y exploits, was to undertake a work in Flanders such as that which,
two years before, he had recommended as the panacea for the woes of
France--a work with which his name will ever remain associated in the
annals of history. The "Beggars" of the Low Countries, like the Huguenots
in their last war, had taken up arms in defence of their religious, and,
to a less degree, of their civil rights. The "Beggars" complained of the
violation of municipal privileges and compacts, ratified by oath at their
sovereign's accession, as the Huguenots pointed to the infringement upon
edicts solemnly published as the basis of the pacification of the country;
and both refused any longer to submit to a tyranny that had, in the name
of religion, sent to the gallows or the stake thousands of their most
pious and industrious fellow-citizens. The cause was, therefore, common to
the Protestants of the two countries, and there was little doubt that
should the enemy of either prove successful at home, he would soon be
impelled by an almost irresistible impulse to assist his ally in
completing his portion of the praiseworthy undertaking. It is true that
the Huguenots of France were not now in actual warfare with the
government; but, that their time would come to be attacked, there was
every reason to apprehend. Hence, when the Duke of Alva, in the memorable
summer of 1567, set out from Piedmont at the head of ten thousand
veterans, to thread his way over the Alps and along the eastern frontiers
of France, through Burgundy and Lorraine, to the fated scene of his bloody
task in the Netherlands, the Protestants of France saw in this neighboring
demonstration a new peril to themselves. In the first moments of
trepidation, their leaders in the royal council are said to have
acquiesced in, if they did not propose, the levy of six thousand Swiss
troops, as a measure of defence against the Spanish general; and Coligny,
the same contemporary authority informs us, strongly advocated that they
should dispute the duke's passage.[422] Even if this statement be true,
they were not long in detecting, or believing that they had detected,
proofs that the Swiss troops were really intended for the overthrow of
Protestantism in France, rather than for any service against the Duke of
Alva. Letters from Rome and Spain were intercepted, we learn from Francois
de la Noue, containing evidence of the sinister designs of the court.[423]
The Prince of La Roche-sur-Yon, a prince