For the next few months this firm attitude of watchfulness was maintained, whilst the outward demonstrations of friendship between Catharine and Elizabeth became gradually more cordial, thanks largely to the influence in the English court of the special envoy Castelnau de la Mauvissière. Elizabeth consented to act as sponsor for the French King’s infant daughter; Alençon’s envoy, Maisonfleur, with the knowledge of Burghley, sent to his master a plan for his escape to England with Navarre and Condé, and assured him that the Queen would marry him if he came. But all this diplomatic finesse did not for a moment stay the grim determination of the Queen and her Council to provide against treachery, from whatever quarter it might come. All along the coast the country stood on guard. Portsmouth, Plymouth, the Thames, and Harwich were swarming with shipping, armed to the teeth for the succour of stern Protestant Rochelle against the Catholics, and to aid the Netherlanders in their struggle.[360] The Huguenots of Guienne, Languedoc, and Gascony had recovered somewhat from the shock of St. Bartholomew, and were arming for their defence; and to them also went English money, arms, and encouragement. At Elizabeth’s court the Vidame de Chartres and the Count de Montgomerie were honoured guests and busy agents, whilst in France the young Princes of Navarre and Condé were daily being pledged deeper to the cause of Protestantism and England. The German princes, too, as profoundly shocked at the treacherous massacre as Elizabeth herself, drew nearer to the Queen, who was now regarded throughout Europe as the head of the Protestant confederacy. It was soon seen that, though St. Bartholomew had given more power to the Guises, it had also strengthened and consolidated the reformers rather than destroyed them. Month after month Anjou, at the head of the Catholic royal army, cast his men fruitlessly against the impregnable walls of Rochelle, well supplied as the town was with stores by Montgomerie’s fleet from England, until at last in the spring of 1573 it was seen by Catharine and her sons that they had failed to crush the reformers of France, and they were glad to make terms with the heroic Rochellais, where the besiegers, plague-stricken, starving, and disheartened, were in far worse case than the beleaguered. Anjou, to his brothers’ and mother’s delight, was elected to the vacant throne of Poland, and a full amnesty was signed for the Huguenots (June 1573); complete religious liberty being accorded in the towns of Rochelle, Montauban, and Nismes, whilst private Protestant worship was allowed throughout France. CHAPTER XI 1572-1576