"If the man in question," he said, "be the author, as perhaps falsely

imputed, of the work 'De Filiatione Christi' or things of that sort, you

may be sure that he shall have no furtherance here." He complained,

however, that before proof the cause was much prejudiced by the

circulation through the press of letters on the subject from important

personages in England. His own efforts to do justice in the matter were

traversed by such machinations. If the Professor proved to be guilty of

publications fairly to be deemed atheistical and blasphemous, he should

be debarred from his functions, but the outcry from England was doing

more harm than good.

"The published extract from the letter of the Archbishop," he wrote, "to

the effect that the King will declare My Lords the States to be his

enemies if they are not willing to send the man away is doing much harm."

Truly, if it had come to this--that a King of England was to go to war

with a neighbouring and friendly republic because an obnoxious professor

of theology was not instantly hurled from a university of which his

Majesty was not one of the overseers--it was time to look a little

closely into the functions of governments and the nature of public and

international law. Not that the sword of James was in reality very likely

to be unsheathed, but his shriekings and his scribblings, pacific as he

was himself, were likely to arouse passions which torrents of blood alone

could satiate.

"The publishing and spreading among the community," continued Barneveld,

"of M. Winwood's protestations and of many indecent libels are also doing

much mischief, for the nature of this people does not tolerate such

things. I hope, however, to obtain the removal according to his Majesty's

desire. Keep me well informed, and send me word what is thought in

England by the four divines of the book of Vorstius, 'De Deo,' and of his

declarations on the points sent here by his Majesty. Let me know, too, if

there has been any later confession published in England than that of the

year 1562, and whether the nine points pressed in the year 1595 were

accepted and published in 1603. If so, pray send them, as they maybe made

use of in settling our differences here."

Thus it will be seen that the spirit of conciliation, of a calm but

earnest desire to obtain a firm grasp of the most reasonable relations

between Church and State through patient study of the phenomena exhibited

in other countries, were the leading motives of the man. Yet he was

perpetually denounced in private as an unbeliever, an atheist, a tyrant,

because he resisted dictation from the clergy within the Provinces and

from kings outside them.

"It was always held here to be one of the chief infractions of the laws

and privileges of this country," he said, "that former princes had placed

themselves in matter of religion in the tutelage of the Pope and the

Spanish Inquisition, and that they therefore on complaint of their good

subjects could take no orders on that subject. Therefore it cannot be

considered strange that we are not willing here to fall into the same

obloquy. That one should now choose to turn the magistrates, who were

once so seriously summoned on their conscience and their office to adopt

the Reformation and to take the matter of religion to heart, into

ignorants, to deprive them of knowledge, and to cause them to see with

other eyes than their own, cannot by many be considered right and

reasonable. 'Intelligenti pauca.'"

[The interesting letter from which I have given these copious

extracts was ordered by its writer to be burned. "Lecta vulcano"

was noted at the end of it, as was not unfrequently the case with

the Advocate. It never was burned; but, innocent and reasonable as

it seems, was made use of by Barneveld's enemies with deadly effect.

J.L.M.]

Meantime M. de Refuge, as before stated, was on his way to the Hague, to

communicate the news of the double marriage. He had fallen sick at

Rotterdam, and the nature of his instructions and of the message he

brought remained unknown, save from the previous despatches of Aerssens.

But reports were rife that he was about to propose new terms of alliance

to the States, founded on large concessions to the Roman Catholic

religion. Of course intense jealousy was excited at the English court,

and calumny plumed her wings for a fresh attack upon the Advocate. Of

course he was sold to Spain, the Reformed religion was to be trampled out

in the Provinces, and the Papacy and Holy Inquisition established on its

ruins. Nothing could be more diametrically the reverse of the fact than

such hysterical suspicions as to the instructions of the ambassador

extraordinary from France, and this has already appeared. The Vorstian

affair too was still in the same phase, the Advocate professing a

willingness that justice should be done in the matter, while courteously

but firmly resisting the arrogant pretensions of James to take the matter

out of the jurisdiction of the States.

"I stand amazed," he said, "at the partisanship and the calumnious

representations which you tell me of, and cannot imagine what is thought

nor what is proposed. Should M. de Refuge make any such propositions as

are feared, believe, and cause his Majesty and his counsellors to

believe, that they would be of no effect. Make assurances upon my word,

notwithstanding all advices to the contrary, that such things would be

flatly refused. If anything is published or proven to the discredit of

Vorstius, send it to me. Believe that we shall not defend heretics nor

schismatics against the pure Evangelical doctrine, but one cannot

conceive here that the knowledge and judicature of the matter belongs

anywhere else than to My Lords the States of Holland, in whose service he

has legally been during four months before his Majesty made the least

difficulty about it. Called hither legally a year before, with the

knowledge and by the order of his Excellency and the councillors of state

of Holland, he has been countermined by five or six Flemings and

Frisians, who, without recognizing the lawful authority of the

magistrates, have sought assistance in foreign countries--in Germany and

afterwards in England. Yes, they have been so presumptuous as to

designate one of their own men for the place. If such a proceeding should

be attempted in England, I leave it to those whose business it would be

to deal with it to say what would be done. I hope therefore that one will

leave the examination and judgment of this matter freely to us, without

attempting to make us--against the principles of the Reformation and the

liberties and laws of the land--executors of the decrees of others, as

the man here wishes to obtrude it upon us."

He alluded to the difficulty in raising the ways and means; saying that

the quota of Holland, as usual, which was more than half the whole, was

ready, while other provinces were in arrears. Yet they were protected,

while Holland was attacked.

"Methinks I am living in a strange world," he said, "when those who have

received great honour from Holland, and who in their conscience know that

they alone have conserved the Commonwealth, are now traduced with such

great calumnies. But God the Lord Almighty is just, and will in His own

time do chastisement."

The affair of Vorstius dragged its slow length along, and few things are

more astounding at this epoch than to see such a matter, interesting

enough certainly to theologians, to the University, and to the rising

generation of students, made the topic of unceasing and embittered

diplomatic controversy between two great nations, who had most pressing

and momentous business on their hands. But it was necessary to humour the

King, while going to the verge of imprudence in protecting the Professor.

In March he was heard, three or four hours long, before the Assembly of

Holland, in answer to various charges made against him, being warned that

"he stood before the Lord God and before the sovereign authority of the

States." Although thought by many to have made a powerful defence, he was

ordered to set it forth in writing, both in Latin and in the vernacular.

Furthermore it was ordained that he should make a complete refutation of

all the charges already made or that might be made during the ensuing

three months against him in speech, book, or letter in England, Germany,

the Netherlands, or anywhere else. He was allowed one year and a half to

accomplish this work, and meantime was to reside not in Leyden, nor the

Hague, but in some other town of Holland, not delivering lectures or

practising his profession in any way. It might be supposed that

sufficient work had been thus laid out for the unfortunate doctor of

divinity without lecturing or preaching. The question of jurisdiction was

saved. The independence of the civil authority over the extreme

pretensions of the clergy had been vindicated by the firmness of the

Advocate. James bad been treated with overflowing demonstrations of

respect, but his claim to expel a Dutch professor from his chair and

country by a royal fiat had been signally rebuked. Certainly if the

Provinces were dependent upon the British king in regard to such a

matter, it was the merest imbecility for them to affect independence.

Barneveld had carried his point and served his country strenuously and

well in this apparently small matter which human folly had dilated into a

great one. But deep was the wrath treasured against him in consequence in

clerical and royal minds.

Returning from Wesel after the negotiations, Sir Ralph Winwood had an

important interview at Arnheim with Prince Maurice, in which they

confidentially exchanged their opinions in regard to the Advocate, and

mutually confirmed their suspicions and their jealousies in regard to

that statesman.

The Ambassador earnestly thanked the Prince in the King's name for his

"careful and industrious endeavours for the maintenance of the truth of

religion, lively expressed in prosecuting the cause against Vorstius and

his adherents."

He then said:

"I am expressly commanded that his Majesty conferring the present

condition of affairs of this quarter of the world with those

advertisements he daily receives from his ministers abroad, together with

the nature and disposition of those men who have in their hands the

managing of all business in these foreign parts, can make no other

judgment than this.

"There is a general ligue and confederation complotted far the subversion

and ruin of religion upon the subsistence whereof his Majesty doth judge

the main welfare of your realms and of these Provinces solely to consist.

"Therefore his Majesty has given me charge out of the knowledge he has of

your great worth and sufficiency," continued Winwood, "and the confidence

he reposes in your faith and affection, freely to treat with you on these

points, and withal to pray you to deliver your opinion what way would be

the most compendious and the most assured to contrequarr these complots,

and to frustrate the malice of these mischievous designs."

The Prince replied by acknowledging the honour the King had vouchsafed to

do him in holding so gracious an opinion of him, wherein his Majesty

should never be deceived.

"I concur in judgment with his Majesty," continued the Prince, "that the

main scope at which these plots and practices do aim, for instance, the

alliance between France and Spain, is this, to root out religion, and by

consequence to bring under their yoke all those countries in which

religion is professed.

"The first attempt," continued the Prince, "is doubtless intended against

these Provinces. The means to countermine and defeat these projected

designs I take to be these: the continuance of his Majesty's constant

resolution for the protection of religion, and then that the King would

be pleased to procure a general confederation between the kings, princes,

and commonwealths professing religion, namely, Denmark, Sweden, the

German princes, the Protestant cantons of Switzerland, and our United

Provinces.

"Of this confederation, his Majesty must be not only the director, but

the head and protector.

"Lastly, the Protestants of France should be, if not supported, at least

relieved from that oppression which the alliance of Spain doth threaten

upon them. This, I insist," repeated Maurice with great fervour, "is the

only coupegorge of all plots whatever between France and Spain."

He enlarged at great length on these points, which he considered so

vital.

"And what appearance can there be," asked Winwood insidiously and

maliciously, "of this general confederation now that these Provinces,

which heretofore have been accounted a principal member of the Reformed

Church, begin to falter in the truth of religion?

"He who solely governs the metropolitan province of Holland," continued

the Ambassador, with a direct stab in the back at Barneveld, "is reputed

generally, as your Excellency best knows, to be the only patron of

Vorstius, and the protector of the schisms of Arminius. And likewise,

what possibility is there that the Protestants of France can expect

favour from these Provinces when the same man is known to depend at the

devotion of France?"

The international, theological, and personal jealousy of the King against

Holland's Advocate having been thus plainly developed, the Ambassador

proceeded to pour into the Prince's ear the venom of suspicion, and to

inflame his jealousy against his great rival. The secret conversation

showed how deeply laid was the foundation of the political hatred, both

of James and of Maurice, against the Advocate, and certainly nothing

could be more preposterous than to imagine the King as the director and

head of the great Protestant League. We have but lately seen him

confidentially assuring his minister that his only aim was "to wind

himself handsomely out of the whole business." Maurice must have found it

difficult to preserve his gravity when assigning such a part to "Master

Jacques."

"Although Monsieur Barneveld has cast off all care of religion," said

Maurice, "and although some towns in Holland, wherein his power doth

reign, are infected with the like neglect, yet so long as so many good

towns in Holland stand sound, and all the other provinces of this

confederacy, the proposition would at the first motion be cheerfully

accepted.

"I confess I find difficulty in satisfying your second question,"

continued the Prince, "for I acknowledge that Barneveld is wholly devoted

to the service of France. During the truce negotiations, when some

difference arose between him and myself, President Jeannin came to me,

requiring me in the French king's name to treat Monsieur Barneveld well,

whom the King had received into his protection. The letters which the

States' ambassador in France wrote to Barneveld (and to him all

ambassadors address their despatches of importance), the very autographs

themselves, he sent back into the hands of Villeroy."

