dread your acquiring power here.  Whatever negotiations they pretend in regard to putting the kingdom or any of their cities under your protection, they have never had any real intention of doing it, but their only object is to keep up our vain hopes while they are carrying out their own ends.  If to-day they seem to have agreed upon any measure, tomorrow they are sure to get out of it again.  This has always been the case, and all your Majesty’s ministers that have had dealings here would say so, if they chose to tell the truth.  Men are disgusted with the entrance of the army, and if they were not expecting a more advantageous peace in the kingdom with my assistance than without it, I don’t know what they would do; for I have heard what I have heard and seen what I have seen.  They are afraid of our army, but they want its assistance and our money.”

Certainly if Philip desired enlightenment as to the real condition of the country he had determined to, appropriate; and the true sentiments of its most influential inhabitants, here, was the man most competent of all the world to advise him; describing the situation for him, day by day, in the most faithful manner.  And at every, step the absolutely puerile inadequacy of the means, employed by the king to accomplish his gigantic purposes became apparent.  If the crime of subjugating or at least dismembering the great kingdom of France were to, be attempted with any hope of success, at least it might have been expected that the man employed to consummate the deed would be furnished with more troops and money than would be required to appropriate a savage island off the Caribbean, or a German. principality.  But Philip expected miracles to be accomplished by the mere private assertion of his will.  It was so easy to conquer realms the writing table.

“I don’t say,” continued Farnese, “if I could have entered France with a competent army, well paid and disciplined, with plenty of artillery, and munitions, and with funds enough to enable Mayenne to buy up the nobles of his party, and to conciliate the leaders generally with presents and promises, that perhaps they might not have softened.  Perhaps interest and fear would have made that name agreeable which pleases them so little, now that the very reverse of all this has occurred.  My want of means is causing a thousand disgusts among the natives of the country, and it is this penury that will be the chief cause of the disasters which may occur.”

Here was sufficiently plain speaking.  To conquer a war-like nation without an army; to purchase a rapacious nobility with an empty purse, were tasks which might break the stoutest heart.  They were breaking Alexander’s.