Much to Oliver's surprise, the news of the proceedings of his men in Hispaniola aroused the bitterest indignation at Madrid, an indignation already, to some extent, aroused when Blake sailed out through the Straits of Gibraltar to meet and capture the treasure ships expected from America. The features of Philip IV. as--thanks to the brush of Velasquez--they meet us in every noted gallery in Europe, are not those of a man remarkable for wisdom, but he had none of the lingering hesitancy of his grandfather, Philip II. He ordered the seizure of the property of English merchants in Spanish harbours; and Oliver, after balancing for two years between France and Spain, had the question decided by his own mistaken belief that the world of Elizabeth remained unchanged. The breach with Spain necessitated a reconsideration of the relations between England and France. Ever since his accession to the Protectorate, Oliver had evaded the demands of the French Ambassador, Bordeaux, for a cessation of the war of reprisals at sea which had been bequeathed him by the Commonwealth. As English privateers captured more prizes than those of the French, he was in no hurry to bring the situation to an end till he obtained of Mazarin, the virtual ruler of France, a tacit understanding that the Huguenots should no longer be maltreated, and an express undertaking to expel from France the English Royal family and the chief Royalists in attendance on the exiled Court. Whilst these questions were still under discussion, an event occurred which, more than any other single action in his life, brought into relief the higher side of Cromwell's character and policy. In January, 1655, the young Duke of Savoy--or rather his mother, who, though he had come to years of discretion, acted in his name--ordered that the Vaudois, whose religion, though now akin to the Protestantism of the seventeenth century, dated from mediæval times, should be removed from the plain at the foot of the Piedmontese Valleys into which they had spread, to the upper and barer reaches, on the pretext that they had broken the bounds assigned them by his ancestors. In April his troops entered the valley, slaying and torturing as they went. When the news reached England in May, Oliver's heart was moved to its depths. He ordered a day of humiliation to be held, and a house-to-house visitation to collect money for the sufferers. Upwards of £38,000 was gathered in the end, the Protector heading the list with £2,000. He sent a Minister to Turin to remonstrate, but his warmest appeals were addressed to Mazarin, the all-powerful Minister of Louis XIV., as some French troops, acting as allies of the Duke in his war against the Spaniards in Italy, had been concerned in the massacre. Mazarin was plainly told that there would be no treaty with France till these massacres were stopped. The French Minister had been so long deluded of his hope of a treaty that this threat alone might not have terrified