Here the Prince did not scruple to accuse the Advocate of doing the base

and treacherous trick against Aerssens which he had expressly denied

doing, and which had been done during his illness, as he solemnly avowed,

by a subordinate probably for the sake of making mischief.

Maurice then discoursed largely and vehemently of the suspicious

proceedings of Barneveld, and denounced him as dangerous to the State.

"When one man who has the conduct of all affairs in his sole power," he

said, "shall hold underhand intelligence with the ministers of Spain and

the Archduke, and that without warrant, thereby he may have the means so

to carry the course of affairs that, do what they will, these Provinces

must fall or stand at the mercy and discretion of Spain. Therefore some

good resolutions must be taken in time to hold up this State from a

sudden downfall, but in this much moderation and discretion must be

used."

The Prince added that he had invited his cousin Lewis William to appear

at the Hague at May day, in order to consult as to the proper means to

preserve the Provinces from confusion under his Majesty's safeguard, and

with the aid of the Englishmen in the States' service whom Maurice

pronounced to be "the strength and flower of his army."

Thus the Prince developed his ideas at great length, and accused the

Advocate behind his back, and without the faintest shadow of proof, of

base treachery to his friends and of high-treason. Surely Barneveld was

in danger, and was walking among pitfalls. Most powerful and deadly

enemies were silently banding themselves together against him. Could he

long maintain his hold on the slippery heights of power, where he was so

consciously serving his country, but where he became day by day a mere

shining mark for calumny and hatred?

The Ambassador then signified to the Prince that he had been instructed

to carry to him the King's purpose to confer on him the Order of the

Garter.

"If his Majesty holds me worthy of so great honour," said the Prince, "I

and my family shall ever remain bound to his service and that of his

royal posterity.

"That the States should be offended I see no cause, but holding the

charge I do in their service, I could not accept the honour without first

acquainting them and receiving their approbation."

Winwood replied that, as the King knew the terms on which the Prince

lived with the States, he doubted not his Majesty would first notify them

and say that he honoured the mutual amity between his realms and these

Provinces by honouring the virtues of their general, whose services, as

they had been most faithful and affectionate, so had they been

accompanied with the blessings of happiness and prosperous success.

Thus said Winwood to the King: "Your Majesty may plaster two walls with

one trowel ('una fidelia duos dealbare parietes'), reverse the designs of

them who to facilitate their own practices do endeavour to alienate your

affections from the good of these Provinces, and oblige to your service

the well-affected people, who know that there is no surety for

themselves, their wives and children, but under the protection of your

Majesty's favour. Perhaps, however, the favourers of Vorstius and

Arminius will buzz into the ears of their associates that your Majesty

would make a party in these Provinces by maintaining the truth of

religion and also by gaining unto you the affections of their chief

commander. But your Majesty will be pleased to pass forth whose worthy

ends will take their place, which is to honour virtue where you find it,

and the suspicious surmises of malice and envy in one instant will vanish

into smoke."

Winwood made no scruple in directly stating to the English government

that Barneveld's purpose was to "cause a divorce between the King's

realms and the Provinces, the more easily to precipitate them into the

arms of Spain." He added that the negotiation with Count Maurice then on

foot was to be followed, but with much secrecy, on account of the place

he held in the State.

Soon after the Ambassador's secret conversation with Maurice he had an

interview with Barneveld. He assured the Advocate that no contentment

could be given to his Majesty but by the banishment of Vorstius. "If the

town of Leyden should understand so much," replied Barneveld, "I fear the

magistrates would retain him still in their town."

"If the town of Leyden should retain Vorstius," answered Winwood, "to

brave or despight his Majesty, the King has the means, if it pleases him

to use them, and that without drawing sword, to range them to reason, and

to make the magistrates on their knees demand his pardon, and I say as

much of Rotterdam."

Such insolence on the part of an ambassador to the first minister of a

great republic was hard to bear. Barneveld was not the man to brook it.

He replied with great indignation. "I was born in liberty," he said with

rising choler, "I cannot digest this kind of language. The King of Spain

himself never dared to speak in so high a style."

"I well understand that logic," returned the Ambassador with continued

insolence. "You hold your argument to be drawn 'a majori ad minus;' but I

pray you to believe that the King of Great Britain is peer and companion

to the King of Spain, and that his motto is, 'Nemo me impune lacessit.'"

And so they parted in a mutual rage; Winwood adding on going out of the

room, "Whatsoever I propose to you in his Majesty's name can find with

you neither goust nor grace."

He then informed Lord Rochester that "the man was extremely distempered

and extremely distasted with his Majesty.

"Some say," he added, "that on being in England when his Majesty first

came to the throne he conceived some offence, which ever since hath

rankled in his heart, and now doth burst forth with more violent malice."

Nor was the matter so small as it superficially appeared. Dependence of

one nation upon the dictation of another can never be considered

otherwise than grave. The subjection of all citizens, clerical or lay, to

the laws of the land, the supremacy of the State over the Church, were

equally grave subjects. And the question of sovereignty now raised for

the first time, not academically merely, but practically, was the gravest

one of all. It was soon to be mooted vigorously and passionately whether

the United Provinces were a confederacy or a union; a league of sovereign

and independent states bound together by treaty for certain specified

purposes or an incorporated whole. The Advocate and all the principal

lawyers in the country had scarcely a doubt on the subject. Whether it

were a reasonable system or an absurd one, a vigorous or an imbecile form

of government, they were confident that the Union of Utrecht, made about

a generation of mankind before, and the only tie by which the Provinces

were bound together at all, was a compact between sovereigns.

Barneveld styled himself always the servant and officer of the States of

Holland. To them was his allegiance, for them he spoke, wrought, and

thought, by them his meagre salary was paid. At the congress of the

States-General, the scene of his most important functions, he was the

ambassador of Holland, acting nominally according to their instructions,

and exercising the powers of minister of foreign affairs and, as it were,

prime minister for the other confederates by their common consent. The

system would have been intolerable, the great affairs of war and peace

could never have been carried on so triumphantly, had not the

preponderance of the one province Holland, richer, more powerful, more

important in every way than the other six provinces combined, given to

the confederacy illegally, but virtually, many of the attributes of

union. Rather by usucaption than usurpation Holland had in many regards

come to consider herself and be considered as the Republic itself. And

Barneveld, acting always in the name of Holland and with the most modest

of titles and appointments, was for a long time in all civil matters the

chief of the whole country. This had been convenient during the war,

still more convenient during negotiations for peace, but it was

inevitable that there should be murmurs now that the cessation from

military operations on a large scale had given men time to look more

deeply into the nature of a constitution partly inherited and partly

improvised, and having many of the defects usually incident to both

sources of government.

The military interest, the ecclesiastical power, and the influence of

foreign nations exerted through diplomatic intrigue, were rapidly

arraying themselves in determined hostility to Barneveld and to what was

deemed his tyrannous usurpation. A little later the national spirit, as

opposed to provincial and municipal patriotism, was to be aroused against

him, and was likely to prove the most formidable of all the elements of

antagonism.

It is not necessary to anticipate here what must be developed on a

subsequent page. This much, however, it is well to indicate for the

correct understanding of passing events. Barneveld did not consider

himself the officer or servant of their High Mightinesses the

States-General, while in reality often acting as their master, but the

vassal and obedient functionary of their Great Mightinesses the States of

Holland, whom he almost absolutely controlled.

His present most pressing business was to resist the encroachments of the

sacerdotal power and to defend the magistracy. The casuistical questions

which were fast maddening the public mind seemed of importance to him

only as enclosing within them a more vital and practical question of

civil government.

But the anger of his opponents, secret and open, was rapidly increasing.

Envy, jealousy, political and clerical hate, above all, that deadliest

and basest of malignant spirits which in partisan warfare is bred out of

subserviency to rising and rival power, were swarming about him and

stinging him at every step. No parasite of Maurice could more effectively

pay his court and more confidently hope for promotion or reward than by

vilipending Barneveld. It would be difficult to comprehend the infinite

extent and power of slander without a study of the career of the Advocate

of Holland.

"I thank you for your advices," he wrote to Carom' "and I wish from my

heart that his Majesty, according to his royal wisdom and clemency

towards the condition of this country, would listen only to My Lords the

States or their ministers, and not to his own or other passionate persons

who, through misunderstanding or malice, furnish him with information and

so frequently flatter him. I have tried these twenty years to deserve his

Majesty's confidence, and have many letters from him reaching through

twelve or fifteen years, in which he does me honour and promises his

royal favour. I am the more chagrined that through false and passionate

reports and information--because I am resolved to remain good and true to

My Lords the States, to the fatherland, and to the true Christian

religion--I and mine should now be so traduced. I hope that God Almighty

will second my upright conscience, and cause his Majesty soon to see the

injustice done to me and mine. To defend the resolutions of My Lords the

States of Holland is my office, duty, and oath, and I assure you that

those resolutions are taken with wider vision and scope than his Majesty

can believe. Let this serve for My Lords' defence and my own against

indecent calumny, for my duty allows me to pursue no other course."

He again alluded to the dreary affair of Vorstius, and told the Envoy

that the venation caused by it was incredible. "That men unjustly defame

our cities and their regents is nothing new," he said; "but I assure you

that it is far more damaging to the common weal than the defamers

imagine."

Some of the private admirers of Arminius who were deeply grieved at so

often hearing him "publicly decried as the enemy of God" had been

defending the great heretic to James, and by so doing had excited the

royal wrath not only against the deceased doctor and themselves, but

against the States of Holland who had given them no commission.

On the other hand the advanced orthodox party, most bitter haters of

Barneveld, and whom in his correspondence with England he uniformly and

perhaps designedly called the Puritans, knowing that the very word was a

scarlet rag to James, were growing louder and louder in their demands.

"Some thirty of these Puritans," said he, "of whom at least twenty are

Flemings or other foreigners equally violent, proclaim that they and the

like of them mean alone to govern the Church. Let his Majesty compare

this proposal with his Royal Present, with his salutary declaration at

London in the year 1603 to Doctor Reynolds and his associates, and with

his admonition delivered to the Emperor, kings, sovereigns, and

republics, and he will best understand the mischievous principles of

these people, who are now gaining credit with him to the detriment of the

freedom and laws of these Provinces."

A less enlightened statesman than Barneveld would have found it easy

enough to demonstrate the inconsistency of the King in thus preaching

subserviency of government to church and favouring the rule of Puritans

over both. It needed but slender logic to reduce such a policy on his

part to absurdity, but neither kings nor governments are apt to value

themselves on their logic. So long as James could play the pedagogue to

emperors, kings, and republics, it mattered little to him that the

doctrines which he preached in one place he had pronounced flat blasphemy

in another.

That he would cheerfully hang in England the man whom he would elevate to

power in Holland might be inconsistency in lesser mortals; but what was

the use of his infallibility if he was expected to be consistent?

But one thing was certain. The Advocate saw through him as if he had been

made of glass, and James knew that he did. This fatal fact outweighed all

the decorous and respectful phraseology under which Barneveld veiled his

remorseless refutations. It was a dangerous thing to incur the wrath of

this despot-theologian.

Prince Maurice, who had originally joined in the invitation given by the

overseers of Leyden to Vorstius, and had directed one of the deputies and

his own "court trumpeter," Uytenbogaert, to press him earnestly to grant

his services to the University, now finding the coldness of Barneveld to

the fiery remonstrances of the King, withdrew his protection of the

Professor.

"The Count Maurice, who is a wise and understanding prince," said

Winwood, "and withal most affectionate to his Majesty's service, doth

foresee the miseries into which these countries are likely to fall, and

with grief doth pine away."

It is probable that the great stadholder had never been more robust, or

indeed inclining to obesity, than precisely at this epoch; but Sir Ralph

was of an imaginative turn. He had discovered, too, that the Advocate's

design was "of no other nature than so to stem the course of the State

that insensibly the Provinces shall fall by relapse into the hands of

Spain."

