Pecquius considered that the King had tried to get him into a net, and to

entrap him into the avowal of a promise which he had never made. Henry

remained obstinate in his assertions, notwithstanding all the envoy's

protestations.

"A fine trick, indeed, and unworthy of a king, 'Si dicere fas est,'" he

wrote to Secretary of State Praets. "But the force of truth is such that

he who spreads the snare always tumbles into the ditch himself."

Henry concluded the subject of Conde at this interview by saying that he

could have his pardon on the conditions already named, and not otherwise.

He also made some complaints about Archduke Leopold, who, he said,

notwithstanding his demonstrations of wishing a treaty of compromise, was

taking towns by surprise which he could not hold, and was getting his

troops massacred on credit.

Pecquius expressed the opinion that it would be better to leave the

Germans to make their own arrangements among themselves, adding that

neither his masters nor the King of Spain meant to mix themselves up in

the matter.

"Let them mix themselves in it or keep out of it, as they like," said

Henry, "I shall not fail to mix myself up in it."

The King was marvellously out of humour.

Before finishing the interview, he asked Pecquius whether Marquis Spinola

was going to Spain very soon, as he had permission from his Majesty to do

so, and as he had information that he would be on the road early in Lent.

The Minister replied that this would depend on the will of the Archduke,

and upon various circumstances. The answer seemed to displease the King,

and Pecquius was puzzled to know why. He was not aware, of course, of

Henry's project to kidnap the Marquis on the road, and keep him as a

surety for Conde.

The Envoy saw Villeroy after the audience, who told him not to mind the

King's ill-temper, but to bear it as patiently as he could. His Majesty

could not digest, he said, his infinite displeasure at the obstinacy of

the Prince; but they must nevertheless strive for a reconciliation. The

King was quick in words, but slow in deeds, as the Ambassador might have

observed before, and they must all try to maintain peace, to which he

would himself lend his best efforts.

As the Secretary of State was thoroughly aware that the King was making

vast preparations for war, and had given in his own adhesion to the

project, it is refreshing to observe the candour with which he assured

the representative of the adverse party of his determination that

friendliest relations should be preserved.

It is still more refreshing to find Villeroy, the same afternoon, warmly

uniting with Sully, Lesdiguieres, and the Chancellor, in the decision

that war should begin forthwith.

For the King held a council at the Arsenal immediately after this

interview with Pecquius, in which he had become convinced that Conde

would never return. He took the Queen with him, and there was not a

dissentient voice as to the necessity of beginning hostilities at once.

Sully, however, was alone in urging that the main force of the attack

should be in the north, upon the Rhine and Meuse. Villeroy and those who

were secretly in the Spanish interest were for beginning it with the

southern combination and against Milan. Sully believed the Duke of Savoy

to be variable and attached in his heart to Spain, and he thought it

contrary to the interests of France to permit an Italian prince to grow

so great on her frontier. He therefore thoroughly disapproved the plan,

and explained to the Dutch ambassador that all this urgency to carry on

the war in the south came from hatred to the United Provinces, jealousy

of their aggrandizement, detestation of the Reformed religion, and hope

to engage Henry in a campaign which he could not carry on successfully.

But he assured Aerssens that he had the means of counteracting these

designs and of bringing on an invasion for obtaining possession of the

Meuse. If the possessory princes found Henry making war in the Milanese

only, they would feel themselves ruined, and might throw up the game. He

begged that Barneveld would come on to Paris at once, as now or never was

the moment to assure the Republic for all time.

The King had acted with malicious adroitness in turning the tables upon

the Prince and treating him as a rebel and a traitor because, to save his

own and his wife's honour, he had fled from a kingdom where he had but

too good reason to suppose that neither was safe. The Prince, with

infinite want of tact, had played into the King's hands. He had bragged

of his connection with Spain and of his deep designs, and had shown to

all the world that he was thenceforth but an instrument in the hands of

the Spanish cabinet, while all the world knew the single reason for which

he had fled.

The King, hopeless now of compelling the return of Conde, had become most

anxious to separate him from his wife. Already the subject of divorce

between the two had been broached, and it being obvious that the Prince

would immediately betake himself into the Spanish dominions, the King was

determined that the Princess should not follow him thither.

He had the incredible effrontery and folly to request the Queen to

address a letter to her at Brussels, urging her to return to France. But

Mary de' Medici assured her husband that she had no intention of becoming

his assistant, using, to express her thought, the plainest and most

vigorous word that the Italian language could supply. Henry had then

recourse once more to the father and aunt.

That venerable couple being about to wait upon the Archduke's envoy, in

compliance with the royal request, Pecquius, out of respect to their

advanced age, went to the Constable's residence. Here both the Duchess

and Constable, with tears in their eyes, besought that diplomatist to do

his utmost to prevent the Princess from the sad fate of any longer

sharing her husband's fortunes.

The father protested that he would never have consented to her marriage,

preferring infinitely that she should have espoused any honest gentleman

with 2000 crowns a year than this first prince of the blood, with a

character such as it had proved to be; but that he had not dared to

disobey the King.

He spoke of the indignities and cruelties to which she was subjected,

said that Rochefort, whom Conde had employed to assist him in their

flight from France, and on the crupper of whose horse the Princess had

performed the journey, was constantly guilty of acts of rudeness and

incivility towards her; that but a few days past he had fired off pistols

in her apartment where she was sitting alone with the Princess of Orange,

exclaiming that this was the way he would treat anyone who interfered

with the commands of his master, Conde; that the Prince was incessantly

railing at her for refusing to caress the Marquis of Spinola; and that,

in short, he would rather she were safe in the palace of the Archduchess

Isabella, even in the humblest position among her gentlewomen, than to

know her vagabondizing miserably about the world with her husband.

This, he said, was the greatest fear he had, and he would rather see her

dead than condemned to such a fate.

He trusted that the Archdukes were incapable of believing the stories

that he and the Duchess of Angouleme were influenced in the appeals they

made for the separation of the Prince and Princess by a desire to serve

the purposes of the King. Those were fables put about by Conde. All that

the Constable and his sister desired was that the Archduchess would

receive the Princess kindly when she should throw herself at her feet,

and not allow her to be torn away against her will. The Constable spoke

with great gravity and simplicity, and with all the signs of genuine

emotion, and Peter Pecquius was much moved. He assured the aged pair that

he would do his best to comply with their wishes, and should immediately

apprise the Archdukes of the interview which had just taken place. Most

certainly they were entirely disposed to gratify the Constable and the

Duchess as well as the Princess herself, whose virtues, qualities, and

graces had inspired them with affection, but it must be remembered that

the law both human and divine required wives to submit themselves to the

commands of their husbands and to be the companions of their good and

evil fortunes. Nevertheless, he hoped that the Lord would so conduct the

affairs of the Prince of Conde that the Most Christian King and the

Archdukes would all be satisfied.

These pious and consolatory commonplaces on the part of Peter Pecquius

deeply affected the Constable. He fell upon the Envoy's neck, embraced

him repeatedly, and again wept plentifully.

CHAPTER III.

Strange Scene at the Archduke's Palace--Henry's Plot frustrated--

His Triumph changed to Despair--Conversation of the Dutch Ambassador

with the King--The War determined upon.

It was in the latter part of the Carnival, the Saturday night preceding

Shrove Tuesday, 1610. The winter had been a rigorous one in Brussels, and

the snow lay in drifts three feet deep in the streets. Within and about

the splendid palace of Nassau there was much commotion. Lights and

flambeaux were glancing, loud voices, martial music, discharge of pistols

and even of artillery were heard together with the trampling of many

feet, but there was nothing much resembling the wild revelry or cheerful

mummery of that holiday season. A throng of the great nobles of Belgium

with drawn swords and menacing aspect were assembled in the chief

apartments, a detachment of the Archduke's mounted body-guard was

stationed in the courtyard, and five hundred halberdiers of the burgher

guilds kept watch and ward about the palace.

The Prince of Conde, a square-built, athletic young man of middle

stature, with regular features, but a sulky expression, deepened at this

moment into ferocity, was seen chasing the secretary of the French

resident minister out of the courtyard, thwacking him lustily about the

shoulders with his drawn sword, and threatening to kill him or any other

Frenchman on the spot, should he show himself in that palace. He was

heard shouting rather than speaking, in furious language against the

King, against Coeuvres, against Berny, and bitterly bewailing his

misfortunes, as if his wife were already in Paris instead of Brussels.

Upstairs in her own apartment which she had kept for some days on pretext

of illness sat the Princess Margaret, in company' of Madame de Berny,

wife of the French minister, and of the Marquis de Coeuvres, Henry's

special envoy, and a few other Frenchmen. She was passionately fond of

dancing. The adoring cardinal described her as marvellously graceful and

perfect in that accomplishment. She had begged her other adorer, the

Marquis Spinola, "with sweetest words," that she might remain a few days

longer in the Nassau Palace before removing to the Archduke's residence,

and that the great general, according to the custom in France and

Flanders, would be the one to present her with the violins. But Spinola,

knowing the artifice concealed beneath these "sweetest words," had

summoned up valour enough to resist her blandishments, and had refused a

second entertainment.

It was not, therefore, the disappointment at losing her ball that now

made the Princess sad. She and her companions saw that there had been a

catastrophe; a plot discovered. There was bitter disappointment and deep

dismay upon their faces. The plot had been an excellent one. De Coeuvres

had arranged it all, especially instigated thereto by the father of the

Princess acting in concurrence with the King. That night when all was

expected to be in accustomed quiet, the Princess, wrapped in her

mantilla, was to have stolen down into the garden, accompanied only by

her maid the adventurous and faithful Philipotte, to have gone through a

breach which led through a garden wall to the city ramparts, thence

across the foss to the counterscarp, where a number of horsemen under

trustworthy commanders were waiting. Mounting on the crupper behind one

of the officers of the escort, she was then to fly to the frontier,

relays of horses having been provided at every stage until she should

reach Rocroy, the first pausing place within French territory; a perilous

adventure for the young and delicate Princess in a winter of almost

unexampled severity.

On the very morning of the day assigned for the adventure, despatches

brought by special couriers from the Nuncius and the Spanish ambassador

at Paris gave notice of the plot to the Archdukes and to Conde, although

up to that moment none knew of it in Brussels. Albert, having been

apprised that many Frenchmen had been arriving during the past few days,

and swarming about the hostelries of the city and suburbs, was at once

disposed to believe in the story. When Conde came to him, therefore, with

confirmation from his own letters, and demanding a detachment of the

body-guard in addition to the burgher militiamen already granted by the

magistrates, he made no difficulty granting the request. It was as if

there had been a threatened assault of the city, rather than the

attempted elopement of a young lady escorted by a handful of cavaliers.

The courtyard of the Nassau Palace was filled with cavalry sent by the

Archduke, while five hundred burgher guards sent by the magistrates were

drawn up around the gate. The noise and uproar, gaining at every moment

more mysterious meaning by the darkness of night, soon spread through the

city. The whole population was awake, and swarming through the streets.

Such a tumult had not for years been witnessed in Brussels, and the

rumour flew about and was generally believed that the King of France at

the head of an army was at the gates of the city determined to carry off

the Princess by force. But although the superfluous and very scandalous

explosion might have been prevented, there could be no doubt that the

stratagem had been defeated.

Nevertheless, the effrontery and ingenuity of de Coeuvres became now

sublime. Accompanied by his colleague, the resident minister, de Berny,

who was sure not to betray the secret because he had never known it--his

wife alone having been in the confidence of the Princess--he proceeded

straightway to the Archduke's palace, and, late in the night as it was,

insisted on an audience.

Here putting on his boldest face when admitted to the presence, he

complained loudly of the plot, of which he had just become aware,

contrived by the Prince of Conde to carry off his wife to Spain against

her will, by main force, and by assistance of Flemish nobles, archiducal

body-guard, and burgher militia.

