manifesto had been at last regularly issued. And the manifesto was
certainly not deficient in bitterness. Not often in Christian history
has a monarch been solemnly and officially accused by a brother sovereign
of suborning assassins against his life. Bribery, stratagem, and murder,
were, however, so entirely the commonplace machinery of Philip's
administration as to make an allusion to the late attempt of Chastel
appear quite natural in Henry's declaration of war. The king further
stigmatized in energetic language the long succession of intrigues by
which the monarch of Spain, as chief of the Holy League, had been making
war upon him by means of his own subjects, for the last half dozcn years.
Certainly there was hardly need of an elaborate statement of grievances.
The deeds of Philip required no herald, unless Henry was prepared to
abdicate his hardly-earned title to the throne of France.

Nevertheless the politic Gascon subsequently regretted the fierce style
in which he had fulminated his challenge. He was accustomed to observe
that no state paper required so much careful pondering as a declaration
of war, and that it was scarcely possible to draw up such a document
without committing many errors in the phraseology. The man who never
knew fear, despondency, nor resentment, was already instinctively acting
on the principle that a king should deal with his enemy as if sure to
become his friend, and with his friends as if they might easily change
to foes.

The answer to the declaration was delayed for two months. When the
reply came it of course breathed nothing but the most benignant
sentiments in regard to France, while it expressed regret that it was
necessary to carry fire and sword through that country in order to avert
the unutterable woe which the crimes of the heretic Prince of Bearne were
bringing upon all mankind.