This information threw the court of France into great excitement. Catherine de Medici declared that the heretics would take up arms immediately, under such circumstances.[1055] The King wrote to Fourquevaux on December 24 not to spare any efforts to penetrate the designs of Spain.[1056] Sixteen thousand troops were sent into the Lyonnais at once.[1057] The marshal Vieilleville returned to Metz.[1058] The government began the erection of a great citadel in Verdun and to fortify the frontier against Luxembourg.[1059] D’Andelot was sent to Switzerland to make new enrolments.[1060] An agent was sent into Normandy with instructions to pass along the coast and take the names of master-mariners and sailors.[1061] The queen of Navarre began to mobilize forces in Béarn.[1062] All this time the duke of Alva kept endeavoring to quiet French alarm by reiterating that he would use all means in his power to avoid troubling France and that the army destined for Flanders, now increased by 1,500 light horse composed of Spaniards, Italians, and Albanians, would go by the valley of the Rhône only as a last recourse.[1063] Finally, in the middle of February, the duke of Alva’s preparations were made. Don Juan de Acuna, who had been sent to Savoy to make arrangements with the duke for the transit of the Spanish army, returned, after having made a satisfactory settlement. The army was to go through Savoy, via the Mt. Cenis and Chambéry, cross the Rhône at Yenne, and so proceed to Besançon in Franche Comté, where it was to be joined by German contingents. This averted the danger threatening Languedoc and Dauphiné, but threw it upon French Burgundy and Champagne.[1064] It was a roundabout route for the Spanish troops in the Milanais, but it was impossible to send them directly through Switzerland by way of the Grisons, Constance, Basel, and Strasburg without inflaming these localities; above all, Geneva would thereby have been menaced, and any movement imperiling that city would have fired the entire Calvinist world.[1065] [Illustration: March of the DUKE of ALVA THROUGH SAVOY, FRANCHE COMTÉ AND LORRAINE. ———————- Conjectured route]