Won by the Sword | Page 9

is,
knows that if France is to be great religious enmities must cease, and
that the wars of the last reign cost tens of thousands of lives, and drove
great numbers of men to take refuge in Holland or England, to the
benefit of those countries and our loss. Still, his successor, whoever he
may be, may think more of party and less of France, and in that case
you might have found your vocation of a Huguenot minister as full of
danger as that of a soldier."
"It would have been much worse," Hector said, "for it would not have
been a question of fighting, but of being massacred. I know nothing of
either religious disputes or of politics. In the regiment these things were
never talked about, either among the men or the officers; all were for

the king. But at the same time, as it seemed to them that it was the
cardinal who had stopped the persecution of the Huguenots, and who
had now gone to war with the Austrians to prevent the Protestant
princes of Germany being altogether subjugated by the Imperialists,
they felt grateful to him; for of course Scotchmen are all on the side of
the princes, and nigh half the army of Gustavus Adolphus was
composed of my countrymen."
"I do not suppose," Chavigny laughed, "that the cardinal would have
cared very much for the destruction of all the Protestant princes of
Germany, had it not been that their ruin would make Austria more
formidable than ever. As long as Gustavus lived and the Swedes were
able to hold their own against the Imperialists, France troubled herself
in no way in the matter; but when the Swedes were finally routed at
Nordlingen, and it seemed that the Imperialists would triumph
everywhere -- for most of the Protestant princes were leaving the
Confederacy and trying to make the best terms they could for
themselves -- Richelieu stepped in; and now we see France, which for
the past hundred years has been trying to stamp out Protestantism,
uniting with Protestant Holland and Sweden to uphold the Protestant
princes of Germany, and this under the direction of a cardinal of the
Church of Rome. And here are we riding behind a Huguenot general,
who perhaps more than any other possesses the cardinal's confidence."
"It seems strange," de Lisle said, "but it is assuredly good policy. While
fighting Austria we are fighting Spain, for Austria and Spain are but
two branches of one empire. Spain is our eternal enemy. True, she is
not as formidable as she was. Henry of Navarre's triumph over the
Guises half emancipated us from her influence. The English destroyed
her naval power. Holland well nigh exhausted her treasury, and brought
such discredit on her arms as she had never before suffered. Still, she
and Austria combined dominate Europe, and it is on her account that
we have taken the place of the Swedes and continued this war that has
raged for so many years."
CHAPTER II

: CHOOSING A LACKEY
The policy of the great cardinal had for its objects the aggrandizement
of France, as well as the weakening of the power of Austria. So long as
the struggle between the Protestant princes and the Swedes against the
Imperialists had been maintained with equal successes on both sides, he
had been well content to see Germany watering its soil with the blood
of its people. Nearly a third of the population had been swept away
during the terrible war. Many hundreds of towns and villages had
already disappeared, while large tracts of country lay uncultivated, and
whichever party won a victory France gained by it. Her interest,
however, lay with the Protestant confederation. So long as Germany
was cut up into a number of small principalities, divided by religion
and political animosity, she could count for little against a foreign
enemy.
France had for centuries suffered from the same cause. The families of
Lorraine, Bouillon, Enghien, Burgundy, the Guises, Longueville, the
Counts of Armagnac, and other powerful vassals of France, paid but a
nominal allegiance to the crown, and were really independent princes.
Louis XI had done much to break their power. Richelieu continued the
work, and under him France for the first time became consolidated into
a whole. Had he lived, the work would doubtless have been completed,
but his death and that of the king postponed the work for years. The
long regency, controlled by a minister possessing none of the courage
and firmness of Richelieu, and personally obnoxious alike to the nobles
and to the population of Paris, again threw the power into the hands of
the great nobles, plunged France into civil strife, and the wars of the
Fronde, like those of the Roses in England, so weakened the