rs, and Bergh, Comte de la Mark, and Lord
of Ravenstein, which had occurred on the 25th of March, and the
numerous claims made upon his succession, having rendered the ultimate
disposition of his duchy a matter of extreme importance to Henry, who
was reluctant to strengthen the power of Austria by permitting this
increase of territory to pass definitely into her hands,[417] as it had
already partially done, the Emperor having hastened to place the duchy
under sequestration.

The petty sovereigns thus despoiled protested energetically against such
an usurpation, and several among them had even entreated the protection
of France, to the great gratification of Henri IV, who thus found
himself doubly armed, as his interference on behalf of the aggrieved
Princes assured their cooperation in his own project of recovering from
the Emperor the provinces of Franche-Comte and Flanders, which had been
in the possession of Spain since the time of Charles V, and which had
formed, as we have elsewhere stated, the dowry of the Infanta on her
marriage with the Archduke Albert. Thus in the eyes of Europe the French
King was about to engage in this new war simply to enforce justice to
himself and his allies; but it was so evident to all who considered the
subject that these pretensions might have been put down at once by the
slightest show of resistance on his own part, and that so comparatively
unimportant a campaign might prudently have been entrusted to one of his
many able generals, that when it became known that an army of forty
thousand infantry, six thousand Swiss, the bodyguard, and a corps of
four thousand mounted nobles, together with a strong park of artillery,
were about to take the field under the command of the King in person,
there were few individuals acquainted with the circumstances which we
have just narrated who did not feel convinced that the monarch was
rather about to undertake a crusade for the deliverance of the Princesse
de Conde than a war for the preservation of his territories.

This opinion was, moreover, strengthened by the fact that throughout all
these hostile preparations Henry did not discontinue his negotiations
for the return of Madame de Conde to France. He pleaded the authority of
her father, the anxiety of her more than mother the Duchesse
d'Angouleme, his own authority over his subjects, the inclination of the
Princess herself to be once more under the protection of her family; but
all these pret