All the forces of Protestantism readily united against Spain; Richelieu had but to direct them.

She, in fact, was the great enemy, and her humiliation was always the ultimate aim of the cardinal's foreign policy; the struggle, power to power, between France and Spain, explains, during that period, nearly all the political and military complications in Europe.

There was no lack of pretexts for bringing it on.

The first was the question of the Valteline, a lovely and fertile valley, which, extending from the Lake of Como to the Tyrol, thus serves as a natural communication between Italy and Germany.

Possessed but lately, as it was, by the Grey Leagues of the Protestant Swiss, the Valteline, a Catholic district, had revolted at the instigation of Spain in 1620; the emperor, Savoy, and Spain had wanted to divide the spoil between them; when France, the old ally of the Grisons, had interfered, and, in 1623, the forts of the Valteline had been intrusted on deposit to the pope, Urban VIII.