[Sidenote: Catharine implores Alva's assistance.] [Sidenote: Alva's view of accommodations with heretics.] Meantime Catharine was not idle in soliciting foreign aid. The Duke d'Aumale--who had also marched to Lorraine, in order to meet the Germans coming to the assistance of the Roman Catholics, under command of the Marquis of Baden--not being strong enough to block the passage of Conde's troops, Catharine wrote to Alva, begging him to send to the duke, in this emergency, two thousand arquebusiers. She warned him that if, through the failure to procure them, the German reiters of John Casimir should be permitted to enter the kingdom, she would hold herself exonerated, in the sight of God and of all Christian princes, from the blame that might otherwise attach to her for the peace which she would be compelled to make with the heretics.[476] Alva, in reply, declined to send the Spanish arquebusiers, who, he said, were needed by him, and could do little good in France; but he added that, if Aumale, who was a soldier, would guarantee with this accession to stop the reiters, he would let them go, useful as they were in the Netherlands. As to the accommodation with the Huguenots, which Catharine suggested, he viewed it as a frightful evil, and exclaimed "that it was better to have a kingdom ruined in preserving it for God and the king, than to retain it whole, but without religion, for the advantage of the devil and his partisans, the heretics."[477] [Sidenote: Conde and John Casimir meet in Lorraine.] [Sidenote: Generosity of the Huguenot troops.]