The Catholics adroitly emphasized the difference between the two Protestant faiths, with the hope not only of preventing Lutheran support of the Huguenots, but even of securing their aid against the French Calvinists. The duke of Guise went in person to confer with the duke of Württemberg at Saverne (February 15, 1562),[448] while Philip II redoubled his efforts to alienate the king of Navarre.[449] The support of the Spanish monarch was the vital factor in French politics. The French Calvinists had no single _most powerful ally_ to support them, such as the Catholic party enjoyed in the assistance of Spain. England was the only Protestant power capable of being a rival to Spain, and England was too cautious or too much occupied with home politics to risk embroilment abroad. Both Rome and Spain at this moment took a resolute attitude. Shortly after the conference of Poissy came to an end, a consistory of the curia, on October 10, 1561, had resolved to resist the Protestants in France.[450] The counter-reformation programme deliberated at Trent recognized Philip II as the secular head of the movement (“à ceste fin d’un commun consentement le tout chef et conducteur de toute l’enterprise”) who was to wheedle or compel the king of Navarre to commit himself in favor of the Catholic cause in France, of which the duke of Guise was to be formally recognized as leader. The Spanish monarch was also to bring pressure to bear upon the Emperor to compel the Catholic princes of Germany to prevent the Lutherans and Rhenish Calvinists from supporting the Protestants of France. France must be saved from self-ruin for the sake both of religion and the preservation of other Catholic nations. Time and circumstances would show the hour of such intervention, but everything must be prepared in advance.[451] Aside from his inflexible religious convictions, in Philip’s eyes, policy also pointed toward Spanish intervention in France. Spain, Spanish Burgundy, and Flanders were, as Montluc of Valence declared, “les trois plus belles fleurs de chapeau du roy Philippe;” each of them bordered France, and France lay between Spain and them, splitting the Spanish empire like a wedge. Under these circumstances the prevention of heresy in France was not merely an act of religious duty but an act dictated by political expediency. Moreover, Spain might territorially profit by such a policy. The son of Charles V dreamed of acquiring ducal Burgundy, which his father had failed to secure; the Three Bishoprics might be wrested away from Charles IX, either violently or as the price of Spanish aid, and joined to Franche Comté they would materially strengthen Spain’s midcontinental road from Lombardy to the mouths of the Rhine.[452]