"One would think," said Barneveld, comparing what was then the future

with the real past, "that these plans in Prague against the

Elector-Palatine are too gross for belief; but when I reflect on the

intense bitterness of these people, when I remember what was done within

living men's memory to the good elector Hans Frederic of Saxony for

exactly the same reasons, to wit, hatred of our religion, and

determination to establish Imperial authority, I have great apprehension.

I believe that the Roman League will use the present occasion to carry

out her great design; holding France incapable of opposition to her,

Germany in too great division, and imagining to themselves that neither

the King of Great Britain nor these States are willing or able to offer

effectual and forcible resistance. Yet his Majesty of Great Britain ought

to be able to imagine how greatly the religious matter in general

concerns himself and the electoral house of the Palatine, as principal

heads of the religion, and that these vast designs should be resisted

betimes, and with all possible means and might. My Lords the States have

good will, but not sufficient strength, to oppose these great forces

single-handed. One must not believe that without great and prompt

assistance in force from his Majesty and other fellow religionists My

Lords the States can undertake so vast an affair. Do your uttermost duty

there, in order that, ere it be too late, this matter be taken to heart

by his Majesty, and that his authority and credit be earnestly used with

other kings, electors, princes, and republics, that they do likewise. The

promptest energy, good will, and affection may be reckoned on from us."

Alas! it was easy for his Majesty to take to heart the matter of Conrad

Vorstius, to spend reams of diplomatic correspondence, to dictate whole

volumes for orations brimming over with theological wrath, for the

edification of the States-General, against that doctor of divinity. But

what were the special interests of his son-in-law, what the danger to all

the other Protestant electors and kings, princes and republics, what the

imperilled condition of the United Provinces, and, by necessary

consequence, the storm gathering over his own throne, what the whole fate

of Protestantism, from Friesland to Hungary, threatened by the

insatiable, all-devouring might of the double house of Austria, the

ancient church, and the Papistical League, what were hundred thousands of

men marching towards Bohemia, the Netherlands, and the duchies, with the

drum beating for mercenary recruits in half the villages of Spain, Italy,

and Catholic Germany, compared with the danger to Christendom from an

Arminian clergyman being appointed to the theological professorship at

Leyden?

The world was in a blaze, kings and princes were arming, and all the time

that the monarch of the powerful, adventurous, and heroic people of Great

Britain could spare from slobbering over his minions, and wasting the

treasures of the realm to supply their insatiate greed, was devoted to

polemical divinity, in which he displayed his learning, indeed, but

changed his positions and contradicted himself day by day. The magnitude

of this wonderful sovereign's littleness oppresses the imagination.

Moreover, should he listen to the adjurations of the States and his

fellow religionists, should he allow himself to be impressed by the

eloquence of Barneveld and take a manly and royal decision in the great

emergency, it would be indispensable for him to come before that odious

body, the Parliament of Great Britain, and ask for money. It would be

perhaps necessary for him to take them into his confidence, to degrade

himself by speaking to them of the national affairs. They might not be

satisfied with the honour of voting the supplies at his demand, but were

capable of asking questions as to their appropriation. On the whole it

was more king-like and statesman-like to remain quiet, and give advice.

Of that, although always a spendthrift, he had an inexhaustible supply.

Barneveld had just hopes from the Commons of Great Britain, if the King

could be brought to appeal to Parliament. Once more he sounded the bugle

of alarm. "Day by day the Archdukes are making greater and greater

enrolments of riders and infantry in ever increasing mass," he cried,

"and therewith vast provision of artillery and all munitions of war.

Within ten or twelve days they will be before Julich in force. We are

sending great convoys to reinforce our army there. The Prince of Neuburg

is enrolling more and more troops every day. He will soon be master of

Mulheim. If the King of Great Britain will lay this matter earnestly to

heart for the preservation of the princes, electors, and estates of the

religion, I cannot doubt that Parliament would cooperate well with his

Majesty, and this occasion should be made use of to redress the whole

state of affairs."

It was not the Parliament nor the people of Great Britain that would be

in fault when the question arose of paying in money and in blood for the

defence of civil and religious liberty. But if James should venture

openly to oppose Spain, what would the Count of Gondemar say, and what

would become of the Infanta and the two millions of dowry?

It was not for want of some glimmering consciousness in the mind of James

of the impending dangers to Northern Europe and to Protestantism from the

insatiable ambition of Spain, and the unrelenting grasp of the Papacy

upon those portions of Christendom which were slipping from its control,

that his apathy to those perils was so marked. We have seen his leading

motives for inaction, and the world was long to feel its effects.

"His Majesty firmly believes," wrote Secretary Winwood, "that the

Papistical League is brewing great and dangerous plots. To obviate them

in everything that may depend upon him, My Lords the States will find him

prompt. The source of all these entanglements comes from Spain. We do not

think that the Archduke will attack Julich this year, but rather fear for

Mulheim and Aix-la-Chapelle."

But the Secretary of State, thus acknowledging the peril, chose to be

blind to its extent, while at the same time undervaluing the powers by

which it might be resisted. "To oppose the violence of the enemy," he

said, "if he does resort to violence, is entirely impossible. It would be

furious madness on our part to induce him to fall upon the

Elector-Palatine, for this would be attacking Great Britain and all her

friends and allies. Germany is a delicate morsel, but too much for the

throat of Spain to swallow all at once. Behold the evil which troubles

the conscience of the Papistical League. The Emperor and his brothers are

all on the brink of their sepulchre, and the Infants of Spain are too

young to succeed to the Empire. The Pope would more willingly permit its

dissolution than its falling into the hands of a prince not of his

profession. All that we have to do in this conjuncture is to attend the

best we can to our own affairs, and afterwards to strengthen the good

alliance existing among us, and not to let ourselves be separated by the

tricks and sleights of hand of our adversaries. The common cause can

reckon firmly upon the King of Great Britain, and will not find itself

deceived."

Excellent commonplaces, but not very safe ones. Unluckily for the allies,

to attend each to his own affairs when the enemy was upon them, and to

reckon firmly upon a king who thought it furious madness to resist the

enemy, was hardly the way to avert the danger. A fortnight later, the man

who thought it possible to resist, and time to resist, before the net was

over every head, replied to the Secretary by a picture of the Spaniards'

progress.

"Since your letter," he said, "you have seen the course of Spinola with

the army of the King and the Archdukes. You have seen the Prince-Palatine

of Neuburg with his forces maintained by the Pope and other members of

the Papistical League. On the 29th of August they forced Aachen, where

the magistrates and those of the Reformed religion have been extremely

maltreated. Twelve hundred soldiers are lodged in the houses there of

those who profess our religion. Mulheim is taken and dismantled, and the

very houses about to be torn down. Duren, Castre, Grevenborg, Orsoy,

Duisburg, Ruhrort, and many other towns, obliged to receive Spanish

garrisons. On the 4th of September they invested Wesel. On the 6th it was

held certain that the cities of Cleve, Emmerich, Rees, and others in that

quarter, had consented to be occupied. The States have put one hundred

and thirty-five companies of foot (about 14,000 men) and 4000 horse and a

good train of artillery in the field, and sent out some ships of war.

Prince Maurice left the Hague on the 4th of September to assist Wesel,

succour the Prince of Brandenburg, and oppose the hostile proceedings of

Spinola and the Palatine of Neuburg . . . . Consider, I pray you, this

state of things, and think how much heed they have paid to the demands of

the Kings of Great Britain and France to abstain from hostilities. Be

sure that without our strong garrison in Julich they would have snapped

up every city in Julich, Cleve, and Berg. But they will now try to make

use of their slippery tricks, their progress having been arrested by our

army. The Prince of Neuburg is sending his chancellor here 'cum mediis

componendae pacis,' in appearance good and reasonable, in reality

deceptive . . . . If their Majesties, My Lords the States, and the

princes of the Union, do not take an energetic resolution for making head

against their designs, behold their League in full vigour and ours

without soul. Neither the strength nor the wealth of the States are

sufficient of themselves to withstand their ambitious and dangerous

designs. We see the possessory princes treated as enemies upon their own

estates, and many thousand souls of the Reformed religion cruelly

oppressed by the Papistical League. For myself I am confirmed in my

apprehensions and believe that neither our religion nor our Union can

endure such indignities. The enemy is making use of the minority in

France and the divisions among the princes of Germany to their great

advantage . . . . I believe that the singular wisdom of his Majesty will

enable him to apply promptly the suitable remedies, and that your

Parliament will make no difficulty in acquitting itself well in repairing

those disorders."

The year dragged on to its close. The supineness of the Protestants

deepened in direct proportion to the feverish increase of activity on the

part of Austria and the League. The mockery of negotiation in which

nothing could be negotiated, the parade of conciliation when war of

extermination was intended, continued on the part of Spain and Austria.

Barneveld was doing his best to settle all minor differences between the

States and Great Britain, that these two bulwarks of Protestantism might

stand firmly together against the rising tide. He instructed the

Ambassador to exhaust every pacific means of arrangement in regard to the

Greenland fishery disputes, the dyed cloth question, and like causes of

ill feeling. He held it more than necessary, he said, that the

inhabitants of the two countries should now be on the very best terms

with each other. Above all, he implored the King through the Ambassador

to summon Parliament in order that the kingdom might be placed in

position to face the gathering danger.

