Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/403

A.D. 1558.] of the French king. He made a visit of triumph to his newly recovered district of Calais, and returned to Paris to celebrate the marriage of the dauphin with the young Queen of Scots—an event which took place on the 24th of April, 1558, the greater portion of the princes, prelates, and nobles, of both France and Scotland attending the ceremony. Mary was then only in her sixteenth year, and the dauphin, her husband, a weakly and imbecile boy of but a few months older.

In England, during the spring, preparations were made for the invasion of France. Seven thousand troops were raised and diligently drilled. One hundred and forty ships were hired, which the Lord-Admiral Clinton collected in the harbour of Portsmouth, to be ready to join the fleet of Philip, and, in conjunction, to ravage the coasts of France; whilst Philip, with an army of Spanish, French, and English, should enter the country by land.

"It is verily believed," says Holinshed, "that if the admirals of England and Spain had been present there with their navies, as the other few ships of England were, and upon the sudden had attempted Calais with the aid of the Count of Egmont, having his power present, the town of Calais might have been recovered again with as little difficulty, and haply in as short a time as it was before gained by the Duke of Guise."

Holinshed says thus for the following reason. The Marshal De Termes, the Governor of Calais, had made an expedition into Flanders with 11,000 men; had forced a passage over the river Aar, reached Dunkirk, and Burg St. Winoc, and burnt them to the ground. He was still advancing, ravaging some of the richest country of Flanders, to near Newport, when he was suddenly arrested in his progress by Count Egmont. In attempting to retreat, Egmont cut off De Termes' line of march near Gravelines by outmarching him with one wing of his army. They there came to an engagement near the mouth of the Aar, and whilst the Spaniards were cannonading them on the one side, ten English ships, under Admiral Malins, off the coast near Gravelines, hearing the roar of the artillery, sailed up the Aar, and perceiving the position of affairs, opened a terrible fire on the right flank of the French army. This surprise threw the French into confusion, and so encouraged the Spaniards that they gained a most decisive victory. The routed French ran in hundreds into the sea, where the English secured 200 of them; and, by consent of Count Egmont, received them as their prisoners in order to obtain their ransom. Five thousand of the French perished on the field of battle, or at the hands of the enraged peasantry, whose lands and houses they had just before destroyed, and who had followed the army of Egmont crying for vengeance.

Marshal de Termes, Senarpont, Governor of Calais, and many of the French officers were taken prisoners, and the garrison of Calais was annihilated almost to a man, creating such a panic in the few left to guard the town, that, as Holinshed observes, had the combined Flemish and English fleet been there, Calais had, in all probability, been retaken.

But this fleet and the English army, instead of aiming to recover Calais, had sailed to make an attack on Brest. The English fleet, consisting of 140 sail, commanded by the Lord Admiral Clinton, and carrying a land force of 6,000 men, under the Earls of Huntingdon and Rutland, had joined a much smaller squadron of the Flemings, and reached Brest. But their progress had been so dilatory that the French had made ample preparations to receive them, and, despairing of effecting any impression on Brest, they fell on the little port of Conquest, which they took and pillaged, with a large church and several hamlets in its immediate neighbourhood. They then marched some miles up the country, burning and plundering, and the Flemings, in the eager quest of booty, going too far a-head, were surrounded, and 400 of them cut off. The English, with more caution, regained their ships. The Duke D'Estampes, having collected a strong body of Bretons, appeared upon the scene, and the Lords Huntingdon and Rutland, not thinking it prudent to engage, drew off their forces, and now finding the people on all the coasts up in arms, returned home without executing any further service.

It appeared as if the war would be brought to a conclusion by a pitched battle betwixt the sovereigns of France and Spain. Philip had joined his general, the Duke of Savoy, and they lay near Dourlens with an army of 45,000 men. Henry had come into the camp of the Duke of Guise near Amiens, who had an army of nearly equal strength. All the world looked now for a great and decisive conflict. But Philip, though superior in numbers, as well as crowned with the prestige of victory, listened to offers of accommodation from Henry, and dismissing their armies into winter quarters, they betook themselves to negotiation. From the first no agreement appeared probable. Philip demanded the restoration of Calais, Henry that of Navarre, and they were still pursuing the hopeless phantom of accommodation, when the news of Queen Mary's death changed totally the position of Philip, and put an end to the attempt.

Mary was sinking to the grave before Philip left England the last time, and his conduct was not calculated to prolong her life. The loss of Calais also fell heavily on her diseased frame and melancholy mind. Her dispute with the Pope, the continual appearances of insurrection, the bitterness and hostile activity of the Protestants, whom all her persecutions had not daunted, and the fears that her anxious endeavours to re-establish the Papal Church would all prove vain, knowing the secret bias of her sister and successor, were a combination of causes, added to her inveterate dropsy, which brought her daily nearer and nearer to her end. Her heart, yearning with affection towards her husband, had been grievously disappointed. Her soul, yearning still more fervently for the triumph of her beloved Church, had found no consolation in hope. She had alienated the love of her subjects, and covered her name with a sanguinary reproach. To make her situation still more desolate and depressing, nature during her reign had, as it were, sympathised with the unhappy course and character of events. A series of most wet, cold, and dismal seasons had been followed by their natural consequences, famines, fevers, and agues. Strange meteors were seen in the damp autumns near the end of Mary's reign, and all these things, certainly the natural precursors of disease and death, were regarded