Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/500

 484 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 67. Torment could not break the spirit of the murderer, but neither could it bring back to life the illustrious per- son who had been the bulwark of Elizabeth's throne. Murray in Scotland, Coligny at Paris, and now the Prince of Orange, the three champions who had best defended God's cause and hers, had fallen all in the same way, and the augury to herself was frightful. In part too it was her own fault. Had there been a Pro- testant League in Europe, had all the countries which had revolted from the See of Rome been compacted in organized union, there would have been less temptation to assassinate individuals whose places would have been immediately filled. She and only she had made a con- federation impossible. She had left the Reformation to be maintained by the disunited efforts of a few heroic men, and the enemy could hope always that they alone were the obstacles to the recovery of their dominion. If Elizabeth however had caused the danger, she also shared it in her own person, and in the highest degree. No single life not the life of Orange himself was of so much moment as hers, and the risk to which she was exposed threw England into an agony of apprehension. She cared little for her own person. Then and always she held her life supremely cheap. But she was startled, as she had been startled when Murray was murdered, out of her political languor. So long as Orange lived, she knew that he would fight to the last, and she had been content to profit by his resolution, and leave him to his own resources. Now it seemed but too likely that the Provinces, having lost their chief, and seeing them-