Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/424

410 Lorraine, the uncles of his queen, brothers of the queen-regent of Scotland. They were placed at the head of affairs, and, as the determined champions of Popery, were doubly odious to Navarre and his adherents. Accordingly, having the secret countenance of the Queen of England and other Protestant princes, Navarre, Condé, Coligny, admiral of France, D'Andelot, colonel of the French infantry, and the cardinal of Châtillon, nephews of the constable Montmorency, united in a plot to seize the king and queen, the cardinal, and the Duke of Guise, and place the government in the hands of the princes of the blood.

At this moment the Duke of Norfolk received his orders to conclude the treaty with the Scottish lords at Berwick. The French ambassadors, rather than proceed to extremities, offered to withdraw the bulk of their troops from Scotland, and submit the points in dispute to the decision of Elizabeth herself. It is said that they even offered to restore Calais, and that Elizabeth replied that she could never place a fishing village in competition with the security of her dominions at large. This, however, is by no means probable, for we soon find Elizabeth herself demanding Calais as a condition of peace, and it is not to be supposed that she would not have at least deferred her plans against Scotland for the much-desired repossession of that town.

Whilst these negotiations were proceeding, the conspiracy of the French princes was defeated at Amboise through the sagacity of the Duke of Guise, and Elizabeth rather hesitated in completing her treaty with the Scots; but her Council urged her to advance, alleging that France was still on the eve of a civil war, and that she would, by backing out, lose a golden opportunity of driving the French from Scotland.

On the 27th of February, 1560, the treaty was concluded at Berwick, and in the month of March the English fleet appeared in the Forth in greater strength. D'Oyselles, the French general, managed to effect his retreat from Fife, and threw himself into Leith, where he resolved to defend himself. The queen-regent, who was lying there worn out by her continual struggles for the maintenance of her daughter's throne and religion, removed, by the permission of Lord Erskine, the governor, to the castle of Edinburgh, as unable to endure the hardships and anxieties of a besieged town. On the other hand, the Duke of Norfolk had collected an army of 6,000 men in the northern counties of England, and sent it, under the command of Lord Gray de Wilton, into Scotland by land. Lord Gray marched from Berwick to Preston, where he joined the forces of the Lords of the Congregation; and whilst Winter's fleet blockaded Leith by sea, the united army invested it on the land side. It was soon known that the fleet of the Marquis d'Elbœuf had been dispersed by a tempest, and partly wrecked on the coast of Holland, so that the English and their allies had little to fear from the arrival of fresh enemies.

The siege was carried on against Leith in a manner little creditable to the ancient fame of the English; as for the Scots, Sadler said, "they could climb no walls;" that is, they were not famous for conducting sieges and taking towns by assault. The English, who had acquired great fame in that kind of warfare, now seemed to have forgotten their skill, though they had lost none of their courage. Their lines of circumvallation were ill-drawn; their guns were ill-directed, their trenches were opened in ground unfit for the purpose, and they were repeatedly thrown into disorder by sorties of the enemy. To make matters worse, the supplies of the Scots became exhausted, and they began to make their usual cries to the English for more money. But from the English court came, instead of the all-needful money, signs of discouragement. Elizabeth still maintained her equivocal conduct, and the Lords of the Congregation were greatly alarmed to find her actually negotiating with the sick queen-regent for an accommodation. At the very time that the Scotch and the English were engaged in a smart action at Hawkhill, near Lochend, during the siege, Sir James Croft and Sir George Howard were with the dying Mary of Guise in the castle of Edinburgh. Elizabeth still declared that she was not fighting against Francis and Mary, the king and queen of France and Scotland, but against their ministers in the latter country, and simply for the defence of her own realm against their attempts. She desired Sir Ralph Sadler to express her willingness to treat, and to make it clear that she was no party to any design to injure or depose the rightful queen. What she aimed at was the expulsion of the French from Scotland as dangerous to her own dominions, and he was instructed, if the old plea was raised, that the French only remained there to maintain the throne of their mistress against disaffected subjects, to state that his sovereign would not admit this plea, as it was only a pretence, and would not lay down her arms till the Queen of Scots was also secured in her just power and claims.

These plausible arguments did not, however, abate the suspicions of the Lords of the Congregation, that Elizabeth was prepared to make a peace without them, nor that several of their own party, including the Duke of Chatelherault, who were lukewarm and dubious Protestants, were ready to join in it. Fortunately for the Congregation, Elizabeth and the queen-regent, undaunted and uncompromising in death, could not agree; the negotiations were broken off, and Elizabeth gave orders to renew the siege with fresh vigour, still commanding her officers to "contemn no reasonable offers of agreement" that might be made by the French.

No such offers, however, appeared likely to come from the brave defenders of Leith. They continued to fight with a spirit and gallantry which gave them a brilliant reputation all over Europe; and the English, on their part, worked doggedly, if not skilfully, to make a breach in the walls. At length they accomplished such a breach, and rushed headlong and in blind fury to force their way into the town; but one of the storming parties lost its way, and the rest, when they reached the ramparts and raised their scaling-ladders, found them too short; and, though they fought like bull-dogs, they were obliged to give way, leaving 1,000 of their comrades in the ditches, and mowed down by the enemy's artillery.

The queen, who had recommended treating in preference to fighting, was greatly chagrined by this failure, and the soldiers were much discouraged. The Government sent down more money, with orders to continue the siege with all vigour, and the Duke of Norfolk