A more despicable idea never entered a human brain. Every action, word,

and thought, of Barneveld's life was a refutation of it. But he was

unwilling, at the bidding of a king, to treat a professor with contumely

who had just been solemnly and unanimously invited by the great

university, by the States of Holland, and by the Stadholder to an

important chair; and that was enough for the diplomatist and courtier.

"He, and only he," said Winwood passionately, "hath opposed his Majesty's

purposes with might and main." Formerly the Ambassador had been full of

complaints of "the craving humour of Count Maurice," and had censured him

bitterly in his correspondence for having almost by his inordinate

pretensions for money and other property brought the Treaty of Truce to a

standstill. And in these charges he was as unjust and as reckless as he

was now in regard to Barneveld.

The course of James and his agents seemed cunningly devised to sow

discord in the Provinces, to inflame the growing animosity of the

Stadholder to the Advocate, and to paralyse the action of the Republic in

the duchies. If the King had received direct instructions from the

Spanish cabinet how to play the Spanish game, he could hardly have done

it with more docility. But was not Gondemar ever at his elbow, and the

Infanta always in the perspective?

And it is strange enough that, at the same moment, Spanish marriages were

in France as well as England the turning-point of policy.

Henry had been willing enough that the Dauphin should espouse a Spanish

infanta, and that one of the Spanish princes should be affianced to one

of his daughters. But the proposition from Spain had been coupled with a

condition that the friendship between France and the Netherlands should

be at once broken off, and the rebellious heretics left to their fate.

And this condition had been placed before him with such arrogance that he

had rejected the whole scheme. Henry was not the man to do anything

dishonourable at the dictation of another sovereign. He was also not the

man to be ignorant that the friendship of the Provinces was necessary to

him, that cordial friendship between France and Spain was impossible, and

that to allow Spain to reoccupy that splendid possession between his own

realms and Germany, from which she had been driven by the Hollanders in

close alliance with himself, would be unworthy of the veriest schoolboy

in politics. But Henry was dead, and a Medici reigned in his place, whose

whole thought was to make herself agreeable to Spain.

Aerssens, adroit, prying, experienced, unscrupulous, knew very well that

these double Spanish marriages were resolved upon, and that the

inevitable condition refused by the King would be imposed upon his widow.

He so informed the States-General, and it was known to the French

government that he had informed them. His position soon became almost

untenable, not because he had given this information, but because the

information and the inference made from it were correct.

It will be observed that the policy of the Advocate was to preserve

friendly relations between France and England, and between both and the

United Provinces. It was for this reason that he submitted to the

exhortations and denunciations of the English ambassadors. It was for

this that he kept steadily in view the necessity of dealing with and

supporting corporate France, the French government, when there were many

reasons for feeling sympathy with the internal rebellion against that

government. Maurice felt differently. He was connected by blood or

alliance with more than one of the princes now perpetually in revolt.

Bouillon was his brother-in-law, the sister of Conde was his brother's

wife. Another cousin, the Elector-Palatine, was already encouraging

distant and extravagant hopes of the Imperial crown. It was not unnatural

that he should feel promptings of ambition and sympathy difficult to avow

even to himself, and that he should feel resentment against the man by

whom this secret policy was traversed in the well-considered interest of

the Republican government.

Aerssens, who, with the keen instinct of self-advancement was already

attaching himself to Maurice as to the wheels of the chariot going

steadily up the hill, was not indisposed to loosen his hold upon the man

through whose friendship he had first risen, and whose power was now

perhaps on the decline. Moreover, events had now caused him to hate the

French government with much fervour. With Henry IV. he had been

all-powerful. His position had been altogether exceptional, and he had

wielded an influence at Paris more than that exerted by any foreign

ambassador. The change naturally did not please him, although he well

knew the reasons. It was impossible for the Dutch ambassador to be

popular at a court where Spain ruled supreme. Had he been willing to eat

humiliation as with a spoon, it would not have sufficed. They knew him,

they feared him, and they could not doubt that his sympathies would ever

be with the malcontent princes. At the same time he did not like to lose

his hold upon the place, nor to have it known, as yet, to the world that

his power was diminished.

"The Queen commands me to tell you," said the French ambassador de Russy

to the States-General, "that the language of the Sieur Aerssens has not

only astonished her, but scandalized her to that degree that she could

not refrain from demanding if it came from My Lords the States or from

himself. He having, however, affirmed to her Majesty that he had express

charge to justify it by reasons so remote from the hope and the belief

that she had conceived of your gratitude to the Most Christian King and

herself, she is constrained to complain of it, and with great frankness."

Some months later than this Aerssens communicated to the States-General

the project of the Spanish marriage, "which," said he, "they have

declared to me with so many oaths to be false." He informed them that M.

de Refuge was to go on special mission to the Hague, "having been

designated to that duty before Aerssens' discovery of the marriage

project." He was to persuade their Mightinesses that the marriages were

by no means concluded, and that, even if they were, their Mightinesses

were not interested therein, their Majesties intending to remain by the

old maxims and alliances of the late king. Marriages, he would be

instructed to say, were mere personal conventions, which remained of no

consideration when the interests of the crown were touched.

"Nevertheless, I know very well," said Aerssens, "that in England these

negotiations are otherwise understood, and that the King has uttered

great complaints about them, saying that such a negotiation as this ought

not to have been concealed from him. He is pressing more than ever for

reimbursement of the debt to him, and especially for the moneys pretended

to have been furnished to your Mightinesses in his Majesty's name."

Thus it will be seen how closely the Spanish marriages were connected

with the immediate financial arrangements of France, England, and the

States, without reference to the wider political consequences

anticipated.

"The princes and most gentlemen," here continued the Ambassador, "believe

that these reciprocal and double marriages will bring about great changes

in Christendom if they take the course which the authors of them intend,

however much they may affect to believe that no novelties are impending.

The marriages were proposed to the late king, and approved by him, during

the negotiations for the truce, and had Don Pedro do Toledo been able to

govern himself, as Jeannin has just been telling me, the United Provinces

would have drawn from it their assured security. What he means by that, I

certainly cannot conceive, for Don Pedro proposed the marriage of the

Dauphin (now Louis XIII.) with the Infanta on the condition that Henry

should renounce all friendship with your Mightinesses, and neither openly

nor secretly give you any assistance. You were to be entirely abandoned,

as an example for all who throw off the authority of their lawful prince.

But his Majesty answered very generously that he would take no

conditions; that he considered your Mightinesses as his best friends,

whom he could not and would not forsake. Upon this Don Pedro broke off

the negotiation. What should now induce the King of Spain to resume the

marriage negotiations but to give up the conditions, I am sure I don't

know, unless, through the truce, his designs and his ambition have grown

flaccid. This I don't dare to hope, but fear, on the contrary, that he

will so manage the irresolution, weakness, and faintheartedness of this

kingdom as through the aid of his pensioned friends here to arrive at all

his former aims."

Certainly the Ambassador painted the condition of France in striking and

veracious colours, and he was quite right in sending the information

which he was first to discover, and which it was so important for the

States to know. It was none the less certain in Barneveld's mind that the

best, not the worst, must be made of the state of affairs, and that

France should not be assisted in throwing herself irrecoverably into the

arms of Spain.

"Refuge will tell you," said Aerssens, a little later, "that these

marriages will not interfere with the friendship of France for you nor

with her subsidies, and that no advantage will be given to Spain in the

treaty to your detriment or that of her other allies. But whatever fine

declarations they may make, it is sure to be detrimental. And all the

princes, gentlemen, and officers here have the same conviction. Those of

the Reformed religion believe that the transaction is directed solely

against the religion which your Mightinesses profess, and that the next

step will be to effect a total separation between the two religions and

the two countries."

Refuge arrived soon afterwards, and made the communication to the

States-General of the approaching nuptials between the King of France and

the Infanta of Spain; and of the Prince of Spain with Madame, eldest

daughter of France, exactly as Aerssens had predicted four months before.

There was a great flourish of compliments, much friendly phrase-making,

and their Mightinesses were informed that the communication of the

marriages was made to them before any other power had been notified, in

proof of the extraordinary affection entertained for them by France. "You

are so much interested in the happiness of France," said Refuge, "that

this treaty by which it is secured will be for your happiness also. He

did not indicate, however, the precise nature of the bliss beyond the

indulgence of a sentimental sympathy, not very refreshing in the

circumstances, which was to result to the Confederacy from this close

alliance between their firmest friend and their ancient and deadly enemy.

He would have found it difficult to do so.

"Don Rodrigo de Calderon, secretary of state, is daily expected from

Spain," wrote, Aerssens once more. "He brings probably the articles of

the marriages, which have hitherto been kept secret, so they say. 'Tis a

shrewd negotiator; and in this alliance the King's chief design is to

injure your Mightinesses, as M. de Villeroy now confesses, although he

says that this will not be consented to on this side. It behoves your

Mightinesses to use all your ears and eyes. It is certain these are much

more than private conventions. Yes, there is nothing private about them,

save the conjunction of the persons whom they concern. In short, all the

conditions regard directly the state, and directly likewise, or by

necessary consequence, the state of your Mightinesses' Provinces. I

reserve explanations until it shall please your Mightinesses to hear me

by word of mouth."

For it was now taken into consideration by the States' government whether

Aerssens was to remain at his post or to return. Whether it was his wish

to be relieved of his embassy or not was a question. But there was no

question that the States at this juncture, and in spite of the dangers

impending from the Spanish marriages, must have an ambassador ready to do

his best to keep France from prematurely sliding into positive hostility

to them. Aerssens was enigmatical in his language, and Barneveld was

somewhat puzzled.

"I have according to your reiterated requests," wrote the Advocate to the

Ambassador, "sounded the assembly of My Lords the States as to your

recall; but I find among some gentlemen the opinion that if earnestly

pressed to continue you would be willing to listen to the proposal. This

I cannot make out from your letters. Please to advise me frankly as to

your wishes, and assure yourself in everything of my friendship."

Nothing could be more straightforward than this language, but the Envoy

was less frank than Barneveld, as will subsequently appear. The subject

was a most important one, not only in its relation to the great affairs

of state, but to momentous events touching the fate of illustrious

personages.

Meantime a resolution was passed by the States of Holland "in regard to

the question whether Ambassador Aerssens should retain his office, yes or

no?" And it was decided by a majority of votes "to leave it to his candid

opinion if in his free conscience he thinks he can serve the public cause

there any longer. If yes, he may keep his office one year more. If no, he

may take leave and come home. In no case is his salary to be increased."

Surely the States, under the guidance of the Advocate, had thus acted

with consummate courtesy towards a diplomatist whose position from no

apparent fault of his own but by the force of circumstances--and rather

to his credit than otherwise--was gravely compromised.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Advanced orthodox party-Puritans

Atheist, a tyrant, because he resisted dictation from the clergy

Give him advice if he asked it, and money when he required

He was not imperial of aspect on canvas or coin

He who would have all may easily lose all

King's definite and final intentions, varied from day to day

Neither kings nor governments are apt to value logic

Outdoing himself in dogmatism and inconsistency

Small matter which human folly had dilated into a great one

The defence of the civil authority against the priesthood

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 of John of Barneveld, v5, 1609-14

CHAPTER VI.

Establishment of the Condominium in the Duchies--Dissensions between

the Neuburgers and Brandenburgers--Occupation of Julich by the

Brandenburgers assisted by the States-General--Indignation in Spain

and at the Court of the Archdukes--Subsidy despatched to Brussels

Spinola descends upon Aix-la-Chapelle and takes possession of Orsoy

and other places--Surrender of Wesel--Conference at Xanten--Treaty

permanently dividing the Territory between Brandenburg and Neuburg--

Prohibition from Spain--Delays and Disagreements.