"I am amazed and distressed," he said, "that the statesmen of England do

not comprehend the perils with which their fellow religionists are

everywhere threatened, especially in Germany and in these States. To

assist us with bare advice and sometimes with traducing our actions,

while leaving us to bear alone the burthens, costs, and dangers, is not

serviceable to us." Referring to the information and advice which he had

sent to England and to France fifteen months before, he now gave

assurance that the Prince of Neuburg and Spinola were now in such force,

both foot and cavalry, with all necessary munitions, as to hold these

most important territories as a perpetual "sedem bedli," out of which to

attack Germany at their pleasure and to cut off all possibility of aid

from England and the States. He informed the court of St. James that

besides the forces of the Emperor and the House of Austria, the Duke of

Bavaria and Spanish Italy, there were now several thousand horse and foot

under the Bishop of Wurzburg, 8000 or 9000 under the Bishop-Elector of

Mayence, and strong bodies of cavalry under Count Vaudemont in Lorraine,

all mustering for the war. The pretext seems merely to reduce Frankfurt

to obedience, even as Donauworth had previously been used as a colour for

vast designs. The real purpose was to bring the Elector-Palatine and the

whole Protestant party in Germany to submission. "His Majesty," said the

Advocate, "has now a very great and good subject upon which to convoke

Parliament and ask for a large grant. This would be doubtless consented

to if Parliament receives the assurance that the money thus accorded

shall be applied to so wholesome a purpose. You will do your best to

further this great end. We are waiting daily to hear if the Xanten

negotiation is broken off or not. I hope and I fear. Meantime we bear as

heavy burthens as if we were actually at war."

He added once more the warning, which it would seem superfluous to repeat

even to schoolboys in diplomacy, that this Xanten treaty, as proposed by

the enemy, was a mere trap.

Spinola and Neuburg, in case of the mutual disbanding, stood ready at an

instant's warning to re-enlist for the League not only all the troops

that the Catholic army should nominally discharge, but those which would

be let loose from the States' army and that of Brandenburg as well. They

would hold Rheinberg, Groll, Lingen, Oldenzaal, Wachtendonk, Maestricht,

Aachen, and Mulheim with a permanent force of more than 20,000 men. And

they could do all this in four days' time.

A week or two later all his prophesies had been fulfilled. "The Prince of

Neuburg," he said, "and Marquis Spinola have made game of us most

impudently in the matter of the treaty. This is an indignity for us,

their Majesties, and the electors and princes. We regard it as

intolerable. A despatch came from Spain forbidding a further step in the

negotiation without express order from the King. The Prince and Spinola

are gone to Brussels, the ambassadors have returned to the Hague, the

armies are established in winter-quarters. The cavalry are ravaging the

debateable land and living upon the inhabitants at their discretion. M.

de Refuge is gone to complain to the Archdukes of the insult thus put

upon his sovereign. Sir Henry Wotton is still here. We have been plunged

into an immensity of extraordinary expense, and are amazed that at this

very moment England should demand money from us when we ought to be

assisted by a large subsidy by her. We hope that now at least his Majesty

will take a vigorous resolution and not suffer his grandeur and dignity

to be vilipended longer. If the Spaniard is successful in this step, he

is ready for greater ones, and will believe that mankind is ready to bear

and submit to everything. His Majesty is the first king of the religion.

He bears the title of Defender of the Faith. His religion, his only

daughter, his son-in-law, his grandson are all especially interested

besides his own dignity, besides the common weal."

He then adverted to the large subsidies from Queen Elizabeth many years

before, guaranteed, it was true, by the cautionary towns, and to the

gallant English regiments, sent by that great sovereign, which had been

fighting so long and so splendidly in the Netherlands for the common

cause of Protestantism and liberty. Yet England was far weaker then, for

she had always her northern frontier to defend against Scotland, ever

ready to strike her in the back. "But now his Majesty," said Barneveld,

"is King of England and Scotland both. His frontier is free. Ireland is

at peace. He possesses quietly twice as much as the Queen ever did. He is

a king. Her Majesty was a woman. The King has children and heirs. His

nearest blood is engaged in this issue. His grandeur and dignity have

been wronged. Each one of these considerations demands of itself a manly

resolution. You will do your best to further it."

The almost ubiquitous power of Spain, gaining after its exhaustion new

life through the strongly developed organization of the League, and the

energy breathed into that mighty conspiracy against human liberty by the

infinite genius of the "cabinet of Jesuits," was not content with

overshadowing Germany, the Netherlands, and England, but was threatening

Savoy with 40,000 men, determined to bring Charles Emmanuel either to

perdition or submission.

Like England, France was spell-bound by the prospect of Spanish

marriages, which for her at least were not a chimera, and looked on

composedly while Savoy was on point of being sacrificed by the common

invader of independent nationality whether Protestant or Catholic.

Nothing ever showed more strikingly the force residing in singleness of

purpose with breadth and unity of design than all these primary movements

of the great war now beginning. The chances superficially considered were

vastly in favour of the Protestant cause. In the chief lands, under the

sceptre of the younger branch of Austria, the Protestants outnumbered the

Catholics by nearly ten to one. Bohemia, the Austrias, Moravia, Silesia,

Hungary were filled full of the spirit of Huss, of Luther, and even of

Calvin. If Spain was a unit, now that the Moors and Jews had been

expelled, and the heretics of Castille and Aragon burnt into submission,

she had a most lukewarm ally in Venice, whose policy was never controlled

by the Church, and a dangerous neighbour in the warlike, restless, and

adventurous House of Savoy, to whom geographical considerations were ever

more vital than religious scruples. A sincere alliance of France, the

very flower of whose nobility and people inclined to the Reformed

religion, was impossible, even if there had been fifty infantes to

espouse fifty daughters of France. Great Britain, the Netherlands, and

the united princes of Germany seemed a solid and serried phalanx of

Protestantism, to break through which should be hopeless. Yet at that

moment, so pregnant with a monstrous future, there was hardly a sound

Protestant policy anywhere but in Holland. How long would that policy

remain sound and united? How long would the Republic speak through the

imperial voice of Barneveld? Time was to show and to teach many lessons.

The united princes of Germany were walking, talking, quarrelling in their

sleep; England and France distracted and bedrugged, while Maximilian of

Bavaria and Ferdinand of Gratz, the cabinets of Madrid and the Vatican,

were moving forward to their aims slowly, steadily, relentlessly as Fate.

And Spain was more powerful than she had been since the Truce began. In

five years she had become much more capable of aggression. She had

strengthened her positions in the Mediterranean by the acquisition and

enlargement of considerable fortresses in Barbary and along a large sweep

of the African coast, so as to be almost supreme in Africa. It was

necessary for the States, the only power save Turkey that could face her

in those waters, to maintain a perpetual squadron of war ships there to

defend their commerce against attack from the Spaniard and from the

corsairs, both Mahometan and Christian, who infested every sea. Spain was

redoubtable everywhere, and the Turk, engaged in Persian campaigns, was

offering no diversion against Hungary and Vienna.

"Reasons of state worthy of his Majesty's consideration and wisdom," said

Barneveld, "forbid the King of Great Britain from permitting the Spaniard

to give the law in Italy. He is about to extort obedience and humiliation

from the Duke of Savoy, or else with 40,000 men to mortify and ruin him,

while entirely assuring himself of France by the double marriages. Then

comes the attack on these Provinces, on Protestant Germany, and all other

states and realms of the religion."

With the turn of the year, affairs were growing darker and darker. The

League was rolling up its forces in all directions; its chiefs proposed

absurd conditions of pacification, while war was already raging, and yet

scarcely any government but that of the Netherlands paid heed to the

rising storm. James, fatuous as ever, listened to Gondemar, and wrote

admonitory letters to the Archduke. It was still gravely proposed by the

Catholic party that there should be mutual disbanding in the duchies,

with a guarantee from Marquis Spinola that there should be no more

invasion of those territories. But powers and pledges from the King of

Spain were what he needed.

To suppose that the Republic and her allies would wait quietly, and not

lift a finger until blows were actually struck against the Protestant

electors or cities of Germany, was expecting too much ingenuousness on

the part of statesmen who had the interests of Protestantism at heart.

What they wanted was the signed, sealed, ratified treaty faithfully

carried out. Then if the King of Spain and the Archdukes were willing to

contract with the States never to make an attempt against the Holy German

Empire, but to leave everything to take its course according to the

constitutions, liberties, and traditions and laws of that empire, under

guidance of its electors, princes, estates, and cities, the United

Provinces were ready, under mediation of the two kings, their allies and

friends, to join in such an arrangement. Thus there might still be peace

in Germany, and religious equality as guaranteed by the "Majesty-Letter,"

and the "Compromise" between the two great churches, Roman and Reformed,

be maintained. To bring about this result was the sincere endeavour of

Barneveld, hoping against hope. For he knew that all was hollowness and

sham on the part of the great enemy. Even as Walsingham almost alone had

suspected and denounced the delusive negotiations by which Spain

continued to deceive Elizabeth and her diplomatists until the Armada was

upon her coasts, and denounced them to ears that were deafened and souls

that were stupified by the frauds practised upon them, so did Barneveld,

who had witnessed all that stupendous trickery of a generation before,

now utter his cries of warning that Germany might escape in time from her

impending doom.

"Nothing but deceit is lurking in the Spanish proposals," he said. "Every

man here wonders that the English government does not comprehend these

malversations. Truly the affair is not to be made straight by new

propositions, but by a vigorous resolution of his Majesty. It is in the

highest degree necessary to the salvation of Christendom, to the

conservation of his Majesty's dignity and greatness, to the service of

the princes and provinces, and of all Germany, nor can this vigorous

resolution be longer delayed without enormous disaster to the common weal

. . . . . I have the deepest affection for the cause of the Duke of

Savoy, but I cannot further it so long as I cannot tell what his Majesty

specifically is resolved to do, and what hope is held out from Venice,

Germany, and other quarters. Our taxes are prodigious, the ordinary and

extraordinary, and we have a Spanish army at our front door."

The armaments, already so great, had been enlarged during the last month

of the year. Vaudemont was at the head of a further force of 2000 cavalry

and 8000 foot, paid for by Spain and the Pope; 24,000 additional

soldiers, riders and infantry together, had been gathered by Maximilian

of Bavaria at the expense of the League. Even if the reports were

exaggerated, the Advocate thought it better to be too credulous than as

apathetic as the rest of the Protestants.

