self to be removed out of Casale, to go and die in a
neighboring castle.

Casale evacuated, the cardinal broke out violently against the
negotiators of Ratisbonne, saying that they had exceeded their powers,
and declaring that the king regarded the treaty as null and void; there
was accordingly a recommencement of negotiations with the emperor as well
as the Spaniards.

It was only in the month of September, 1631, that the states of Savoy and
Mantua were finally evacuated by the hostile troops. Pignerol had been
given up to the new Duke of Savoy, but a secret agreement had been
entered into between that prince and France: French soldiers remained
concealed in Pignerol; and they retook possession of the place in the
name of the king, who had purchased the town and its territory, to secure
himself a passage into Italy. The Spaniards, when they bad news of it,
made so much the more uproar as they had the less foreseen it, and as it
cut the thread of all the enterprises they were meditating against
Christendom. The affairs of the emperor in Germany were in too bad a
state for him to rekindle war, and France kept Pignerol. The house of
Austria, in fact, was threatened mortally. For two years Cardinal
Richelieu had been laboring to carry war into its very heart. Ferdinand
II. had displeased many electors of the empire, who began to be
disquieted at the advances made by his power. "It is, no doubt, a great
affliction for the Christian commonwealth," said the cardinal to the
German princes, "that none but the Protestants should dare to oppose such
pernicious designs; they must not be aided in their enterprises against
religion, but they must be made use of in order to maintain Germany in
the enjoyment of her liberties." The Catholic league in Germany,
habitually allied as it was with the house of Austria, did not offer any
leader to take the field against her. The King of Denmark, after a long
period of hostilities, had just made peace with the emperor; and, "in
their need, all these offended and despoiled princes looked, as sailors
look to the north," towards the King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus.

[Illustration: Gustavus Adolphus----282]

"The King of Sweden was a new rising sun, who, having been at war with
all his neighbors, had wrested from them several provinces; he was young,
but of great reputation, and already incensed against the emperor, not so
much on account of any real injuries he had received from him