Selected quad for the lemma: england_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
england_n	french_a	king_n	truce_n	2,525	5	11.6510	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A91712	France no friend to England. Or, The resentments of the French upon the success of the English. As it is expressed in a most humble and important remonstrance to the King of France, upon the surrendring of the maritime ports of Flanders into the hands of the English. Wherein, much of the private transactions between Cardinal Mazarin and the late Protector Oliver, are discovered. Translated out of French.; Très humble et très importante remonstrance au roi, sur le remise des places maritimes de Flandres entre les mains des Anglois. English.	Retz, Jean François Paul de Gondi de, 1613-1679.	1659 (1659)	Wing R1186; Thomason E986_21; ESTC R203406	16,767	27

then half the considerations they should have made upon this subject and that they have acted after the manner of them who deceiveth the sight by taking away one half of the day from the objects they would have shown and that your Minister keeps from your knowledg the most solid and the most important part of your interest We cannot deny but that your Maj. had a great deal of Reason to wish the falling out betwixt Spain and England but we maintain you had none at all to buy the Rupture at the price of a publick Scandal which eclipseth the glory of your Reign by such unparallell'd baseness which obscureth the splendor of your Renown by such tyes as makes you lose your ancient Allies by such unnecessary condescentions which makes the Protector of England Protector of the Hugonots in France by the unbridled licentiousness which made them build more then forty Temples since the death of the late King your Father of Sacred Memory and by the giving up of those places which gives the entry in the nearest places to your Capital City to the ancientest and mortallest enemie of your State Sir If all the forces of the Empire and Spain were triumphing in the midst of your Provinces if our fields were covered with the multitude of their Legions if all Europe had conspired against the Lillies we should never have look't for any succor from England and if we had certainly we should have shed tears of blood to be reduced to so great a straight as to seek for consolation in the infidelity of Rebels who would never have granted us any but to our destruction And we do firmly believe Sir that we shall never be brought to such Extremities as might make our interests depend from the good will of such people as have principles so directly opposite to ours The Divine Providence which so diffusively spreads its benediction upon the Piety and Valour of your Majesty hath ordained far more auspiciously the events of your happy destinie still Victorious over the indiscreet follies of your Minister shall more and more mark your dayes with continual Victories But Sir Is this to answer those blessings of heaven Is this to be sensible of the glory of your Reign Is this to know the advantages of your Victories to end them with the loss of your Conquests with the surrendring of Mardike and those other preambles to the Siege of Dunkirke which they forced out of your hands even with terrible menances You exhaust your Treasures you ransome your Subjects you expose all your Nobility all your Army is endangered every day they fight against the element they combat with the Rigour of the season and all those strugglings more then humane hath no other motive but the surrendring of the Key of Flanders unto a Nation which in two hundred years could not comfort themselves of the loss of that of France in being deprived of Callais Sir whosoever would had seen that which is done to day upon the Frontire of France drawn in a Table he would certainly have considered it as a Capricious fancie of a Painter who would have taken pleasure to play with his own imaginations or rather of a description of a Masquerade where those who enter the Lists do only make their Swords glister for the divertisement of the beholders If one would have shewn on the one part those vast fields of Dunkirke covered with Battalions and on the other part that little Territory of Mardike covered only with fourteen or fifteen hundred men which looketh upon the motions of the others with their hands hanging loose by their sides should not one have greater reason to believe that the later were Senators of old Rome who would for their own pleasure and recreation cause an Army of Gladiators and slaves to fight before them than to imagin that this great multitude were composed of free borne-men who with all their hearts sacrificeth their lives and fortunes for the conservation and glory of this handful of people We see the remnant of 4000 men flying up and down the banks or dunes of Flanders only for the service of 2 or 3000. Goviats or Crackropes which England sent in this small number We see them daily continue those sad engines and projects of this bloody spectacle wherewith they make account to feed the greedy eyes of Cromwell towards the beginning of the next Campain we see that this false Prophet beholdeth from the top of the Tower of London all those combats where all the blood that is spilt whether Spanish or French is drawn as if it were in a sacrifice which we our selves do offer to his illusions And which is more deplorable in these transactions it seems we are not contented to subject this age wherein we live to the will of this tyrant but that we do also affect to enslave our posterity to the English servitude by surrendring those places so famous and so considerable in the world Those places are so considerable Sir that France could not endure they should remaine in the power of Spain whose Naval forces are well known to be nothing dreadful to your Maj. and your Minister is pleased to deliver them unto England which is already Mistress of all the Seas and who doth only consider them as the first step or degree upon which they will hereafter mount up the bastions of Callis if the weakness of your Minister doth not prevent them by opening the gates by virtue of a treaty But Sir We humbly supplicate unto you that you would be pleased not to receive this which we now offer unto your Maj. as any spightful exaggeration carried on by the wings of malice It being evident that there is not so long a way between Dunkirk and Callis as there is between London and Dunkirk The Protector who makes the Pavillion of France humble it self before him which neither the Henryes nor the Edwards could ever have done cannot behold with a good eye those places in the hands of the French which the aforesaid Kings of England had enjoyed in your Kingdom wherein he keepeth by his Intelligence a party which those Kings had not And without doubt Sir he exasperates daily that Ulcer which knaweth incessantly our own entrails within us and the interest he assumes in the sylliest creature that belongeth to those of the reformed R●l●gion proveth pregnantly that Mardike and Dunki●k are not the bounds he puts to his designs God grant Sir that when this Daemon of ambition is once established in the main Continent by your Maj. own forces which gives him more advantages against your self then he could have hoped for in thirty years of open War against your Crown That after he hath made parties of his own within your Kingdome through the connivance or at least the ignorance of your Minister who doth even Idolatrize him God grant I say Sir that he doth not convert all his forces against France it self which is without contradiction the object which

