situation of Sweden worse than it now was; and if Germany was to be
evacuated, it was at least better and nobler to do so sword in hand, and
to yield to force rather than to fear.

In the extremity in which the Swedes were now placed by the desertion of
their allies, they addressed themselves to France, who met them with the
greatest encouragement. The interests of the two crowns were closely
united, and France would have injured herself by allowing the Swedish
power in Germany to decline. The helpless situation of the Swedes, was
rather an additional motive with France to cement more closely their
alliance, and to take a more active part in the German war. Since the
alliance with Sweden, at Beerwald, in 1632, France had maintained the
war against the Emperor, by the arms of Gustavus Adolphus, without any
open or formal breach, by furnishing subsidies and increasing the number
of his enemies. But alarmed at the unexpected rapidity and success of
the Swedish arms, France, in anxiety to restore the balance of power,
which was disturbed by the preponderance of the Swedes, seemed, for a
time, to have lost sight of her original designs. She endeavoured to
protect the Roman Catholic princes of the empire against the Swedish
conqueror, by the treaties of neutrality, and when this plan failed, she
even meditated herself to declare war against him. But no sooner had
the death of Gustavus Adolphus, and the desperate situation of the
Swedish affairs, dispelled this apprehension, than she returned with
fresh zeal to her first design, and readily afforded in this misfortune
the aid which in the hour of success she had refused. Freed from the
checks which the ambition and vigilance of Gustavus Adolphus placed upon
her plans of aggrandizement, France availed herself of the favourable
opportunity afforded by the defeat of Nordlingen, to obtain the entire
direction of the war, and to prescribe laws to those who sued for her
powerful protection. The moment seemed to smile upon her boldest plans,
and those which had formerly seemed chimerical, now appeared to be
justified by circumstances. She now turned her whole attention to the
war in Germany; and, as soon as she had secured her own private ends by
a treaty with the Germans, she suddenly entered the political arena as
an active and a commanding power. While the other belligerent states
had been exhausting themselves in a tedious contest, France had been
reserving her strength, and maint