Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/288

 250 Readings in European History proceeded with this kind of indignation and haughtiness with those who were refractory and dared to contend with his greatness, so towards those who complied with his good pleasure, and courted his protection, he used a wonderful civility, generosity, and bounty. To reduce three nations, which perfectly hated him, to an entire obedience to all his dictates ; to awe and govern those nations by an army that was indevoted to him and wished his ruin ; was an instance of a very prodigious address. But his greatness at home was but a shadow of the glory he had abroad. It was hard to discover which feared him most, France, Spain, or the Low Countries, where his friendship was current at the value he put upon it. And as they did all sacrifice their honour and their interest to his pleasure, so there is nothing he could have demanded that either of them would have denied him. To manifest which, there need only two instances. The first is, when those of the valley of Lucerne had unwarily rebelled against the duke of Savoy, 1 which gave occasion to the pope and the neighbour princes of Italy to call and solicit for their extirpation, which their prince positively resolved upon, Cromwell sent his agent to the duke of Savoy (a prince with whom he had no correspondence or commerce), and so engaged the Cardinal [Mazarin], and even terrified the pope himself, without so much as doing any grace to the English Catholics (nothing being more usual than his saying that his ships in the Medi- terranean should visit Civita Vieca, and that the sound of his canon should be heard in Rome), that the duke of Savoy thought it necessary to restore all that he had taken from them, and did renew all those privileges they had formerly enjoyed and newly forfeited. A pamphlet of the time shows how a great part of the English must have felt in 1659 m regard to the expe- diency of calling back Charles II. 1 Clarendon appears to be somewhat confused at this point. He evidently refers to the massacre of the Vaudois by the duke of Savoy, which aroused Protestant Europe in 1655.