The duke then outlined the plan. Ten thousand new Spanish recruits under three ensigns were to be sent to Luxembourg, Naples, Sardinia, and Sicily to take the places of as many veteran troops there, for the King was unwilling to use Italian infantry. A thousand heavy-armed footmen and three or four hundred mounted arquebusiers, all Spanish, were to be drawn from Milan, the most loyal of Spain’s Italian dependencies. An indefinite number of reiters and other mercenaries could be had for the asking. These troops would proceed to the Netherlands through Savoy by way of Val d’Aoste or Mt. Cenis, Montmélian, Chambéry, and La Bresse, into Franche Comté and Lorraine, unless—and this was the crux of Alva’s interview with Fourquevaux—the winter season made it impossible to traverse the mountain passes, in which case His Catholic Majesty desired leave of France to take them by sea to Marseilles or Toulon and thence to march them northward up the Rhône to La Bresse and so reach Franche Comté. No one knew better than Alva the formidable nature of this proposition to France and he used all his artifice to conceal its danger, dwelling on the mutual connection between the Huguenot and the Flemish movement and the benefit that France would derive from the crushing of the rebellion in the Low Countries. Fourquevaux in reply declared that the Huguenots would fly to arms again, if a Spanish army should enter France, to which the duke rejoined that the presence of a Spanish army would so overawe them that they would not dare to do so. The ambassador then inquired whether the Emperor could support Philip, seeing that he was engaged in a war with the Turks[1052] and was incapable of raising funds in his behalf. Alva told him that the German princes would perceive that the Flemings were merely rebels and that “no prince or soldier in Germany, even were he a Lutheran, would refuse to take the pay of Spain.”[1053] But Fourquevaux refused to be convinced by Alva’s smooth words. He had information that Spain was borrowing ships from Malta, Genoa, and the papacy and Savoy and warned Charles IX to strengthen the garrisons in Languedoc and Provence.[1054]