days after the separation of the plenipotentiaries, in case no peace took place. It was concluded on the 2d of April, 1559, between Henry II. and Elizabeth, who had become Queen of England at the death of her sister Mary (November 17, 1558); and next day, April 3, between Henry II., Philip II., and the allied princes of Spain, amongst others the Prince of Orange, William the Silent, who, whilst serving in the Spanish army, was fitting himself to become the leader of the Reformers, and the liberator of the Low Countries. By the treaty with England, France was to keep Calais for eight years in the first instance, and on a promise to pay five hundred thousand gold crowns to Queen Elizabeth or her successors. The money was never paid, and Calais was never restored, and this without the English government’s having considered that it could make the matter a motive for renewing the war. By the treaty with Spain, France was to keep Metz, Toul, and Verdun, and have back Saint-Quentin, Le Catelet, and Ham; but she was to restore to Spain or her allies a hundred and eighty-nine places in Flanders, Piedmont, Tuscany, and Corsica. The malcontents--for the absence of political liberty does not suppress them entirely--raised their voices energetically against this last treaty signed by the king, with the sole desire, it was supposed, of obtaining the liberation of his two favorites, the Constable de Montmorency and Marshal de Saint-Andre, who had been prisoners in Spain since the defeat at Saint-Quentin. “Their ransom,” it was said, “has cost the kingdom more than that of Francis I.” Guise himself said to the king, “A stroke of your Majesty’s pen costs more to France than thirty years of war cost.” Ever since that time the majority of historians, even the most enlightened, have joined in the censure that was general in the sixteenth century; but their opinion will not be indorsed here; the places which France had won during the war, and which she retained by the peace,--Metz, Toul, and Verdun on her frontier in the north-east, facing the imperial or Spanish possessions, and Boulogne and Calais on her coasts in the north-west, facing England,--were, as regarded the integrity of the state and the security of the inhabitants, of infinitely more importance than those which she gave up in Flanders and Italy. The treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, too, marked the termination of those wars of ambition and conquest which the Kings of France had waged beyond the Alps an injudicious policy, which, for four reigns, had crippled and wasted the resources of France in adventurous expeditions, beyond the limits of her geographical position and her natural and permanent interests.