Europe was, at first, ill-disposed towards Parliament and the Commonwealth. The trial and execution of Charles I. had caused a powerful sensation, though for different reasons and in different degrees. The Protestants felt the need of clearing themselves from association with this deed. The Catholics saw in it the fruits of heresy. {231} In France, amidst the agitations of "The Fronde," the Parliament of England had found admirers; but the English revolution, with its consequences, soon excited an exasperation mingled with alarm, which the presence of Queen Henrietta Maria, her sons and her fugitive partisans continued to maintain. Cardinal Mazarin had taken no step in the name of the little king, Louis XIV., for saving of the king his uncle. The two solemn letters written to Cromwell and Fairfax were delivered. Before they had even been despatched from Paris, the king was executed. When he was dead, however, the ambassador, M. de Bellièvre was recalled, and his secretary, M. de Croullé, alone remained entrusted to take charge officially of French interests. Careful to maintain everywhere relations which might prejudice its rivals, Spain did not recall Don Alonzo de Cardeñas; but it neglected to renew his credentials, and he acquired no official position in the Commonwealth of England. Alone, of all the sovereigns of Europe, the Czar of Russia, Alexis, the father of Peter the Great, severed all connection with the revolutionary republic, and drove English merchants from his empire. At the Hague, in the United Provinces, notwithstanding the hostile feelings of a great portion of the States-General, the devotion of the Prince of Orange to the family of his wife preserved for the fallen English monarchy a support and shelter. It was at the Hague that Doctor Dorislaüs, a Dutchman long naturalized in England, and but recently employed to draw up the impeachment of Charles I., was assassinated, shortly after the death of the king, by some cavaliers who had taken refuge in Holland. Such was also to be the fate a few months later, in an inn at Madrid, of Asham, who had placed his talent as a writer at the service of the revolution. {232} At the Hague, as at Madrid, public feeling was on the side of the murderers. A Dutch patrician might have said with Don Luis de Haro, "I envy the gentlemen who have done so noble a deed; whatever may befall them in consequence, they have avenged the blood of their sovereign. If the king my master had had subjects as resolute, he would not have lost his kingdom of Portugal!"