"We receive advices every day," he wrote to Caron, "that the Spaniards

and the Roman League are going forward with their design. They are trying

to amuse the British king and to gain time, in order to be able to deal

the heavier blows. Do all possible duty to procure a timely and vigorous

resolution there. To wait again until we are anticipated will be fatal to

the cause of the Evangelical electors and princes of Germany and

especially of his Electoral Highness of Brandenburg. We likewise should

almost certainly suffer irreparable damage, and should again bear our

cross, as men said last year in regard to Aachen, Wesel, and so many

other places. The Spaniard is sly, and has had a long time to contrive

how he can throw the net over the heads of all our religious allies.

Remember all the warnings sent from here last year, and how they were all

tossed to the winds, to the ruin of so many of our co-religionists. If it

is now intended over there to keep the Spaniards in check merely by

speeches or letters, it would be better to say so clearly to our friends.

So long as Parliament is not convoked in order to obtain consents and

subsidies for this most necessary purpose, so long I fail to believe that

this great common cause of Christendom, and especially of Germany, is

taken to heart by England."

He adverted with respectfully subdued scorn to King James's proposition

that Spinola should give a guarantee. "I doubt if he accepts the

suggestion," said Barneveld, "unless as a notorious trick, and if he did,

what good would the promise of Spinola do us? We consider Spinola a great

commander having the purses and forces of the Spaniards and the Leaguers

in his control; but should they come into other hands, he would not be a

very considerable personage for us. And that may happen any day. They

don't seem in England to understand the difference between Prince Maurice

in his relations to our state and that of Marquis Spinola to his

superiors. Try to make them comprehend it. A promise from the Emperor,

King of Spain, and the princes of the League, such as his Majesty in his

wisdom has proposed to Spinola, would be most tranquillizing for all the

Protestant princes and estates of the Empire, especially for the Elector

and Electress Palatine, and for ourselves. In such a case no difficulty

would be made on our side."

After expressing his mind thus freely in regard to James and his policy,

he then gave the Ambassador a word of caution in characteristic fashion.

"Cogita," he said, "but beware of censuring his Majesty's projects. I do

not myself mean to censure them, nor are they publicly laughed at here,

but look closely at everything that comes from Brussels, and let me know

with diligence."

And even as the Advocate was endeavouring with every effort of his skill

and reason to stir the sluggish James into vigorous resolution in behalf

of his own children, as well as of the great cause of Protestantism and

national liberty, so was he striving to bear up on his strenuous

shoulders the youthful king of France, and save him from the swollen

tides of court intrigue and Jesuitical influence fast sweeping him to

destruction.

He had denounced the recent and paltry proposition made on the part of

the League, and originally suggested by James, as a most open and

transparent trap, into which none but the blind would thrust themselves.

The Treaty of Xanten, carried out as it had been signed and guaranteed by

the great Catholic powers, would have brought peace to Christendom. To

accept in place of such guarantee the pledge of a simple soldier, who

to-morrow might be nothing, was almost too ridiculous a proposal to be

answered gravely. Yet Barneveld through the machinations of the Catholic

party was denounced both at the English and French courts as an obstacle

to peace, when in reality his powerful mind and his immense industry were

steadily directed to the noblest possible end--to bring about a solemn

engagement on the part of Spain, the Emperor, and the princes of the

League, to attack none of the Protestant powers of Germany, especially

the Elector-Palatine, but to leave the laws, liberties, and privileges of

the States within the Empire in their original condition. And among those

laws were the great statutes of 1609 and 1610, the "Majesty-Letter" and

the "Compromise," granting full right of religious worship to the

Protestants of the Kingdom of Bohemia. If ever a policy deserved to be

called truly liberal and truly conservative, it was the policy thus

steadily maintained by Barneveld.

Adverting to the subterfuge by which the Catholic party had sought to set

aside the treaty of Xanten, he instructed Langerac, the States'

ambassador in Paris, and his own pupils to make it clear to the French

government that it was impossible that in such arrangements the Spanish

armies would not be back again in the duchies at a moment's notice. It

could not be imagined even that they were acting sincerely.

"If their upright intention," he said, "is that no actual, hostile,

violent attack shall be made upon the duchies, or upon any of the

princes, estates, or cities of the Holy Empire, as is required for the

peace and tranquillity of Christendom, and if all the powers interested

therein will come into a good and solid convention to that effect. My

Lords the States will gladly join in such undertaking and bind themselves

as firmly as the other powers. If no infraction of the laws and liberties

of the Holy Empire be attempted, there will be peace for Germany and its

neighbours. But the present extravagant proposition can only lead to

chicane and quarrels. To press such a measure is merely to inflict a

disgrace upon us. It is an attempt to prevent us from helping the

Elector-Palatine and the other Protestant princes of Germany and

coreligionists everywhere against hostile violence. For the

Elector-Palatine can receive aid from us and from Great Britain through

the duchies only. It is plainly the object of the enemy to seclude us

from the Palatine and the rest of Protestant Germany. It is very

suspicious that the proposition of Prince Maurice, supported by the two

kings and the united princes of Germany, has been rejected."

The Advocate knew well enough that the religious franchises granted by

the House of Habsburg at the very moment in which Spain signed her peace

with the Netherlands, and exactly as the mad duke of Cleve was

expiring--with a dozen princes, Catholic and Protestant, to dispute his

inheritance--would be valuable just so long as they could be maintained

by the united forces of Protestantism and of national independence and no

longer. What had been extorted from the Catholic powers by force would be

retracted by force whenever that force could be concentrated. It had been

necessary for the Republic to accept a twelve years' truce with Spain in

default of a peace, while the death of John of Cleve, and subsequently of

Henry IV., had made the acquisition of a permanent pacification between

Catholicism and Protestantism, between the League and the Union, more

difficult than ever. The so-called Thirty Years' War--rather to be called

the concluding portion of the Eighty Years' War--had opened in the

debateable duchies exactly at the moment when its forerunner, the forty

years' war of the Netherlands, had been temporarily and nominally

suspended. Barneveld was perpetually baffled in his efforts to obtain a

favourable peace for Protestant Europe, less by the open diplomacy and

military force of the avowed enemies of Protestantism than by the secret

intrigues and faintheartedness of its nominal friends. He was unwearied

in his efforts simultaneously to arouse the courts of England and France

to the danger to Europe from the overshadowing power of the House of

Austria and the League, and he had less difficulty in dealing with the

Catholic Lewis and his mother than with Protestant James. At the present

moment his great designs were not yet openly traversed by a strong

Protestant party within the very republic which he administered.

"Look to it with earnestness and grave deliberation," he said to

Langerac, "that they do not pursue us there with vain importunity to

accept something so notoriously inadmissible and detrimental to the

common weal. We know that from the enemy's side every kind of unseemly

trick is employed, with the single object of bringing about

misunderstanding between us and the King of France. A prompt and vigorous

resolution on the part of his Majesty, to see the treaty which we made

duly executed, would be to help the cause. Otherwise, not. We cannot here

believe that his Majesty, in this first year of his majority, will submit

to such a notorious and flagrant affront, or that he will tolerate the

oppression of the Duke of Savoy. Such an affair in the beginning of his

Majesty's reign cannot but have very great and prejudicial consequences,

nor can it be left to linger on in uncertainty and delay. Let him be

prompt in this. Let him also take a most Christian--kingly, vigorous

resolution against the great affront put upon him in the failure to carry

out the treaty. Such a resolve on the part of the two kings would restore

all things to tranquillity and bring the Spaniard and his adherents 'in

terminos modestiae. But so long as France is keeping a suspicious eye

upon England, and England upon France, everything will run to combustion,

detrimental to their Majesties and to us, and ruinous to all the good

inhabitants."

To the Treaty of Xanten faithfully executed he held as to an anchor in

the tempest until it was torn away, not by violence from without, but by

insidious mutiny within. At last the government of James proposed that

the pledges on leaving the territory should be made to the two allied

kings as mediators and umpires. This was better than the naked promises

originally suggested, but even in this there was neither heartiness nor

sincerity. Meantime the Prince of Neuburg, negotiations being broken off,

departed for Germany, a step which the Advocate considered ominous. Soon

afterwards that prince received a yearly pension of 24,000 crowns from

Spain, and for this stipend his claims on the sovereignty of the duchies

were supposed to be surrendered.

"If this be true," said Barneveld, "we have been served with covered

dishes."

The King of England wrote spirited and learned letters to the

Elector-Palatine, assuring him of his father-in-law's assistance in case

he should be attacked by the League. Sir Henry Wotton, then on special

mission at the Hague, showed these epistles to Barneveld.

"When I hear that Parliament has been assembled and has granted great

subsidies," was the Advocate's comment, "I shall believe that effects may

possibly follow from all these assurances."

It was wearisome for the Advocate thus ever to be foiled; by the

pettinesses and jealousies of those occupying the highest earthly places,

in his efforts to stem the rising tide of Spanish and Catholic

aggression, and to avert the outbreak of a devastating war to which he

saw Europe doomed. It may be wearisome to read the record. Yet it is the

chronicle of Christendom during one of the most important and fateful

epochs of modern history. No man can thoroughly understand the

complication and precession of phenomena attending the disastrous dawn of

the renewed war, on an even more awful scale than the original conflict

in the Netherlands, without studying the correspondence of Barneveld. The

history of Europe is there. The fate of Christendom is there. The

conflict of elements, the crash of contending forms of religion and of

nationalities, is pictured there in vivid if homely colours. The

Advocate, while acting only in the name of a slender confederacy, was in

truth, so long as he held his place, the prime minister of European

Protestantism. There was none other to rival him, few to comprehend him,

fewer still to sustain him. As Prince Maurice was at that moment the

great soldier of Protestantism without clearly scanning the grandeur of

the field in which he was a chief actor, or foreseeing the vastness of

its future, so the Advocate was its statesman and its prophet. Could the

two have worked together as harmoniously as they had done at an earlier

day, it would have been a blessing for the common weal of Europe. But,

alas! the evil genius of jealousy, which so often forbids cordial

relations between soldier and statesman, already stood shrouded in the

distance, darkly menacing the strenuous patriot, who was wearing his life

out in exertions for what he deemed the true cause of progress and

humanity.

