Like England, France was spell-bound by the prospect of Spanish marriages, which for her at least were not a chimera, and looked on composedly while Savoy was on point of being sacrificed by the common invader of independent nationality whether Protestant or Catholic.  Nothing ever showed more strikingly the force residing in singleness of purpose with breadth and unity of design than all these primary movements of the great war now beginning.  The chances superficially considered were vastly in favour of the Protestant cause.  In the chief lands, under the sceptre of the younger branch of Austria, the Protestants outnumbered the Catholics by nearly ten to one.  Bohemia, the Austrias, Moravia, Silesia, Hungary were filled full of the spirit of Huss, of Luther, and even of Calvin.  If Spain was a unit, now that the Moors and Jews had been expelled, and the heretics of Castille and Aragon burnt into submission, she had a most lukewarm ally in Venice, whose policy was never controlled by the Church, and a dangerous neighbour in the warlike, restless, and adventurous House of Savoy, to whom geographical considerations were ever more vital than religious scruples.  A sincere alliance of France, the very flower of whose nobility and people inclined to the Reformed religion, was impossible, even if there had been fifty infantes to espouse fifty daughters of France.  Great Britain, the Netherlands, and the united princes of Germany seemed a solid and serried phalanx of Protestantism, to break through which should be hopeless.  Yet at that moment, so pregnant with a monstrous future, there was hardly a sound Protestant policy anywhere but in Holland.  How long would that policy remain sound and united?  How long would the Republic speak through the imperial voice of Barneveld?  Time was to show and to teach many lessons.  The united princes of Germany were walking, talking, quarrelling in their sleep; England and France distracted and bedrugged, while Maximilian of Bavaria and Ferdinand of Gratz, the cabinets of Madrid and the Vatican, were moving forward to their aims slowly, steadily, relentlessly as Fate.  And Spain was more powerful than she had been since the Truce began.  In five years she had become much more capable of aggression.  She had strengthened her positions in the Mediterranean by the acquisition and enlargement of considerable fortresses in Barbary and along a large sweep of the African coast, so as to be almost supreme in Africa.  It was necessary for the States, the only power save Turkey that could face her in those waters, to maintain a perpetual squadron of war ships there to defend their commerce against attack from the Spaniard and from the corsairs, both Mahometan and Christian, who infested every sea.  Spain was redoubtable everywhere, and the Turk, engaged in Persian campaigns, was offering no diversion against Hungary and Vienna.

“Reasons of state worthy of his Majesty’s consideration and wisdom,” said Barneveld, “forbid the King of Great Britain from permitting the Spaniard to give the law in Italy.  He is about to extort obedience and humiliation from the Duke of Savoy, or else with 40,000 men to mortify and ruin him, while entirely assuring himself of France by the double marriages.  Then comes the attack on these Provinces, on Protestant Germany, and all other states and realms of the religion.”