26 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
sympathetic, without powerful external allies the new Protestant Union
was not strong enough to contend with the assistance which Spain
and Archduke Albrecht, the Habsburg regent in the Netherlands, were
expected to provide to Leopold. Moreover the situation in Cleves-Jülich
did not fall within the terms of the Union’s strictly defensive constitu-
tion, and other members, particularly the cities, were strongly opposed
to external entanglements.
The participation of France was clearly crucial, so the elector of the
Palatinate’s leading councillor, Prince Christian I of Anhalt-Bernburg,
who had a long-standing personal connection with the king, was
despatched to Paris in December 1609. There Christian somewhat mis-
leadingly told Henri that the princes of the Union had decided to recruit
a small army, which together with the claimants’ own forces would
amount to some 10,000 men. The response far exceeded his expec-
tations, as Henri agreed to match all the forces raised in Germany, a
promise which in turn was highly significant in persuading the Union
actually to raise their proposed army. Even so there was considerable
opposition at the Union meeting which followed in January, and efforts
to whip up religious anxieties, together with the personal presence of
most of the leading princes to over-awe the humbler representatives of
the cities, were necessary to secure agreement.^25
The resulting potential army of 20,000 men should have been equal
to the task, but contributions from England and the United Provinces
were still desirable in order to present the planned intervention as
being carried out by a broad international coalition, acting in the
name of justice in order to prevent the claimant princes being deprived
of their rightful inheritances by Habsburg autocracy. Both countries
remained reluctant, but diplomatic pressure over the following few
months, particularly from Henri, eventually persuaded them to agree,
the Dutch influenced by the fact that French support played an impor-
tant part in their struggle against Spain, and James I probably by prestige
considerations.
In the event Henri set about raising not the 10,000 troops he had
promised, but twice as many, as he himself confirmed, but without pro-
viding a convincing explanation. However he had for some time been
negotiating with the duke of Savoy, a shifty but ambitious prince with
a territory extending from north-west Italy into part of modern France,
encouraging him to break off relations with Spain and instead join an
alliance aiming at an attack on the Spanish province of Milan. How
serious Henri was in this cannot now be said, but the prospect cer-
tainly alarmed the Spanish, for whom Milan was even more important