Struggling thus against his own difficulties, and triumphantly, accomplishing a whole paragraph with disabled hand, it was natural that the King should expect Alexander, then deep in the siege of Sluy’s, to vanquish all his obstacles as successfully; and to effect the conquest of England so soon as the harvests of that kingdom should be garnered.

Sluy’s was surrendered at last, and the great enterprise seemed opening from hour to hour.  During the months of autumn; upon the very days when those loving messages, mixed with gentle reproaches, were sent by Alexander to Elizabeth, and almost at the self-same hours in which honest Andrew de Loo was getting such head-aches by drinking the Queen’s health with Cosimo, and Champagny, the Duke and Philip were interchanging detailed information as to the progress of the invasion.  The King calculated that by the middle of September Alexander would have 30,000 men in the Netherlands ready for embarcation.—­Marquis Santa Cruz was announced as nearly ready to, sail for the English channel with 22,000 more, among whom were to be 16,000 seasoned Spanish infantry.  The Marquis was then to extend the hand to Parma, and protect that passage to England which the Duke was at once to effect.  The danger might be great for so large a fleet to navigate the seas at so late a season of the year; but Philip was sure that God, whose cause it was, would be pleased to give good weather.  The Duke was to send, with infinite precautions of secrecy, information which the Marquis would expect off Ushant, and be quite ready to act so soon as Santa Cruz should arrive.  Most earnestly and anxiously did the King deprecate any, thought of deferring the expedition to another year.  If delayed, the obstacles of the following summer—­a peace in France, a peace between the Turk and Persia, and other contingencies—­would cause the whole project to fail, and Philip declared, with much iteration, that money; reputation, honour, his own character and that of Farnese, and God’s service, were all at stake.  He was impatient at suggestions of difficulties occasionally, ventured by the Duke, who was reminded that he had been appointed chief of the great enterprise by the spontaneous choice of his master, and that all his plans had been minutely followed.  “You are the author of the whole scheme,” said Philip, “and if it, is all to vanish into space, what kind of a figure shall we cut the coming year?” Again and again he referred to the immense sum collected—­such as never before had been seen since the world was made—­4,800,000 ducats with 2,000,000 in reserve, of which he was authorized to draw for 500,000 in advance, to say nothing of the Pope’s million.