The ceremony of the King's abjuration was followed by a deputation of the Duke of Nevers to Rome, who, together with the Cardinal de Gondy and the Marquis de Pisany, was to offer the Pope the submission usual in such cases. Although this change was a mortal blow for the League, yet the Spaniards and the Duke of Mayenne still held out; they endeavored to persuade their partisans that there still remained resources capable of making it ineffectual; but they spoke at that time contrary to their own opinion, and this feigned confidence was only designed to obtain greater advantages from the King before he was securely fixed on the throne. This is not a mere conjecture, at least with regard to the King of Spain, since it is certain that he ordered Taxis and Stuniga to offer the King forces sufficient to reduce all the chiefs of the League and the Protestant party, without annexing any other condition to this offer than a strict alliance between the two crowns, and an agreement that the King should give no assistance to the rebels in the Low Countries. Philip II judged of Henry by himself, and considered his conversion only as the principle of a new political system, which made it necessary for him to break through his former engagements. It may not, perhaps, be useless to mention here an observation I have made on the conduct of Spain, which is, that although before and after the death of Catherine de' Medicis she had put a thousand different springs in motion, changed parties and interests as she thought most expedient to draw advantages from the divisions that shook this kingdom, yet the Protestant party was the only one to which she never made any application: she had often publicly protested that she never had the least intention to gain or suffer their alliance. It is by an effect of this very antipathy that the Spaniards have constantly refused the Reformed religion admission into their states--an antipathy which cannot be attributed to anything but the republican principles the Protestants are accused of having imbibed. The King being fully convinced that, to stifle the seeds of schism in his kingdom, it was necessary to give none of the different factions occasion to boast that his power was at their disposal, and that to reduce all parties he must be partial to none, he therefore steadily rejected these offers from Spain, and those which the Duke of Mayenne made him to the same purpose, but at that very time appeared willing to treat with any of the chiefs or cities of the League which would surrender, and to reward them in proportion to their readiness and services; and it was this prudent medium that he was resolved to persist in.