The whole political position was changed in a day. The new King Francis and his wife, Mary Stuart, were little more than children; and the young Queen’s uncles the Guises would rule France unless Catharine the Queen Dowager could beat them on their own ground. For her, indeed, the hour had now come, or was coming. For years she had been patient whilst the King’s mistress held sway; but if she could combine the enemies of the Guises now she might be mistress of France. The alliance with Spain was no longer to be used if she could help it as a means for crushing Protestantism; for to Protestantism she must partly look to crush the Guises; but if by diplomacy and the efforts of her daughter Isabel she could win Spanish support to her side on personal grounds, then she might triumph over her foes. It needed, as we shall see, consummate skill and chicanery, and, in the end, it did not succeed; for Philip would naturally in the long run tend towards the Guises, the enemies of reform, and he was easily led by a woman. And thus the mission of Isabel of Valois in marrying Philip was changed in a moment by Montgomerie’s unlucky lance thrust from a national and religious to a personal and political object. But Philip was a difficult man to be used for the ends of others; what he had needed was French neutrality whilst he tackled heresy, and he had no desire to forward the interests of an ambitious Italian woman whom he hated; though at first there was just one element that made him inclined to smile upon Catharine, doubtfully orthodox though she was. The Queen of Scots and France was Catholic heiress of England; and the Guises were already preparing to employ French national forces to oust Elizabeth in favour of their niece. This Philip could never have permitted: better for him a Protestant England than a French England: so again national interests overrode religious affinities, and before the ink of the treaty of Cateau Cambresis was well dry the spirit that inspired the agreement was as dead as the king who had conceived it.