Thus the 'Condominium' had been peaceably established.

Three or four years passed away in the course of which the evils of a

joint and undivided sovereignty of two rival houses over the same

territory could not fail to manifest themselves. Brandenburg, Calvinist

in religion, and for other reasons more intimately connected with and

more favoured by the States' government than his rival, gained ground in

the duchies. The Palatine of Neuburg, originally of Lutheran faith like

his father, soon manifested Catholic tendencies, which excited suspicion

in the Netherlands. These suspicions grew into certainties at the moment

when he espoused the sister of Maximilian of Bavaria and of the Elector

of Cologne. That this close connection with the very heads of the

Catholic League could bode no good to the cause of which the

States-General were the great promoters was self-evident. Very soon

afterwards the Palatine, a man of mature age and of considerable talents,

openly announced his conversion to the ancient church. Obviously the

sympathies of the States could not thenceforth fail to be on the side of

Brandenburg. The Elector's brother died and was succeeded in the

governorship of the Condeminium by the Elector's brother, a youth of

eighteen. He took up his abode in Cleve, leaving Dusseldorf to be the

sole residence of his co-stadholder.

Rivalry growing warmer, on account of this difference of religion,

between the respective partisans of Neuburg and Brandenburg, an attempt

was made in Dusseldorf by a sudden entirely unsuspected rising of the

Brandenburgers to drive their antagonist colleagues and their portion of

the garrison out of the city. It failed, but excited great anger. A more

successful effort was soon afterwards made in Julich; the Neuburgers were

driven out, and the Brandenburgers remained in sole possession of the

town and citadel, far the most important stronghold in the whole

territory. This was partly avenged by the Neuburgers, who gained absolute

control of Dusseldorf. Here were however no important fortifications, the

place being merely an agreeable palatial residence and a thriving mart.

The States-General, not concealing their predilection for Brandenburg,

but under pretext of guarding the peace which they had done so much to

establish, placed a garrison of 1400 infantry and a troop or two of horse

in the citadel of Julich.

Dire was the anger not unjustly excited in Spain when the news of this

violation of neutrality reached that government. Julich, placed midway

between Liege and Cologne, and commanding those fertile plains which make

up the opulent duchy, seemed virtually converted into a province of the

detested heretical republic. The German gate of the Spanish Netherlands

was literally in the hands of its most formidable foe.

The Spaniards about the court of the Archduke did not dissemble their

rage. The seizure of Julich was a stain upon his reputation, they cried.

Was it not enough, they asked, for the United Provinces to have made a

truce to the manifest detriment and discredit of Spain, and to have

treated her during all the negotiation with such insolence? Were they now

to be permitted to invade neutral territory, to violate public faith, to

act under no responsibility save to their own will? What was left for

them to do except to set up a tribunal in Holland for giving laws to the

whole of Northern Europe? Arrogating to themselves absolute power over

the controverted states of Cleve, Julich, and the dependencies, they now

pretended to dispose of them at their pleasure in order at the end

insolently to take possession of them for themselves.

These were the egregious fruits of the truce, they said tauntingly to the

discomfited Archduke. It had caused a loss of reputation, the very soul

of empires, to the crown of Spain. And now, to conclude her abasement,

the troops in Flanders had been shaven down with such parsimony as to

make the monarch seem a shopkeeper, not a king. One would suppose the

obedient Netherlands to be in the heart of Spain rather than outlying

provinces surrounded by their deadliest enemies. The heretics had gained

possession of the government at Aix-la-Chapelle; they had converted the

insignificant town of Mulheim into a thriving and fortified town in

defiance of Cologne and to its manifest detriment, and in various other

ways they had insulted the Catholics throughout those regions. And who

could wonder at such insolence, seeing that the army in Flanders,

formerly the terror of heretics, had become since the truce so weak as to

be the laughing-stock of the United Provinces? If it was expensive to

maintain these armies in the obedient Netherlands, let there be economy

elsewhere, they urged.

From India came gold and jewels. From other kingdoms came ostentation and

a long series of vain titles for the crown of Spain. Flanders was its

place of arms, its nursery of soldiers, its bulwark in Europe, and so it

should be preserved.

There was ground for these complaints. The army at the disposition of the

Archduke had been reduced to 8000 infantry and a handful of cavalry. The

peace establishment of the Republic amounted to 20,000 foot, 3000 horse,

besides the French and English regiments.

So soon as the news of the occupation of Julich was officially

communicated to the Spanish cabinet, a subsidy of 400,000 crowns was at

once despatched to Brussels. Levies of Walloons and Germans were made

without delay by order of Archduke Albert and under guidance of Spinola,

so that by midsummer the army was swollen to 18,000 foot and 3000 horse.

With these the great Genoese captain took the field in the middle of

August. On the 22nd of that month the army was encamped on some plains

mid-way between Maestricht and Aachen. There was profound mystery both at

Brussels and at the Hague as to the objective point of these military

movements. Anticipating an attack upon Julich, the States had meantime

strengthened the garrison of that important place with 3000 infantry and

a regiment of horse. It seemed scarcely probable therefore that Spinola

would venture a foolhardy blow at a citadel so well fortified and

defended. Moreover, there was not only no declaration of war, but strict

orders had been given by each of the apparent belligerents to their

military commanders to abstain from all offensive movements against the

adversary. And now began one of the strangest series of warlike

evolution's that were ever recorded. Maurice at the head of an army of

14,000 foot and 3000 horse manoeuvred in the neighbourhood of his great

antagonist and professional rival without exchanging a blow. It was a

phantom campaign, the prophetic rehearsal of dreadful marches and tragic

histories yet to be, and which were to be enacted on that very stage and

on still wider ones during a whole generation of mankind. That cynical

commerce in human lives which was to become one of the chief branches of

human industry in the century had already begun.

Spinola, after hovering for a few days in the neighbourhood, descended

upon the Imperial city of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle). This had been one of

the earliest towns in Germany to embrace the Reformed religion, and up to

the close of the sixteenth century the control of the magistracy had been

in the hands of the votaries of that creed. Subsequently the Catholics

had contrived to acquire and keep the municipal ascendency, secretly

supported by Archduke Albert, and much oppressing the Protestants with

imprisonments, fines, and banishment, until a new revolution which had

occurred in the year 1610, and which aroused the wrath of Spinola.

Certainly, according to the ideas of that day, it did not seem unnatural

in a city where a very large majority of the population were Protestants

that Protestants should have a majority in the town council. It seemed,

however, to those who surrounded the Archduke an outrage which could no

longer be tolerated, especially as a garrison of 600 Germans, supposed to

have formed part of the States' army, had recently been introduced into

the town. Aachen, lying mostly on an extended plain, had but very slight

fortifications, and it was commanded by a neighbouring range of hills. It

had no garrison but the 600 Germans. Spinola placed a battery or two on

the hills, and within three days the town surrendered. The inhabitants

expected a scene of carnage and pillage, but not a life was lost. No

injury whatever was inflicted on person or property, according to the

strict injunctions of the Archduke. The 600 Germans were driven out, and

1200 other Germans then serving under Catholic banners were put in their

places to protect the Catholic minority, to whose keeping the municipal

government was now confided.

Spinola, then entering the territory of Cleve, took session of Orsoy, an

important place on the Rhine, besides Duren, Duisburg, Kaster,

Greevenbroek and Berchem. Leaving garrisons in these places, he razed the

fortifications of Mulheim, much to the joy of the Archbishop and his

faithful subjects of Cologne, then crossed the Rhine at Rheinberg, and

swooped down upon Wesel. This flourishing and prosperous city had

formerly belonged to the Duchy of Cleve. Placed at the junction of the

Rhine and Lippe and commanding both rivers, it had become both powerful

and Protestant, and had set itself up as a free Imperial city,

recognising its dukes no longer as sovereigns, but only as protectors. So

fervent was it in the practice of the Reformed religion that it was

called the Rhenish Geneva, the cradle of German Calvinism. So important

was its preservation considered to the cause of Protestantism that the

States-General had urged its authorities to accept from them a garrison.

They refused. Had they complied, the city would have been saved, because

it was the rule in this extraordinary campaign that the belligerents made

war not upon each other, nor in each others territory, but against

neutrals and upon neutral soil. The Catholic forces under Spinola or his

lieutenants, meeting occasionally and accidentally with the Protestants

under Maurice or his generals, exchanged no cannon shots or buffets, but

only acts of courtesy; falling away each before the other, and each

ceding to the other with extreme politeness the possession of towns which

one had preceded the other in besieging.

The citizens of Wesel were amazed at being attacked, considering

themselves as Imperial burghers. They regretted too late that they had

refused a garrison from Maurice, which would have prevented Spinola from

assailing them. They had now nothing for it but to surrender, which they

did within three days. The principal condition of the capitulation was

that when Julich should be given up by the States Wesel should be

restored to its former position. Spinola then took and garrisoned the

city of Xanten, but went no further. Having weakened his army

sufficiently by the garrisons taken from it for the cities captured by

him, he declined to make any demonstration upon the neighbouring and

important towns of Emmerich and Rees. The Catholic commander falling

back, the Protestant moved forward. Maurice seized both Emmerich and

Rees, and placed garrisons within them, besides occupying Goch,

Kranenburg, Gennip, and various places in the County of Mark. This closed

the amicable campaign.

Spinola established himself and his forces near Wesel. The Prince

encamped near Rees. The two armies were within two hours' march of each

other. The Duke of Neuburg--for the Palatine had now succeeded on his

father's death to the ancestral dukedom and to his share of the

Condominium of the debateable provinces--now joined Spinola with an army

of 4000 foot and 400 horse. The young Prince of Brandenburg came to

Maurice with 800 cavalry and an infantry regiment of the

Elector-Palatine.

Negotiations destined to be as spectral and fleeting as the campaign had

been illusory now began. The whole Protestant world was aflame with

indignation at the loss of Wesel. The States' government had already

proposed to deposit Julich in the hands of a neutral power if the

Archduke would abstain from military movements. But Albert, proud of his

achievements in Aachen, refused to pause in his career. Let them make the

deposit first, he said.

Both belligerents, being now satiated with such military glory as could

flow from the capture of defenceless cities belonging to neutrals, agreed

to hold conferences at Xanten. To this town, in the Duchy of Cleve, and

midway between the rival camps, came Sir Henry Wotton and Sir Dudley

Carleton, ambassadors of Great Britain; de Refuge and de Russy, the

special and the resident ambassador of France at the Hague; Chancellor

Peter Pecquius and Counsellor Visser, to represent the Archdukes; seven

deputies from the United Provinces, three from the Elector of Cologne,

three from Brandenburg, three from Neuburg, and two from the

Elector-Palatine, as representative of the Protestant League.

In the earlier conferences the envoys of the Archduke and of the Elector

of Cologne were left out, but they were informed daily of each step in

the negotiation. The most important point at starting was thought to be

to get rid of the 'Condominium.' There could be no harmony nor peace in

joint possession. The whole territory should be cut provisionally in

halves, and each possessory prince rule exclusively within the portion

assigned to him. There might also be an exchange of domain between the

two every six months. As for Wesel and Julich, they could remain

respectively in the hands then holding them, or the fortifications of

Julich might be dismantled and Wesel restored to the status quo. The

latter alternative would have best suited the States, who were growing

daily more irritated at seeing Wesel, that Protestant stronghold, with an

exclusively Calvinistic population, in the hands of Catholics.

The Spanish ambassador at Brussels remonstrated, however, at the thought

of restoring his precious conquest, obtained without loss of time, money,

or blood, into the hands of heretics, at least before consultation with

the government at Madrid and without full consent of the King.

