the position of the republic to both powers and to Spain itself might perhaps be more accurately defined.

Calvaert, the States’ envoy—­to use his own words—­haunted Henry like his perpetual shadow, and was ever doing his best to persuade him of the necessity of this alliance.  De Saucy, as we have seen, had just arrived in England, when the cool proposition of the queen to rescue Calais from Philip on condition of keeping it for herself had been brought to Boulogne by Sidney.  Notwithstanding the indignation of the king, he had been induced directly afterwards to send an additional embassy to Elizabeth, with the Duke of Bouillon at its head; and he had insisted upon Calvaert’s accompanying the mission.  He had, as he frequently observed, no secrets from the States-General, or from Calvaert, who had been negotiating upon these affairs for two years past and was so well acquainted with all their bearings.