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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.

When the Cardinal Infante, as Viceroy of the Spanish Netherlands, refused satisfaction for these injuries, and delayed to restore the prince to liberty, Richelieu, after the old custom, formally proclaimed war at Brussels by a herald, and the war was at once opened by three different armies in Milan, in the Valteline, and in Flanders.

If you had made war in the Valteline, you would not talk like that; and if you had seen his Eminence marching upon the dike at Rochelle, with the old Marquis de Spinola, while volleys of cannonshot were sent after him, you would have nothing to say about red-stockings." "Come, let us amuse ourselves, instead of quarrelling," said the other soldiers.

Rohan and Soubise demanded to be employed against Spain in the Valteline, claiming the destruction of Fort Louis; parleys mitigated hostilities; the Duke of Soubise obtained a suspension of arms from the Dutch Admiral Haustein, and then, profiting by a favorable gust of wind, approached the fleet, set fire to the admiral's ship, and captured five vessels, which he towed off to the Island of Re.

The moment seemed to have come for crushing La Rochelle, deprived of the naval forces that protected it; but the cardinal, still at grips with Spain in the Valteline, was not sure of his allies before La Rochelle.

When the Cardinal Infante, as Viceroy of the Spanish Netherlands, refused satisfaction for these injuries, and delayed to restore the prince to liberty, Richelieu, after the old custom, formally proclaimed war at Brussels by a herald, and the war was at once opened by three different armies in Milan, in the Valteline, and in Flanders.

The game was not yet safe; and Richelieu did not allow himself to be led astray by the anger of fanatics who dubbed him State Cardinal. Marshal Bassompierre was returning from his embassy to Switzerland, having secured the alliance of the Thirteen Cantons in the affair of the Valteline, when it was noised abroad that peace with Spain was signed.

Disturbances in the Swiss district of the Valteline soon enabled Bonaparte to intervene on behalf of the oppressed peasants, and to merge this territory also in the Cisalpine Republic, which consequently stretched from the high Alps southward to Rimini, and from the Ticino on the west to the Mincio on the east.

When the Cardinal Infante, as Viceroy of the Spanish Netherlands, refused satisfaction for these injuries, and delayed to restore the prince to liberty, Richelieu, after the old custom, formally proclaimed war at Brussels by a herald, and the war was at once opened by three different armies in Milan, in the Valteline, and in Flanders.

A government, with which France was on terms of alliance and amity, was thus robbed of its richest possession; but the Valteline belonged by natural position, religion, and language, to Italy, and its annexation to the new Italian republic was regarded as in itself just and proper, however questionable Buonaparte's title to effect that event.