in your power, especially those most sorrow-stricken Piedmontese:  firmly persuaded of this, that the intention was to have opened a passage to your persons over their bodies and deaths.  For my part, be assured [the expression in the singular:  de me scitote] that your safety and prosperity are no less my care and anxiety than if this fire had broken out in this our own Commonwealth, or than if those axes of the Schwytz Cantoners had been sharpened, and their swords drawn (as they veritably are, for all the Reformed are concerned), for our own necks.  No sooner, therefore, have we been informed of the state of your affairs, and the obdurate temper of your enemies, than, taking counsel with some very honourable persons, and some ministers of the Church of highest esteem for their piety, on the subject of the assistance it might be possible to send you consistently with our own present requirements, we have come to those resolutions which our agent Pell will communicate to you.  For the rest, we cease not to commend to the favour of Almighty God all your plans, and the protection of this most righteous cause of yours, whether in peace or in war.”—­From a private letter of Thurloe’s to Pell, of the same date as this official one, we learn that the persons consulted by Cromwell on the occasion were the Committee for the Piedmontese Collection (ante pp. 40-41), his Highness regarding the Piedmontese business and the Swiss business as radically identical, and desiring to prepare the public mind for exertions, if necessary, in behalf of Swiss Protestantism as extraordinary as those that had been made for the Piedmontese.  The conferences on the subject were very earnest, with the result that his Highness instructed Pell to offer the Cantons of Zuerich and Bern a subsidy of L20,000, at the rate of L5000 a month, on security for repayment—­the first L5000, however, to be sent immediately, without waiting for such security.[1]

[Footnote 1:  See Thurloe’s Letter in Vaughan’s Protectorate, I, 334-337.]

(LXIX.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, Feb. 1655-6:[1]—­This letter also is very important, though less in itself than in its circumstances; and it requires introduction.—­Charles X., or Charles Gustavus (Karl Gustav), the successor of Queen Christina on the Swedish throne, was proving himself a man of energy.  Chancellor Oxenstiern, so long the leading statesman of Sweden, had died in Aug. 1654, just after the accession of Charles; and under the new King, with the younger Oxenstiern for his Chancellor, Sweden had entered on a career of war, which was to continue through his whole reign, and the aim of which was little less than the extension of Sweden into an Empire across the Baltic.  He had begun with Poland, between which and Sweden there was an old feud, and the King of which then was John Casimir.  Other powers, however, had been immediately stirred by the war.  Denmark, Russia, and the German empire generally, were interested