is most natural and obvious to his desires God grant Sir that those places which we buy for him to day at the price of our blood of our goods of our Honour and of our consciences be not in a short time the Magazins and Arsenals that shall furnish out the ammunition destined to batter down ours God grant that those places be not the refuges of those Vessels which may hereafter block up our Havens God grant that the influence Dunkirk has does not make it self sensible even unto our residences Sir The most infallible Maxime for to judg wholsomly of the actions of men is to examin their interests which commonly are the Rules they prescribe to their actions and the delicatest Politician doth not absolutely reject the conjectures which might be drawn from their passions being often mingled together and running almost insensibly into those powers which gives motion to the most important affaires Those that are perswaded that as he had not faln out with the Catholick King but through rage and choller which made him arrest all his Ships and commit such insupportable Robberies upon the coast of Spaine are also of this opinion which hath also great deal of likelihood as well in respect of Cromwell as other Politicks it being very credible that the Furies wherewith he is agitated doth often occupy that place in his spirit which was destiny'd to the pure lights of reason Sir After what manner soever we manage our Judgment upon this matter it is impossible for to divide it between the Protectors interests and his passions and at whatsoever time we consider both the one and the other we find them in a perfect harmony to conspire against our greatness neither can we think the seeming union that is betwixt your Crown and England for the present to be any thing else but a Captious Truce which the Interest of the Protector hath violently extorted from his inclinations hoping to be better able to follow them after that the inveiglement of your Minister shall have done forging the most dangerous armes that can be employed against your Crown and Kingdome It is in this Kingdome Sir where besides other States which have but indirect alliances with the House of England that he seeth at every instant the Manes or Ghost of Henry the great threatnings the Parricide of his Son in Law it is in this Kingdome that he beholdeth Reigning so gloriously that blood which is confounded and mixt by many straight alliances with that which he had so barbarously spilt upon the Scaffold of White-hall It is in this Kingdome that he seeth already form'd in the noble minds of the French those lightnings and tempests with which they shall hereafter chastise his criminal head after that the providence of God shall through the loss of your Minister purifie their generous inclinations so naturally devoted to Monarchy the furies which alwayes agitateth Parricides impoisoneth daily the ulcerated and cankerous soul of this Tyrant by the fear of the indignation which he cannot escape but in appearance only by the diffidence he hath in your promises which he seeth to be forc't from your inclinations by the hatred of your blood which he hath so outragiously injured he knoweth too well that a Minister which is capable to put into his hands that which he durst not pretend unto with all the force of his arms is a Minister which nature doth not produce in all times and in all ages He cannot expect to find in an alteration which might happen God knows when in your Councel those faculties he hath met with in a blind and stupid Minister whose ignorance he improveth so well that he would willingly p●event those ordinary resolutions in France which perhaps in time would oppose the most rigorous and most subtil spirits he would make use of that imbecillity to conquer our Country which serves him now to deceive it and all these confiderations joyned together will undoubtedly represent themselves to his mind and reduce him peradventure to his own natural Genius which induced him to make war upon us by the space of four years with insuppor-table Pyracies without ever daigning to denounce any against us as if he were minded to adde that disdain to which we daily expose our selves to the other damages which we sustain in the ruin of our commerce that Genius which though obliged by so solemn a Treatie yet hinders him not upon all occasions fromtreating us rather like slaves then allies that Genius which is so fortified by a particular interest alwayes inseperable from such avaritions souls as his nay by those rapines and outragious Extortions which he can commit every hour in the sight of our Ports which are so near his and without comparison more commodious more considerable and more profitable to him then all the advantages he can derive from the far research of the Fleet of Spain which one may say to be as uncertain as their course is in the vast extension of the Ocean Those projects which came to nothing in the Indies but to his own confusion doth certainly turn his restless and ambitious imaginations to other parts nearer home and which are more exposed to his Tyranny He feeds his soul with those Soaring Ideas of the ancient Brittans which seems not to him so impossible as their examples and without doubt when he considers that the first of his Conquests costs him but so little pains he sooths up his ambitious thoughts which Ferries him over our Seas and represents unto him one time Guienne revolted under his Standarts and another time he fancyeth Normandie reduced under his Laws But we hope Sir that God Almighty will limit those vast designs by some extraordinary effect of his mercy upon poor England now Tyrannized and oppressed and that by a mighty stroke of his Justice he will no longer suffer this Tyrant to usurp the Lawful Inheritance of that August Prince who is Cousin German to your Maj. and who does so perfectly answer by his merits the Proximity of blood that is betwixt your Majesties In that case Sir what advantage shall France find in the necessity they have reduced the King of England to in Allying himself so straitly with the King of Spain In that case Sir may not we with great deal of reason complain of the little forecast of your Minister who by a very peculiar address against your Interest should joyn the most redoubtable puissance of the Sea with the considerablest forces of the Land that is in the world In that case Sir should not we with great deal of judgment apprehend from a Lawful King justly incensed that power which makes us now tremble being in the hands of an usurper whom we so often oblige and so observantly respect In that case Sir the same policy which yields up Dunkirk to the Changeling power of a Tyrant raised only by the uncertain motions of a blind and capricious fortune shall not refuse Callais to the soveraign authority of