the Prince of Orange, the Admiral Coligny, the British Queen Elizabeth,
and the Protestant princes of Germany, supplies of men and money
from their subjects, to a degree which at present is inconceivable.

But, with all their exertions, they would have effected little against a power
which was an overmatch for any single adversary, however powerful.
At this period of imperfect policy, accidental circumstances alone
could determine distant states to afford one another a mutual support.
The differences of government, of laws, of language, of manners,
and of character, which hitherto had kept whole nations and countries
as it were insulated, and raised a lasting barrier between them,
rendered one state insensible to the distresses of another,
save where national jealousy could indulge a malicious joy at the reverses
of a rival. This barrier the Reformation destroyed. An interest
more intense and more immediate than national aggrandizement or patriotism,
and entirely independent of private utility, began to animate
whole states and individual citizens; an interest capable of uniting
numerous and distant nations, even while it frequently lost its force
among the subjects of the same government. With the inhabitants of Geneva,
for instance, of England, of Germany, or of Holland, the French Calvinist
possessed a common point of union which he had not with his own countrymen.
Thus, in one important particular, he ceased to be the citizen
of a single state, and to confine his views and sympathies
to his own country alone. The sphere of his views became enlarged.
He began to calculate his own fate from that of other nations of the same
religious profession, and to make their cause his own. Now for the first time
did princes venture to bring the affairs of other countries
before their own councils; for the first time could they hope
for a willing ear to their own necessities, and prompt assistance from others.
Foreign affairs had now become a matter of domestic policy,