Nor can the fate of the man himself, his genuine character, and the

extraordinary personal events towards which he was slowly advancing, be

accurately unfolded without an attempt by means of his letters to lay

bare his inmost thoughts. Especially it will be seen at a later moment

how much value was attached to this secret correspondence with the

ambassadors in London and Paris.

The Advocate trusted to the support of France, Papal and Medicean as the

court of the young king was, because the Protestant party throughout the

kingdom was too powerful, warlike, and numerous to be trifled with, and

because geographical considerations alone rendered a cordial alliance

between Spain and France very difficult. Notwithstanding the Spanish

marriages, which he opposed so long as opposition was possible, he knew

that so long as a statesman remained in the kingdom, or a bone for one

existed, the international policy of Henry, of Sully, and of Jeannin

could not be wholly abandoned.

He relied much on Villeroy, a political hack certainly, an ancient

Leaguer, and a Papist, but a man too cool, experienced, and wily to be

ignorant of the very hornbook of diplomacy, or open to the shallow

stratagems by which Spain found it so easy to purchase or to deceive. So

long as he had a voice in the council, it was certain that the Netherland

alliance would not be abandoned, nor the Duke of Savoy crushed. The old

secretary of state was not especially in favour at that moment, but

Barneveld could not doubt his permanent place in French affairs until

some man of real power should arise there. It was a dreary period of

barrenness and disintegration in that kingdom while France was mourning

Henry and waiting for Richelieu.

The Dutch ambassador at Paris was instructed accordingly to maintain.

good relations with Villeroy, who in Barneveld's opinion had been a

constant and sincere friend to the Netherlands. "Don't forget to caress

the old gentleman you wot of," said the Advocate frequently, but

suppressing his name, "without troubling yourself with the reasons

mentioned in your letter. I am firmly convinced that he will overcome all

difficulties. Don't believe either that France will let the Duke of Savoy

be ruined. It is against every reason of State." Yet there were few to

help Charles Emmanuel in this Montferrat war, which was destined to drag

feebly on, with certain interludes of negotiations, for two years longer.

The already notorious condottiere Ernest Mansfeld, natural son of old

prince Peter Ernest, who played so long and so high a part in command of

the Spanish armies in the Netherlands, had, to be sure, taken service

under the Duke. Thenceforth he was to be a leader and a master in that

wild business of plunder, burning, blackmailing, and murder, which was

opening upon Europe, and was to afford occupation for many thousands of

adventurers of high and low degree.

Mansfeld, reckless and profligate, had already changed his banner more

than once. Commanding a company under Leopold in the duchies, he had been

captured by the forces of the Union, and, after waiting in vain to be

ransomed by the Archduke, had gone secretly over to the enemy. Thus

recovering his liberty, he had enlisted a regiment under Leopold's name

to fight the Union, and had then, according to contract, transferred

himself and most of his adventurers to the flag of the Union. The

military operations fading away in the duchies without being succeeded by

permanent peace, the Count, as he was called, with no particular claim to

such title, had accepted a thousand florins a year as retainer from the

Union and had found occupation under Charles Emmanuel. Here the Spanish

soldier of a year or two before found much satisfaction and some profit

in fighting Spanish soldiers. He was destined to reappear in the

Netherlands, in France, in Bohemia, in many places where there were

villages to be burned, churches to be plundered, cities to be sacked,

nuns and other women to be outraged, dangerous political intrigues to be

managed. A man in the prime of his age, fair-haired, prematurely

wrinkled, battered, and hideous of visage, with a hare-lip and a

humpback; slovenly of dress, and always wearing an old grey hat without a

band to it; audacious, cruel, crafty, and licentious--such was Ernest

Mansfeld, whom some of his contemporaries spoke of as Ulysses Germanicus,

others as the new Attila, all as a scourge to the human race. The

cockneys of Paris called him "Machefer," and nurses long kept children

quiet by threatening them with that word. He was now enrolled on the

Protestant side, although at the moment serving Savoy against Spain in a

question purely personal. His armies, whether in Italy or in Germany,

were a miscellaneous collection of adventurers of high and low degree, of

all religions, of all countries, unfrocked priests and students, ruined

nobles, bankrupt citizens, street vagabonds--earliest type perhaps of the

horrible military vermin which were destined to feed so many years long

on the unfortunate dismembered carcass of Germany.

Many demands had been made upon the States for assistance to Savoy,--as

if they and they alone were to bear the brunt and pay the expense of all

the initiatory campaigns against Spain.

"We are much importuned," said the Advocate, "to do something for the

help of Savoy . . . . We wish and we implore that France, Great Britain,

the German princes, the Venetians, and the Swiss would join us in some

scheme of effective assistance. But we have enough on our shoulders at

this moment."

They had hardly money enough in their exchequer, admirably ordered as it

was, for enterprises so far from home when great Spanish armies were

permanently encamped on their border.

Partly to humour King James and partly from love of adventure, Count John

of Nassau had gone to Savoy at the head of a small well disciplined body

of troops furnished by the States.

"Make use of this piece of news," said Barneveld, communicating the fact

to Langerac, "opportunely and with discretion. Besides the wish to give

some contentment to the King of Great Britain, we consider it

inconsistent with good conscience and reasons of state to refuse help to

a great prince against oppression by those who mean to give the law to

everybody; especially as we have been so earnestly and frequently

importuned to do so."

And still the Spaniards and the League kept their hold on the duchies,

while their forces, their munitions, their accumulation of funds waged

hourly. The war of chicane was even more deadly than an actual campaign,

for when there was no positive fighting the whole world seemed against

the Republic. And the chicane was colossal.

"We cannot understand," said Barneveld, "why M. de Prevaulx is coming

here on special mission. When a treaty is signed and sealed, it only

remains to execute it. The Archduke says he is himself not known in the

treaty, and that nothing can be demanded of him in relation to it. This

he says in his letters to the King of Great Britain. M. de Refuge knows

best whether or not Marquis Spinola, Ottavio Visconti, Chancellor

Pecquius, and others, were employed in the negotiation by the Archduke.

We know very well here that the whole business was conducted by them. The

Archduke is willing to give a clean and sincere promise not to re-occupy,

and asks the same from the States. If he were empowered by the Emperor,

the King of Spain, and the League, and acted in such quality, something

might be done for the tranquillity of Germany. But he promises for

himself only, and Emperor, King, or League, may send any general to do

what they like to-morrow. What is to prevent it?

"And so My Lords the States, the Elector of Brandenburg, and others

interested are cheated and made fools of. And we are as much troubled by

these tricks as by armed force. Yes, more; for we know that great

enterprises are preparing this year against Germany and ourselves, that

all Neuburg's troops have been disbanded and re-enlisted under the

Spanish commanders, and that forces are levying not only in Italy and

Spain, but in Germany, Lorraine, Luxemburg, and Upper Burgundy, and that

Wesel has been stuffed full of gunpowder and other munitions, and very

strongly fortified."

For the States to agree to a treaty by which the disputed duchies should

be held jointly by the Princes of Neuburg and of Brandenburg, and the

territory be evacuated by all foreign troops; to look quietly on while

Neuburg converted himself to Catholicism, espoused the sister of

Maximilian of Bavaria, took a pension from Spain, resigned his claims in

favour of Spain, and transferred his army to Spain; and to expect that

Brandenburg and all interested in Brandenburg, that is to say, every

Protestant in Europe, should feel perfectly easy under such arrangement

and perfectly protected by the simple promise of a soldier of fortune

against Catholic aggression, was a fantastic folly hardly worthy of a

child. Yet the States were asked to accept this position, Brandenburg and

all Protestant Germany were asked to accept it, and Barneveld was howled

at by his allies as a marplot and mischief-maker, and denounced and

insulted by diplomatists daily, because he mercilessly tore away the

sophistries of the League and of the League's secret friend, James

Stuart.

The King of Spain had more than 100,000 men under arms, and was enlisting

more soldiers everywhere and every day, had just deposited 4,000,000

crowns with his Antwerp bankers for a secret purpose, and all the time

was exuberant in his assurances of peace. One would have thought that

there had never been negotiations in Bourbourg, that the Spanish Armada

had never sailed from Coruna.

"You are wise and prudent in France," said the Advocate, "but we are used

to Spanish proceedings, and from much disaster sustained are filled with

distrust. The King of England seems now to wish that the Archduke should

draw up a document according to his good pleasure, and that the States

should make an explanatory deed, which the King should sign also and ask

the King of France to do the same. But this is very hazardous.

"We do not mean to receive laws from the King of Spain, nor the Archduke

. . . . The Spanish proceedings do not indicate peace but war. One must

not take it ill of us that we think these matters of grave importance to

our friends and ourselves. Affairs have changed very much in the last

four months. The murder of the first vizier of the Turkish emperor and

his designs against Persia leave the Spanish king and the Emperor free

from attack in that quarter, and their armaments are far greater than

last year . . . . I cannot understand why the treaty of Xanten, formerly

so highly applauded, should now be so much disapproved. . . . The King of

Spain and the Emperor with their party have a vast design to give the law

to all Christendom, to choose a Roman king according to their will, to

reduce the Evangelical electors, princes, and estates of Germany to

obedience, to subject all Italy, and, having accomplished this, to

proceed to triumph over us and our allies, and by necessary consequence

over France and England. They say they have established the Emperor's

authority by means of Aachen and Mulheim, will soon have driven us out of

Julich, and have thus arranged matters entirely to their heart's content.

