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Mon cher Monsieur Reeve, Mon frere Aumale vient de me communiquer votre aimable lettre, a laquelle je m'empresse de repondre.
Accordingly, on the last day of the year 1584, a secret treaty had been signed at Joinville between Henry of Guise and his brother the Duc de Mayenne, holding the proxies of their brother the Cardinal and those of their uncles, Aumale and Elbeuf, on the one part, and John Baptist Tassis and Commander Moreo, on the other, as representatives of Philip.
Then came the news that every town commanding a bridge across the Loire was being put in a state of defence, and strong bodies of troops thrown into them; and we heard that, as soon as the Germans reached the river, and farther advance was impossible, they would be attacked by the armies of Nemours and Aumale.
Meantime the royalists fell back from Aumale and Neufchatel, both of which places were at once occupied by the Leaguers: In pursuance of his original plan, the Duke of Parma advanced with his customary steadiness and deliberation towards Rouen. It was his intention to assault the king's army in its entrenchments in combination with a determined sortie to be made by the besieged garrison.
Mayenne, Nemours, Aumale, Mercoeur longed to convert temporary governments into independent principalities. The Duke of Lorraine looked with longing eyes on Verdun, Sedan, and, the other fair cities within the territories contiguous to his own domains.
Hugh Mortimer, lord of Wigmore, Cleobury, and Bridgenorth, the most powerful lord on the Welsh border, and Roger, Earl of Hereford and lord of Gloucester, and connected by his mother with the royal house of Wales, prepared for war. Immediately after his crowning Henry hurried to the north, accompanied by Theobald, and forced Aumale to submission. The fear of him fell on the barons.
Millions have been wrung from the sweat of toil to accomplish a worse than useless conquest, thousands of Frenchmen have been sacrificed on the burning sands of Africa, and all for what? that a throne might be won for a boy a boy without ability, or experience, and now the Duke of Aumale is Governor-General of Algeria, while hundreds of brave men are forgotten."
The background of this eminently picturesque scene, under the blazing eastern sun, was the wide horizon of the mountains of Bou Cada and Taguin, amongst which my brother Aumale captured Abd-el-Kadir's smalah.
But both Aumale and I were very eager to see something more of Portugal than the pleasures and official and political life of Lisbon. So as soon as we were back from the shooting excursion we started on a whimsical expedition of our own, which we hoped to carry as far as the ancient and celebrated university town of Coimbra.
For privacy, it was deemed expedient that Her Highness should withdraw to Aumale, under the plea of ill-health, and thence proceed to England; and it was also by way of Aumale that she as secretly returned, after the fatal disaster of the stoppage, to discourage the impression of her ever having been out of France. The mission was even unknown to the French Minister at the Court of St. James.
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