It was all a plot of Conde, he said, to palliate still more his flight

from France. Every one knew that the Princess could not fly back to Paris

through the air. To take her out of a house filled with people, to pierce

or scale the walls of the city, to arrange her journey by ordinary means,

and to protect the whole route by stations of cavalry, reaching from

Brussels to the frontier, and to do all this in profound secrecy, was

equally impossible. Such a scheme had never been arranged nor even

imagined, he said. The true plotter was Conde, aided by ministers in

Flanders hostile to France, and as the honour of the King and the

reputation of the Princess had been injured by this scandal, the

Ambassador loudly demanded a thorough investigation of the affair in

order that vengeance might fall where it was due.

The prudent Albert was equal to the occasion. Not wishing to state the

full knowledge which he possessed of de Coeuvres' agency and the King's

complicity in the scheme of abduction to France, he reasoned calmly with

the excited marquis, while his colleague looked and listened in dumb

amazement, having previously been more vociferous and infinitely more

sincere than his colleague in expressions of indignation.

The Archduke said that he had not thought the plot imputed to the King

and his ambassador very probable. Nevertheless, the assertions of the

Prince had been so positive as to make it impossible to refuse the guards

requested by him. He trusted, however, that the truth would soon be

known, and that it would leave no stain on the Princess, nor give any

offence to the King.

Surprised and indignant at the turn given to the adventure by the French

envoys, he nevertheless took care to conceal these sentiments, to abstain

from accusation, and calmly to inform them that the Princess next morning

would be established under his own roof; and enjoy the protection of the

Archduchess.

For it had been arranged several days before that Margaret should leave

the palace of Nassau for that of Albert and Isabella on the 14th, and the

abduction had been fixed for the night of the 13th precisely because the

conspirators wished to profit by the confusion incident on a change of

domicile.

The irrepressible de Coeuvres, even then hardly willing to give up the

whole stratagem as lost, was at least determined to discover how and by

whom the plot had been revealed. In a cemetery piled three feet deep with

snow on the evening following that mid-winter's night which had been

fixed for the Princess's flight, the unfortunate ambassador waited until

a certain Vallobre, a gentleman of Spinola's, who was the go-between of

the enamoured Genoese and the Princess, but whom de Coeuvres had gained

over, came at last to meet him by appointment. When he arrived, it was

only to inform him of the manner in which he had been baffled, to

convince him that the game was up, and that nothing was left him but to

retreat utterly foiled in his attempt, and to be stigmatized as a

blockhead by his enraged sovereign.

Next day the Princess removed her residence to the palace of the

Archdukes, where she was treated with distinguished honour by Isabella,

and installed ceremoniously in the most stately, the most virtuous, and

the most dismal of courts. Her father and aunt professed themselves as

highly pleased with the result, and Pecquius wrote that "they were glad

to know her safe from the importunities of the old fop who seemed as mad

as if he had been stung by a tarantula."

And how had the plot been revealed? Simply through the incorrigible

garrulity of the King himself. Apprised of the arrangement in all its

details by the Constable, who had first received the special couriers of

de Coeuvres, he could not keep the secret to himself for a moment, and

the person of all others in the world to whom he thought good to confide

it was the Queen herself. She received the information with a smile, but

straightway sent for the Nuncius Ubaldini, who at her desire instantly

despatched a special courier to Spinola with full particulars of the time

and mode of the proposed abduction.

Nevertheless the ingenuous Henry, confiding in the capacity of his deeply

offended queen to keep the secret which he had himself divulged, could

scarcely contain himself for joy.

Off he went to Saint-Germain with a train of coaches, impatient to get

the first news from de Coeuvres after the scheme should have been carried

into effect, and intending to travel post towards Flanders to meet and

welcome the Princess.

"Pleasant farce for Shrove Tuesday," wrote the secretary of Pecquius, "is

that which the Frenchmen have been arranging down there! He in whose

favour the abduction is to be made was seen going out the same day

spangled and smart, contrary to his usual fashion, making a gambado

towards Saint-Germain-en-Laye with four carriages and four to meet the

nymph."

Great was the King's wrath and mortification at this ridiculous exposure

of his detestable scheme. Vociferous were Villeroy's expressions of

Henry's indignation at being supposed to have had any knowledge of or

complicity in the affair. "His Majesty cannot approve of the means one

has taken to guard against a pretended plot for carrying off the

Princess," said the Secretary of State; "a fear which was simulated by

the Prince in order to defame the King." He added that there was no

reason to suspect the King, as he had never attempted anything of the

sort in his life, and that the Archduke might have removed the Princess

to his palace without sending an army to the hotel of the Prince of

Orange, and causing such an alarm in the city, firing artillery on the

rampart as if the town had been full of Frenchmen in arms, whereas one

was ashamed next morning to find that there had been but fifteen in all.

"But it was all Marquis Spinola's fault," he said, "who wished to show

himself off as a warrior."

The King, having thus through the mouth of his secretary of state warmly

protested against his supposed implication in the attempted abduction,

began as furiously to rail at de Coeuvres for its failure; telling the

Duc de Vendome that his uncle was an idiot, and writing that unlucky

envoy most abusive letters for blundering in the scheme which had been so

well concerted between them. Then he sent for Malherbe, who straightway

perpetrated more poems to express the King's despair, in which Henry was

made to liken himself to a skeleton with a dried skin, and likewise to a

violet turned up by the ploughshare and left to wither.

He kept up through Madame de Berny a correspondence with "his beautiful

angel," as he called the Princess, whom he chose to consider a prisoner

and a victim; while she, wearied to death with the frigid monotony and

sepulchral gaieties of the archiducal court, which she openly called her

"dungeon" diverted herself with the freaks and fantasies of her royal

adorer, called him in very ill-spelled letters "her chevalier, her heart,

her all the world," and frequently wrote to beg him, at the suggestion of

the intriguing Chateau Vert, to devise some means of rescuing her from

prison.

The Constable and Duchess meanwhile affected to be sufficiently satisfied

with the state of things. Conde, however, received a letter from the

King, formally summoning him to return to France, and, in case of

refusal, declaring him guilty of high-treason for leaving the kingdom

without the leave and against the express commands of the King. To this

letter, brought to him by de Coeuvres, the Prince replied by a paper,

drawn up and served by a notary of Brussels, to the effect that he had

left France to save his life and honour; that he was ready to return when

guarantees were given him for the security of both. He would live and

die, he said, faithful to the King. But when the King, departing from the

paths of justice, proceeded through those of violence against him, he

maintained that every such act against his person was null and invalid.

Henry had even the incredible meanness and folly to request the Queen to

write to the Archdukes, begging that the Princess might be restored to

assist at her coronation. Mary de' Medici vigorously replied once more

that, although obliged to wink at the King's amours, she declined to be

his procuress. Conde then went off to Milan very soon after the scene at

the Nassau Palace and the removal of the Princess to the care of the

Archdukes. He was very angry with his wife, from whom he expressed a

determination to be divorced, and furious with the King, the validity of

whose second marriage and the legitimacy of whose children he proposed

with Spanish help to dispute.

The Constable was in favour of the divorce, or pretended to be so, and

caused importunate letters to be written, which he signed, to both Albert

and Isabella, begging that his daughter might be restored to him to be

the staff of his old age, and likewise to be present at the Queen's

coronation. The Archdukes, however, resolutely refused to permit her to

leave their protection without Conde's consent, or until after a divorce

had been effected, notwithstanding that the father and aunt demanded it.

The Constable and Duchess however, acquiesced in the decision, and

expressed immense gratitude to Isabella.

"The father and aunt have been talking to Pecquius," said Henry very

dismally; "but they give me much pain. They are even colder than the

season, but my fire thaws them as soon as I approach."

"P. S.--I am so pining away in my anguish that I am nothing but skin and

bones. Nothing gives me pleasure. I fly from company, and if in order to

comply with the law of nations I go into some assembly or other, instead

of enlivening, it nearly kills me."--[Lettres missives de Henri vii.

834].

And the King took to his bed. Whether from gout, fever, or the pangs of

disappointed love, he became seriously ill. Furious with every one, with

Conde, the Constable, de Coeuvres, the Queen, Spinola, with the Prince of

Orange, whose councillor Keeremans had been encouraging Conde in his

rebellion and in going to Spain with Spinola, he was now resolved that

tho war should go on. Aerssens, cautious of saying too much on paper of

this very delicate affair, always intimated to Barneveld that, if the

Princess could be restored, peace was still possible, and that by moving

an inch ahead of the King in the Cleve matter the States at the last

moment might be left in the lurch. He distinctly told the Advocate, on

his expressing a hope that Henry might consent to the Prince's residence

in some neutral place until a reconciliation could be effected, that the

pinch of the matter was not there, and that van der Myle, who knew all

about it, could easily explain it.

Alluding to the project of reviving the process against the Dowager, and

of divorcing the Prince and Princess, he said these steps would do much

harm, as they would too much justify the true cause of the retreat of the

Prince, who was not believed when he merely talked of his right of

primogeniture: "The matter weighs upon us very heavily," he said, "but

the trouble is that we don't search for the true remedies. The matter is

so delicate that I don't dare to discuss it to the very bottom."

The Ambassador had a long interview with the King as he lay in his bed

feverish and excited. He was more impatient than ever for the arrival of

the States' special embassy, reluctantly acquiesced in the reasons

assigned for the delay, but trusted that it would arrive soon with

Barneveld at the head, and with Count Lewis William as a member for "the

sword part of it."

He railed at the Prince of Orange, not believing that Keeremans would

have dared to do what he had done but with the orders of his master. He

said that the King of Spain would supply Conde with money and with

everything he wanted, knowing that he could make use of him to trouble

his kingdom. It was strange, he thought, that Philip should venture to

these extremities with his affairs in such condition, and when he had so

much need of repose. He recalled all his ancient grievances against

Spain, his rights to the Kingdom of Navarre and the County of St. Pol

violated; the conspiracy of Biron, the intrigues of Bouillon, the plots

of the Count of Auvergne and the Marchioness of Verneuil, the treason of

Meragne, the corruption of L'Hoste, and an infinity of other plots of the

King and his ministers; of deep injuries to him and to the public repose,

not to be tolerated by a mighty king like himself, with a grey beard. He

would be revenged, he said, for this last blow, and so for all the rest.

He would not leave a troublesome war on the hands of his young son. The

occasion was favourable. It was just to defend the oppressed princes with

the promptly accorded assistance of the States-General. The King of Great

Britain was favourable. The Duke of Savoy was pledged. It was better to

begin the war in his green old age than to wait the pleasure and

opportunity of the King of Spain.

All this he said while racked with fever, and dismissed the Envoy at

last, after a long interview, with these words: "Mr. Ambassador--I have

always spoken roundly and frankly to you, and you will one day be my

witness that I have done all that I could to draw the Prince out of the

plight into which he has put himself. But he is struggling for the

succession to this crown under instructions from the Spaniards, to whom

he has entirely pledged himself. He has already received 6000 crowns for

his equipment. I know that you and my other friends will work for the

conservation of this monarchy, and will never abandon me in my designs to

weaken the power of Spain. Pray God for my health."

The King kept his bed a few days afterwards, but soon recovered. Villeroy

sent word to Barneveld in answer to his suggestions of reconciliation

that it was too late, that Conde was entirely desperate and Spanish. The

crown of France was at stake, he said, and the Prince was promising

himself miracles and mountains with the aid of Spain, loudly declaring

the marriage of Mary de' Medici illegal, and himself heir to the throne.

The Secretary of State professed himself as impatient as his master for

the arrival of the embassy; the States being the best friends France ever

had and the only allies to make the war succeed.

Jeannin, who was now never called to the council, said that the war was

not for Germany but for Conde, and that Henry could carry it on for eight

years. He too was most anxious for Barneveld's arrival, and was of his

opinion that it would have been better for Conde to be persuaded to

remain at Breda and be supported by his brother-in-law, the Prince of

Orange. The impetuosity of the King had however swept everything before

it, and Conde had been driven to declare himself Spanish and a pretender

to the crown. There was no issue now but war.

