ABSTRACT
In traditional style the peace was sealed by dynastic marriages: of Philip II with Henry II's daughter, Elizabeth, and of Emmanuel Philibert of Piedmont-Savoy with Henry's sister, Margaret. But the rest of the terms made it clear that the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis was a power-political arrangement between France and Spain. It was characteristic of the dilemma in which Philip II found himself that this situation drove him to negotiate with Henry of Navarre in order to keep alive the civil wars in France and stop French intervention in the Netherlands. As in France after the massacre of St Bartholomew, many good Catholics, like the duke of Aerschot, now began to look for national unity, rather than religious uniformity imposed by Alva's methods. More and more the Netherlands were becoming the focal point for all the political and religious struggles of western Europe the only place where, as yet, France and England were beginning to challenge the hegemony of Spain.
