What preparations had Spain and the Empire, the Pope and the League, set on foot to beat back even for a moment the overwhelming onset? None whatever. Spinola in the Netherlands, Fuentes in Milan, Bucquoy and Lobkowitz and Lichtenstein in Prague, had hardly the forces of a moderate peace establishment at their disposal, and all the powers save France and the States were on the verge of bankruptcy. Even James of Great Britain--shuddering at the vast thundercloud which had stretched itself over Christendom growing blacker and blacker, precisely at this moment, in which he had proved to his own satisfaction that the peace just made would perpetually endure--even James did not dare to traverse the designs of the king whom he feared, and the republic which he hated, in favour of his dearly loved Spain. Sweden, Denmark, the Hanse Towns, were in harmony with France, Holland, Savoy, and the whole Protestant force of Germany--a majority both in population and resources of the whole empire. What army, what combination, what device, what talisman, could save the House of Austria, the cause of Papacy, from the impending ruin? A sudden, rapid, conclusive victory for the allies seemed as predestined a result as anything could be in the future of human affairs. On the 14th or 15th day of May, as he had just been informing the States' ambassadors, Henry meant to place himself at the head of his army. That was the moment fixed by himself for "taking his departure." And now the ides of May had come--but not gone. In the midst of all the military preparations with which Paris had been resounding, the arrangements for the Queen's coronation had been simultaneously going forward. Partly to give check in advance to the intrigues which would probably at a later date be made by Conde, supported by the power of Spain, to invalidate the legitimacy of the Dauphin, but more especially perhaps to further and to conceal what the faithful Sully called the "damnable artifices" of the Queen's intimate councillors--sinister designs too dark to be even whispered at that epoch, and of which history, during the lapse of more than two centuries and a half, has scarcely dared to speak above its breath--it was deemed all important that the coronation should take place.