Boderie, the King's envoy in Great Britain, wrote that James would be

willing to make a defensive league for the affairs of Cleve and Julich

only, which was the slenderest amount of assistance; but Henry always

suspected Master Jacques of intentions to baulk him if possible and

traverse his designs. But the die was cast. Spinola had carried off Conde

in triumph; the Princess was pining in her gilt cage in Brussels, and

demanding a divorce for desertion and cruel treatment; the King

considered himself as having done as much as honour allowed him to effect

a reconciliation, and it was obvious that, as the States' ambassador

said, he could no longer retire from the war without shame, which would

be the greatest danger of all.

"The tragedy is ready to begin," said Aerssens. "They are only waiting

now for the arrival of our ambassadors."

On the 9th March the King before going to Fontainebleau for a few days

summoned that envoy to the Louvre. Impatient at a slight delay in his

arrival, Henry came down into the courtyard as he was arriving and asked

eagerly if Barneveld was coming to Paris. Aerssens replied, that the

Advocate had been hastening as much as possible the departure of the

special embassy, but that the condition of affairs at home was such as

not to permit him to leave the country at that moment. Van der Myle, who

would be one of the ambassadors, would more fully explain this by word of

mouth.

The King manifested infinite annoyance and disappointment that Barneveld

was not to make part of the embassy. "He says that he reposes such

singular confidence in your authority in the state, experience in

affairs, and affection for himself," wrote Aerssens, "that he might treat

with you in detail and with open heart of all his designs. He fears now

that the ambassadors will be limited in their powers and instructions,

and unable to reply at once on the articles which at different times have

been proposed to me for our enterprise. Thus much valuable time will be

wasted in sending backwards and forwards."

The King also expressed great anxiety to consult with Count Lewis William

in regard to military details, but his chief sorrow was in regard to the

Advocate. "He acquiesced only with deep displeasure and regret in your

reasons," said the Ambassador, "and says that he can hope for nothing

firm now that you refuse to come."

Villeroy intimated that Barneveld did not come for fear of exciting the

jealousy of the English.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

He who spreads the snare always tumbles into the ditch himself

Most detestable verses that even he had ever composed

She declined to be his procuress

THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND

WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR

By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.

The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, v3, 1610

CHAPTER IV.

Difficult Position of Barneveld--Insurrection at Utrecht subdued by

the States' Army--Special Embassies to England and France--Anger of

the King with Spain and the Archdukes--Arrangements of Henry for the

coming War--Position of Spain--Anxiety of the King for the Presence

of Barneveld in Paris--Arrival of the Dutch Commissioners in France

and their brilliant Reception--Their Interview with the King and his

Ministers--Negotiations--Delicate Position of the Dutch Government--

India Trade--Simon Danzer, the Corsair--Conversations of Henry with

the Dutch Commissioners--Letter of the King to Archduke Albert--

Preparations for the Queen's Coronation, and of Henry to open the

Campaign in person--Perplexities of Henry--Forebodings and Warnings

--The Murder accomplished--Terrible Change in France--Triumph of

Concini and of Spain--Downfall of Sully--Disputes of the Grandees

among themselves--Special Mission of Condelence from the Republic--

Conference on the great Enterprise--Departure of van der Myle from

Paris.

There were reasons enough why the Advocate could not go to Paris at this

juncture. It was absurd in Henry to suppose it possible. Everything

rested on Barneveld's shoulders. During the year which had just passed he

had drawn almost every paper, every instruction in regard to the peace

negotiations, with his own hand, had assisted at every conference, guided

and mastered the whole course of a most difficult and intricate

negotiation, in which he had not only been obliged to make allowance for

the humbled pride and baffled ambition of the ancient foe of the

Netherlands, but to steer clear of the innumerable jealousies,

susceptibilities, cavillings, and insolences of their patronizing

friends.

It was his brain that worked, his tongue that spoke, his restless pen

that never paused. His was not one of those easy posts, not unknown in

the modern administration of great affairs, where the subordinate

furnishes the intellect, the industry, the experience, while the bland

superior, gratifying the world with his sign-manual, appropriates the

applause. So long as he lived and worked, the States-General and the

States of Holland were like a cunningly contrived machine, which seemed

to be alive because one invisible but mighty mind vitalized the whole.

And there had been enough to do. It was not until midsummer of 1609 that

the ratifications of the Treaty of Truce, one of the great triumphs in

the history of diplomacy, had been exchanged, and scarcely had this

period been put to the eternal clang of arms when the death of a lunatic

threw the world once more into confusion. It was obvious to Barneveld

that the issue of the Cleve-Julich affair, and of the tremendous

religious fermentation in Bohemia, Moravia, and Austria, must sooner or

later lead to an immense war. It was inevitable that it would devolve

upon the States to sustain their great though vacillating, their generous

though encroaching, their sincere though most irritating, ally. And yet,

thoroughly as Barneveld had mastered all the complications and

perplexities of the religious and political question, carefully as he had

calculated the value of the opposing forces which were shaking

Christendom, deeply as he had studied the characters of Matthias and

Rudolph, of Charles of Denmark and Ferdinand of Graz, of Anhalt and

Maximilian, of Brandenburg and Neuburg, of James and Philip, of Paul V.

and Charles Emmanuel, of Sully and Yilleroy, of Salisbury and Bacon, of

Lerma and Infantado; adroitly as he could measure, weigh, and analyse all

these elements in the great problem which was forcing itself on the

attention of Europe--there was one factor with which it was difficult for

this austere republican, this cold, unsusceptible statesman, to deal: the

intense and imperious passion of a greybeard for a woman of sixteen.

For out of the cauldron where the miscellaneous elements of universal war

were bubbling rose perpetually the fantastic image of Margaret

Montmorency: the fatal beauty at whose caprice the heroic sword of Ivry

and Cahors was now uplifted and now sheathed.

Aerssens was baffled, and reported the humours of the court where he

resided as changing from hour to hour. To the last he reported that all

the mighty preparations then nearly completed "might evaporate in smoke"

if the Princess of Conde should come back. Every ambassador in Paris was

baffled. Peter Pecquius was as much in the dark as Don Inigo de Cardenas,

as Ubaldini or Edmonds. No one save Sully, Aerssens, Barneveld, and the

King knew the extensive arrangements and profound combinations which had

been made for the war. Yet not Sully, Aerssens, Barneveld, or the King,

knew whether or not the war would really be made.

Barneveld had to deal with this perplexing question day by day. His

correspondence with his ambassador at Henry's court was enormous, and we

have seen that the Ambassador was with the King almost daily; sleeping or

waking; at dinner or the chase; in the cabinet or the courtyard.

But the Advocate was also obliged to carry in his arms, as it were, the

brood of snarling, bickering, cross-grained German princes, to supply

them with money, with arms, with counsel, with brains; to keep them awake

when they went to sleep, to steady them in their track, to teach them to

go alone. He had the congress at Hall in Suabia to supervise and direct;

he had to see that the ambassadors of the new republic, upon which they

in reality were already half dependent and chafing at their dependence,

were treated with the consideration due to the proud position which the

Commonwealth had gained. Questions of etiquette were at that moment

questions of vitality. He instructed his ambassadors to leave the

congress on the spot if they were ranked after the envoys of princes who

were only feudatories of the Emperor. The Dutch ambassadors, "recognising

and relying upon no superiors but God and their sword," placed themselves

according to seniority with the representatives of proudest kings.

He had to extemporize a system of free international communication with

all the powers of the earth--with the Turk at Constantinople, with the

Czar of Muscovy; with the potentates of the Baltic, with both the Indies.

The routine of a long established and well organized foreign office in a

time-honoured state running in grooves; with well-balanced springs and

well oiled wheels, may be a luxury of civilization; but it was a more

arduous task to transact the greatest affairs of a state springing

suddenly into recognized existence and mainly dependent for its primary

construction and practical working on the hand of one man.

Worse than all, he had to deal on the most dangerous and delicate topics

of state with a prince who trembled at danger and was incapable of

delicacy; to show respect for a character that was despicable, to lean on

a royal word falser than water, to inhale almost daily the effluvia from

a court compared to which the harem of Henry was a temple of vestals. The

spectacle of the slobbering James among his Kars and Hays and Villiers's

and other minions is one at which history covers her eyes and is dumb;

but the republican envoys, with instructions from a Barneveld, were

obliged to face him daily, concealing their disgust, and bowing

reverentially before him as one of the arbiters of their destinies and

the Solomon of his epoch.

A special embassy was sent early in the year to England to convey the

solemn thanks of the Republic to the King for his assistance in the truce

negotiations, and to treat of the important matters then pressing on the

attention of both powers. Contemporaneously was to be despatched the

embassy for which Henry was waiting so impatiently at Paris.

Certainly the Advocate had enough with this and other, important business

already mentioned to detain him at his post. Moreover the first year of

peace had opened disastrously in the Netherlands. Tremendous tempests

such as had rarely been recorded even in that land of storms had raged

all the winter. The waters everywhere had burst their dykes and

inundations, which threatened to engulph the whole country, and which had

caused enormous loss of property and even of life, were alarming the most

courageous. It was difficult in many district to collect the taxes for

the every-day expenses of the community, and yet the Advocate knew that

the Republic would soon be forced to renew the war on a prodigious scale.

Still more to embarrass the action of the government and perplex its

statesmen, an alarming and dangerous insurrection broke out in Utrecht.

In that ancient seat of the hard-fighting, imperious, and opulent

sovereign archbishops of the ancient church an important portion of the

population had remained Catholic. Another portion complained of the

abolition of various privileges which they had formerly enjoyed; among

others that of a monopoly of beer-brewing for the province. All the

population, as is the case with all populations in all countries and all

epochs, complained of excessive taxation.

A clever politician, Dirk Kanter by name, a gentleman by birth, a scholar

and philosopher by pursuit and education, and a demagogue by profession,

saw an opportunity of taking an advantage of this state of things. More

than twenty years before he had been burgomaster of the city, and had

much enjoyed himself in that position. He was tired of the learned

leisure to which the ingratitude of his fellow-citizens had condemned

him. He seems to have been of easy virtue in the matter of religion, a

Catholic, an Arminian, an ultra orthodox Contra-Remonstrant by turns. He

now persuaded a number of determined partisans that the time had come for

securing a church for the public worship of the ancient faith, and at the

same time for restoring the beer brewery, reducing the taxes, recovering

lost privileges, and many other good things. Beneath the whole scheme lay

a deep design to effect the secession of the city and with it of the

opulent and important province of Utrecht from the Union. Kanter had been

heard openly to avow that after all the Netherlands had flourished under

the benign sway of the House of Burgundy, and that the time would soon

come for returning to that enviable condition.

By a concerted assault the city hall was taken possession of by main

force, the magistracy was overpowered, and a new board of senators and

common council-men appointed, Kanter and a devoted friend of his,

Heldingen by name, being elected burgomasters.

The States-Provincial of Utrecht, alarmed at these proceedings in the

city, appealed for protection against violence to the States-General

under the 3rd Article of the Union, the fundamental pact which bore the

name of Utrecht itself. Prince Maurice proceeded to the city at the head

of a detachment of troops to quell the tumults. Kanter and his friends

were plausible enough to persuade him of the legality and propriety of

the revolution which they had effected, and to procure his formal

confirmation of the new magistracy. Intending to turn his military genius

and the splendour of his name to account, they contrived to keep him for

a time at least in an amiable enthralment, and induced him to contemplate

in their interest the possibility of renouncing the oath which subjected

him to the authority of the States of Utrecht. But the far-seeing eye of

Barneveld could not be blind to the danger which at this crisis beset the

Stadholder and the whole republic. The Prince was induced to return to

the Hague, but the city continued by armed revolt to maintain the new

magistracy. They proceeded to reduce the taxes, and in other respects to

carry out the measures on the promise of which they had come into power.

