was not afraid of Rome. Sully was urgent that the Provinces should now
go vigorously into the war without stumbling at any consideration. Thus
they would confirm their national power for all time, but if the
opportunity were now lost, it would be their ruin, and posterity would
most justly blame them. The King of Spain was so stripped of troops and
resources, so embarrassed by the Moors, that in ten months he would not
be able to send one man to the Netherlands.

Meantime the Nuncius in Paris was moving heaven and earth; storming,
intriguing, and denouncing the course of the King in protecting heresy,
when it would have been so easy to extirpate it, encouraging rebellion
and disorder throughout Christendom, and embarking in an action against
the Church and against his conscience. A new legate was expected daily
with the Pope's signature to the new league, and a demand upon the King
to sign it likewise, and to pause in a career of which something was
suspected, but very little accurately known. The preachers in Paris and
throughout the kingdom delivered most vehement sermons against the King,
the government, and the Protestants, and seemed to the King to be such
"trumpeters of sedition" that he ordered the seneschals and other
officers to put a stop to these turbulent discourses, censure their
authors, and compel them to stick to their texts.

But the preparations were now so far advanced and going on so warmly that
nothing more was wanting than, in the words of Aerssens, "to uncouple the
dogs and let them run." Recruits were pouring steadily to their places
of rendezvous; their pay having begun to run from the 25th March at the
rate of eight sous a day for the private foot soldier and ten sous for a
corporal. They were moved in small parties of ten, lodged in the wayside
inns, and ordered, on pain of death, to pay for everything they consumed.