ould be gone before making
his arrangements with Lesdiguieres. "He knows that he can put no trust in
Spain, and that he can confide in me," said the King. "I have made a
great stroke by thus entangling the King of Spain by the use of a few
troops in Italy. But I assure you that there is none but me and My Lords
the States that can do anything solid. Whether the Duke breaks or holds
fast will make no difference in our first and great designs. For the
honour of God I beg them to lose no more time, but to trust in me. I will
never deceive them, never abandon them."

At last 25,000 infantry and 5000 cavalry were already in marching order,
and indeed had begun to move towards the Luxemburg frontier, ready to
co-operate with the States' army and that of the possessory princes for
the campaign of the Meuse and Rhine.

Twelve thousand more French troops under Lesdiguieres were to act with
the Duke of Savoy, and an army as large was to assemble in the Pyrenees
and to operate on the Spanish frontier, in hope of exciting and fomenting
an insurrection caused by the expulsion of the Moors. That gigantic act
of madness by which Spain thought good at this juncture to tear herself
to pieces, driving hundreds of thousands of the most industrious, most
intelligent, and most opulent of her population into hopeless exile, had
now been accomplished, and was to stand prominent for ever on the records
of human fatuity.

Twenty-five thousand Moorish families had arrived at Bayonne, and the
Viceroy of Canada had been consulted as to the possibility and expediency
of establishing them in that province, although emigration thither seemed
less tempting to them than to Virginia. Certainly it was not unreasonable
for Henry to suppose that a kingdom thus torn by internal convulsions
might be more open to a well organized attack, than capable of carrying
out at that moment fresh projects of universal dominion.

As before observed, Sully was by no means in favour of this combined
series of movements, although at a later day, when dictating his famous
memoirs to his secretaries, he seems to describe himself as
enthusiastically applauding and almost originating them. But there is no
doubt at all that throughout this eventful spring he did his best to
concentrate the whole attack on Luxemburg and the Meuse districts, and
wished that the movements in the Milanese and in Provence should be
considered merely a slight accessory, as not much more than a div