"How important to your Majesty's affairs in Flanders," wrote Guadaleste

to Philip, "is the acquisition of Wesel may be seen by the manifest grief

of your enemies. They see with immense displeasure your royal ensigns

planted on the most important place on the Rhine, and one which would

become the chief military station for all the armies of Flanders to

assemble in at any moment.

"As no acquisition could therefore be greater, so your Majesty should

never be deprived of it without thorough consideration of the case. The

Archduke fears, and so do his ministers, that if we refuse to restore

Wesel, the United Provinces would break the truce. For my part I believe,

and there are many who agree with me, that they would on the contrary be

more inclined to stand by the truce, hoping to obtain by negotiation that

which it must be obvious to them they cannot hope to capture by force.

But let Wesel be at once restored. Let that be done which is so much

desired by the United Provinces and other great enemies and rivals of

your Majesty, and what security will there be that the same Provinces

will not again attempt the same invasion? Is not the example of Julich

fresh? And how much more important is Wesel! Julich was after all not

situate on their frontiers, while Wesel lies at their principal gates.

Your Majesty now sees the good and upright intentions of those Provinces

and their friends. They have made a settlement between Brandenburg and

Neuburg, not in order to breed concord but confusion between those two,

not tranquillity for the country, but greater turbulence than ever

before. Nor have they done this with any other thought than that the

United Provinces might find new opportunities to derive the same profit

from fresh tumults as they have already done so shamelessly from those

which are past. After all I don't say that Wesel should never be

restored, if circumstances require it, and if your Majesty, approving the

Treaty of Xanten, should sanction the measure. But such a result should

be reached only after full consultation with your Majesty, to whose

glorious military exploits these splendid results are chiefly owing."

The treaty finally decided upon rejected the principle of alternate

possession, and established a permanent division of the territory in

dispute between Brandenburg and Neuburg.

The two portions were to be made as equal as possible, and lots were to

be thrown or drawn by the two princes for the first choice. To the one

side were assigned the Duchy of Cleve, the County of Mark, and the

Seigniories of Ravensberg and Ravenstein, with some other baronies and

feuds in Brabant and Flanders; to the other the Duchies of Julich and

Berg with their dependencies. Each prince was to reside exclusively

within the territory assigned to him by lot. The troops introduced by

either party were to be withdrawn, fortifications made since the

preceding month of May to be razed, and all persons who had been

expelled, or who had emigrated, to be restored to their offices,

property, or benefices. It was also stipulated that no place within the

whole debateable territory should be put in the hands of a third power.

These articles were signed by the ambassadors of France and England, by

the deputies of the Elector-Palatine and of the United Provinces, all

binding their superiors to the execution of the treaty. The arrangement

was supposed to refer to the previous conventions between those two

crowns, with the Republic, and the Protestant princes and powers. Count

Zollern, whom we have seen bearing himself so arrogantly as envoy from

the Emperor Rudolph to Henry IV., was now despatched by Matthias on as

fruitless a mission to the congress at Xanten, and did his best to

prevent the signature of the treaty, except with full concurrence of the

Imperial government. He likewise renewed the frivolous proposition that

the Emperor should hold all the provinces in sequestration until the

question of rightful sovereignty should be decided. The "proud and

haggard" ambassador was not more successful in this than in the

diplomatic task previously entrusted to him, and he then went to

Brussels, there to renew his remonstrances, menaces, and intrigues.

For the treaty thus elaborately constructed, and in appearance a

triumphant settlement of questions so complicated and so burning as to

threaten to set Christendom at any moment in a blaze, was destined to an

impotent and most unsatisfactory conclusion.

The signatures were more easily obtained than the ratifications.

Execution was surrounded with insurmountable difficulties which in

negotiation had been lightly skipped over at the stroke of a pen. At the

very first step, that of military evacuation, there was a stumble.

Maurice and Spinola were expected to withdraw their forces, and to

undertake to bring in no troops in the future, and to make no invasion of

the disputed territory.

But Spinola construed this undertaking as absolute; the Prince as only

binding in consequence of, with reference to, and for the duration of;

the Treaty of Xanten. The ambassadors and other commissioners, disgusted

with the long controversy which ensued, were making up their minds to

depart when a courier arrived from Spain, bringing not a ratification but

strict prohibition of the treaty. The articles were not to be executed,

no change whatever was to be made, and, above all, Wesel was not to be

restored without fresh negotiations with Philip, followed by his explicit

concurrence.

Thus the whole great negotiation began to dissolve into a shadowy,

unsatisfactory pageant. The solid barriers which were to imprison the

vast threatening elements of religious animosity and dynastic hatreds,

and to secure a peaceful future for Christendom, melted into films of

gossamer, and the great war of demons, no longer to be quelled by the

commonplaces of diplomatic exorcism, revealed its close approach. The

prospects of Europe grew blacker than ever.

The ambassadors, thoroughly disheartened and disgusted, all took their

departure from Xanten, and the treaty remained rather a by-word than a

solution or even a suggestion.

"The accord could not be prevented," wrote Archduke Albert to Philip,

"because it depended alone on the will of the signers. Nor can the

promise to restore Wesel be violated, should Julich be restored. Who can

doubt that such contravention would arouse great jealousies in France,

England, the United Provinces, and all the members of the heretic League

of Germany? Who can dispute that those interested ought to procure the

execution of the treaty? Suspicions will not remain suspicions, but they

light up the flames of public evil and disturbance. Either your Majesty

wishes to maintain the truce, in which case Wesel must be restored, or to

break the truce, a result which is certain if Wesel be retained. But the

reasons which induced your Majesty to lay down your arms remain the same

as ever. Our affairs are not looking better, nor is the requisition of

Wesel of so great importance as to justify our involving Flanders in a

new and more atrocious war than that which has so lately been suspended.

The restitution is due to the tribunal of public faith. It is a great

advantage when actions done for the sole end of justice are united to

that of utility. Consider the great successes we have had. How well the

affairs of Aachen and Mulbeim have been arranged; those of the Duke of

Neuburg how completely re-established. The Catholic cause, always

identical with that of the House of Austria, remains in great superiority

to the cause of the heretics. We should use these advantages well, and to

do so we should not immaturely pursue greater ones. Fortune changes,

flies when we most depend on her, and delights in making her chief sport

of the highest quality of mortals."

Thus wrote the Archduke sensibly, honourably from his point of view, and

with an intelligent regard to the interests of Spain and the Catholic

cause. After months of delay came conditional consent from Madrid to the

conventions, but with express condition that there should be absolute

undertaking on the part of the United Provinces never to send or maintain

troops in the duchies. Tedious and futile correspondence followed between

Brussels, the Hague, London, Paris. But the difficulties grew every

moment. It was a Penelope's web of negotiation, said one of the envoys.

Amid pertinacious and wire-drawn subtleties, every trace of practical

business vanished. Neuburg departed to look after his patrimonial

estates; leaving his interests in the duchies to be watched over by the

Archduke. Even Count Zollern, after six months of wrangling in Brussels,

took his departure. Prince Maurice distributed his army in various places

within the debateable land, and Spinola did the same, leaving a garrison

of 3000 foot and 300 horse in the important city of Wesel. The town and

citadel of Julich were as firmly held by Maurice for the Protestant

cause. Thus the duchies were jointly occupied by the forces of

Catholicism and Protestantism, while nominally possessed and administered

by the princes of Brandenburg and Neuburg. And so they were destined to

remain until that Thirty Years' War, now so near its outbreak, should

sweep over the earth, and bring its fiery solution at last to all these

great debates.

CHAPTER VII.

Proud Position of the Republic--France obeys her--Hatred of Carleton

--Position and Character of Aerssens--Claim for the "Third"--Recall

of Aerssens--Rivalry between Maurice and Barneveld, who always

sustains the separate Sovereignties of the Provinces--Conflict

between Church and State added to other Elements of Discord in the

Commonwealth--Religion a necessary Element in the Life of all

Classes.

Thus the Republic had placed itself in as proud a position as it was

possible for commonwealth or kingdom to occupy. It had dictated the

policy and directed the combined military movements of Protestantism. It

had gathered into a solid mass the various elements out of which the

great Germanic mutiny against Rome, Spain, and Austria had been

compounded. A breathing space of uncertain duration had come to interrupt

and postpone the general and inevitable conflict. Meantime the Republic

was encamped upon the enemy's soil.

France, which had hitherto commanded, now obeyed. England, vacillating

and discontented, now threatening and now cajoling, saw for the time at

least its influence over the councils of the Netherlands neutralized by

the genius of the great statesman who still governed the Provinces,

supreme in all but name. The hatred of the British government towards the

Republic, while in reality more malignant than at any previous period,

could now only find vent in tremendous, theological pamphlets, composed

by the King in the form of diplomatic instructions, and hurled almost

weekly at the heads of the States-General, by his ambassador, Dudley

Carleton.

Few men hated Barneveld more bitterly than did Carleton. I wish to

describe as rapidly, but as faithfully, as I can the outline at least of

the events by which one of the saddest and most superfluous catastrophes

in modern history was brought about. The web was a complex one, wrought

apparently of many materials; but the more completely it is unravelled

the more clearly we shall detect the presence of the few simple but

elemental fibres which make up the tissue of most human destinies,

whether illustrious or obscure, and out of which the most moving pictures

of human history are composed.

The religious element, which seems at first view to be the all pervading

and controlling one, is in reality rather the atmosphere which surrounds

and colours than the essence which constitutes the tragedy to be

delineated.

Personal, sometimes even paltry, jealousy; love of power, of money, of

place; rivalry between civil and military ambition for predominance in a

free state; struggles between Church and State to control and oppress

each other; conflict between the cautious and healthy, but provincial and

centrifugal, spirit on the one side, and the ardent centralizing,

imperial, but dangerous, instinct on the other, for ascendancy in a

federation; mortal combat between aristocracy disguised in the plebeian

form of trading and political corporations and democracy sheltering

itself under a famous sword and an ancient and illustrious name;--all

these principles and passions will be found hotly at work in the

melancholy five years with which we are now to be occupied, as they have

entered, and will always enter, into every political combination in the

great tragi-comedy which we call human history. As a study, a lesson, and

a warning, perhaps the fate of Barneveld is as deserving of serious

attention as most political tragedies of the last few centuries.

Francis Aerssens, as we have seen, continued to be the Dutch ambassador

after the murder of Henry IV. Many of the preceding pages of this volume

have been occupied with his opinions, his pictures, his conversations,

and his political intrigues during a memorable epoch in the history of

the Netherlands and of France. He was beyond all doubt one of the ablest

diplomatists in Europe. Versed in many languages, a classical student,

familiar with history and international law, a man of the world and

familiar with its usages, accustomed to associate with dignity and tact

on friendliest terms with sovereigns, eminent statesmen, and men of

letters; endowed with a facile tongue, a fluent pen, and an eye and ear

of singular acuteness and delicacy; distinguished for unflagging industry

and singular aptitude for secret and intricate affairs;--he had by the

exercise of these various qualities during a period of nearly twenty

years at the court of Henry the Great been able to render inestimable

services to the Republic which he represented. Of respectable but not

distinguished lineage, not a Hollander, but a Belgian by birth, son of

Cornelis Aerssens, Grefter of the States-General, long employed in that

important post, he had been brought forward from a youth by Barneveld and

early placed by him in the diplomatic career, of which through his favour

and his own eminent talents he had now achieved the highest honours.

He had enjoyed the intimacy and even the confidence of Henry IV., so far

as any man could be said to possess that monarch's confidence, and his

friendly relations and familiar access to the King gave him political

advantages superior to those of any of his colleagues at the same court.

Acting entirely and faithfully according to the instructions of the

Advocate of Holland, he always gratefully and copiously acknowledged the

privilege of being guided and sustained in the difficult paths he had to

traverse by so powerful and active an intellect. I have seldom alluded in

terms to the instructions and despatches of the chief, but every

position, negotiation, and opinion of the envoy--and the reader has seen

many of them--is pervaded by their spirit. Certainly the correspondence

of Aerssens is full to overflowing of gratitude, respect, fervent

attachment to the person and exalted appreciation of the intellect and

high character of the Advocate.