They can then, in name of the Emperor, the League, the Prince of Neuburg,

or any one else, make themselves in eight days masters of the places

which they are now imaginarily to leave as well as of those which we are

actually to surrender, and by possession of which we could hold out a

long time against all their power."

Those very places held by the States--Julich, Emmerich, and others--had

recently been fortified at much expense, under the superintendence of

Prince Maurice, and by advice of the Advocate. It would certainly be an

act of madness to surrender them on the terms proposed. These warnings

and forebodings of Barneveld sound in our ears like recorded history, yet

they were far earlier than the actual facts. And now to please the

English king, the States had listened to his suggestion that his name and

that of the King of France should be signed as mediators to a new

arrangement proposed in lieu of the Xanten treaty. James had suggested

this, Lewis had agreed to it. Yet before the ink had dried in James's

pen, he was proposing that the names of the mediating sovereigns should

be omitted from the document? And why? Because Gondemar was again

whispering in his ear. "They are renewing the negotiations in England,"

said the Advocate, "about the alliance between the Prince of Wales and

the second daughter of Spain; and the King of Great Britain is seriously

importuning us that the Archdukes and My Lords the States should make

their pledges 'impersonaliter' and not to the kings." James was also

willing that the name of the Emperor should appear upon it. To prevent

this, Barneveld would have had himself burned at the stake. It would be

an ignominious and unconditional surrender of the whole cause.

"The Archduke will never be contented," said the Advocate, "unless his

Majesty of Great Britain takes a royal resolution to bring him to reason.

That he tries to lay the fault on us is pure malice. We have been ready

and are still ready to execute the treaty of Xanten. The Archduke is the

cause of the dispute concerning the act. We approved the formularies of

their Majesties, and have changed them three times to suit the King of

Great Britain. Our Provincial States have been notified in the matter, so

that we can no longer digest the Spanish impudence, and are amazed that

his Majesty can listen any more to the Spanish ministers. We fear that

those ministers are working through many hands, in order by one means or

another to excite quarrels between his Majesty, us, and the respective

inhabitants of the two countries . . . . . Take every precaution that no

attempt be made there to bring the name of the Emperor into the act. This

would be contrary to their Majesties' first resolution, very prejudicial

to the Elector of Brandenburg, to the duchies, and to ourselves. And it

is indispensable that the promise be made to the two kings as mediators,

as much for their reputation and dignity as for the interests of the

Elector, the territories, and ourselves. Otherwise too the Spaniards will

triumph over us as if they had driven us by force of arms into this

promise."

The seat of war, at the opening of the apparently inevitable conflict

between the Catholic League and the Protestant Union, would be those

debateable duchies, those border provinces, the possession of which was

of such vital importance to each of the great contending parties, and the

populations of which, although much divided, were on the whole more

inclined to the League than to the Union. It was natural enough that the

Dutch statesman should chafe at the possibility of their being lost to

the Union through the adroitness of the Catholic managers and the

supineness of the great allies of the Republic.

Three weeks later than these last utterances of the Advocate, he was

given to understand that King James was preparing to slide away from the

position which had been three times changed to make it suitable for him.

His indignation was hot.

"Sir Henry Wotton," he said, "has communicated to me his last despatches

from Newmarket. I am in the highest degree amazed that after all our

efforts at accommodation, with so much sacrifice to the electors, the

provinces, and ourselves, they are trying to urge us there to consent

that the promise be not made to the Kings of France and Great Britain as

mediators, although the proposition came from the Spanish side. After we

had renounced, by desire of his Majesty, the right to refer the promise

to the Treaty of Xanten, it was judged by both kings to be needful and

substantial that the promise be made to their Majesties. To change this

now would be prejudicial to the kings, to the electors, the duchies, and

to our commonwealth; to do us a wrong and to leave us naked. France

maintains her position as becoming and necessary. That Great Britain

should swerve from it is not to be digested here. You will do your utmost

according to my previous instructions to prevent any pressure to this

end. You will also see that the name of the Emperor is mentioned neither

in the preamble nor the articles of the treaty. It would be contrary to

all our policy since 1610. You may be firmly convinced that malice is

lurking under the Emperor's name, and that he and the King of Spain and

their adherents, now as before, are attempting a sequestration. This is

simply a pretext to bring those principalities and provinces into the

hands of the Spaniards, for which they have been labouring these thirty

years. We are constantly cheated by these Spanish tricks. Their intention

is to hold Wesel and all the other places until the conclusion of the

Italian affair, and then to strike a great blow."

Certainly were never words more full of sound statesmanship, and of

prophecy too soon to be fulfilled, than these simple but pregnant

warnings. They awakened but little response from the English government

save cavils and teasing reminders that Wesel had been the cradle of

German Calvinism, the Rhenish Geneva, and that it was sinful to leave it

longer in the hands of Spain. As if the Advocate had not proved to

demonstration that to stock hands for a new deal at that moment was to

give up the game altogether.

His influence in France was always greater than in England, and this had

likewise been the case with William the Silent. And even now that the

Spanish matrimonial alliance was almost a settled matter at the French

court, while with the English king it was but a perpetual will-o'the-wisp

conducting to quagmires ineffable, the government at Paris sustained the

policy of the Advocate with tolerable fidelity, while it was constantly

and most capriciously traversed by James.

Barneveld sighed over these approaching nuptials, but did not yet

despair. "We hope that the Spanish-French marriages," he said, "may be

broken up of themselves; but we fear that if we should attempt to delay

or prevent them authoritatively, or in conjunction with others, the

effort would have the contrary effect."

In this certainly he was doomed to disappointment.

He had already notified the French court of the absolute necessity of the

great points to be insisted upon in the treaty, and there he found more

docility than in London or Newmarket.

All summer he was occupied with this most important matter, uttering

Cassandra-like warnings into ears wilfully deaf. The States had gone as

far as possible in concession. To go farther would be to wreck the great

cause upon the very quicksands which he had so ceaselessly pointed out.

"We hope that nothing further will be asked of us, no scruples be felt as

to our good intentions," he said, "and that if Spain and the Archdukes

are not ready now to fulfil the treaty, their Majesties will know how to

resent this trifling with their authority and dignity, and how to set

matters to rights with their own hands in the duchies. A new treaty,

still less a sequestration, is not to be thought of for a moment."

Yet the month of August came and still the names of the mediating kings

were not on the treaty, and still the spectre of sequestration had not

been laid. On the contrary, the peace of Asti, huddled up between Spain

and Savoy, to be soon broken again, had caused new and painful

apprehensions of an attempt at sequestration, for it was established by

several articles in that treaty that all questions between Savoy and

Mantua should be referred to the Emperor's decision. This precedent was

sure to be followed in the duchies if not resisted by force, as it had

been so successfully resisted five years before by the armies of the

States associated with those of France. Moreover the first step at

sequestration had been actually taken. The Emperor had peremptorily

summoned the Elector of Brandenburg and all other parties interested to

appear before him on the 1st of August in Prague. There could be but one

object in this citation, to drive Brandenburg and the States out of the

duchies until the Imperial decision as to the legitimate sovereignty

should be given. Neuburg being already disposed of and his claims ceded

to the Emperor, what possibility was there in such circumstances of

saving one scrap of the territory from the clutch of the League? None

certainly if the Republic faltered in its determination, and yielded to

the cowardly advice of James. "To comply with the summons," said

Barneveld, "and submit to its consequences will be an irreparable injury

to the electoral house of Brandenburg, to the duchies, and to our

co-religionists everywhere, and a very great disgrace to both their

Majesties and to us."

He continued, through the ambassador in London, to hold up to the King,

in respectful but plain language, the shamelessness of his conduct in

dispensing the enemy from his pledge to the mediators, when the Republic

expressly, in deference to James, had given up the ampler guarantees of

the treaty. The arrangement had been solemnly made, and consented to by

all the provinces, acting in their separate and sovereign capacity. Such

a radical change, even if it were otherwise permissible, could not be

made without long debates, consultations, and votes by the several

states. What could be more fatal at such a crisis than this childish and

causeless delay. There could be no doubt in any statesman's eyes that the

Spanish party meant war and a preparatory hoodwinking. And it was even

worse for the government of the Republic to be outwitted in diplomacy

than beaten in the field.

"Every man here," said the Advocate, "has more apprehension of fraud than

of force. According to the constitution of our state, to be overcome by

superior power must be endured, but to be overreached by trickery is a

reproach to the government."

The summer passed away. The States maintained their positions in the

duchies, notwithstanding the objurgations of James, and Barneveld

remained on his watch-tower observing every movement of the

fast-approaching war, and refusing at the price of the whole territory in

dispute to rescue Wesel and Aix-la-Chapelle from the grasp of the League.

Caron came to the Hague to have personal consultations with the

States-General, the Advocate, and Prince Maurice, and returned before the

close of the year. He had an audience of the King at the palace of

Whitehall early in November, and found him as immovable as ever in his

apathetic attitude in regard to the affairs of Germany. The murder of Sir

Thomas Overbury and the obscene scandals concerning the King's beloved

Carr and his notorious bride were then occupying the whole attention of

the monarch, so that he had not even time for theological lucubrations,

still less for affairs of state on which the peace of Christendom and the

fate of his own children were hanging.

The Ambassador found him sulky and dictatorial, but insisted on

expressing once more to him the apprehensions felt by the States-General

in regard to the trickery of the Spanish party in the matter of Cleve and

Julich. He assured his Majesty that they had no intention of maintaining

the Treaty of Xanten, and respectfully requested that the King would no

longer urge the States to surrender the places held by them. It was a

matter of vital importance to retain them, he said.

"Sir Henry Wotton told me," replied James, "that the States at his

arrival were assembled to deliberate on this matter, and he had no doubt

that they would take a resolution in conformity with my intention. Now I

see very well that you don't mean to give up the places. If I had known

that before, I should not have warned the Archduke so many times, which I

did at the desire of the States themselves. And now that the Archdukes

are ready to restore their cities, you insist on holding yours. That is

the dish you set before me."

