No more decisive defeat could have been inflicted on the Scottish host and the Britannic idea. Other events called Somerset home. The Scots could always be crushed in the field, but Scotland could not be annexed. Then came help from the good friend France, in the shape of French, German, and Italian troops; the English employed Germans and Spaniards. A Parliament decided to accept a French proposal (July, 1548): the Queen of Scots should marry, not the English King, but young Francis the Dauphin, and meantime should be placed out of harm's way. She was shipped off at Dumbarton, and landed in Britanny (August 13, 1548) to pass a happy girlhood in a lettered and luxurious Court. The war was prosecuted with a bloodthirst new in the savage annals of the borders; it was a war fought by mercenary Almains. When peace was signed in 1550, England had gained nothing, and upon the surface (though only upon the surface) Scotland was as Catholic as ever it had been, grateful to France, bitterly resentful against heretical England.
During the struggle Mary of Lorraine had borne herself bravely; she appeared as the guiding spirit of a national resistance. She or her advising kinsfolk were soon to make, though in less brutal sort, the mistake that Henry VIII had made, and this time it was to be irretrievable. During a visit to France (September, 1550-October, 1551) she schemed with her brothers and the French King. She was to take Arran's place as Regent; he had been compensated with the duchy (no empty title) of Châtelherault, and his eldest son (who now becomes the Arran of our story) was to command the French King's Scots guard. The arrangement was not perfected until 1554, for " the second person in the kingdom " was loth to relax his hold on a land of which he might soon be King; but the French influence was strong, and he yielded. Mary of Lorraine was no bad ruler for Scotland; but still the Scots could not help seeing that she was ruling in the interest of a foreign Power. Moreover, there had been a change in the religious environment: Mary Tudor had become Queen of England (July 6, 1558). John Knox, who after his sojourn in the French galleys had been one of King Edward's select preachers and had narrowly escaped the bishopric of Rochester, was fleeing to Geneva; and thence he went to Frankfort, there to quarrel with his fellow exile Dr Cox over the Book of Common Prayer. In Scotland Catholicism had been closely allied with patriotism; but when England became Catholic, Protestant preachers found refuge in Scotland. The King of France was cherishing the intrigues of English heretics against the Spanish Queen; Mary of Lorraine was no fanatic, and her policy was incompatible with stern repression. She was trying to make Scotland more securely French; the task was delicate; and she needed the support of nobles who had little love for the clergy. A few high offices were given to Frenchmen; a few French soldiers were kept in the fortresses; they were few, but enough to scatter whole hosts