There can be no question of Aerssen's consummate abilities. Whether his

heart were as sound as his head, whether his protestations of devotion

had the ring of true gold or not, time would show. Hitherto Barneveld had

not doubted him, nor had he found cause to murmur at Barneveld.

But the France of Henry IV., where the Dutch envoy was so all-powerful,

had ceased to exist. A duller eye than that of Aerssens could have seen

at a glance that the potent kingdom and firm ally of the Republic had

been converted, for a long time to come at least, into a Spanish

province. The double Spanish marriages (that of the young Louis XIII.

with the Infanta Anna, and of his sister with the Infante, one day to be

Philip IV.), were now certain, for it was to make them certain that the

knife of Ravaillac had been employed. The condition precedent to those

marriages had long been known. It was the renunciation of the alliance

between France and Holland. It was the condemnation to death, so far as

France had the power to condemn her to death, of the young Republic. Had

not Don Pedro de Toledo pompously announced this condition a year and a

half before? Had not Henry spurned the bribe with scorn? And now had not

Francis Aerssens been the first to communicate to his masters the fruit

which had already ripened upon Henry's grave? As we have seen, he had

revealed these intrigues long before they were known to the world, and

the French court knew that he had revealed them. His position had become

untenable. His friendship for Henry could not be of use to him with the

delicate-featured, double-chinned, smooth and sluggish Florentine, who

had passively authorized and actively profited by her husband's murder.

It was time for the Envoy to be gone. The Queen-Regent and Concini

thought so. And so did Villeroy and Sillery and the rest of the old

servants of the King, now become pensionaries of Spain. But Aerssens did

not think so. He liked his position, changed as it was. He was deep in

the plottings of Bouillon and Conde and the other malcontents against the

Queen-Regent. These schemes, being entirely personal, the rank growth of

the corruption and apparent disintegration of France, were perpetually

changing, and could be reduced to no principle. It was a mere struggle of

the great lords of France to wrest places, money, governments, military

commands from the Queen-Regent, and frantic attempts on her part to save

as much as possible of the general wreck for her lord and master Concini.

It was ridiculous to ascribe any intense desire on the part of the Duc de

Bouillon to aid the Protestant cause against Spain at that moment, acting

as he was in combination with Conde, whom we have just seen employed by

Spain as the chief instrument to effect the destruction of France and the

bastardy of the Queen's children. Nor did the sincere and devout

Protestants who had clung to the cause through good and bad report, men

like Duplessis-Mornay, for example, and those who usually acted with him,

believe in any of these schemes for partitioning France on pretence of

saving Protestantism. But Bouillon, greatest of all French fishermen in

troubled waters, was brother-in-law of Prince Maurice of Nassau, and

Aerssens instinctively felt that the time had come when he should anchor

himself to firm holding ground at home.

The Ambassador had also a personal grievance. Many of his most secret

despatches to the States-General in which he expressed himself very

freely, forcibly, and accurately on the general situation in France,

especially in regard to the Spanish marriages and the Treaty of Hampton

Court, had been transcribed at the Hague and copies of them sent to the

French government. No baser act of treachery to an envoy could be

imagined. It was not surprising that Aerssens complained bitterly of the

deed. He secretly suspected Barneveld, but with injustice, of having

played him this evil turn, and the incident first planted the seeds of

the deadly hatred which was to bear such fatal fruit.

"A notable treason has been played upon me," he wrote to Jacques de

Maldere, "which has outraged my heart. All the despatches which I have

been sending for several months to M. de Barneveld have been communicated

by copy in whole or in extracts to this court. Villeroy quoted from them

at our interview to-day, and I was left as it were without power of

reply. The despatches were long, solid, omitting no particularity for

giving means to form the best judgment of the designs and intrigues of

this court. No greater damage could be done to me and my usefulness. All

those from whom I have hitherto derived information, princes and great

personages, will shut themselves up from me . . . . What can be more

ticklish than to pass judgment on the tricks of those who are governing

this state? This single blow has knocked me down completely. For I was

moving about among all of them, making my profit of all, without any

reserve. M. de Barneveld knew by this means the condition of this kingdom

as well as I do. Certainly in a well-ordered republic it would cost the

life of a man who had thus trifled with the reputation of an ambassador.

I believe M. de Barneveld will be sorry, but this will never restore to

me the confidence which I have lost. If one was jealous of my position at

this court, certainly I deserved rather pity from those who should

contemplate it closely. If one wished to procure my downfall in order to

raise oneself above me, there was no need of these tricks. I have been

offering to resign my embassy this long time, which will now produce

nothing but thorns for me. How can I negotiate after my private

despatches have been read? L'Hoste, the clerk of Villeroy, was not so

great a criminal as the man who revealed my despatches; and L'Hoste was

torn by four horses after his death. Four months long I have been

complaining of this to M. de Barneveld. . . . Patience! I am groaning

without being able to hope for justice. I console myself, for my term of

office will soon arrive. Would that my embassy could have finished under

the agreeable and friendly circumstances with which it began. The man who

may succeed me will not find that this vile trick will help him much.

. . . Pray find out whence and from whom this intrigue has come."

Certainly an envoy's position could hardly be more utterly compromised.

Most unquestionably Aerssens had reason to be indignant, believing as he

did that his conscientious efforts in the service of his government had

been made use of by his chief to undermine his credit and blast his

character. There was an intrigue between the newly appointed French

minister, de Russy, at the Hague and the enemies of Aerssens to represent

him to his own government as mischievous, passionate, unreasonably

vehement in supporting the claims and dignity of his own country at the

court to which he was accredited. Not often in diplomatic history has an

ambassador of a free state been censured or removed for believing and

maintaining in controversy that his own government is in the right. It

was natural that the French government should be disturbed by the vivid

light which he had flashed upon their pernicious intrigues with Spain to

the detriment of the Republic, and at the pertinacity with which he

resisted their preposterous claim to be reimbursed for one-third of the

money which the late king had advanced as a free subsidy towards the war

of the Netherlands for independence. But no injustice could be more

outrageous than for the Envoy's own government to unite with the foreign

State in damaging the character of its own agent for the crime of

fidelity to itself.

Of such cruel perfidy Aerssens had been the victim, and he most

wrongfully suspected his chief as its real perpetrator.

The claim for what was called the "Third" had been invented after the

death of Henry. As already explained, the "Third" was not a gift from

England to the Netherlands. It was a loan from England to France, or more

properly a consent to abstain from pressing for payment for this

proportion of an old debt. James, who was always needy, had often

desired, but never obtained, the payment of this sum from Henry. Now that

the King was dead, he applied to the Regent's government, and the

Regent's government called upon the Netherlands, to pay the money.

Aerssens, as the agent of the Republic, protested firmly against such

claim. The money had been advanced by the King as a free gift, as his

contribution to a war in which he was deeply interested, although he was

nominally at peace with Spain. As to the private arrangements between

France and England, the Republic, said the Dutch envoy, was in no sense

bound by them. He was no party to the Treaty of Hampton Court, and knew

nothing of its stipulations.

Courtiers and politicians in plenty at the French court, now that Henry

was dead, were quite sure that they had heard him say over and over again

that the Netherlands had bound themselves to pay the Third. They

persuaded Mary de' Medici that she likewise had often heard him say so,

and induced her to take high ground on the subject in her interviews with

Aerssens. The luckless queen, who was always in want of money to satisfy

the insatiable greed of her favourites, and to buy off the enmity of the

great princes, was very vehement--although she knew as much of those

transactions as of the finances of Prester John or the Lama of Thibet--in

maintaining this claim of her government upon the States.

"After talking with the ministers," said Aerssens, "I had an interview

with the Queen. I knew that she had been taught her lesson, to insist on

the payment of the Third. So I did not speak at all of the matter, but

talked exclusively and at length of the French regiments in the States'

service. She was embarrassed, and did not know exactly what to say. At

last, without replying a single word to what I had been saying, she

became very red in the face, and asked me if I were not instructed to

speak of the money due to England. Whereupon I spoke in the sense already

indicated. She interrupted me by saying she had a perfect recollection

that the late king intended and understood that we were to pay the Third

to England, and had talked with her very seriously on the subject. If he

were living, he would think it very strange, she said, that we refused;

and so on.

"Soissons, too, pretends to remember perfectly that such were the King's

intentions. 'Tis a very strange thing, Sir. Every one knows now the

secrets of the late king, if you are willing to listen. Yet he was not in

the habit of taking all the world into his confidence. The Queen takes

her opinions as they give them to her. 'Tis a very good princess, but I

am sorry she is so ignorant of affairs. As she says she remembers, one is

obliged to say one believes her. But I, who knew the King so intimately,

and saw him so constantly, know that he could only have said that the

Third was paid in acquittal of his debts to and for account of the King

of England, and not that we were to make restitution thereof. The

Chancellor tells me my refusal has been taken as an affront by the Queen,

and Puysieux says it is a contempt which she can't swallow."

Aerssens on his part remained firm; his pertinacity being the greater as

he thoroughly understood the subject which he was talking about, an

advantage which was rarely shared in by those with whom he conversed. The

Queen, highly scandalized by his demeanour, became from that time forth

his bitter enemy, and, as already stated, was resolved to be rid of him.

Nor was the Envoy at first desirous of remaining. He had felt after

Henry's death and Sully's disgrace, and the complete transformation of

the France which he had known, that his power of usefulness was gone.

"Our enemies," he said, "have got the advantage which I used to have in

times past, and I recognize a great coldness towards us, which is

increasing every day." Nevertheless, he yielded reluctantly to

Barneveld's request that he should for the time at least remain at his

post. Later on, as the intrigues against him began to unfold themselves,

and his faithful services were made use of at home to blacken his

character and procure his removal, he refused to resign, as to do so

would be to play into the hands of his enemies, and by inference at least

to accuse himself of infidelity to his trust.

But his concealed rage and his rancor grew more deadly every day. He was

fully aware of the plots against him, although he found it difficult to

trace them to their source.

"I doubt not," he wrote to Jacques de Maldere, the distinguished

diplomatist and senator, who had recently returned from his embassy to

England, "that this beautiful proposition of de Russy has been sent to

your Province of Zealand. Does it not seem to you a plot well woven as

well in Holland as at this court to remove me from my post with

disreputation? What have I done that should cause the Queen to disapprove

my proceedings? Since the death of the late king I have always opposed

the Third, which they have been trying to fix upon the treasury, on the

ground that Henry never spoke to me of restitution, that the receipts

given were simple ones, and that the money given was spent for the common

benefit of France and the States under direction of the King's

government. But I am expected here to obey M. de Villeroy, who says that

it was the intention of the late king to oblige us to make the payment. I

am not accustomed to obey authority if it be not supported by reason. It

is for my masters to reply and to defend me. The Queen has no reason to

complain. I have maintained the interests of my superiors. But this is

not the cause of the complaints. My misfortune is that all my despatches

have been sent from Holland in copy to this court. Most of them contained

free pictures of the condition and dealings of those who govern here. M.

de Villeroy has found himself depicted often, and now under pretext of a

public negotiation he has found an opportunity of revenging himself. . . .

Besides this cause which Villeroy has found for combing my head, Russy

has given notice here that I have kept my masters in the hopes of being

honourably exempted from the claims of this government. The long letter

which I wrote to M. de Barneveld justifies my proceedings."

