Those intense religious convictions of the Spanish King which made him believe he was the divinely ordained instrument of the counter-Reformation, united with his political purposes and ambitions, required him to keep a watchful eye upon France.[865] The Netherlands, France, Italy, England, Scotland were like so many squares of a vast political chessboard upon which he aimed so to move the pieces he was in command of as ultimately to seize possession of those countries, and redeem them from heresy. Mary Stuart was an important personage in Philip’s purposes. He wanted to put her on the throne of Elizabeth and thus unite Scotland and England under a common Catholic rule. For a time he dreamed of marrying her to his own son, Don Carlos, until Catherine interfered and offered her daughter Marguerite as a less dangerous alternative to France. The death of Don Carlos,[866] the eternal irresolution of the Spanish King, the development of new events, continually altered the details of Philip’s purposes, but his essential aim never varied an iota.[867] The subjugation of France, not in the exact terms of loss of sovereignty, perhaps, but no less in loss of true national independence was a necessary condition of Philip’s purposes. The kingdom of France was situated in the very center of those dominions whose consolidation was to be the Spanish King’s realization of universal rule. Spain bordered her on the south; the Netherlands on the north; in the east lay Franche Comté. Besides these territories which were directly Spanish, the Catholic cantons of Switzerland and Savoy were morally in vassalage to Spain. Beyond Franche Comté lay the Catholic Rhinelands, bound to the other branch of the house of Hapsburg. Beyond Switzerland and Savoy lay Italy, save Venice entirely, and Rome in part, a group of Spanish dominions. Catherine de Medici combated Philip II both at Madrid and Vienna. But by the side of the negative purpose to thwart Philip’s proposed alliances, Catherine de Medici had purposes of her own of the same sort. The daughter of a house made rich by banking and which never lived down the bourgeois tradition of its ancestry in spite of all its wealth and power, even though popes had come from its house, Catherine was fascinated by the thought of marrying Charles IX to the eldest daughter of the Hapsburgs, and her favorite son, the future Henry III, then known as the duke of Orleans-Anjou, to the Spanish princess Juana, sister of Philip, hoping to see some of Spain’s numerous dominions pass to France as part of Juana’s dowry. In the pursuance of this double marriage project, the queen early began to beset Philip II for a personal interview, and urged her daughter to persuade the king to the same end, using Pius IV’s cherished idea of a concert of the great Catholic powers to consider the condition and needs of Christendom with some adroitness as a screen to her own personal purposes.[868]