he
regarded as unnecessary; but he sent the Constable Montmorency to
propose that both monarchs should make a joint expedition against
Geneva, and declared himself ready to employ all his forces in the pious
undertaking. It may surprise us to learn that the prudent duke in turn
rejected the crusade against the Protestant citadel. Even Philip and his
equally bigoted agents could close their ears to the call to become the
instruments in the extirpation of heresy. While they could see neither
reason nor religion in the temporizing policy occasionally manifested by
other Roman Catholic sovereigns in their dealings with Protestant
subjects, Philip and Alva never suffered their hatred of schism to be so
uncompromising as to interfere with what they considered a material
interest of the state. Unfortunately for Philip, the quarrel of Geneva
would inevitably be espoused by the Bernese and the inhabitants of the
other Protestant cantons of Switzerland; and it was certainly
undesirable to provoke the enmity of a powerful body of freemen,
situated in dangerous proximity to the "Franche Comte"--the remnant of
Burgundy still in Spanish hands. It was no less imprudent, in view of
future contingencies, to render still more difficult the passage from
his Catholic Majesty's dominions in Northern Italy to the Netherlands.
So Alva, as he himself reports to his master, rejected the constable's
proposition, contenting himself with a few empty phrases respecting the
great profit that would flow to the cause of God and of royalty from an
exclusion of Roman Catholic subjects from that pestilent city on the
shores of Lake Leman.[688]

[Sidenote: Parliament suspected of heretical leanings.]

Henry had deemed the progress of the reformed doctrines in France so
formidable[689] as to dictate the necessity of making peace with Philip,
even upon humiliating terms. But where should he begin the savage work
for which he had made such sacrifices? His spiritual advisers pointed to
the courts of justice, which they accused of being lukewarm, and even
infected with heresy. For years they had been dwelling upon the same
theme. In 1556 the Sorbonne had denounced the parliament itself as
altogether heretical;[690] and, although Henry showed some indignation
at the suggestion, and sarcastically asked whether the theologians
aspired to become the supreme judges of the kingdom, it was notorious,
two years later, that they had succeeded in sowing in his breast a