horrible a conflagration; adding many arguments to show that it was no
fault of the Archdukes, but that he who was the cause of all might one
day have reason to repent.

Villeroy replied that "the King believed the Princess to be suffering and
miserable for love of him, and that therefore he felt obliged to have her
sent back to her father." Pecquius asked whether in his conscience the
Secretary of State believed it right or reasonable to make war for such a
cause. Villeroy replied by asking "whether even admitting the negative,
the Ambassador thought it were wisely done for such a trifle, for a
formality, to plunge into extremities and to turn all Christendom upside
down." Pecquius, not considering honour a trifle or a formality, said
that "for nothing in the world would his Highness the Archduke descend to
a cowardly action or to anything that would sully his honour." Villeroy
said that the Prince had compelled his wife, pistol in hand, to follow
him to the Netherlands, and that she was no longer bound to obey a
husband who forsook country and king. Her father demanded her, and she
said "she would rather be strangled than ever to return to the company of
her husband." The Archdukes were not justified in keeping her against
her will in perpetual banishment. He implored the Ambassador in most
pathetic terms to devise some means of sending back the Princess, saying
that he who should find such expedient would do the greatest good that
was ever done to Christianity, and that otherwise there was no guarantee
against a universal war. The first design of the King had been merely to
send a moderate succour to the Princes of Brandenburg and Neuburg, which
could have given no umbrage to the Archdukes, but now the bitterness
growing out of the affairs of the Prince and Princess had caused him to
set on foot a powerful army to do worse. He again implored Pecquius to
invent some means of sending back the Princess, and the Ambassador
besought him ardently to divert the King from his designs. Of this the