The Prince of Condé and the Protestants were now in array against the Guises, and Catharine de Medici was in the power of the latter. Both sides had striven to obtain the help of the German Protestant princes, but, in a great measure due to Cecil’s foresight, their sympathies were on the side of Condé. Cecil laboured incessantly, but against many difficulties, for the Queen was anxious to avoid the cost and risk of pledging herself too deeply. In an important letter to Throgmorton, 16th July 1562, he thus lays bare his plans and his obstacles: “Our thynges here depend so upon those matters ther (_i.e._ in France) that yow shall well ynough judg thereof without advertisement. This _hardness_ here will indanger all, I feare. Sir Thomas Wroth, I trust, shall into Germany with spede: my device is to sollicite them, and to offer a contribution for an army to enter France.… Good Mr. Throgmorton, omitt not now to advertise us from time to time, for this Bishop of Aquila letteth not weekly to forge new devices.… Continue your wryting to putt the Quene’s Majesty in remembrance of her peril if the Guisans prosper. And so, being overweryed with care, I end.”[168] There is another document of the same period in Cecil’s hand, which also shows how earnestly he tried to combat the peril, and make the Queen and Council understand it. It is a memorial setting forth “the perills growing uppon the overthrow of the Prince of Condé’s cause,”[169] and points out that if Condé be allowed to fall, the Guises would be supreme in France, “and to maynteane their faction they will pleasure the King of Spayne all that they maye. Hereupon shall follow a complott betwixt them twoo … the King of Spayne to unhable the house of Navarre for ever clayming the Kingdom of Navarre; and the house of Guise to promote their niece the Queen of Scotts to the crown of England. For doing thereof twoo thyngs principally will be attempted: the marriage of the sayd Queen with the Prince of Spayne, and the realme of Ireland to be given in a paye to the King of Spayne.” All English Catholics, he continues, will be told to make ready, and at a given moment rise; the Council of Trent will condemn all Protestants; the Guises, Spain, and the Pope will unite England and Scotland under Mary, and Protestantism will be undone. It will be, he says, too late then to withstand it, “for it shall be lyke a great rock of stone that is fallyng downe from the topp of a mountayn, which when it is comming no force can stey.”