And upon this James swore a mighty oath, and beat himself upon the

breast.

"Now and nevermore will I trouble myself about the States' affairs, come

what come will," he continued. "I have always been upright in my words

and my deeds, and I am not going to embark myself in a wicked war because

the States have plunged themselves into one so entirely unjust. Next

summer the Spaniard means to divide himself into two or three armies in

order to begin his enterprises in Germany."

Caron respectfully intimated that these enterprises would be most

conveniently carried on from the very advantageous positions which be

occupied in the duchies. "No," said the King, "he must restore them on

the same day on which you make your surrender, and he will hardly come

back in a hurry."

"Quite the contrary," said the Ambassador, "they will be back again in a

twinkling, and before we have the slightest warning of their intention."

But it signified not the least what Caron said. The King continued to

vociferate that the States had never had any intention of restoring the

cities.

"You mean to keep them for yourselves," he cried, "which is the greatest

injustice that could be perpetrated. You have no right to them, and they

belong to other people."

The Ambassador reminded him that the Elector of Brandenburg was well

satisfied that they should be occupied by the States for his greater

security and until the dispute should be concluded.

"And that will never be," said James; "never, never. The States are

powerful enough to carry on the war all alone and against all the world."

And so he went on, furiously reiterating the words with which he had

begun the conversation, "without accepting any reasons whatever in

payment," as poor Caron observed.

"It makes me very sad," said the Ambassador, "to find your Majesty so

impatient and so resolved. If the names of the kings are to be omitted

from the document, the Treaty of Xanten should at least be modified

accordingly."

"Nothing of the kind," said James; "I don't understand it so at all. I

speak plainly and without equivocation. It must be enough for the States

that I promise them, in case the enemy is cheating or is trying to play

any trick whatever, or is seeking to break the Treaty of Xanten in a

single point, to come to their assistance in person."

And again the warlike James swore a big oath and smote his breast,

affirming that he meant everything sincerely; that he cheated no one, but

always spoke his thoughts right on, clearly and uprightly.

It was certainly not a cheerful prospect for the States. Their chief ally

was determined that they should disarm, should strip themselves naked,

when the mightiest conspiracy against the religious freedom and

international independence of Europe ever imagined was perfecting itself

before their eyes, and when hostile armies, more numerous than ever

before known, were at their very door. To wait until the enemy was at

their throat, and then to rely upon a king who trembled at the sight of a

drawn sword, was hardly the highest statesmanship. Even if it had been

the chivalrous Henry instead of the pacific James that had held out the

promise of help, they would have been mad to follow such counsel.

The conversation lasted more than an hour. It was in vain that Caron

painted in dark colours the cruel deeds done by the Spaniards in Mulheim

and Aachen, and the proceedings of the Archbishop of Cologne in Rees. The

King was besotted, and no impression could be made upon him.

"At any rate," said the Envoy, "the arrangement cannot be concluded

without the King of France."

"What excuse is that?" said James. "Now that the King is entirely

Spanish, you are trying to excuse your delays by referring to him. You

have deferred rescuing the poor city of Wesel from the hands of the

Spaniard long enough. I am amazed to have heard never a word from you on

that subject since your departure. I had expressed my wish to you clearly

enough that you should inform the States of my intention to give them any

assurance they chose to demand."

Caron was much disappointed at the humour of his Majesty. Coming freshly

as he did from the council of the States, and almost from the seat of

war, he had hoped to convince and content him. But the King was very

angry with the States for putting him so completely in the wrong. He had

also been much annoyed at their having failed to notify him of their

military demonstration in the Electorate of Cologne to avenge the

cruelties practised upon the Protestants there. He asked Caron if he was

instructed to give him information regarding it. Being answered in the

negative, he said he had thought himself of sufficient importance to the

States and enough in their confidence to be apprised of their military

movements. It was for this, he said, that his ambassador sat in their

council. Caron expressed the opinion that warlike enterprises of the kind

should be kept as secret as possible in order to be successful. This the

King disputed, and loudly declared his vexation at being left in

ignorance of the matter. The Ambassador excused himself as well as he

could, on the ground that he had been in Zealand when the troops were

marching, but told the King his impression that they had been sent to

chastise the people of Cologne for their cruelty in burning and utterly

destroying the city of Mulheim.

"That is none of your affair," said the King.

"Pardon me, your Majesty," replied Caron, "they are our fellow

religionists, and some one at least ought to resent the cruelty practised

upon them."

The King admitted that the destruction of the city had been an

unheard--of cruelty, and then passed on to speak of the quarrel between

the Duke and City of Brunswick, and other matters. The interview ended,

and the Ambassador, very downhearted, went to confer with the Secretary

of State Sir Ralph Winwood, and Sir Henry Wotton.

He assured these gentlemen that without fully consulting the French

government these radical changes in the negotiations would never be

consented to by the States. Winwood promised to confer at once with the

French ambassador, admitting it to be impossible for the King to take up

this matter alone. He would also talk with the Archduke's ambassador next

day noon at dinner, who was about leaving for Brussels, and "he would put

something into his hand that he might take home with him."

"When he is fairly gone," said Caron, "it is to be hoped that the King's

head will no longer be so muddled about these things. I wish it with all

my heart."

It was a dismal prospect for the States. The one ally on whom they had a

right to depend, the ex-Calvinist and royal Defender of the Faith, in

this mortal combat of Protestantism with the League, was slipping out of

their grasp with distracting lubricity. On the other hand, the Most

Christian King, a boy of fourteen years, was still in the control of a

mother heart and soul with the League--so far as she had heart or

soul--was betrothed to the daughter of Spain, and saw his kingdom torn to

pieces and almost literally divided among themselves by rebellious

princes, who made use of the Spanish marriages as a pretext for unceasing

civil war.

The Queen-Mother was at that moment at Bordeaux, and an emissary from the

princes was in London. James had sent to offer his mediation between them

and the Queen. He was fond of mediation. He considered it his special

mission in the world to mediate. He imagined himself as looked up to by

the nations as the great arbitrator of Christendom, and was wont to issue

his decrees as if binding in force and infallible by nature. He had

protested vigorously against the Spanish-French marriages, and declared

that the princes were justified in formalizing an opposition to them, at

least until affairs in France were restored to something like order. He

warned the Queen against throwing the kingdom "into the combustion of war

without necessity," and declared that, if she would trust to his

guidance, she might make use of him as if her affairs were his own. An

indispensable condition for much assistance, however, would be that the

marriages should be put off.

As James was himself pursuing a Spanish marriage for his son as the chief

end and aim of his existence, there was something almost humorous in this

protest to the Queen-Dowager and in his encouragement of mutiny in France

in order to prevent a catastrophe there which he desired at home.

The same agent of the princes, de Monbaran by name, was also privately

accredited by them to the States with instructions to borrow 200,000

crowns of them if he could. But so long as the policy of the Republic was

directed by Barneveld, it was not very probable that, while maintaining

friendly and even intimate relations with the legitimate government, she

would enter into negotiations with rebels against it, whether princes or

plebeians, and oblige them with loans. "He will call on me soon, no

doubt," said Caron, "but being so well instructed as to your Mightinesses

intentions in this matter, I hope I shall keep him away from you."

Monbaran was accordingly kept away, but a few weeks later another

emissary of Conde and Bouillon made his appearance at the Hague, de

Valigny by name. He asked for money and for soldiers to reinforce

Bouillon's city of Sedan, but he was refused an audience of the

States-General. Even the martial ardour of Maurice and his sympathy for

his relatives were cooled by this direct assault on his pocket. "The

Prince," wrote the French ambassador, du Maurier, "will not furnish him

or his adherents a thousand crowns, not if they had death between their

teeth. Those who think it do not know how he loves his money."

In the very last days of the year (1615) Caron had another interview with

the King in which James was very benignant. He told the Ambassador that

he should wish the States to send him some special commissioners to make

a new treaty with him, and to treat of all unsettled affairs which were

daily arising between the inhabitants of the respective countries. He

wished to make a firmer union and accord between Great Britain and the

Netherlands. He was very desirous of this, "because," said he, "if we can

unite with and understand each other, we have under God no one what ever

to fear, however mighty they may be."

Caron duly notified Barneveld of these enthusiastic expressions of his

Majesty. The Advocate too was most desirous of settling the troublesome

questions about the cloth trade, the piracies, and other matters, and was

in favour of the special commission. In regard to a new treaty of

alliance thus loosely and vaguely suggested, he was not so sanguine

however. He had too much difficulty in enforcing the interests of

Protestantism in the duchies against the infatuation of James in regard

to Spain, and he was too well aware of the Spanish marriage delusion,

which was the key to the King's whole policy, to put much faith in these

casual outbursts of eternal friendship with the States. He contented

himself therefore with cautioning Caron to pause before committing

himself to any such projects. He had frequently instructed him, however,

to bring the disputed questions to his Majesty's notice as often as

possible with a view to amicable arrangement.

This preventive policy in regard to France was highly approved by

Barneveld, who was willing to share in the blame profusely heaped upon

such sincere patriots and devoted Protestants as Duplessis-Mornay and

others, who saw small advantage to the great cause from a mutiny against

established government, bad as it was, led by such intriguers as Conde

and Bouillon. Men who had recently been in the pay of Spain, and one of

whom had been cognizant of Biron's plot against the throne and life of

Henry IV., to whom sedition was native atmosphere and daily bread, were

not likely to establish a much more wholesome administration than that of

Mary de' Medici. Prince Maurice sympathized with his relatives by

marriage, who were leading the civil commotions in France and

endeavouring to obtain funds in the Netherlands. It is needless to say

that Francis Aerssens was deep in their intrigues, and feeding full the

grudge which the Stadholder already bore the Advocate for his policy on

this occasion.