Especially the Catholic party sustained Kanter and his friends, and

promised themselves from him and from his influence over Prince Maurice

to obtain a power of which they had long been deprived.

The States-General now held an assembly at Woerden, and summoned the

malcontents of Utrecht to bring before that body a statement of their

grievances. This was done, but there was no satisfactory arrangement

possible, and the deputation returned to Utrecht, the States-General to

the Hague. The States-Provincial of Utrecht urged more strongly than ever

upon the assembly of the Union to save the city from the hands of a

reckless and revolutionary government. The States-General resolved

accordingly to interfere by force. A considerable body of troops was

ordered to march at once upon Utrecht and besiege the city. Maurice, in

his capacity of captain-general and stadholder of the province, was

summoned to take charge of the army. He was indisposed to do so, and

pleaded sickness. The States, determined that the name of Nassau should

not be used as an encouragement to disobedience, and rebellion, then

directed the brother of Maurice, Frederic Henry, youngest son of William

the Silent, to assume the command. Maurice insisted that his brother was

too young, and that it was unjust to allow so grave a responsibility to

fall upon his shoulders. The States, not particularly pleased with the

Prince's attitude at this alarming juncture, and made anxious by the

glamour which seemed to possess him since his conferences with the

revolutionary party at Utrecht, determined not to yield.

The army marched forth and laid siege to the city, Prince Frederic Henry

at its head. He was sternly instructed by the States-General, under whose

orders he acted, to take possession of the city at all hazards. He was to

insist on placing there a garrison of 2000 foot and 300 horse, and to

permit not another armed man within the walls. The members of the council

of state and of the States of Utrecht accompanied the army. For a moment

the party in power was disposed to resist the forces of the Union. Dick

Kanter and his friends were resolute enough; the Catholic priests turned

out among the rest with their spades and worked on the entrenchments. The

impossibility of holding the city against the overwhelming power of the

States was soon obvious, and the next day the gates were opened, and easy

terms were granted. The new magistracy was set aside, the old board that

had been deposed by the rebels reinstated. The revolution and the

counterrevolution were alike bloodless, and it was determined that the

various grievances of which the discontented party had complained should

be referred to the States-General, to Prince Maurice, to the council of

state, and to the ambassadors of France and England. Amnesty was likewise

decreed on submission.

The restored government was Arminian in its inclinations, the

revolutionary one was singularly compounded both of Catholic and of

ultra-orthodox elements. Quiet was on the whole restored, but the

resources of the city were crippled. The event occurring exactly at the

crisis of the Clove and Julich expedition angered the King of France.

"The trouble of Utrecht," wrote Aerssens to Barneveld, "has been turned

to account here marvellously, the Archdukes and Spaniards boasting that

many more revolts like this may be at once expected. I have explained to

his Majesty, who has been very much alarmed about it, both its source and

the hopes that it will be appeased by the prudence of his Excellency

Prince Maurice and the deputies of the States. The King desires that

everything should be pacified as soon as possible, so that there may be

no embarrassment to the course of public affairs. But he fears, he tells

me, that this may create some new jealousy between Prince Maurice and

yourself. I don't comprehend what he means, although he held this

language to me very expressly and without reserve. I could only answer

that you were living on the best of terms together in perfect amity and

intelligence. If you know if this talk of his has any other root, please

to enlighten me, that I may put a stop to false reports, for I know

nothing of affairs except what you tell me."

King James, on the other hand, thoroughly approved the promptness of the

States-General in suppressing the tumult.

Nothing very serious of alike nature occurred in Utrecht until the end of

the year, when a determined and secret conspiracy was discovered, having

for its object to overpower the garrison and get bodily possession of

Colonel John Ogle, the military commander of the town. At the bottom of

the movement were the indefatigable Dirk Kanter and his friend Heldingen.

The attempt was easily suppressed, and the two were banished from the

town. Kanter died subsequently in North Holland, in the odour of

ultra-orthodoxy. Four of the conspirators--a post-master, two shoemakers,

and a sexton, who had bound themselves by oath to take the lives of two

eminent Arminian preachers, besides other desperate deeds--were condemned

to death, but pardoned on the scaffold. Thus ended the first revolution

at Utrecht.

Its effect did not cease, however, with the tumults which were its

original manifestations. This earliest insurrection in organized shape

against the central authority of the States-General; this violent though

abortive effort to dissolve the Union and to nullify its laws; this

painful necessity for the first time imposed upon the federal government

to take up arms against misguided citizens of the Republic, in order to

save itself from disintegration and national death, were destined to be

followed by far graver convulsions on the self-same spot. Religious

differences and religious hatreds were to mingle their poison with

antagonistic political theories and personal ambitions, and to develop on

a wide scale the danger ever lurking in a constitution whose fundamental

law was unstable, ill defined, and liable to contradictory

interpretations. For the present it need only be noticed that the

States-General, guided by Barneveld, most vigorously suppressed the local

revolt and the incipient secession, while Prince Maurice, the right arm

of the executive, the stadholder of the province, and the representative

of the military power of the Commonwealth, was languid in the exertion of

that power, inclined to listen to the specious arguments of the Utrecht

rebels, and accused at least of tampering with the fell spirit which the

Advocate was resolute to destroy. Yet there was no suspicion of treason,

no taint of rebellion, no accusation of unpatriotic motives uttered

against the Stadholder.

There was a doubt as to the true maxims by which the Confederacy was to

be governed, and at this moment, certainly, the Prince and the Advocate

represented opposite ideas. There was a possibility, at a future day,

when the religious and political parties might develop themselves on a

wider scale and the struggles grow fiercer, that the two great champions

in the conflict might exchange swords and inflict mutual and poisoned

wounds. At present the party of the Union had triumphed, with Barneveld

at its head. At a later but not far distant day, similar scenes might be

enacted in the ancient city of Utrecht, but with a strange difference and

change in the cast of parts and with far more tragical results.

For the moment the moderate party in the Church, those more inclined to

Arminianism and the supremacy of the civil authority in religious

matters, had asserted their ascendency in the States-General, and had

prevented the threatened rupture.

Meantime it was doubly necessary to hasten the special embassies to

France and to England, in both which countries much anxiety as to the

political health and strength of the new republic had been excited by

these troubles in Utrecht. It was important for the States-General to

show that they were not crippled, and would not shrink from the coming

conflict, but would justify the reliance placed on them by their allies.

Thus there were reasons enough why Barneveld could not himself leave the

country in the eventful spring of 1610. It must be admitted, however,

that he was not backward in placing his nearest relatives in places of

honour, trust, and profit.

His eldest son Reinier, Seignior of Groeneveld, had been knighted by

Henry IV.; his youngest, William, afterwards called Seignior of

Stoutenburg, but at this moment bearing the not very mellifluous title of

Craimgepolder, was a gentleman-in-waiting at that king's court, with a

salary of 3000 crowns a year. He was rather a favourite with the

easy-going monarch, but he gave infinite trouble to the Dutch ambassador

Aerssens, who, feeling himself under immense obligations to the Advocate

and professing for him boundless gratitude, did his best to keep the

idle, turbulent, extravagant, and pleasure-loving youth up to the strict

line of his duties.

"Your son is in debt again," wrote Aerssens, on one occasion, "and

troubled for money. He is in danger of going to the usurers. He says he

cannot keep himself for less than 200 crowns a month. This is a large

allowance, but he has spent much more than that. His life is not

irregular nor his dress remarkably extravagant. His difficulty is that he

will not dine regularly with me nor at court. He will keep his own table

and have company to dinner. That is what is ruining him. He comes

sometimes to me, not for the dinner nor the company, but for tennis,

which he finds better in my faubourg than in town. His trouble comes from

the table, and I tell you frankly that you must regulate his expenses or

they will become very onerous to you. I am ashamed of them and have told

him so a hundred times, more than if he had been my own brother. It is

all for love of you . . . . I have been all to him that could be expected

of a man who is under such vast obligations to you; and I so much esteem

the honour of your friendship that I should always neglect my private

affairs in order to do everything for your service and meet your desires

. . . . . If M. de Craimgepolder comes back from his visit home, you must

restrict him in two things, the table and tennis, and you can do this if

you require him to follow the King assiduously as his service requires."

Something at a future day was to be heard of William of Barneveld, as

well as of his elder brother Reinier, and it is good, therefore, to have

these occasional glimpses of him while in the service of the King and

under the supervision of one who was then his father's devoted friend,

Francis Aerssens. There were to be extraordinary and tragical changes in

the relations of parties and of individuals ere many years should go by.

Besides the sons of the Advocate, his two sons-in-law, Brederode,

Seignior of Veenhuizep, and Cornelis van der Myle, were constantly

employed? in important embassies. Van der Myle had been the first

ambassador to the great Venetian republic, and was now placed at the head

of the embassy to France, an office which it was impossible at that

moment for the Advocate to discharge. At the same critical moment

Barneveld's brother Elias, Pensionary of Rotterdam, was appointed one of

the special high commissioners to the King of Great Britain.

It is necessary to give an account of this embassy.

They were provided with luminous and minute instructions from the hand of

the Advocate.

They were, in the first place, and ostensibly, to thank the King for his

services in bringing about the truce, which, truly, had been of the

slightest, as was very well known. They were to explain, on the part of

the States, their delay in sending this solemn commission, caused by the

tardiness of the King of Spain in sending his ratification to the treaty,

and by the many disputations caused by the irresolutions of the Archdukes

and the obstinacy of their commissioners in regard to their many

contraventions of the treaty. After those commissioners had gone, further

hindrances had been found in the "extraordinary tempests, high floods,

rising of the waters, both of the ocean and the rivers, and the very

disastrous inundations throughout nearly all the United Provinces, with

the immense and exorbitant damage thus inflicted, both on the public and

on many individuals; in addition to all which were to be mentioned the

troubles in the city of Utrecht."

They were, in almost hyperbolical language, directed to express the

eternal gratitude of the States for the constant favours received by them

from the crown of England, and their readiness to stand forth at any

moment with sincere affection and to the utmost of their power, at all

times and seasons, in resistance of any attempts against his Majesty's

person or crown, or against the Prince of Wales or the royal family. They

were to thank him for his "prudent, heroic, and courageous resolve to

suffer nothing to be done under colour of justice, authority, or any

other pretext, to the hindrance of the Elector of Brandenburg and

Palatine of Neuburg, in the maintenance of their lawful rights and

possession of the principalities of Julich, Cleve, and Berg, and other

provinces."

By this course his Majesty, so the commissioners were to state, would put

an end to the imaginations of those who thought they could give the law

to everybody according to their pleasure.

They were to assure the King that the States-General would exert

themselves to the utmost to second his heroic resolution, notwithstanding

the enormous burthens of their everlasting war, the very exorbitant

damage caused by the inundations, and the sensible diminution in the

contributions and other embarrassments then existing in the country.

They were to offer 2000 foot and 500 horse for the general purpose under

Prince Henry of Nassau, besides the succours furnished by the King of

France and the electors and princes of Germany. Further assistance in

men, artillery, and supplies were promised under certain contingencies,

and the plan of the campaign on the Meuse in conjunction with the King of

France was duly mapped.

They were to request a corresponding promise of men and money from the

King of Great Britain, and they were to propose for his approval a closer

convention for mutual assistance between his Majesty, the United

Netherlands, the King of France, the electors and princes and other

powers of Germany; as such close union would be very beneficial to all

Christendom. It would put a stop to all unjust occupations, attempts, and

intrigues, and if the King was thereto inclined, he was requested to

indicate time and place for making such a convention.

The commissioners were further to point out the various contraventions on

the part of the Archdukes of the Treaty of Truce, and were to give an

exposition of the manner in which the States-General had quelled the

tumults at Utrecht, and reasons why such a course had of necessity been

adopted.

