Lectures on European History (Volume 228)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904. Excerpt: ... Catherine prepared to take advantage of the alarm to execute judicially the remaining chiefs of the Huguenots; amongst them the Count of Montgomery, the accidental murderer of Henry II., suffered death. This was the last cruelty of what has been called the reign of blood. Charles hod been ill for a long time; and, in his agonies of pain and remorse, threw out hints of past horrors and of dis-. appointed good intentions, the truth of which can never now be arrived at. Of him also it was suspected that he was poisoned by Catherine to make way for Henry of Anjou. He died on May 80, 1574, having declared the King of Poland his heir, and Catherine the regent until his brother should return. We will leave to another lecture the events that follow and that belong more naturally to the wars of the League than to what went before. I fear that in this abstract, for it is little more, of a period of great interest, I have dwelt too long on names and dates. But if I have, I have tried at least to show how those names and dates illustrate the history of the great parties. It is not easy either to detect, or to remember when detected, all the underhand workings of policy, especially when the underhand workers were such people as Philip II. and Elizabeth. But we may, I think, conclude that Philip's movements with regard to England, and Elizabeth's towards Philip, depended very much on the varying state of the Netherlands: and that Catherine's attitude towards the Huguenots varied according to her objects of negotiation from time to time with Elizabeth and Philip. Spain and England were not at war, but the French politics were affected very much as they might have been if they had been at war. They were known to be rivals, but rivals who were kept at peace by mistrust of...