f war.
He asked them if they desired the King of Spain or the Duke of Mayenne
for their king, and bade them look well to themselves. The King of Spain
could not help them, for he had too much business on hand; while Mayenne
had neither means nor courage, having been within three leagues of them
for three weeks doing nothing. Neither king nor duke should have that
which belonged to him, of that they might be assured. He told them he
loved Paris as his capital, as his eldest daughter. If the Parisians
wished to see the end of their miseries it was to him they should appeal,
not to the Spaniard nor to the Duke of Mayenne. By the grace of God and
the swords of his brave gentlemen he would prevent the King of Spain from
making a colony of France as he had done of Brazil. He told the
commissioners that they ought to die of shame that they, born Frenchmen,
should have so forgotten their love of country and of liberty as thus to
bow the head to the Spaniard, and--while famine was carrying off
thousands of their countrymen before their eyes--to be so cowardly as not
to utter one word for the public welfare from fear of offending Cardinal.
Gaetano, Mendoza, and Moreo. He said that he longed for a combat to
decide the issue, and that he had charged Count de Brissac to tell
Mayenne that he would give a finger of his right hand for a battle, and
two for a general peace. He knew and pitied the sufferings of Paris, but
the horrors now raging there were to please the King of Spain. That
monarch had told the Duke of Parma to trouble himself but little about
the Netherlands so long as he could preserve for him his city of Paris.
But it was to lean on a broken reed to expect support from this old,
decrepit king, whose object was to dismember the flourishing kingdom of
France, and to divide it among as many tyrants as he had sent viceroys to
the Indies. The crown was his own birthright. Were it elective he should
receive the suffrages of the great mass of the electors. He hoped soon to
drive those red-crossed foreigners out of his kingdom. Should he fail,
they would end by expelling the Duke of Mayenne and all the rest who had
called them in, and Paris would become the theatre of the bloodiest
tragedy ever yet enacted. The king then ordered Sir Roger Williams to see
that a collation was prepared for the deputies, and the veteran Welshman
took occasion to indulge in much blunt conversation with the guests. He
informed them that he, Mr. Sackvi