They were instructed to state that, "over and above the great expenses of

the late war and the necessary maintenance of military forces to protect

their frontiers against their suspected new friends or old enemies, the

Provinces were burthened with the cost of the succour to the Elector of

Brandenburg and Palatine of Neuburg, and would be therefore incapable of

furnishing the payments coming due to his Majesty. They were accordingly

to sound his Majesty as to whether a good part of the debt might not be

remitted or at least an arrangement made by which the terms should begin

to run only after a certain number of years."

They were also directed to open the subject of the fisheries on the

coasts of Great Britain, and to remonstrate against the order lately

published by the King forbidding all foreigners from fishing on those

coasts. This was to be set forth as an infringement both of natural law

and of ancient treaties, and as a source of infinite danger to the

inhabitants of the United Provinces.

The Seignior of Warmond, chief of the commission, died on the 15th April.

His colleagues met at Brielle on the 16th, ready to take passage to

England in the ship of war, the Hound. They were, however, detained there

six days by head winds and great storms, and it was not until the 22nd

that they were able to put to sea. The following evening their ship cast

anchor in Gravesend. Half an hour before, the Duke of Wurtemberg had

arrived from Flushing in a ship of war brought from France by the Prince

of Anhalt.

Sir Lewis Lewkener, master of ceremonies, had been waiting for the

ambassadors at Gravesend, and informed them that the royal barges were to

come next morning from London to take them to town. They remained that

night on board the Hound, and next morning, the wind blowing up the

river, they proceeded in their ship as far as Blackwall, where they were

formally received and bade welcome in the name of the King by Sir Thomas

Cornwallis and Sir George Carew, late ambassador in France. Escorted by

them and Sir Lewis, they were brought in the court barges to Tower Wharf.

Here the royal coaches were waiting, in which they were taken to lodgings

provided for them in the city at the house of a Dutch merchant. Noel de

Caron, Seignior of Schonewal, resident ambassador of the States in

London, was likewise there to greet them. This was Saturday night: On the

following Tuesday they went by appointment to the Palace of Whitehall in

royal carriages for their first audience. Manifestations of as entire

respect and courtesy had thus been made to the Republican envoys as could

be shown to the ambassadors of the greatest sovereigns. They found the

King seated on his throne in the audience chamber, accompanied by the

Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, the Lord High Treasurer and Lord High

Admiral, the Duke of Lenox, the Earls of Arundel and Northampton, and

many other great nobles and dignitaries. James rose from his seat, took

off his hat, and advanced several paces to meet the ambassadors, and bade

them courteously and respectfully welcome. He then expressed his regret

at the death of the Seignior of Warmond, and after the exchange of a few

commonplaces listened, still with uncovered head, to the opening address.

The spokesman, after thanking the King for his condolences on the death

of the chief commissioner, whom, as was stated with whimsical simplicity,

"the good God had called to Himself after all his luggage had been put on

board ship," proceeded in the French language to give a somewhat

abbreviated paraphrase of Barneveld's instructions.

When this was done and intimation made that they would confer more fully

with his Majesty's council on the subjects committed to their charge, the

ambassadors were conducted home with the same ceremonies as had

accompanied their arrival. They received the same day the first visit

from the ambassadors of France and Venice, Boderie and Carrero, and had a

long conference a few days afterwards with the High Treasurer, Lord

Salisbury.

On the 3rd May they were invited to attend the pompous celebration of the

festival of St. George in the palace at Westminster, where they were

placed together with the French ambassador in the King's oratorium; the

Dukes of Wurtemberg and Brunswick being in that of the Queen.

These details are especially to be noted, and were at the moment of

considerable importance, for this was the first solemn and extraordinary

embassy sent by the rebel Netherlanders, since their independent national

existence had been formally vindicated, to Great Britain, a power which a

quarter of a century before had refused the proffered sovereignty over

them. Placed now on exactly the same level with the representatives of

emperors and kings, the Republican envoys found themselves looked upon by

the world with different eyes from those which had regarded their

predecessors askance, and almost with derision, only seven years before.

At that epoch the States' commissioners, Barneveld himself at the head of

them, had gone solemnly to congratulate King James on his accession, had

scarcely been admitted to audience by king or minister, and had found

themselves on great festivals unsprinkled with the holy water of the

court, and of no more account than the crowd of citizens and spectators

who thronged the streets, gazing with awe at the distant radiance of the

throne.

But although the ambassadors were treated with every external

consideration befitting their official rank, they were not likely to find

themselves in the most genial atmosphere when they should come to

business details. If there was one thing in the world that James did not

intend to do, it was to get himself entangled in war with Spain, the

power of all others which he most revered and loved. His "heroic and

courageous resolve" to defend the princes, on which the commissioners by

instructions of the Advocate had so highly complimented him, was not

strong enough to carry him much beyond a vigorous phraseology. He had not

awoke from the delusive dream of the Spanish marriage which had

dexterously been made to flit before him, and he was not inclined, for

the sake of the Republic which he hated the more because obliged to be

one of its sponsors, to risk the animosity of a great power which

entertained the most profound contempt for him. He was destined to find

himself involved more closely than he liked, and through family ties,

with the great Protestant movement in Germany, and the unfortunate

"Winter King" might one day find his father-in-law as unstable a reed to

lean upon as the States had found their godfather, or the Brandenburgs

and Neuburgs at the present juncture their great ally. Meantime, as the

Bohemian troubles had not yet reached the period of actual explosion, and

as Henry's wide-reaching plan against the House of Austria had been

strangely enough kept an inviolable secret by the few statesmen, like

Sully and Barneveld, to whom they had been confided, it was necessary for

the King and his ministers to deal cautiously and plausibly with the

Dutch ambassadors. Their conferences were mere dancing among eggs, and if

no actual mischief were done, it was the best result that could be

expected.

On the 8th of May, the commissioners met in the council chamber at

Westminster, and discussed all the matters contained in their

instructions with the members of the council; the Lord Treasurer

Salisbury, Earl of Northampton, Privy Seal and Warden of the Cinque

Ports, Lord Nottingham, Lord High Admiral, the Lord Chamberlain, Earl of

Suffolk, Earls of Shrewsbury, Worcester, and several others being

present.

The result was not entirely satisfactory. In regard to the succour

demanded for the possessory princes, the commissioners were told that

they seemed to come with a long narrative of their great burthens during

the war, damage from inundations, and the like, to excuse themselves from

doing their share in the succour, and thus the more to overload his

Majesty, who was not much interested in the matter, and was likewise

greatly encumbered by various expenses. The King had already frankly

declared his intention to assist the princes with the payment of 4000

men, and to send proportionate artillery and powder from England. As the

States had supplies in their magazines enough to move 12,000 men, he

proposed to draw upon those, reimbursing the States for what was thus

consumed by his contingent.

With regard to the treaty of close alliance between France, Great

Britain, the princes, and the Republic, which the ambassadors had

proposed, the--Lord Treasurer and his colleagues gave a reply far from

gratifying. His Majesty had not yet decided on this point, they said. The

King of France had already proposed to treat for such an alliance, but it

did not at present seem worth while for all to negotiate together.

This was a not over-courteous hint that the Republic was after all not

expected to place herself at the council-board of kings on even terms of

intimacy and fraternal alliance.

What followed was even less flattering. If his Majesty, it was intimated,

should decide to treat with the King of France, he would not shut the

door on their High Mightinesses; but his Majesty was not yet exactly

informed whether his Majesty had not certain rights over the provinces

'in petitorio.'

This was a scarcely veiled insinuation against the sovereignty of the

States, a sufficiently broad hint that they were to be considered in a

certain degree as British provinces. To a soldier like Maurice, to a

statesman like Barneveld, whose sympathies already were on the side of

France, such rebuffs and taunts were likely to prove unpalatable. The

restiveness of the States at the continual possession by Great Britain of

those important sea-ports the cautionary towns, a fact which gave colour

to these innuendoes, was sure to be increased by arrogant language on the

part of the English ministers. The determination to be rid of their debt

to so overbearing an ally, and to shake off the shackles imposed by the

costly mortgages, grew in strength from that hour.

In regard to the fisheries, the Lord Treasurer and his colleagues

expressed amazement that the ambassadors should consider the subjects of

their High Mightinesses to be so much beloved by his Majesty. Why should

they of all other people be made an exception of, and be exempt from, the

action of a general edict? The reasons for these orders in council ought

to be closely examined. It would be very difficult to bring the opinions

of the English jurists into harmony with those of the States. Meantime it

would be well to look up such treaties as might be in existence, and have

a special joint commission to confer together on the subject. It was very

plain, from the course of the conversation, that the Netherland fishermen

were not to be allowed, without paying roundly for a license, to catch

herrings on the British coasts as they had heretofore done.

Not much more of importance was transacted at this first interview

between the ambassadors and the Ding's ministers. Certainly they had not

yet succeeded in attaining their great object, the formation of an

alliance offensive and defensive between Great Britain and the Republic

in accordance with the plan concerted between Henry and Barneveld. They

could find but slender encouragement for the warlike plans to which

France and the States were secretly committed; nor could they obtain

satisfactory adjustment of affairs more pacific and commercial in their

tendencies. The English ministers rather petulantly remarked that, while

last year everybody was talking of a general peace, and in the present

conjuncture all seemed to think, or at least to speak, of nothing but a

general war, they thought best to defer consideration of the various

subjects connected with duties on the manufactures and products of the

respective countries, the navigation laws, the "entrecours," and other

matters of ancient agreement and controversy, until a more convenient

season.

After the termination of the verbal conference, the ambassadors delivered

to the King's government, in writing, to be pondered by the council and

recorded in the archives, a summary of the statements which had been thus

orally treated. The document was in French, and in the main a paraphrase

of the Advocate's instructions, the substance of which has been already

indicated. In regard, however, to the far-reaching designs of Spain, and

the corresponding attitude which it would seem fitting for Great Britain

to assume, and especially the necessity of that alliance the proposal for

which had in the conference been received so haughtily, their language

was far plainer, bolder, and more vehement than that of the instructions.

"Considering that the effects show," they said, "that those who claim the

monarchy of Christendom, and indeed of the whole world, let slip no

opportunity which could in any way serve their designs, it is suitable to

the grandeur of his Majesty the King, and to the station in which by the

grace of the good God he is placed, to oppose himself thereto for the

sake of the common liberty of Christendom, to which end, and in order the

better to prevent all unjust usurpations, there could be no better means

devised than a closer alliance between his Majesty and the Most Christian

King, My Lords the States-General, and the electors, princes, and states

of Germany. Their High Mightinesses would therefore be most glad to learn

that his Majesty was inclined to such a course, and would be glad to

discuss the subject when and wherever his Majesty should appoint, or

would readily enter into such an alliance on reasonable conditions."

This language and the position taken up by the ambassadors were highly

approved by their government, but it was fated that no very great result

was to be achieved by this embassy. Very elaborate documents, exhaustive

in legal lore, on the subject of the herring fisheries, and of the right

to fish in the ocean and on foreign coasts, fortified by copious

citations from the 'Pandects' and 'Institutes' of Justinian, were

presented for the consideration of the British government, and were

answered as learnedly, exhaustively, and ponderously. The English

ministers were also reminded that the curing of herrings had been

invented in the fifteenth century by a citizen of Biervliet, the

inscription on whose tombstone recording that faces might still be read

in the church of that town.

All this did not prevent, however, the Dutch herring fishermen from being

excluded from the British waters unless they chose to pay for licenses.

The conferences were however for a season interrupted, and a new aspect

was given to affairs by an unforeseen and terrible event.

Meanwhile it is necessary to glance for a moment at the doings of the

special embassy to France, the instructions for which were prepared by

Barneveld almost at the same moment at which he furnished those for the

commission to England.

