, when an army under
Gaspard de Coligny, after sweeping four hundred leagues through the
southern and western provinces, was now in the immediate vicinity of
Paris? His forces, indeed, were small in numbers, but would speedily grow
formidable. The French ambassador sent from London the intelligence that
letters of credit had been sent from England to Hamburg in order to hasten
the entrance into France of some twelve or fifteen thousand Germans under
Duke Casimir; that twenty-five hundred men were to be despatched from La
Rochelle to make a descent on some point in Normandy or Brittany, in
conjunction with the ships of the Prince of Orange; and that the English
were to be invited to co-operate.[782] If it had proved impracticable to
prevent the Duc de Deux Ponts from marching across France to join the
confederates near the ocean, what hope was there that the king would be
able to hinder the union of Coligny and Casimir? Or, why might not both be
reinforced by the troops of La Noue, who had been accomplishing such
exploits in Aunis and Saintonge?

The princes of Germany added their intercessions to the stern logic of the
conflict. During the festivities in Heidelberg, attending the marriage of
John Casimir, Duke of Bavaria, and Elizabeth, daughter of the Elector of
Saxony, in June, 1570, the Elector Palatine, the Elector of Saxony, the
Margraves George Frederick of Brandenburg and Charles of Baden, Louis,
Duke of Wuertemberg, the Landgraves William, Philip and George of Hesse,
and Adolphus, Duke of Holstein, wrote a joint letter to Charles the Ninth
of France, in which they drew his attention to the injury which the long
war he was carrying on with his subjects was inflicting upon the states of
the empire, and to the necessity of speedily terminating it if he would
retain their good-will and friendship. And they assured him that there was
no way of accomplishing this result except by permitting the exercise of
the reformed religion throughout the kingdom, and abolishing all
distinctions between his Majesty's subjects of different faiths.[783]

[Sidenote: Anxiety of Cardinal Chatillon.]

When the war had so signally failed, it is not strange that the king and
his mother should have turned once more to the advocates of peace, with
whose return to favor the retirement of the Guises from court was
contemporaneous. Yet the Protestants, who knew too well from experience
the malignity of that hated family, could not but shudder