Excerpt from Some Chapters From the History, of the Rhine Country Although there is a general tendency to reject the de tails of the Grand Design as given by Sully, we can well ac cept its fundamental idea so far as Germany is concerned that of a reorganization of the Empire by the aid 'of a league of German princes. Henry's antagonism to Spain had not been affected by his change of religion; he was also not in sensible to the advantage of an extension of French territory. It was natural that he should strive for the weakening of the power of the Hapsburg house in Germany - natural that he should look to the Protestant states of Germany as his allies, for they also regarded the Hapsburg power with great dis trust. The German princes who were inclined to support France against the Emperor were Maurice the Wise, Landgrave of Hesse, the Elector Palatine, the Duke of Wiirtemberg and the Elector of Brandenburg. But they hesitated to ally themselves directly with France, not wishing to appear as traitors to the Emperor. The French agent in Germany, the Calvinist Bongars, had before him the difficult task of win ning the German princes to Henry's hoped-for offensive movement against the House of Hapsburg. He had not only to reassure them on account of Henry's conversion to to Catholicism and his Italian marriage, but he had to con vince them of the King's zeal for German liberty. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.