e enlisting was carried on with the utmost zeal. The viceroys
and governors of Sardinia, Sicily, Naples, and Milan received orders to
select the best of their Italian and Spanish troops in the garrisons and
despatch them to the general rendezvous in the Genoese territory, where
the Duke of Alva would exchange them for the Spanish recruits which he
should bring with him. At the same time the regent was commanded to
hold in readiness a few more regiments of German infantry in Luxembourg,
under the command of the Counts Eberstein, Schaumburg, and Lodrona, and
also some squadrons of light cavalry in the Duchy of Burgundy to
reinforce the Spanish general immediately on his entrance into the
provinces. The Count of Barlaimont was commissioned to furnish the
necessary provision for the armament, and a sum of two hundred thousand
gold florins was remitted to the regent to enable her to meet these
expenses and to maintain her own troops.

The French court, however, under pretence of the danger to be
apprehended from the Huguenots, had refused to allow the Spanish army to
pass through France. Philip applied to the Dukes of Savoy and Lorraine,
who were too dependent upon him to refuse his request. The former
merely stipulated that he should be allowed to maintain two thousand
infantry and a squadron of horse at the king's expense in order to
protect his country from the injuries to which it might otherwise be
exposed from the passage of the Spanish army. At the same time he
undertook to provide the necessary supplies for its maintenance during
the transit.

The rumor of this arrangement roused the Huguenots, the Genevese, the
Swiss, and the Grisons. The Prince of Conde and the Admiral Coligny
entreated Charles IX. not to neglect so favorable a moment of inflicting
a deadly blow on the hereditary foe of France. With the aid of the
Swiss, the Genevese, and his own Protestant subjects, it would, they
alleged, be an easy matter to destroy the flower of the Spanish troops
in the narrow passes of the Alpine mountains; and they promised to
support him in this undertaking with an army of fifty thousand
Huguenots. This advice, however, whose dangerous object was not easily
to be mistaken, was plausibly declined by Charles IX., who assured them
that he was both able and anxious to provide for the security of his
kingdom. He hastily despatched troops to cover the French frontiers;
and the republics of Geneva, Bern, Zurich, and the Grisons f