ibute for or against they
would, it was thought, be more ready to burden themselves with a view of
preserving peace than for an oppressive and devasting war. Others saw
in this offer nothing more than a temporary stratagem of the Protestants
by which they hoped to bind the court and keep it irresolute until they
should have gained sufficient strength to confront it. Others again
declared it to be a downright bravado in order to alarm the regent, and
to raise the courage of their own party by the display of such rich
resources. But whatever was the true motive of this proposition, its
originators gained little by it; the contributions flowed in scantily
and slowly, and the court answered the proposal with silent contempt.
The excesses, too, of the Iconoclasts, far from promoting the cause of
the league and advancing the Protestants interests, had done irreparable
injury to both. The sight of their ruined churches, which, in the
language of Viglius, resembled stables more than houses of God, enraged
the Roman Catholics, and above all the clergy. All of that religion,
who had hitherto been members of the league, now forsook it, alleging
that even if it had not intentionally excited and encouraged the
excesses of the Iconoclasts it had beyond question remotely led to them.
The intolerance of the Calvinists who, wherever they were the ruling
party, cruelly oppressed the Roman Catholics, completely expelled the
delusion in which the latter had long indulged, and they withdrew their
support from a party from which, if they obtained the upper hand, their
own religion had so much cause to fear. Thus the league lost many of
its best members; the friends and patrons, too, which it had hitherto
found amongst the well-disposed citizens now deserted it, and its
character began perceptibly to decline. The severity with which some of
its members had acted against the Iconoclasts in order to prove their
good disposition towards the regent, and to remove the suspicion of any
connection with the malcontents, had also injured them with the people
who favored the latter, and thus the league was in danger of ruining
itself with both parties at the same time. The regent had no sooner
became acquainted with this change in the public mind than she devised a
plan by which she hoped gradually to dissolve the whole league, or at
least to enfeeble it through internal dissensions. For this end she
availed herself of the private letters which the king