The ambassadors were Walraven, Seignior of Brederode, Cornelis van der

Myle, son-in-law of the Advocate, and Jacob van Maldere. Remembering how

impatient the King of France had long been for their coming, and that all

the preparations and decisions for a great war were kept in suspense

until the final secret conferences could be held with the representatives

of the States-General, it seems strange enough to us to observe the

extreme deliberation with which great affairs of state were then

conducted and the vast amount of time consumed in movements and

communications which modern science has either annihilated or abridged

from days to hours. While Henry was chafing with anxiety in Paris, the

ambassadors, having received Barneveld's instructions dated 31st March,

set forth on the 8th April from the Hague, reached Rotterdam at noon, and

slept at Dordrecht. Newt day they went to Breda, where the Prince of

Orange insisted upon their passing a couple of days with him in his

castle, Easter-day being 11th April. He then provided them with a couple

of coaches and pair in which they set forth on their journey, going by

way of Antwerp, Ghent, Courtray, Ryssel, to Arras, making easy stages,

stopping in the middle of the day to bait, and sleeping at each of the

cities thus mentioned, where they duly received the congratulatory visit

and hospitalities of their respective magistracies.

While all this time had been leisurely employed in the Netherlands in

preparing, instructing, and despatching the commissioners, affairs were

reaching a feverish crisis in France.

The States' ambassador resident thought that it would have been better

not to take such public offence at the retreat of the Prince of Conde.

The King had enough of life and vigour in him; he could afford to leave

the Dauphin to grow up, and when he should one day be established on the

throne, he would be able to maintain his heritage. "But," said Aerssens,

"I fear that our trouble is not where we say it is, and we don't dare to

say where it is." Writing to Carew, former English ambassador in Paris,

whom we have just seen in attendance on the States' commissioners in

London, he said: "People think that the Princess is wearying herself much

under the protection of the Infanta, and very impatient at not obtaining

the dissolution of her marriage, which the Duchess of Angouleme is to go

to Brussels to facilitate. This is not our business, but I mention it

only as the continuation of the Tragedy which you saw begin. Nevertheless

I don't know if the greater part of our deliberations is not founded on

this matter."

It had been decided to cause the Queen to be solemnly crowned after

Easter. She had set her heart with singular persistency upon the

ceremony, and it was thought that so public a sacrament would annihilate

all the wild projects attributed to Spain through the instrumentality of

Conde to cast doubts on the validity of her marriage and the legitimacy

of the Dauphin. The King from the first felt and expressed a singular

repugnance, a boding apprehension in regard to the coronation, but had

almost yielded to the Queen's importunity. He told her he would give his

consent provided she sent Concini to Brussels to invite in her own name

the Princess of Conde to be present on the occasion. Otherwise he

declared that at least the festival should be postponed till September.

The Marquis de Coeuvres remained in disgrace after the failure of his

mission, Henry believing that like all the world he had fallen in love

with the Princess, and had only sought to recommend himself, not to

further the suit of his sovereign.

Meanwhile Henry had instructed his ambassador in Spain, M. de Vaucelas,

to tell the King that his reception of Conde within his dominions would

be considered an infraction of the treaty of Vervins and a direct act of

hostility. The Duke of Lerma answered with a sneer that the Most

Christian King had too greatly obliged his Most Catholic Majesty by

sustaining his subjects in their rebellion and by aiding them to make

their truce to hope now that Conde would be sent back. France had ever

been the receptacle of Spanish traitors and rebels from Antonio Perez

down, and the King of Spain would always protect wronged and oppressed

princes like Conde. France had just been breaking up the friendly

relations between Savoy and Spain and goading the Duke into hostilities.

On the other hand the King had more than one stormy interview with Don

Inigo de Cardenas in Paris. That ambassador declared that his master

would never abandon his only sister the most serene Infanta, such was the

affection he born her, whose dominions were obviously threatened by these

French armies about to move to the frontiers. Henry replied that the

friends for whom he was arming had great need of his assistance; that his

Catholic Majesty was quite right to love his sister, whom he also loved;

but that he did not choose that his own relatives should be so much

beloved in Spain as they were. "What relatives?" asked Don Inigo. "The

Prince of Conde," replied the King, in a rage, "who has been debauched by

the Spaniards just as Marshal Biron was, and the Marchioness Verneuil,

and so many others. There are none left for them to debauch now but the

Dauphin and his brothers." The Ambassador replied that, if the King had

consulted him about the affair of Conde, he could have devised a happy

issue from it. Henry rejoined that he had sent messages on the subject to

his Catholic Majesty, who had not deigned a response, but that the Duke

of Lerma had given a very indiscreet one to his ambassador. Don Inigo

professed ignorance of any such reply. The King said it was a mockery to

affect ignorance of such matters. Thereupon both grew excited and very

violent in their discourses; the more so as Henry knowing but little

Spanish and the Envoy less French they could only understand from tone

and gesture that each was using exceedingly unpleasant language. At last

Don Inigo asked what he should write to his sovereign. "Whatever you

like," replied the King, and so the audience terminated, each remaining

in a towering passion.

Subsequently Villeroy assured the Archduke's ambassador that the King

considered the reception given to the Prince in the Spanish dominions as

one of the greatest insults and injuries that could be done to him.

Nothing could excuse it, said the Secretary of State, and for this reason

it was very difficult for the two kings to remain at peace with each

other, and that it would be wiser to prevent at once the evil designs of

his Catholic Majesty than to leave leisure for the plans to be put into

execution, and the claims of the Dauphin to his father's crown to be

disputed at a convenient season.

He added that war would not be made for the Princess, but for the Prince,

and that even the war in Germany, although Spain took the Emperor's side

and France that of the possessory princes, would not necessarily produce

a rupture between the two kings if it were not for this affair of the

Prince--true cause of the disaster now hanging over Christianity.

Pecquius replied by smooth commonplaces in favour of peace with which

Villeroy warmly concurred; both sadly expressing the conviction however

that the wrath divine had descended on them all on account of their sins.

A few days later, however, the Secretary changed his tone.

"I will speak to you frankly and clearly," he said to Pecquius, "and tell

you as from myself that there is passion, and if one is willing to

arrange the affair of the Princess, everything else can be accommodated

and appeased. Put if the Princess remain where she is, we are on the eve

of a rupture which may set fire to the four corners of Christendom."

Pecquius said he liked to talk roundly, and was glad to find that he had

not been mistaken in his opinion, that all these commotions were only

made for the Princess, and if all the world was going to war, she would

be the principal subject of it. He could not marvel sufficiently, he

said, at this vehement passion which brought in its train so great and

horrible a conflagration; adding many arguments to show that it was no

fault of the Archdukes, but that he who was the cause of all might one

day have reason to repent.

Villeroy replied that "the King believed the Princess to be suffering and

miserable for love of him, and that therefore he felt obliged to have her

sent back to her father." Pecquius asked whether in his conscience the

Secretary of State believed it right or reasonable to make war for such a

cause. Villeroy replied by asking "whether even admitting the negative,

the Ambassador thought it were wisely done for such a trifle, for a

formality, to plunge into extremities and to turn all Christendom upside

down." Pecquius, not considering honour a trifle or a formality, said

that "for nothing in the world would his Highness the Archduke descend to

a cowardly action or to anything that would sully his honour." Villeroy

said that the Prince had compelled his wife, pistol in hand, to follow

him to the Netherlands, and that she was no longer bound to obey a

husband who forsook country and king. Her father demanded her, and she

said "she would rather be strangled than ever to return to the company of

her husband." The Archdukes were not justified in keeping her against her

will in perpetual banishment. He implored the Ambassador in most pathetic

terms to devise some means of sending back the Princess, saying that he

who should find such expedient would do the greatest good that was ever

done to Christianity, and that otherwise there was no guarantee against a

universal war. The first design of the King had been merely to send a

moderate succour to the Princes of Brandenburg and Neuburg, which could

have given no umbrage to the Archdukes, but now the bitterness growing

out of the affairs of the Prince and Princess had caused him to set on

foot a powerful army to do worse. He again implored Pecquius to invent

some means of sending back the Princess, and the Ambassador besought him

ardently to divert the King from his designs. Of this the Secretary of

State left little hope and they parted, both very low and dismal in

mind. Subsequent conversations with the leading councillors of state

convinced Pecquius that these violent menaces were only used to shake the

constancy of the Archduke, but that they almost all highly disapproved

the policy of the King. "If this war goes on, we are all ruined," said

the Duke d'Epernon to the Nuncius.

Thus there had almost ceased to be any grimacing between the two kings,

although it was still a profound mystery where or when hostilities would

begin, and whether they would break out at all. Henry frequently remarked

that the common opinion all over Europe was working in his favour. Few

people in or out of France believed that he meant a rupture, or that his

preparations were serious. Thus should he take his enemies unawares and

unprepared. Even Aerssens, who saw him almost daily, was sometimes

mystified, in spite of Henry's vehement assertions that he was resolved

to make war at all hazards and on all sides, provided My Lords the States

would second him as they ought, their own existence being at stake.

"For God's sake," cried the King, "let us take the bit into our mouths.

Tell your masters that I am quite resolved, and that I am shrieking

loudly at their delays." He asked if he could depend on the States, if

Barneveld especially would consent to a league with him. The Ambassador

replied that for the affair of Cleve and Julich he had instructions to

promise entire concurrence, that Barneveld was most resolute in the

matter, and had always urged the enterprise and wished information as to

the levies making in France and other military preparations.

"Tell him," said Henry, "that they are going on exactly as often before

stated, but that we are holding everything in suspense until I have

talked with your ambassadors, from whom I wish counsel, safety, and

encouragement for doing much more than the Julich business. That alone

does not require so great a league and such excessive and unnecessary

expense."

The King observed however that the question of the duchies would serve as

just cause and excellent pretext to remove those troublesome fellows for

ever from his borders and those of the States. Thus the princes would be

established safely in their possession and the Republic as well as

himself freed from the perpetual suspicions which the Spaniards excited

by their vile intrigues, and it was on this general subject that he

wished to confer with the special commissioners. It would not be possible

for him to throw succour into Julich without passing through Luxemburg in

arms. The Archdukes would resist this, and thus a cause of war would

arise. His campaign on the Meuse would help the princes more than if he

should only aid them by the contingent he had promised. Nor could the

jealousy of King James be excited since the war would spring out of the

Archdukes' opposition to his passage towards the duchies, as he obviously

could not cut himself off from his supplies, leaving a hostile province

between himself and his kingdom. Nevertheless he could not stir, he said,

without the consent and active support of the States, on whom he relied

as his principal buttress and foundation.

The levies for the Milanese expedition were waiting until Marshal de

Lesdiguieres could confer personally with the Duke of Savoy. The reports

as to the fidelity of that potentate were not to be believed. He was

trifling with the Spanish ambassadors, so Henry was convinced, who were

offering him 300,000 crowns a year besides Piombino, Monaco, and two

places in the Milanese, if he would break his treaty with France. But he

was thought to be only waiting until they should be gone before making

his arrangements with Lesdiguieres. "He knows that he can put no trust in

Spain, and that he can confide in me," said the King. "I have made a

great stroke by thus entangling the King of Spain by the use of a few

troops in Italy. But I assure you that there is none but me and My Lords

the States that can do anything solid. Whether the Duke breaks or holds

fast will make no difference in our first and great designs. For the

honour of God I beg them to lose no more time, but to trust in me. I will

never deceive them, never abandon them."

At last 25,000 infantry and 5000 cavalry were already in marching order,

and indeed had begun to move towards the Luxemburg frontier, ready to

co-operate with the States' army and that of the possessory princes for

the campaign of the Meuse and Rhine.

Twelve thousand more French troops under Lesdiguieres were to act with

the Duke of Savoy, and an army as large was to assemble in the Pyrenees

and to operate on the Spanish frontier, in hope of exciting and fomenting

an insurrection caused by the expulsion of the Moors. That gigantic act

of madness by which Spain thought good at this juncture to tear herself

to pieces, driving hundreds of thousands of the most industrious, most

intelligent, and most opulent of her population into hopeless exile, had

now been accomplished, and was to stand prominent for ever on the records

of human fatuity.