The Advocate thought it best to wait until the young king should himself

rise in mutiny against his mother and her minions. Perhaps the downfall

of the Concini's and their dowager and the escape of Lewis from thraldom

might not be so distant as it seemed. Meantime this was the legal

government, bound to the States by treaties of friendship and alliance,

and it would be a poor return for the many favours and the constant aid

bestowed by Henry IV. on the Republic, and an imbecile mode of avenging

his murder to help throw his kingdom into bloodshed and confusion before

his son was able to act for himself. At the same time he did his best to

cultivate amicable relations with the princes, while scrupulously

abstaining from any sympathy with their movements. "If the Prince and the

other gentlemen come to court," he wrote to Langerac, "you will treat

them with all possible caresses so far as can be done without disrespect

to the government."

While the British court was occupied with the foul details of the

Overbury murder and its consequences, a crime of a more commonplace

nature, but perhaps not entirely without influence on great political

events, had startled the citizens of the Hague. It was committed in the

apartments of the Stadholder and almost under his very eyes. A jeweller

of Amsterdam, one John van Wely, had come to the court of Maurice to lay

before him a choice collection of rare jewellery. In his caskets were

rubies and diamonds to the value of more than 100,000 florins, which

would be the equivalent of perhaps ten times as much to-day. In the

Prince's absence the merchant was received by a confidential groom of the

chambers, John of Paris by name, and by him, with the aid of a third

John, a soldier of his Excellency's guard, called Jean de la Vigne,

murdered on the spot. The deed was done in the Prince's private study.

The unfortunate jeweller was shot, and to make sure was strangled with

the blue riband of the Order of the Garter recently conferred upon

Maurice, and which happened to be lying conspicuously in the room.

The ruffians had barely time to take possession of the booty, to thrust

the body behind the tapestry of the chamber, and to remove the more

startling evidences of the crime, when the Prince arrived. He supped soon

afterwards in the same room, the murdered jeweller still lying behind the

arras. In the night the valet and soldier carried the corpse away from

the room, down the stairs, and through the great courtyard, where,

strange to say, no sentinels were on duty, and threw it into an ashpit.

A deed so bloody, audacious, and stupid was of course soon discovered and

the murderers arrested and executed. Nothing would remove the incident

from the catalogue of vulgar crimes, or even entitle it to a place in

history save a single circumstance. The celebrated divine John

Uytenbogaert, leader among the Arminians, devoted friend of Barneveld,

and up to that moment the favorite preacher of Maurice, stigmatized

indeed, as we have seen, by the orthodox as "Court Trumpeter," was

requested by the Prince to prepare the chief criminal for death. He did

so, and from that day forth the Stadholder ceased to be his friend,

although regularly listening to his preaching in the French chapel of the

court for more than a year longer. Some time afterwards the Advocate

informed Uytenbogaert that the Prince was very much embittered against

him. "I knew it well," says the clergyman in his memoirs, "but not the

reasons for it, nor do I exactly comprehend them to this day. Truly I

have some ideas relating to certain things which I was obliged to do in

discharge of my official duty, but I will not insist upon them, nor will

I reveal them to any man."

These were mysterious words, and the mystery is said to have been

explained; for it would seem that the eminent preacher was not so

entirely reticent among his confidential friends as before the public.

Uytenbogaert--so ran the tale--in the course of his conversation with the

condemned murderer, John of Paris, expressed a natural surprise that

there should have been no soldiers on guard in the court on the evening

when the crime was committed and the body subsequently removed. The valet

informed him that he had for a long time been empowered by the Prince to

withdraw the sentinels from that station, and that they had been

instructed to obey his orders--Maurice not caring that they should be

witnesses to the equivocal kind of female society that John of Paris was

in the habit of introducing of an evening to his master's apartments. The

valet had made use of this privilege on the night in question to rid

himself of the soldiers who would have been otherwise on guard.

The preacher felt it his duty to communicate these statements to the

Prince, and to make perhaps a somewhat severe comment upon them. Maurice

received the information sullenly, and, as soon as Uytenbogaert was gone,

fell into a violent passion, throwing his hat upon the floor, stamping

upon it, refusing to eat his supper, and allowing no one to speak to him.

Next day some courtiers asked the clergyman what in the world he had been

saying to the Stadholder.

From that time forth his former partiality for the divine, on whose

preaching he had been a regular attendant, was changed to hatred; a

sentiment which lent a lurid colour to subsequent events.

The attempts of the Spanish party by chicane or by force to get

possession of the coveted territories continued year after year, and were

steadily thwarted by the watchfulness of the States under guidance of

Barneveld. The martial stadholder was more than ever for open war, in

which he was opposed by the Advocate, whose object was to postpone and,

if possible, to avert altogether the dread catastrophe which he foresaw

impending over Europe. The Xanten arrangement seemed hopelessly thrown to

the winds, nor was it destined to be carried out; the whole question of

sovereignty and of mastership in those territories being swept

subsequently into the general whirlpool of the Thirty Years' War. So long

as there was a possibility of settlement upon that basis, the Advocate

was in favour of settlement, but to give up the guarantees and play into

the hands of the Catholic League was in his mind to make the Republic one

of the conspirators against the liberties of Christendom.

"Spain, the Emperor and the rest of them," said he, "make all three modes

of pacification--the treaty, the guarantee by the mediating kings, the

administration divided between the possessory princes--alike impossible.

They mean, under pretext of sequestration, to make themselves absolute

masters there. I have no doubt that Villeroy means sincerely, and

understands the matter, but meantime we sit by the fire and burn. If the

conflagration is neglected, all the world will throw the blame on us."

Thus the Spaniards continued to amuse the British king with assurances of

their frank desire to leave those fortresses and territories which they

really meant to hold till the crack of doom. And while Gondemar was

making these ingenuous assertions in London, his colleagues at Paris and

at Brussels distinctly and openly declared that there was no authority

whatever for them, that the Ambassador had received no such instructions,

and that there was no thought of giving up Wesel or any other of the

Protestant strongholds captured, whether in the duchies or out of them.

And Gondemar, still more to keep that monarch in subjection, had been

unusually flattering in regard to the Spanish marriage. "We are in great

alarm here," said the Advocate, "at the tidings that the projected

alliance of the Prince of Wales with the daughter of Spain is to be

renewed; from which nothing good for his Majesty's person, his kingdom,

nor for our state can be presaged. We live in hope that it will never

be."

But the other marriage was made. Despite the protest of James, the

forebodings of Barneveld, and the mutiny of the princes, the youthful

king of France had espoused Anne of Austria early in the year 1616. The

British king did his best to keep on terms with France and Spain, and by

no means renounced his own hopes. At the same time, while fixed as ever

in his approbation of the policy pursued by the Emperor and the League,

and as deeply convinced of their artlessness in regard to the duchies,

the Protestant princes of Germany, and the Republic, he manifested more

cordiality than usual in his relations with the States. Minor questions

between the countries he was desirous of arranging--so far as matters of

state could be arranged by orations--and among the most pressing of these

affairs were the systematic piracy existing and encouraged in English

ports, to the great damage of all seafaring nations and to the Hollanders

most of all, and the quarrel about the exportation of undyed cloths,

which had almost caused a total cessation of the woollen trade between

the two countries. The English, to encourage their own artisans, had

forbidden the export of undyed cloths, and the Dutch had retorted by

prohibiting the import of dyed ones.

The King had good sense enough to see the absurdity of this condition of

things, and it will be remembered that Barneveld had frequently urged

upon the Dutch ambassador to bring his Majesty's attention to these

dangerous disputes. Now that the recovery of the cautionary towns had

been so dexterously and amicably accomplished, and at so cheap a rate, it

seemed a propitious moment to proceed to a general extinction of what

would now be called "burning questions."

James was desirous that new high commissioners might be sent from the

States to confer with himself and his ministers upon the subjects just

indicated, as well as upon the fishery questions as regarded both

Greenland and Scotland, and upon the general affairs of India.

He was convinced, he said to Caron, that the sea had become more and more

unsafe and so full of freebooters that the like was never seen or heard

of before. It will be remembered that the Advocate had recently called

his attention to the fact that the Dutch merchants had lost in two months

800,000 florins' worth of goods by English pirates.

The King now assured the Ambassador of his intention of equipping a fleet

out of hand and to send it forth as speedily as possible under command of

a distinguished nobleman, who would put his honour and credit in a

successful expedition, without any connivance or dissimulation whatever.

In order thoroughly to scour these pirates from the seas, he expressed

the hope that their Mightinesses the States would do the same either

jointly or separately as they thought most advisable. Caron bluntly

replied that the States had already ten or twelve war-ships at sea for

this purpose, but that unfortunately, instead of finding any help from

the English in this regard, they had always found the pirates favoured in

his Majesty's ports, especially in Ireland and Wales.

"Thus they have so increased in numbers," continued the Ambassador, "that

I quite believe what your Majesty says, that not a ship can pass with

safety over the seas. More over, your Majesty has been graciously pleased

to pardon several of these corsairs, in consequence of which they have

become so impudent as to swarm everywhere, even in the river Thames,

where they are perpetually pillaging honest merchantmen."

"I confess," said the King, "to having pardoned a certain Manning, but

this was for the sake of his old father, and I never did anything so

unwillingly in my life. But I swear that if it were the best nobleman in

England, I would never grant one of them a pardon again."

Caron expressed his joy at hearing such good intentions on the part of

his Majesty, and assured him that the States-General would be equally

delighted.

In the course of the summer the Dutch ambassador had many opportunities

of seeing the King very confidentially, James having given him the use of

the royal park at Bayscot, so that during the royal visits to that place

Caron was lodged under his roof.

