consider the King of England's offers, if he on his side would bind himself to assist them, should they be attacked on a pretext of religion, and would deposit 200,000 crowns as caution-money with the senate of Hamburg, which, in case of necessity, they might appropriate.[1]
Two years later the princes of the League could better estimate the relative importance of the alliance to England and to themselves. In fact, perhaps, the attitude of all the powers, Catholic or Protestant, in Europe towards this country depended on the issue of the struggle which the opening summer would bring with it. France was known to be straining every nerve to bring her old rival on her knees. Men, ships, and money were collected with unheard-of profusion; and the French themselves were so confident of success, that other nations shared inevitably, to some extent, the same expectations. The siege of Boulogne had not been pressed. The intention was to collect a fleet so large as absolutely to command the Channel. The occupation of the Isle of Wight—a more feasible enterprise than the march on London—would be the prelude of an attack on Portsmouth and the destruction of the fleet; and in the same stroke which crippled their naval power, the English would lose not Boulogne only, but their last hold upon the French soil. Montgomery, with five thousand men, was sent into Scotland to defend the Borders. The whole available strength of France remaining was collected at the mouth of the Seine. A hundred and fifty
- ↑ State Papers, vol. v. p. 554.
