104
ESSAYS ON LIBERTY
it would have been necessary to invoke the help of Philip 11., and to accept protection which would have made France subordinate to Spain. Philip laboured to establish such an alhance; and it was to promote this scherne that he sent his queen, Elizabeth of Valois, to meet her mother at Bayonne. In 1568 Elizabeth died; and a rumour came to Catherine touching the manner of her death which made it hard to listen to friendly over- tures from her husband. Antonio Perez, at that time an unscrupulous instrument of his master's \vill, afterwards accused him of having poisoned his \vife. "On parle fort sinistrement de sa mort, pour avoir été advancée," says Brantôme. After the massacre of the Protestants, the ambassador at Venice, a man distinguished as a jurist and a statesman,reproached Catherine with having thrown France into the hands of him in \vhom the world recognised her daughter's murderer. Catherine did not deny the truth of the report. She replied that she was "bound to think of her sons in preference to her daughters, that the foul- play was not fully proved, and that if it were it could not be avenged so long as France was weakened by religious discord." 1 She \vrote as she could not have written if she had been convinced that the suspicion was unjust. When Charles I X. began to be his own master he seemed resolved to follo\v his father and grandfather in their hostility to the Spanish Po\ver. He wrote to a trusted servant that all his thoughts were bent on th\varting Philip.2 While the Christian navies \vere fighting at Lepanto, the King of France \vas treating with the Turks. His menacing attitude in the following year kept Don
1 Quant à ce qui me touche à moyen particulier, encores que j'ayme unicque- ment tous mes enffans, je veulx préférer, comme i1 est bien raysonnable, les filz aux filles; et pour Ie regard de ce que me mandez de celluy qui a faict mourir ma fille, c'est chose que 1'on ne tient point pour certaine, et oil elle Ie seroit, Ie roy monsieur mondit filz n'en pouvoit faire la vengence en l'estat que son royaulme estoit lors; mais à présent qu'il est tout uni, il aura assez de moien et de forces pour sen ressentir quant 1'occasion s'en présentera (Catherine to Du Ferrier, Oct, I, 1572; Bib. Imp, F, Fr, 15,555), The despatches of Fourquevaulx from Madrid, published by the Marquis Du Prat in the Histoire d' Elisabeth de Valois, do not confirm the rumour, 2 Toutes roes fantaisies sont bandées pour m'opposer à la grandeur des Espagnols, et délibère m'y conduire Ie plus dextrement qu'il me sera possible (Charles IX, to oailles, May 2, 1572; Noailles, Henri de Valois, i. 8).
