pointed despondingly to Henry's renewed league with the Empire; not choosing to confess, and yet unable to deny, that the same league had been within their own reach, and that they had trifled with their opportunity. Repentance now was too late. The substantial support of the Emperor, however hollow might be the motive with which it was given, was too valuable to the English to be flung away in the uncertain hope of a friendship unpopular in itself with most of them, and politically made useless by divided counsels and instability of purpose.
How little they could expect from France the Lutheran league had soon occasion of knowing. As soon as the attitude of Charles was definitively taken, the cabinet of Paris had no longer a serious intention of continuing the war. They had other work upon their hands. The glens of Languedoc and the valley of the Loire were already ringing with the shrieks of perishing heretics. The blood of four thousand innocents—old men, women, and children—was the pious expiation with which, at the opening of the Council of Trent, Francis
league with the Bishop of Rome, the apparent enemy of those Princes, and who hath in no one point joined himself with the Protestants nor will not, yet they esteem his friendship so much as they do, suffering men of his to be so familiar with them, and to levy in their countries against the King's Majesty. Let them look to the matter. The weaker they suffer his Majesty to be made, they shall find at length their part therein, and so tell them hardly their part is more therein than they know of. But few words sufficeth a wise man: for whensoever it pleaseth their enemies, they have in their hands wherewith to bring their antient friend, as they call him, the French King, on their necks with his drawn sword in his hand to overthrow those heretics, as the French King calleth them among his council.'—Paget to Mont: State Papers, vol. xi. p. 61.