Twenty-five thousand Moorish families had arrived at Bayonne, and the

Viceroy of Canada had been consulted as to the possibility and expediency

of establishing them in that province, although emigration thither seemed

less tempting to them than to Virginia. Certainly it was not unreasonable

for Henry to suppose that a kingdom thus torn by internal convulsions

might be more open to a well organized attack, than capable of carrying

out at that moment fresh projects of universal dominion.

As before observed, Sully was by no means in favour of this combined

series of movements, although at a later day, when dictating his famous

memoirs to his secretaries, he seems to describe himself as

enthusiastically applauding and almost originating them. But there is no

doubt at all that throughout this eventful spring he did his best to

concentrate the whole attack on Luxemburg and the Meuse districts, and

wished that the movements in the Milanese and in Provence should be

considered merely a slight accessory, as not much more than a diversion

to the chief design, while Villeroy and his friends chose to consider the

Duke of Savoy as the chief element in the war. Sully thoroughly

distrusted the Duke, whom he deemed to be always put up at auction

between Spain and France and incapable of a sincere or generous policy.

He was entirely convinced that Villeroy and Epernon and Jeannin and other

earnest Papists in France were secretly inclined to the cause of Spain,

that the whole faction of the Queen, in short, were urging this

scattering of the very considerable forces now at Henry's command in the

hope of bringing him into a false position, in which defeat or an

ignominious peace would be the alternative. To concentrate an immense

attack upon the Archdukes in the Spanish Netherlands and the debateable

duchies would have for its immediate effect the expulsion of the

Spaniards out of all those provinces and the establishment of the Dutch

commonwealth on an impregnable basis. That this would be to strengthen

infinitely the Huguenots in France and the cause of Protestantism in

Bohemia, Moravia and Austria, was unquestionable. It was natural,

therefore, that the stern and ardent Huguenot should suspect the plans of

the Catholics with whom he was in daily council. One day he asked the

King plumply in the presence of Villeroy if his Majesty meant anything

serious by all these warlike preparations. Henry was wroth, and

complained bitterly that one who knew him to the bottom of his soul

should doubt him. But Sully could not persuade himself that a great and

serious war would be carried on both in the Netherlands and in Italy.

As much as his sovereign he longed for the personal presence of

Barneveld, and was constantly urging the States' ambassador to induce his

coming to Paris. "You know," said Aerssens, writing to the French

ambassador at the Hague, de Russy, "that it is the Advocate alone that

has the universal knowledge of the outside and the inside of our

commonwealth."

Sully knew his master as well as any man knew him, but it was difficult

to fix the chameleon hues of Henry at this momentous epoch. To the

Ambassador expressing doubts as to the King's sincerity the Duke asserted

that Henry was now seriously piqued with the Spaniard on account of the

Conde business. Otherwise Anhalt and the possessory princes and the

affair of Cleve might have had as little effect in driving him into war

as did the interests of the Netherlands in times past. But the bold

demonstration projected would make the "whole Spanish party bleed at the

nose; a good result for the public peace."

Therefore Sully sent word to Barneveld, although he wished his name

concealed, that he ought to come himself, with full powers to do

everything, without referring to any superiors or allowing any secrets to

be divulged. The King was too far committed to withdraw, unless coldness

on part of the States should give him cause. The Advocate must come

prepared to answer all questions; to say how much in men and money the

States would contribute, and whether they would go into the war with the

King as their only ally. He must come with the bridle on his neck. All

that Henry feared was being left in the lurch by the States; otherwise he

was not afraid of Rome. Sully was urgent that the Provinces should now go

vigorously into the war without stumbling at any consideration. Thus they

would confirm their national power for all time, but if the opportunity

were now lost, it would be their ruin, and posterity would most justly

blame them. The King of Spain was so stripped of troops and resources, so

embarrassed by the Moors, that in ten months he would not be able to send

one man to the Netherlands.

Meantime the Nuncius in Paris was moving heaven and earth; storming,

intriguing, and denouncing the course of the King in protecting heresy,

when it would have been so easy to extirpate it, encouraging rebellion

and disorder throughout Christendom, and embarking in an action against

the Church and against his conscience. A new legate was expected daily

with the Pope's signature to the new league, and a demand upon the King

to sign it likewise, and to pause in a career of which something was

suspected, but very little accurately known. The preachers in Paris and

throughout the kingdom delivered most vehement sermons against the King,

the government, and the Protestants, and seemed to the King to be such

"trumpeters of sedition" that he ordered the seneschals and other

officers to put a stop to these turbulent discourses, censure their

authors, and compel them to stick to their texts.

But the preparations were now so far advanced and going on so warmly that

nothing more was wanting than, in the words of Aerssens, "to uncouple the

dogs and let them run." Recruits were pouring steadily to their places of

rendezvous; their pay having begun to run from the 25th March at the rate

of eight sous a day for the private foot soldier and ten sous for a

corporal. They were moved in small parties of ten, lodged in the wayside

inns, and ordered, on pain of death, to pay for everything they consumed.

It was growing difficult to wait much longer for the arrival of the

special ambassadors, when at last they were known to be on their way.

Aerssens obtained for their use the Hotel Gondy, formerly the residence

of Don Pedro de Toledo, the most splendid private palace in Paris, and

recently purchased by the Queen. It was considered expedient that the

embassy should make as stately an appearance as that of royal or imperial

envoys. He engaged an upholsterer by the King's command to furnish, at

his Majesty's expense, the apartments, as the Baron de Gondy, he said,

had long since sold and eaten up all the furniture. He likewise laid in

six pieces of wine and as many of beer, "tavern drinks" being in the

opinion of the thrifty ambassador "both dear and bad."

He bought a carriage lined with velvet for the commissioners, and another

lined with broadcloth for the principal persons of their suite, and with

his own coach as a third he proposed to go to Amiens to meet them. They

could not get on with fewer than these, he said, and the new carriages

would serve their purpose in Paris. He had paid 500 crowns for the two,

and they could be sold, when done with, at a slight loss. He bought

likewise four dapple-grey horses, which would be enough, as nobody had

more than two horses to a carriage in town, and for which he paid 312

crowns--a very low price, he thought, at a season when every one was

purchasing. He engaged good and experienced coachmen at two crowns a

month, and; in short, made all necessary arrangements for their comfort

and the honour of the state.

The King had been growing more and more displeased at the tardiness of

the commission, petulantly ascribing it to a design on the part of the

States to "excuse themselves from sharing in his bold conceptions," but

said that "he could resolve on nothing without My Lords the States, who

were the only power with which he could contract confidently, as mighty

enough and experienced enough to execute the designs to be proposed to

them; so that his army was lying useless on his hands until the

commissioners arrived," and lamented more loudly than ever that Barneveld

was not coming with them. He was now rejoiced, however, to hear that they

would soon arrive, and went in person to the Hotel Gondy to see that

everything was prepared in a manner befitting their dignity and comfort.

His anxiety had moreover been increased, as already stated, by the

alarming reports from Utrecht and by his other private accounts from the

Netherlands.

De Russy expressed in his despatches grave doubts whether the States

would join the king in a war against the King of Spain, because they

feared the disapprobation of the King of Great Britain, "who had already

manifested but too much jealousy of the power and grandeur of the

Republic." Pecquius asserted that the Archdukes had received assurances

from the States that they would do nothing to violate the truce. The

Prince of Anhalt, who, as chief of the army of the confederated princes,

was warm in his demonstrations for a general war by taking advantage of

the Cleve expedition, was entirely at cross purposes with the States'

ambassador in Paris, Aerssens maintaining that the forty-three years'

experience in their war justified the States in placing no dependence on

German princes except with express conventions. They had no such

conventions now, and if they should be attacked by Spain in consequence

of their assistance in the Cleve business, what guarantee of aid had they

from those whom Anhalt represented? Anhalt was loud in expressions of

sympathy with Henry's designs against Spain, but said that he and the

States meant a war of thirty or forty years, while the princes would

finish what they meant to do in one.

A more erroneous expression of opinion, when viewed in the light of

subsequent events, could hardly have been hazarded. Villeroy made as good

use as he could of these conversations to excite jealousy between the

princes and the States for the furtherance of his own ends, while

affecting warm interest in the success of the King's projects.

Meantime Archduke Albert had replied manfully and distinctly to the

menaces of the King and to the pathetic suggestions made by Villeroy to

Pecquius as to a device for sending back the Princess. Her stay at

Brussels being the chief cause of the impending war, it would be better,

he said, to procure a divorce or to induce the Constable to obtain the

consent of the Prince to the return of his wife to her father's house. To

further either of these expedients, the Archduke would do his best. "But

if one expects by bravados and threats," he added, "to force us to do a

thing against our promise, and therefore against reason, our reputation,

and honour, resolutely we will do nothing of the kind. And if the said

Lord King decided on account of this misunderstanding for a rupture and

to make war upon us, we will do our best to wage war on him. In such

case, however, we shall be obliged to keep the Princess closer in our own

house, and probably to send her to such parts as may be most convenient

in order to remove from us an instrument of the infinite evils which this

war will produce."

Meantime the special commissioners whom we left at Arras had now entered

the French kingdom.

On the 17th April, Aerssens with his three coaches met them on their

entrance into Amiens, having been waiting there for them eight days. As

they passed through the gate, they found a guard of soldiers drawn up to

receive them with military honours, and an official functionary to

apologize for the necessary absence of the governor, who had gone with

most of the troops stationed in the town to the rendezvous in Champagne.

He expressed regret, therefore, that the King's orders for their solemn

reception could not be literally carried out. The whole board of

magistrates, however, in their costumes of ceremony, with sergeants

bearing silver maces marching before them, came forth to bid the

ambassadors welcome. An advocate made a speech in the name of the city

authorities, saying that they were expressly charged by the King to

receive them as coming from his very best friends, and to do them all

honour. He extolled the sage government of their High Mightinesses and

the valour of the Republic, which had become known to the whole world by

the successful conduct of their long and mighty war.

The commissioners replied in words of compliment, and the magistrates

then offered them, according to ancient usage, several bottles of

hippocras.

Next day, sending back the carriages of the Prince of Orange, in which

they had thus far performed the journey, they set forth towards Paris,

reaching Saint-Denis at noon of the third day. Here they were met by de

Bonoeil, introducer of ambassadors, sent thither by the King to give them

welcome, and to say that they would be received on the road by the Duke

of Vendome, eldest of the legitimatized children of the King. Accordingly

before reaching the Saint-Denis gate of Paris, a splendid cavalcade of

nearly five hundred noblemen met them, the Duke at their head,

accompanied by two marshals of France, de Brissac and Boisdaulphin. The

three instantly dismounted, and the ambassadors alighted from their

coach. The Duke then gave them solemn and cordial welcome, saying that he

had been sent by his father the King to receive them as befitted envoys

of the best and most faithful friends he possessed in the world.

The ambassadors expressed their thanks for the great and extraordinary

honour thus conferred on them, and they were then requested to get into a

royal carriage which had been sent out for that purpose. After much

ceremonious refusal they at last consented and, together with the Duke of

Vendome, drove through Paris in that vehicle into the Faubourg Saint

Germain. Arriving at the Hotel Gondy, they were, notwithstanding all

their protestations, escorted up the staircase into the apartments by the

Duke.

"This honour is notable," said the commissioners in their report to the

States, "and never shown to anyone before, so that our ill-wishers are

filled with spite."

And Peter Pecquius was of the same opinion. "Everyone is grumbling here,"

about the reception of the States' ambassadors, "because such honours

were never paid to any ambassador whatever, whether from Spain, England,

or any other country."

