Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 1.djvu/41

 Cromwell; so he believed they were all rebels in their heart.” Burnet replied, “Foreigners are no other way concerned in the quarrels of their neighbours than to see who can or will assist them. The coldness which they had formerly seen in the Court of England with relation to them, and the zeal which was now expressed, naturally made them depend on one who seemed resolved to protect them.”

The distaste with which, at first, French Protestants viewed Cromwell’s government gave way before his zeal for Protestantism and his intercessions to the European powers in behalf of the persecuted. As a Protestant King had damaged his influence by leaning on a Romanizing Archbishop, so the Republican protector rose in estimation through his beneficence to poor Protestant people.

Cardinal Mazarin, the Prime Minister of Louis XIV., who had been lukewarm in Charles’s cause, vehemently courted an alliance with Cromwell. France and Spain were at irreconcilable enmity, and England could not avoid taking a side in the contest. The advocate of Spain was a Frenchman, the Prince of Conde, who had withdrawn from allegiance to his native monarchy, and was living as a denizen in the Spanish Netherlands, having some French Protestants among his followers. He represented to Cromwell that the Huguenots might be willing to rise in France against the Crown; and that to incite them to this, he would revive the old hereditary influence of the name of Conde by becoming a Protestant himself, on condition that Cromwell would join him in a Spanish alliance. He also offered to conquer Calais for the English. Mazarin made further advances, and made the more feasible proposal to assist Cromwell to take Dunkirk.

Oliver resolved to be guided by the sentiments of the Protestant population of France, and took counsel accordingly with one of the pastors of the French Church of the city of London. He was a native of the Grisons, and at heart more a layman than a pastor, as he ultimately proved by becoming a brigadier in the French Army. This pastor, Jean Baptiste Stouppe, was sent by the Protector into France on a private mission. I quote Burnet’s account:—

“Cromwell sent Stouppe round all France to talk with their most eminent men, to see into their strength, into their present condition, the oppressions they lay under, and their inclinations to trust the Prince of Conde. He went from Paris down the Loire, then to Bourdeaux, from thence to Montauban, and across the south of France to Lyons. He was instructed to talk to them only as a traveller, and to assure them of Cromwell’s zeal and care for them, which he magnified everywhere. The Protestants were then very much at their ease. Mazarin, who thought of nothing but to enrich his family, took care to maintain the edicts better than they had been in any time formerly. So Stouppe returned, and gave Cromwell an account of the ease they were in, and of their resolution to be quiet. They had a very bad opinion of the Prince of Conde, as a man who sought nothing but his own greatness, to which they believed he was ready to sacrifice all his friends, and every cause that he espoused.”

Having upon this refused the Prince of Conde’s offer, Cromwell had to consider whether he would accede to the overtures of Cardinal Mazarin. The great reason for his deciding in favour of the French alliance is thus reported by Burnet:— “He found the parties grew so strong against him at home, that he saw if the King or his brother were assisted by France with an army of Huguenots to make a descent on England (which was threatened if he should join with Spain) this might prove very dangerous to him who had so many enemies at home and so few friends.” The Huguenots had no reason to regret Cromwell’s decision. The two memorable occasions of his using the French Alliance as a means of relieving persecuted Protestants may be here given — the first in Burnet’s words:—

The other grand intervention is thus recorded by Oldmixon:—

“All Europe was so sensible of his power, that the distressed in all parts of it flew to him for refuge, and found it, even when their case was most desperate, as that of the Protestant