Thus embittered and bloodthirsty towards each other were the two great
sections of the Reformed religion on the first centennial jubilee of the
Reformation. Such was the divided front which the anti-Catholic party
presented at the outbreak of the war with Catholicism.

Ferdinand, on the other hand, was at the head of a comparatively united
party. He could hardly hope for more than benevolent neutrality from the
French government, which, in spite of the Spanish marriages, dared not
wholly desert the Netherlands and throw itself into the hands of Spain;
but Spanish diplomacy had enslaved the British king, and converted what
should have been an active and most powerful enemy into an efficient if
concealed ally. The Spanish and archiducal armies were enveloping the
Dutch republic, from whence the most powerful support could be expected
for the Protestant cause. Had it not been for the steadiness of
Barneveld, Spain would have been at that moment established in full
panoply over the whole surface of those inestimable positions, the
disputed duchies. Venice was lukewarm, if not frigid; and Savoy,
although deeply pledged by passion and interest to the downfall of the
House of Austria, was too dangerously situated herself, too distant, too
poor, and too Catholic to be very formidable.

Ferdinand was safe from the Turkish side. A twenty years' peace,
renewable by agreement, between the Holy Empire and the Sultan had been
negotiated by those two sons of bakers, Cardinal Khlesl and the Vizier
Etmekdschifade. It was destined to endure through all the horrors of the
great war, a stronger protection to Vienna than all the fortifications
which the engineering art could invent. He was safe too from Poland,
King Sigmund being not only a devoted Catholic but doubly his brother-in-
law.