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.

Spain, therefore, the Spanish Netherlands, the Pope, and the German
League headed by Maximilian of Bavaria, the ablest prince on the
continent of Europe, presented a square, magnificent phalanx on which
Ferdinand might rely. The States-General, on the other hand, were a most
dangerous foe. With a centennial hatred of Spain, splendidly disciplined
armies and foremost navy of the world, with an admirable financial system
and vast commercial resources, with a great stadholder, first captain of
the age, thirsting for war, and allied in blood as well as religion to
the standard-bearer of the Bohemian revolt; with councils directed by the
wisest and most experienced of living statesman, and with the very life
blood of her being derived from the fountain of civil and religious
liberty, the great Republic of the United Netherlands--her Truce with the
hereditary foe just expiring was, if indeed united, strong enough at the
head of the Protestant forces of Europe to dictate to a world in arms.

Alas! was it united?

As regarded internal affairs of most pressing interest, the electoral
vote at the next election at Frankfurt had been calculated as being
likely to yield a majority of one for the opposition candidate, should