They were to find that it was not for nothing that they had scouted the threats and warnings of Richelieu. That old man, sitting in his study in the Palais Cardinal in Paris, held in his frail hands the threads of all the diplomacy of Europe. He had long looked with no favourable eye upon England, for the alliance which he had himself brought about had proved one of his greatest disappointments. The union of the crowns of England and Scotland had deprived France of a warm and constant ally,[203] and it was to counterbalance this loss that Henry IV had planned, and Richelieu had carried out, Henrietta's marriage. The Cardinal had not reckoned upon the indeed somewhat unlikely contingency that a royal marriage should also become a marriage of affection and community of interest. The first step in his defeat was the dismission of the French in 1626, and this insult, which circumstances did not permit him to avenge at once, was never forgiven to its author the King of England, whom he also hated, because, in the words of Madame de Motteville, he believed him to have a Spanish heart, and because Queen Anne was allowed to carry on her Spanish correspondence by way of England. Of Henrietta he had hardly a better opinion. She had fulfilled none of the purposes for which he had sent her into England, and though originally she had unwillingly submitted to her husband's will in the matter of her servants, in later days she had made no great effort to recall them. She had done little to cement an alliance between the two kingdoms, and the English Catholics, whom she had been specially commissioned to win over, remained, for the most part, obstinately attached to the interests of Spain. Their relations had been, moreover, severely strained by the Chateauneuf episode, and they were further embittered by the disgrace and exile of Mary de' Medici, which her daughter rightly attributed to Richelieu, whose conduct in the matter she considered an act of the blackest ingratitude towards the woman who had made his fortune.