Imagining that the succour which he expected from the Spanish court, and the movements of the French malecontents, would render it impossible for Henry to attack him, Charles Emmanuel, on his return to Turin, refused to carry the treaty into effect. Henry determined, therefore, to resort to force. To Biron, of whose fidelity he did not yet doubt, he offered the command of the army; and the marshal, in order to avoid suspicion, was compelled to accept it. All that, without betraying himself, he could do to shun success, he did. But the duke of Savoy, relying on his intrigues, had left his fortresses scantily provided with the means of defence, and they consequently made only a feeble resistance, in spite of Biron’s wishes and faulty measures. It was a fatal circumstance for the Savoyard prince, that the power of Spain was palsied by the recent accession of the contemptible Philip the third. Had the second Philip been alive, the viceroy of Milan, the count de Fuentes, a deadly foe of Henry, would probably have led his numerous forces from the Milanese, and made the contest something like what the duke had vauntingly threatened to make it, “a forty years’ affair.” As it was, Fuentes could only recommend to Biron, to seize the king and send him to Spain, “where,” said he, contemptuously, “he shall be well treated, and we will divert him with dancing, and banquetting among the ladies.” Biron shrank from this step, yet, in one of his furious outbreaks of passion, he meditated a fouler crime. At the siege of fort St. Catherine, knowing that the king was about to visit the trenches, he sent a message to the governor, to point his cannon on a certain part of them, and to place in another a company of musketeers, who were to fire when a signal was given. But he quickly repented of his purpose, and kept the king from approaching the perilous spots. Though the marshal renounced the base idea of becoming the murderer of his sovereign, he did not renounce his plots against him. La Fin was still employed in negotiating for him with the count de Fuentes, and a second treaty was agreed upon at Milan. It was arranged that the duke of Savoy should sign a peace, which, however, he was to break as soon as the French armies were withdrawn, and the Spanish troops were ready; that the Spanish monarch should give to the marshal the title of his lieutenant-general, and secure to him Burgundy, and a princess of Spain or Savoy; and that, in case of the war being unsuccessful, he should be indemnified for his loss by the payment of twelve hundred thousand golden crowns, and an annuity of a hundred and twenty thousand.