d to the Netherlands, as well as for taking her old
stand as a champion of Catholicism. Rumours of her purpose had already
stolen over the Channel, and James was brought at last to suffer Sir
Horace Vere to take some English volunteers to the Palatinate. But the
succour came too late. Spinola, the Spanish general in the Low
Countries, was ordered to march to the aid of the Emperor; and the
famous Spanish battalions were soon moving up the Rhine. Their march
turned the local struggle in Bohemia into a European war. The whole face
of affairs was changed as by enchantment. The hesitation of the Union
was ended by the needs of self-defence; but it could only free its hands
for action against the Spaniards by signing a treaty of neutrality with
the Catholic League. The treaty sealed the fate of Bohemia. It enabled
the army of the League under Maximilian of Bavaria to march down the
valley of the Danube; Austria was forced to submit unconditionally to
Ferdinand; and in August, as Spinola reached the frontier of the
Palatinate, the joint army of Ferdinand and the League prepared to enter
Bohemia.

[Sidenote: The Parliament of 1621.]

On James the news of these events burst like a thunderbolt. He had been
duped; and for the moment he bent before the burst of popular fury
which the danger to German Protestantism called forth throughout the
land. The cry for a Parliament, the necessary prelude to a war,
overpowered the king's secret resistance; and the Houses were again
called together. But before they could meet the game of Protestantism
was lost. Spinola beat the troops of the Union back upon Worms, and
occupied with ease the bulk of the Palatinate. On the 8th of November
the army of the League forced Frederick to battle before the walls of
Prague; and before the day was over he was galloping off, a fugitive, to
North Germany. Such was the news that met the Houses on their assembly
at Westminster in January 1621. The instinct of every Englishman told
him that matters had now passed beyond the range of mediation or
diplomacy. Armies were moving, fierce passions were aroused, schemes of
vast ambition and disturbance were disclosing themselves; and at such a
moment the only intervention possible was an intervention of the sword.
The German princes called on James to send them an army. "The business
is gone too far to be redressed with words only," said the Danish king,
who was prepared to help them. "I thank God we hope, with the