And there were many men living and employed in great affairs of State,

both in France and in the Republic--the King and Villeroy, Barneveld and

Maurice--who could remember how twenty-six years before a solemn embassy

from the States had proceeded from the Hague to France to offer the

sovereignty of their country to Henry's predecessor, had been kept

ignominiously and almost like prisoners four weeks long in Rouen, and had

been thrust back into the Netherlands without being admitted even to one

audience by the monarch. Truly time, in the course of less than one

generation of mankind, had worked marvellous changes in the fortunes of

the Dutch Republic.

President Jeannin came to visit them next day, with friendly proffers of

service, and likewise the ambassador of Venice and the charge d'affaires

of Great Britain.

On the 22nd the royal carriages came by appointment to the Hotel Gondy,

and took them for their first audience to the Louvre. They were received

at the gate by a guard of honour, drums beating and arms presented, and

conducted with the greatest ceremony to an apartment in the palace. Soon

afterwards they were ushered into a gallery where the King stood,

surrounded by a number of princes and distinguished officers of the

crown. These withdrew on the approach of the Netherlanders, leaving the

King standing alone. They made their reverence, and Henry saluted them

all with respectful cordiality. Begging them to put on their hats again,

he listened attentively to their address.

The language of the discourse now pronounced was similar in tenour to

that almost contemporaneously held by the States' special envoys in

London. Both documents, when offered afterwards in writing, bore the

unmistakable imprint of the one hand that guided the whole political

machine. In various passages the phraseology was identical, and, indeed,

the Advocate had prepared and signed the instructions for both embassies

on the same day.

The commissioners acknowledged in the strongest possible terms the great

and constant affection, quite without example, that Henry had manifested

to the Netherlands during the whole course of their war. They were at a

loss to find language adequately to express their gratitude for that

friendship, and the assistance subsequently afforded them in the

negotiations for truce. They apologized for the tardiness of the States

in sending this solemn embassy of thanksgiving, partly on the ground of

the delay in receiving the ratifications from Spain, partly by the

protracted contraventions by the Archdukes of certain articles in the

treaty, but principally by the terrible disasters occasioned throughout

their country by the great inundations, and by the commotions in the city

of Utrecht, which had now been "so prudently and happily pacified."

They stated that the chief cause of their embassy was to express their

respectful gratitude, and to say that never had prince or state treasured

more deeply in memory benefits received than did their republic the

favours of his Majesty, or could be more disposed to do their utmost to

defend his Majesty's person, crown, or royal family against all attack.

They expressed their joy that the King had with prudence, and heroic

courage undertaken the defence of the just rights of Brandenburg and

Neuburg to the duchies of Cleve, Julich, and the other dependent

provinces. Thus had he put an end to the presumption of those who thought

they could give the law to all the world. They promised the co-operation

of the States in this most important enterprise of their ally,

notwithstanding their great losses in the war just concluded, and the

diminution of revenue occasioned by the inundations by which they had

been afflicted; for they were willing neither to tolerate so unjust an

usurpation as that attempted by the Emperor nor to fail to second his

Majesty in his generous designs. They observed also that they had been

instructed to enquire whether his Majesty would not approve the

contracting of a strict league of mutual assistance between France,

England, the United Provinces, and the princes of Germany.

The King, having listened with close attention, thanked the envoys in

words of earnest and vigorous cordiality for their expressions of

affection to himself. He begged them to remember that he had always been

their good friend, and that he never would forsake them; that he had

always hated the Spaniards, and should ever hate them; and that the

affairs of Julich must be arranged not only for the present but for the

future. He requested them to deliver their propositions in writing to

him, and to be ready to put themselves into communication with the

members of his council, in order that they might treat with each other

roundly and without reserve. He should always deal with the Netherlanders

as with his own people, keeping no back-door open, but pouring out

everything as into the lap of his best and most trusty friends.

After this interview conferences followed daily between the ambassadors

and Villeroy, Sully, Jeannin, the Chancellor, and Puysieug.

The King's counsellors, after having read the written paraphrase of

Barneveld's instructions, the communication of which followed their oral

statements, and which, among other specifications, contained a respectful

remonstrance against the projected French East India Company, as likely

to benefit the Spaniards only, while seriously injuring the States,

complained that "the representations were too general, and that the paper

seemed to contain nothing but compliments."

The ambassadors, dilating on the various points and articles, maintained

warmly that there was much more than compliments in their instructions.

The ministers wished to know what the States practically were prepared to

do in the affair of Cleve, which they so warmly and encouragingly

recommended to the King. They asked whether the States' army would march

at once to Dusseldorf to protect the princes at the moment when the King

moved from Mezieres, and they made many enquiries as to what amount of

supplies and munitions they could depend upon from the States' magazines.

The envoys said that they had no specific instructions on these points,

and could give therefore no conclusive replies. More than ever did Henry

regret the absence of the great Advocate at this juncture. If he could

have come, with the bridle on his neck, as Henry had so repeatedly urged

upon the resident ambassador, affairs might have marched more rapidly.

The despotic king could never remember that Barneveld was not the

unlimited sovereign of the United States, but only the seal-keeper of one

of the seven provinces and the deputy of Holland to the General Assembly.

His indirect power, however vast, was only great because it was so

carefully veiled.

It was then proposed by Villeroy and Sully, and agreed to by the

commissioners, that M. de Bethune, a relative of the great financier,

should be sent forthwith to the Hague, to confer privately with Prince

Maurice and Barneveld especially, as to military details of the coming

campaign.

It was also arranged that the envoys should delay their departure until

de Bethune's return. Meantime Henry and the Nuncius had been exchanging

plain and passionate language. Ubaldini reproached the King with

disregarding all the admonitions of his Holiness, and being about to

plunge Christendom into misery and war for the love of the Princess of

Conde. He held up to him the enormity of thus converting the King of

Spain and the Archdukes into his deadly enemies, and warned him that he

would by such desperate measures make even the States-General and the

King of Britain his foes, who certainly would never favour such schemes.

The King replied that "he trusted to his own forces, not to those of his

neighbours, and even if the Hollanders should not declare for him still

he would execute his designs. On the 15th of May most certainly he would

put himself at the head of his army, even if he was obliged to put off

the Queen's coronation till October, and he could not consider the King

of Spain nor the Archdukes his friends unless they at once made him some

demonstration of friendship. Being asked by the Nuncius what

demonstration he wished, he answered flatly that he wished the Princess

to be sent back to the Constable her father, in which case the affair of

Julich could be arranged amicably, and, at all events, if the war

continued there, he need not send more than 4000 men."

Thus, in spite of his mighty preparations, vehement demands for

Barneveld, and profound combinations revealed to that statesman, to

Aerssens, and to the Duke of Sully only, this wonderful monarch was ready

to drop his sword on the spot, to leave his friends in the lurch, to

embrace his enemies, the Archduke first of all, instead of bombarding

Brussels the very next week, as he had been threatening to do, provided

the beautiful Margaret could be restored to his arms through those of her

venerable father.

He suggested to the Nuncius his hope that the Archduke would yet be

willing to wink at her escape, which he was now trying to arrange through

de Preaux at Brussels, while Ubaldini, knowing the Archduke incapable of

anything so dishonourable, felt that the war was inevitable.

At the very same time too, Father Cotton, who was only too ready to

betray the secrets of the confessional when there was an object to gain,

had a long conversation with the Archduke's ambassador, in which the holy

man said that the King had confessed to him that he made the war

expressly to cause the Princess to be sent back to France, so that as

there could be no more doubt on the subject the father-confessor begged

Pecquius, in order to prevent so great an evil, to devise "some prompt

and sudden means to induce his Highness the Archduke to order the

Princess to retire secretly to her own country." The Jesuit had different

notions of honour, reputation, and duty from those which influenced the

Archduke. He added that "at Easter the King had been so well disposed to

seek his salvation that he could easily have forgotten his affection for

the Princess, had she not rekindled the fire by her letters, in which she

caressed him with amorous epithets, calling him 'my heart,' 'my

chevalier,' and similar terms of endearment." Father Cotton also drew up

a paper, which he secretly conveyed to Pecquius, "to prove that the

Archduke, in terms of conscience and honour, might decide to permit this

escape, but he most urgently implored the Ambassador that for the love of

God and the public good he would influence his Serene Highness to prevent

this from ever coming to the knowledge of the world, but to keep the

secret inviolably."

Thus, while Henry was holding high council with his own most trusted

advisers, and with the most profound statesmen of Europe, as to the

opening campaign within a fortnight of a vast and general war, he was

secretly plotting with his father-confessor to effect what he avowed to

be the only purpose of that war, by Jesuitical bird-lime to be applied to

the chief of his antagonists. Certainly Barneveld and his colleagues were

justified in their distrust. To move one step in advance of their potent

but slippery ally might be a step off a precipice.

On the 1st of May, Sully made a long visit to the commissioners. He

earnestly urged upon them the necessity of making the most of the present

opportunity. There were people in plenty, he said, who would gladly see

the King take another course, for many influential persons about him were

altogether Spanish in their inclinations.

The King had been scandalized to hear from the Prince of Anhalt, without

going into details, that on his recent passage through the Netherlands he

had noticed some change of feeling, some coolness in their High

Mightinesses. The Duke advised that they should be very heedful, that

they should remember how much more closely these matters regarded them

than anyone else, that they should not deceive themselves, but be firmly

convinced that unless they were willing to go head foremost into the

business the French would likewise not commit themselves. Sully spoke

with much earnestness and feeling, for it was obvious that both he and

his master had been disappointed at the cautious and limited nature of

the instructions given to the ambassadors.

An opinion had indeed prevailed, and, as we have seen, was to a certain

extent shared in by Aerssens, and even by Sully himself, that the King's

military preparations were after all but a feint, and that if the Prince

of Conde, and with him the Princess, could be restored to France, the

whole war cloud would evaporate in smoke.

It was even asserted that Henry had made a secret treaty with the enemy,

according to which, while apparently ready to burst upon the House of

Austria with overwhelming force, he was in reality about to shake hands

cordially with that power, on condition of being allowed to incorporate

into his own kingdom the very duchies in dispute, and of receiving the

Prince of Conde and his wife from Spain. He was thus suspected of being

about to betray his friends and allies in the most ignoble manner and for

the vilest of motives. The circulation of these infamous reports no doubt

paralysed for a time the energy of the enemy who had made no requisite

preparations against the threatened invasion, but it sickened his friends

with vague apprehensions, while it cut the King himself to the heart and

infuriated him to madness.

He asked the Nuncius one day what people thought in Rome and Italy of the

war about to be undertaken. Ubaldini replied that those best informed

considered the Princess of Conde as the principal subject of hostilities;

they thought that he meant to have her back. "I do mean to have her

back," cried Henry, with a mighty oath, and foaming with rage, "and I

shall have her back. No one shall prevent it, not even the Lieutenant of

God on earth."

But the imputation of this terrible treason weighed upon his mind and

embittered every hour.

The commissioners assured Sully that they had no knowledge of any

coolness or change such as Anhalt had reported on the part of their

principals, and the Duke took his leave.

It will be remembered that Villeroy had, it was thought, been making

mischief between Anhalt and the States by reporting and misreporting

private conversations between that Prince and the Dutch ambassador.

As soon as Sully had gone, van der Myle waited upon Villeroy to ask, in

name of himself and colleagues, for audience of leave-taking, the object

of their mission having been accomplished. The Secretary of State, too,

like Sully, urged the importance of making the most of the occasion. The

affair of Cleve, he said, did not very much concern the King, but his

Majesty had taken it to heart chiefly on account of the States and for

their security. They were bound, therefore, to exert themselves to the

utmost, but more would not be required of them than it would be possible

to fulfil.

Van der Myle replied that nothing would be left undone by their High

Mightinesses to support the King faithfully and according to their

promise.

On the 5th, Villeroy came to the ambassadors, bringing with him a letter

from the King for the States-General, and likewise a written reply to the

declarations made orally and in writing by the ambassadors to his

Majesty.