It is no wonder that the Ambassador was galled to the quick by the

outrage which those concerned in the government were seeking to put upon

him. How could an honest man fail to be overwhelmed with rage and anguish

at being dishonoured before the world by his masters for scrupulously

doing his duty, and for maintaining the rights and dignity of his own

country? He knew that the charges were but pretexts, that the motives of

his enemies were as base as the intrigues themselves, but he also knew

that the world usually sides with the government against the individual,

and that a man's reputation is rarely strong enough to maintain itself

unsullied in a foreign land when his own government stretches forth its

hand not to, shield, but to stab him.

[See the similarity of Aerssens position to that of Motley 250 years

later, in the biographical sketch of Motley by Oliver Wendell

Holmes. D.W.]

"I know," he said, "that this plot has been woven partly in Holland and

partly here by good correspondence, in order to drive me from my post

with disreputation. To this has tended the communication of my despatches

to make me lose my best friends. This too was the object of the

particular imparting to de Russy of all my propositions, in order to draw

a complaint against me from this court.

"But as I have discovered this accurately, I have resolved to offer to my

masters the continuance of my very humble service for such time and under

such conditions as they may think good to prescribe. I prefer forcing my

natural and private inclinations to giving an opportunity for the

ministers of this kingdom to discredit us, and to my enemies to succeed

in injuring me, and by fraud and malice to force me from my post . . . I

am truly sorry, being ready to retire, wishing to have an honourable

testimony in recompense of my labours, that one is in such hurry to take

advantage of my fall. I cannot believe that my masters wish to suffer

this. They are too prudent, and cannot be ignorant of the treachery which

has been practised on me. I have maintained their cause. If they have

chosen to throw down the fruits of my industry, the blame should be

imputed to those who consider their own ambition more than the interests

of the public . . . . What envoy will ever dare to speak with vigour if

he is not sustained by the government at home? . . . . . . My enemies

have misrepresented my actions, and my language as passionate,

exaggerated, mischievous, but I have no passion except for the service of

my superiors. They say that I have a dark and distrustful disposition,

but I have been alarmed at the alliance now forming here with the King of

Spain, through the policy of M. de Villeroy. I was the first to discover

this intrigue, which they thought buried in the bosom of the Triumvirate.

I gave notice of it to My Lords the States as in duty bound. It all came

back to the government in the copies furnished of my secret despatches.

This is the real source of the complaints against me. The rest of the

charges, relating to the Third and other matters, are but pretexts. To

parry the blow, they pretend that all that is said and done with the

Spaniard is but feigning. Who is going to believe that? Has not the Pope

intervened in the affair? . . . I tell you they are furious here because

I have my eyes open. I see too far into their affairs to suit their

purposes. A new man would suit them better."

His position was hopelessly compromised. He remained in Paris, however,

month after month, and even year after year, defying his enemies both at

the Queen's court and in Holland, feeding fat the grudge he bore to

Barneveld as the supposed author of the intrigue against him, and drawing

closer the personal bands which united him to Bouillon and through him to

Prince Maurice.

The wrath of the Ambassador flamed forth without disguise against

Barneveld and all his adherents when his removal, as will be related on a

subsequent page, was at last effected. And his hatred was likely to be

deadly. A man with a shrewd, vivid face, cleanly cut features and a

restless eye; wearing a close-fitting skull cap, which gave him something

the lock of a monk, but with the thoroughbred and facile demeanour of one

familiar with the world; stealthy, smooth, and cruel, a man coldly

intellectual, who feared no one, loved but few, and never forgot or

forgave; Francis d'Aerssens, devoured by ambition and burning with

revenge, was a dangerous enemy.

Time was soon to show whether it was safe to injure him. Barneveld, from

well-considered motives of public policy, was favouring his honourable

recall. But he allowed a decorous interval of more than three years to

elapse in which to terminate his affairs, and to take a deliberate

departure from that French embassy to which the Advocate had originally

promoted him, and in which there had been so many years of mutual benefit

and confidence between the two statesmen. He used no underhand means. He

did not abuse the power of the States-General which he wielded to cast

him suddenly and brutally from the distinguished post which he occupied,

and so to attempt to dishonour him before the world. Nothing could be

more respectful and conciliatory than the attitude of the government from

first to last towards this distinguished functionary. The Republic

respected itself too much to deal with honourable agents whose services

it felt obliged to dispense with as with vulgar malefactors who had been

detected in crime. But Aerssens believed that it was the Advocate who had

caused copies of his despatches to be sent to the French court, and that

he had deliberately and for a fixed purpose been undermining his

influence at home and abroad and blackening his character. All his

ancient feelings of devotion, if they had ever genuinely existed towards

his former friend and patron, turned to gall. He was almost ready to deny

that he had ever respected Barneveld, appreciated his public services,

admired his intellect, or felt gratitude for his guidance.

A fierce controversy--to which at a later period it will be necessary to

call the reader's attention, because it is intimately connected with dark

scenes afterwards to be enacted--took place between the late ambassador

and Cornelis van der Myle. Meantime Barneveld pursued the policy which he

had marked out for the States-General in regard to France.

Certainly it was a difficult problem. There could be no doubt that

metamorphosed France could only be a dangerous ally for the Republic. It

was in reality impossible that she should be her ally at all. And this

Barneveld knew. Still it was better, so he thought, for the Netherlands

that France should exist than that it should fall into utter

decomposition. France, though under the influence of Spain, and doubly

allied by marriage contracts to Spain, was better than Spain itself in

the place of France. This seemed to be the only choice between two evils.

Should the whole weight of the States-General be thrown into the scale of

the malcontent and mutinous princes against the established but tottering

government of France, it was difficult to say how soon Spain might

literally, as well as inferentially, reign in Paris.

Between the rebellion and the legitimate government, therefore, Barneveld

did not hesitate. France, corporate France, with which the Republic had

bean so long in close and mutually advantageous alliance, and from whose

late monarch she had received such constant and valuable benefits, was in

the Advocate's opinion the only power to be recognised, Papal and Spanish

though it was. The advantage of an alliance with the fickle,

self-seeking, and ever changing mutiny, that was seeking to make use of

Protestantism to effect its own ends, was in his eyes rather specious

than real.

By this policy, while making the breach irreparable with Aerssens and as

many leading politicians as Aerssens could influence, he first brought on

himself the stupid accusation of swerving towards Spain. Dull murmurs

like these, which were now but faintly making themselves heard against

the reputation of the Advocate, were destined ere long to swell into a

mighty roar; but he hardly listened now to insinuations which seemed

infinitely below his contempt. He still effectually ruled the nation

through his influence in the States of Holland, where he reigned supreme.

Thus far Barneveld and My Lords the States-General were one personage.

But there was another great man in the State who had at last grown

impatient of the Advocate's power, and was secretly resolved to brook it

no longer. Maurice of Nassau had felt himself too long rebuked by the

genius of the Advocate. The Prince had perhaps never forgiven him for the

political guardianship which he had exercised over him ever since the

death of William the Silent. He resented the leading strings by which his

youthful footstep had been sustained, and which he seemed always to feel

about his limbs so long as Barneveld existed. He had never forgotten the

unpalatable advice given to him by the Advocate through the

Princess-Dowager.

The brief campaign in Cleve and Julich was the last great political

operation in which the two were likely to act in even apparent harmony.

But the rivalry between the two had already pronounced itself

emphatically during the negotiations for the truce. The Advocate had felt

it absolutely necessary for the Republic to suspend the war at the first

moment when she could treat with her ancient sovereign on a footing of

equality. Spain, exhausted with the conflict, had at last consented to

what she considered the humiliation of treating with her rebellious

provinces as with free states over which she claimed no authority. The

peace party, led by Barneveld, had triumphed, notwithstanding the steady

opposition of Prince Maurice and his adherents.

Why had Maurice opposed the treaty? Because his vocation was over,

because he was the greatest captain of the age, because his emoluments,

his consideration, his dignity before the world, his personal power, were

all vastly greater in war than in his opinion they could possibly be in

peace. It was easy for him to persuade himself that what was manifestly

for his individual interest was likewise essential to the prosperity of

the country.

The diminution in his revenues consequent on the return to peace was made

good to him, his brother, and his cousin, by most munificent endowments

and pensions. And it was owing to the strenuous exertions of the Advocate

that these large sums were voted. A hollow friendship was kept up between

the two during the first few years of the truce, but resentment and

jealousy lay deep in Maurice's heart.

At about the period of the return of Aerssens from his French embassy,

the suppressed fire was ready to flame forth at the first fanning by that

artful hand. It was impossible, so Aerssens thought and whispered, that

two heads could remain on one body politic. There was no room in the

Netherlands for both the Advocate and the Prince. Barneveld was in all

civil affairs dictator, chief magistrate, supreme judge; but he occupied

this high station by the force of intellect, will, and experience, not

through any constitutional provision. In time of war the Prince was

generalissimo, commander-in-chief of all the armies of the Republic. Yet

constitutionally he was not captain-general at all. He was only

stadholder of five out of seven provinces.

Barneveld suspected him of still wishing to make himself sovereign of the

country. Perhaps his suspicions were incorrect. Yet there was every

reason why Maurice should be ambitious of that position. It would have

been in accordance with the openly expressed desire of Henry IV. and

other powerful allies of the Netherlands. His father's assassination had

alone prevented his elevation to the rank of sovereign Count of Holland.

The federal policy of the Provinces had drifted into a republican form

after their renunciation of their Spanish sovereign, not because the

people, or the States as representing the people, had deliberately chosen

a republican system, but because they could get no powerful monarch to

accept the sovereignty. They had offered to become subjects of Protestant

England and of Catholic France. Both powers had refused the offer, and

refused it with something like contumely. However deep the subsequent

regret on the part of both, there was no doubt of the fact. But the

internal policy in all the provinces, and in all the towns, was

republican. Local self-government existed everywhere. Each city

magistracy was a little republic in itself. The death of William the

Silent, before he had been invested with the sovereign power of all seven

provinces, again left that sovereignty in abeyance. Was the supreme power

of the Union, created at Utrecht in 1579, vested in the States-General?

They were beginning theoretically to claim it, but Barneveld denied the

existence of any such power either in law or fact. It was a league of

sovereignties, he maintained; a confederacy of seven independent states,

united for certain purposes by a treaty made some thirty years before.

Nothing could be more imbecile, judging by the light of subsequent events

and the experience of centuries, than such an organization. The

independent and sovereign republic of Zealand or of Groningen, for

example, would have made a poor figure campaigning, or negotiating, or

exhibiting itself on its own account before the world. Yet it was

difficult to show any charter, precedent, or prescription for the

sovereignty of the States-General. Necessary as such an incorporation was

for the very existence of the Union, no constitutional union had ever

been enacted. Practically the Province of Holland, representing more than

half the population, wealth, strength, and intellect of the whole

confederation, had achieved an irregular supremacy in the States-General.

But its undeniable superiority was now causing a rank growth of envy,

hatred, and jealousy throughout the country, and the great Advocate of

Holland, who was identified with the province, and had so long wielded

its power, was beginning to reap the full harvest of that malice.

Thus while there was so much of vagueness in theory and practice as to

the sovereignty, there was nothing criminal on the part of Maurice if he

was ambitious of obtaining the sovereignty himself. He was not seeking to

compass it by base artifice or by intrigue of any kind. It was very

natural that he should be restive under the dictatorship of the Advocate.

If a single burgher and lawyer could make himself despot of the

Netherlands, how much more reasonable that he--with the noblest blood of

Europe in his veins, whose direct ancestor three centuries before had

been emperor not only of those provinces, but of all Germany and half

Christendom besides, whose immortal father had under God been the creator

and saviour of the new commonwealth, had made sacrifices such as man

never made for a people, and had at last laid down his life in its

defence; who had himself fought daily from boyhood upwards in the great

cause, who had led national armies from victory to victory till he had

placed his country as a military school and a belligerent power foremost

among the nations, and had at last so exhausted and humbled the great

adversary and former tyrant that he had been glad of a truce while the

rebel chief would have preferred to continue the war--should aspire to

rule by hereditary right a land with which his name and his race were

indelibly associated by countless sacrifices and heroic achievements.

