if a lasting and honourable peace could be procured; but he insisted that
the only road tosuch a result was through a "good sharp war." His troops
were mutinous for want of pay, so that he had been obligedto have a few
of them executed, although he protested that he would rather have "gone a
thousand miles a-foot" than have done so; and he was crippled by his
government at exactly the time when his great adversary's condition was
most forlorn. Was it strange that the proud Earl should be fretting his
heart away when such golden chances were eluding his grasp? He would
"creep upon the ground," he said, as far as his hands and knees would
carry him, to have a good peace for her Majesty, but his care was to have
a peace indeed, and not a show of it. It was the cue of Holland and
England to fight before they could expect to deal upon favourable terms
with their enemy. He was quick enough to see that his false colleagues
at home were playing into the enemy's hands. Victory was what was
wanted; victory the Earl pledged himself, if properly seconded, to
obtain; and, braggart though he was, it is by no means impossible that
he might have redeemed his pledge. "If her Majesty will use her
advantage," he said, "she shall bring the King, and especially this
Prince of Parma, to seek peace in other sort than by way of merchants."
Of courage and confidence the governor had no lack. Whether he was
capable of outgeneralling Alexander Farnese or no, will be better seen,
perhaps, in subsequent chapters; but there is no doubt that he was
reasonable enough in thinking, at that juncture, that a hard campaign
rather than a "merchant's brokerage" was required to obtain an honourable
peace. Lofty, indeed, was the scorn of the aristocratic Leicester that
"merchants and pedlars should be paltering in so weighty a cause," and
daring to send him a dish of plums when he was hoping half a dozen
regiments from the Queen; and a sorry business, in truth, the pedlars
had made of it.