It was no crime in Maurice to desire the sovereignty. It was still less a

crime in Barneveld to believe that he desired it. There was no special

reason why the Prince should love the republican form of government

provided that an hereditary one could be legally substituted for it. He

had sworn allegiance to the statutes, customs, and privileges of each of

the provinces of which he had been elected stadholder, but there would

have been no treason on his part if the name and dignity of stadholder

should be changed by the States themselves for those of King or sovereign

Prince.

Yet it was a chief grievance against the Advocate on the part of the

Prince that Barneveld believed him capable of this ambition.

The Republic existed as a fact, but it had not long existed, nor had it

ever received a formal baptism. So undefined was its constitution, and so

conflicting were the various opinions in regard to it of eminent men,

that it would be difficult to say how high-treason could be committed

against it. Great lawyers of highest intellect and learning believed the

sovereign power to reside in the separate states, others found that

sovereignty in the city magistracies, while during a feverish period of

war and tumult the supreme function had without any written constitution,

any organic law, practically devolved upon the States-General, who had

now begun to claim it as a right. The Republic was neither venerable by

age nor impregnable in law. It was an improvised aristocracy of lawyers,

manufacturers, bankers, and corporations which had done immense work and

exhibited astonishing sagacity and courage, but which might never have

achieved the independence of the Provinces unaided by the sword of

Orange-Nassau and the magic spell which belonged to that name.

Thus a bitter conflict was rapidly developing itself in the heart of the

Commonwealth. There was the civil element struggling with the military

for predominance; sword against gown; states' rights against central

authority; peace against war; above all the rivalry of one prominent

personage against another, whose mutual hatred was now artfully inflamed

by partisans.

And now another element of discord had come, more potent than all the

rest: the terrible, never ending, struggle of Church against State.

Theological hatred which forty years long had found vent in the exchange

of acrimony between the ancient and the Reformed churches was now

assuming other shapes. Religion in that age and country was more than has

often been the case in history the atmosphere of men's daily lives. But

during the great war for independence, although the hostility between the

two religious forces was always intense, it was modified especially

towards the close of the struggle by other controlling influences. The

love of independence and the passion for nationality, the devotion to

ancient political privileges, was often as fervid and genuine in Catholic

bosoms as in those of Protestants, and sincere adherents of the ancient

church had fought to the death against Spain in defence of chartered

rights.

At that very moment it is probable that half the population of the United

Provinces was Catholic. Yet it would be ridiculous to deny that the

aggressive, uncompromising; self-sacrificing, intensely believing,

perfectly fearless spirit of Calvinism had been the animating soul, the

motive power of the great revolt. For the Provinces to have encountered

Spain and Rome without Calvinism, and relying upon municipal enthusiasm

only, would have been to throw away the sword and fight with the

scabbard.

But it is equally certain that those hot gospellers who had suffered so

much martyrdom and achieved so many miracles were fully aware of their

power and despotic in its exercise. Against the oligarchy of commercial

and juridical corporations they stood there the most terrible aristocracy

of all: the aristocracy of God's elect, predestined from all time and to

all eternity to take precedence of and to look down upon their inferior

and lost fellow creatures. It was inevitable that this aristocracy, which

had done so much, which had breathed into a new-born commonwealth the

breath of its life, should be intolerant, haughty, dogmatic.

The Church of Rome, which had been dethroned after inflicting such

exquisite tortures during its period of power, was not to raise its head.

Although so large a proportion of the inhabitants of the country were

secretly or openly attached to that faith, it was a penal offence to

participate openly in its rites and ceremonies. Religious equality,

except in the minds of a few individuals, was an unimaginable idea. There

was still one Church which arrogated to itself the sole possession of

truth, the Church of Geneva. Those who admitted the possibility of other

forms and creeds were either Atheists or, what was deemed worse than

Atheists, Papists, because Papists were assumed to be traitors also, and

desirous of selling the country to Spain. An undevout man in that land

and at that epoch was an almost unknown phenomenon. Religion was as much

a recognized necessity of existence as food or drink. It were as easy to

find people about without clothes as without religious convictions.

The Advocate, who had always adhered to the humble spirit of his

ancestral device, "Nil scire tutissima fedes," and almost alone among his

fellow citizens (save those immediate apostles and pupils of his who

became involved in his fate) in favour of religious toleration, began to

be suspected of treason and Papacy because, had he been able to give the

law, it was thought he would have permitted such horrors as the public

exercise of the Roman Catholic religion.

The hissings and screamings of the vulgar against him as he moved forward

on his stedfast course he heeded less than those of geese on a common.

But there was coming a time when this proud and scornful statesman,

conscious of the superiority conferred by great talents and unparalleled

experience, would find it less easy to treat the voice of slanderers,

whether idiots or powerful and intellectual enemies, with contempt.

CHAPTER VIII.

Schism in the Church a Public Fact--Struggle for Power between the

Sacerdotal and Political Orders--Dispute between Arminius and

Gomarus--Rage of James I. at the Appointment of Voratius--Arminians

called Remonstrants--Hague Conference--Contra-Remonstrance by

Gomarites of Seven Points to the Remonstrants' Five--Fierce

Theological Disputes throughout the Country--Ryswyk Secession--

Maurice wishes to remain neutral, but finds himself the Chieftain of

the Contra-Remonstrant Party--The States of Holland Remonstrant by a

large Majority--The States-General Contra-Remonstrant--Sir Ralph

Winwood leaves the Hague--Three Armies to take the Field against

Protestantism.

Schism in the Church had become a public fact, and theological hatred was

in full blaze throughout the country.

The great practical question in the Church had been as to the appointment

of preachers, wardens, schoolmasters, and other officers. By the

ecclesiastical arrangements of 1591 great power was conceded to the civil

authority in church matters, especially in regard to such appointments,

which were made by a commission consisting of four members named by the

churches and four by the magistrates in each district.

Barneveld, who above all things desired peace in the Church, had wished

to revive this ordinance, and in 1612 it had been resolved by the States

of Holland that each city or village should, if the magistracy approved,

provisionally conform to it. The States of Utrecht made at the same time

a similar arrangement.

It was the controversy which has been going on since the beginning of

history and is likely to be prolonged to the end of time--the struggle

for power between the sacerdotal and political orders; the controversy

whether priests shall control the state or the state govern the priests.

This was the practical question involved in the fierce dispute as to

dogma. The famous duel between Arminius and Gomarus; the splendid

theological tournaments which succeeded; six champions on a side armed in

full theological panoply and swinging the sharpest curtal axes which

learning, passion, and acute intellect could devise, had as yet produced

no beneficent result. Nobody had been convinced by the shock of argument,

by the exchange of those desperate blows. The High Council of the Hague

had declared that no difference of opinion in the Church existed

sufficient to prevent fraternal harmony and happiness. But Gomarus loudly

declared that, if there were no means of putting down the heresy of

Arminius, there would before long be a struggle such as would set

province against province, village against village, family against

family, throughout the land. He should be afraid to die in such doctrine.

He shuddered that any one should dare to come before God's tribunal with

such blasphemies. Meantime his great adversary, the learned and eloquent,

the musical, frolicsome, hospitable heresiarch was no more. Worn out with

controversy, but peaceful and happy in the convictions which were so

bitterly denounced by Gomarus and a large proportion of both preachers

and laymen in the Netherlands, and convinced that the schism which in his

view had been created by those who called themselves the orthodox would

weaken the cause of Protestantism throughout Europe, Arminius died at the

age of forty-nine.

The magistrates throughout Holland, with the exception of a few cities,

were Arminian, the preachers Gomarian; for Arminius ascribed to the civil

authority the right to decide upon church matters, while Gomarus

maintained that ecclesiastical affairs should be regulated in

ecclesiastical assemblies. The overseers of Leyden University appointed

Conrad Vorstius to be professor of theology in place of Arminius. The

selection filled to the brim the cup of bitterness, for no man was more

audaciously latitudinarian than he. He was even suspected of Socinianism.

There came a shriek from King James, fierce and shrill enough to rouse

Arminius from his grave. James foamed to the mouth at the insolence of

the overseers in appointing such a monster of infidelity to the

professorship. He ordered his books to be publicly burned in St. Paul's

Churchyard and at both Universities, and would have burned the Professor

himself with as much delight as Torquemada or Peter Titelman ever felt in

roasting their victims, had not the day for such festivities gone by. He

ordered the States of Holland on pain of for ever forfeiting his

friendship to exclude Vorstius at once from the theological chair and to

forbid him from "nestling anywhere in the country."

He declared his amazement that they should tolerate such a pest as Conrad

Vorstius. Had they not had enough of the seed sown by that foe of God,

Arminius? He ordered the States-General to chase the blasphemous monster

from the land, or else he would cut off all connection with their false

and heretic churches and make the other Reformed churches of Europe do

the same, nor should the youth of England ever be allowed to frequent the

University of Leyden.

In point of fact the Professor was never allowed to qualify, to preach,

or to teach; so tremendous was the outcry of Peter Plancius and many

orthodox preachers, echoing the wrath of the King. He lived at Gouda in a

private capacity for several years, until the Synod of Dordrecht at last

publicly condemned his opinions and deprived him of his professorship.

Meantime, the preachers who were disciples of Arminius had in a private

assembly drawn up what was called a Remonstrance, addressed to the States

of Holland, and defending themselves from the reproach that they were

seeking change in the Divine service and desirous of creating tumult and

schism.

This Remonstrance, set forth by the pen of the famous Uytenbogaert, whom

Gomarus called the Court Trumpeter, because for a long time he had been

Prince Maurice's favourite preacher, was placed in the hands of

Barneveld, for delivery to the States of Holland. Thenceforth the

Arminians were called Remonstrants.

The Hague Conference followed, six preachers on a side, and the States of

Holland exhorted to fraternal compromise. Until further notice, they

decreed that no man should be required to believe more than had been laid

down in the Five Points:

I. God has from eternity resolved to choose to eternal life those who

through his grace believe in Jesus Christ, and in faith and obedience so

continue to the end, and to condemn the unbelieving and unconverted to

eternal damnation.

II. Jesus Christ died for all; so, nevertheless, that no one actually

except believers is redeemed by His death.

III. Man has not the saving belief from himself, nor out of his free

will, but he needs thereto God's grace in Christ.

IV. This grace is the beginning, continuation, and completion of man's

salvation; all good deeds must be ascribed to it, but it does not work

irresistibly.

V. God's grace gives sufficient strength to the true believers to

overcome evil; but whether they cannot lose grace should be more closely

examined before it should be taught in full security.

Afterwards they expressed themselves more distinctly on this point, and

declared that a true believer, through his own fault, can fall away from

God and lose faith.

Before the conference, however, the Gomarite preachers had drawn up a

Contra-Remonstrance of Seven Points in opposition to the Remonstrants'

five.

They demanded the holding of a National Synod to settle the difference

between these Five and Seven Points, or the sending of them to foreign

universities for arbitration, a mutual promise being given by the

contending parties to abide by the decision.

Thus much it has been necessary to state concerning what in the

seventeenth century was called the platform of the two great parties: a

term which has been perpetuated in our own country, and is familiar to

all the world in the nineteenth.

These were the Seven Points:

I. God has chosen from eternity certain persons out of the human race,

which in and with Adam fell into sin and has no more power to believe and

Convert itself than a dead man to restore himself to life, in order to

make them blessed through Christ; while He passes by the rest through His

righteous judgment, and leaves them lying in their sins.

II. Children of believing parents, as well as full-grown believers, are

to be considered as elect so long as they with action do not prove the

contrary.