On the whole, James had much regard and respect for Noel de Caron. He

knew him to be able, although he thought him tiresome. It is amusing to

observe the King and Ambassador in their utterances to confidential

friends each frequently making the charge of tediousness against the

other. "Caron's general education," said James on one occasion to Cecil,

"cannot amend his native German prolixity, for had I not interrupted him,

it had been tomorrow morning before I had begun to speak. God preserve me

from hearing a cause debated between Don Diego and him! . . . But in

truth it is good dealing with so wise and honest a man, although he be

somewhat longsome."

Subsequently James came to Whitehall for a time, and then stopped at

Theobalds for a few days on his way to Newmarket, where he stayed until

Christmas. At Theobalds he sent again for the Ambassador, saying that at

Whitehall he was so broken down with affairs that it would be impossible

to live if he stayed there.

He asked if the States were soon to send the commissioners, according to

his request, to confer in regard to the cloth-trade. Without interference

of the two governments, he said, the matter would never be settled. The

merchants of the two countries would never agree except under higher

authority.

"I have heard both parties," he said, "the new and the old companies, two

or three times in full council, and tried to bring them to an agreement,

but it won't do. I have heard that My Lords the States have been hearing

both sides, English and the Hollanders, over and over again, and that the

States have passed a provisional resolution, which however does not suit

us. Now it is not reasonable, as we are allies, that our merchants should

be obliged to send their cloths roundabout, not being allowed either to

sell them in the United Provinces or to pass them through your

territories. I wish I could talk with them myself, for I am certain, if

they would send some one here, we could make an agreement. It is not

necessary that one should take everything from them, or that one should

refuse everything to us. I am sure there are people of sense in your

assembly who will justify me in favouring my own people so far as I

reasonably can, and I know very well that My Lords the States must stand

up for their own citizens. If we have been driving this matter to an

extreme and see that we are ruining each other, we must take it up again

in other fashion, for Yesterday is the preceptor of To-morrow. Let the

commissioners come as soon as possible. I know they have complaints to

make, and I have my complaints also. Therefore we must listen to each

other, for I protest before God that I consider the community of your

state with mine to be so entire that, if one goes to perdition, the other

must quickly follow it."

Thus spoke James, like a wise and thoughtful sovereign interested in the

welfare of his subjects and allies, with enlightened ideas for the time

upon public economy. It is difficult, in the man conversing thus amicably

and sensibly with the Dutch ambassador, to realise the shrill pedant

shrieking against Vorstius, the crapulous comrade of Carrs and Steenies,

the fawning solicitor of Spanish marriages, the "pepperer" and hangman of

Puritans, the butt and dupe of Gondemar and Spinola.

"I protest," he said further, "that I seek nothing in your state but all

possible friendship and good fellowship. My own subjects complain

sometimes that your people follow too closely on their heels, and confess

that your industry goes far above their own. If this be so, it is a lean

kind of reproach; for the English should rather study to follow you.

Nevertheless, when industry is directed by malice, each may easily be

attempting to snap an advantage from the other. I have sometimes

complained of many other things in which my subjects suffered great

injustice from you, but all that is excusable. I will willingly listen to

your people and grant them to be in the right when they are so. But I

will never allow them to be in the right when they mistrust me. If I had

been like many other princes, I should never have let the advantage of

the cautionary towns slip out of my fingers, but rather by means of them

attempted to get even a stronger hold on your country. I have had plenty

of warnings from great statesmen in France, Germany, and other nations

that I ought to give them up nevermore. Yet you know how frankly and

sincerely I acquitted myself in that matter without ever making

pretensions upon your state than the pretensions I still make to your

friendship and co-operation."

James, after this allusion to an important transaction to be explained in

the next chapter, then made an observation or two on a subject which was

rapidly overtopping all others in importance to the States, and his

expressions were singularly at variance with his last utterances in that

regard. "I tell you," he said, "that you have no right to mistrust me in

anything, not even in the matter of religion. I grieve indeed to hear

that your religious troubles continue. You know that in the beginning I

occupied myself with this affair, but fearing that my course might be

misunderstood, and that it might be supposed that I was seeking to

exercise authority in your republic, I gave it up, and I will never

interfere with the matter again, but will ever pray God that he may give

you a happy issue out of these troubles."

Alas! if the King had always kept himself on that height of amiable

neutrality, if he had been able to govern himself in the future by these

simplest principles of reason and justice, there might have been perhaps

a happier issue from the troubles than time was like to reveal.

Once more James referred to the crisis pending in German affairs, and as

usual spoke of the Clove and Julich question as if it were a simple

matter to be settled by a few strokes of the pen and a pennyworth of

sealing-wax, instead of being the opening act in a vast tragedy, of which

neither he, nor Carom nor Barneveld, nor Prince Maurice, nor the youthful

king of France, nor Philip, nor Matthias, nor any of the men now foremost

in the conduct of affairs, was destined to see the end.

The King informed Caron that he had just received most satisfactory

assurances from the Spanish ambassador in his last audience at Whitehall.

"He has announced to me on the part of the King his master with great

compliments that his Majesty seeks to please me and satisfy me in

everything that I could possibly desire of him," said James, rolling over

with satisfaction these unctuous phrases as if they really had any

meaning whatever.

"His Majesty says further," added the King, "that as he has been at

various times admonished by me, and is daily admonished by other princes,

that he ought to execute the treaty of Xanten by surrendering the city of

Wesel and all other places occupied by Spinola, he now declares himself

ready to carry out that treaty in every point. He will accordingly

instruct the Archduke to do this, provided the Margrave of Brandenburg

and the States will do the same in regard to their captured places. As he

understands however that the States have been fortifying Julich even as

he might fortify Wesel, he would be glad that no innovation be made

before the end of the coming month of March. When this term shall have

expired, he will no longer be bound by these offers, but will proceed to

fortify Wesel and the other places, and to hold them as he best may for

himself. Respect for me has alone induced his Majesty to make this

resolution."

We have already seen that the Spanish ambassador in Paris was at this

very time loudly declaring that his colleague in London had no commission

whatever to make these propositions. Nor when they were in the slightest

degree analysed, did they appear after all to be much better than

threats. Not a word was said of guarantees. The names of the two kings

were not mentioned. It was nothing but Albert and Spinola then as always,

and a recommendation that Brandenburg and the States and all the

Protestant princes of Germany should trust to the candour of the Catholic

League. Caron pointed out to the King that in these proposals there were

no guarantees nor even promises that the fortresses would not be

reoccupied at convenience of the Spaniards. He engaged however to report

the whole statement to his masters. A few weeks afterwards the Advocate

replied in his usual vein, reminding the King through the Ambassador that

the Republic feared fraud on the part of the League much more than force.

He also laid stress on the affairs of Italy, considering the fate of

Savoy and the conflicts in which Venice was engaged as components of a

general scheme. The States had been much solicited, as we have seen, to

render assistance to the Duke of Savoy, the temporary peace of Asti being

already broken, and Barneveld had been unceasing in his efforts to arouse

France as well as England to the danger to themselves and to all

Christendom should Savoy be crushed. We shall have occasion to see the

prominent part reserved to Savoy in the fast opening debate in Germany.

Meantime the States had sent one Count of Nassau with a couple of

companies to Charles Emmanuel, while another (Ernest) had just gone to

Venice at the head of more than three thousand adventurers. With so many

powerful armies at their throats, as Barneveld had more than once

observed, it was not easy for them to despatch large forces to the other

end of Europe, but he justly reminded his allies that the States were now

rendering more effective help to the common cause by holding great

Spanish armies in check on their own frontier than if they assumed a more

aggressive line in the south. The Advocate, like every statesman worthy

of the name, was accustomed to sweep the whole horizon in his

consideration of public policy, and it will be observed that he always

regarded various and apparently distinct and isolated movements in

different parts of Europe as parts of one great whole. It is easy enough

for us, centuries after the record has been made up, to observe the

gradual and, as it were, harmonious manner in which the great Catholic

conspiracy against the liberties of Europe was unfolded in an ever

widening sphere. But to the eyes of contemporaries all was then misty and

chaotic, and it required the keen vision of a sage and a prophet to

discern the awful shape which the future might assume. Absorbed in the

contemplation of these portentous phenomena, it was not unnatural that

the Advocate should attach less significance to perturbations nearer

home. Devoted as was his life to save the great European cause of

Protestantism, in which he considered political and religious liberty

bound up, from the absolute extinction with which it was menaced, he

neglected too much the furious hatreds growing up among Protestants

within the narrow limits of his own province. He was destined one day to

be rudely awakened. Meantime he was occupied with organizing a general

defence of Italy, Germany, France, and England, as well as the

Netherlands, against the designs of Spain and the League.

"We wish to know," he said in answer to the affectionate messages and

fine promises of the King of Spain to James as reported by Caron, "what

his Majesty of Great Britain has done, is doing, and is resolved to do

for the Duke of Savoy and the Republic of Venice. If they ask you what we

are doing, answer that we with our forces and vigour are keeping off from

the throats of Savoy and Venice 2000 riders and 10,000 infantry, with

which forces, let alone their experience, more would be accomplished than

with four times the number of new troops brought to the field in Italy.

This is our succour, a great one and a very costly one, for the expense

of maintaining our armies to hold the enemy in check here is very great."

He alluded with his usual respectful and quiet scorn to the arrangements

by which James so wilfully allowed himself to be deceived.

"If the Spaniard really leaves the duchies," he said, "it is a grave

matter to decide whether on the one side he is not resolved by that means

to win more over us and the Elector of Brandenburg in the debateable land

in a few days than he could gain by force in many years, or on the other

whether by it he does not intend despatching 1200 or 1500 cavalry and

5000 or 6000 foot, all his most experienced soldiers, from the

Netherlands to Italy, in order to give the law at his pleasure to the

Duke of Savoy and the Republic of Venice, reserving his attack upon

Germany and ourselves to the last. The Spaniards, standing under a

monarchical government, can in one hour resolve to seize to-morrow all

that they and we may abandon to-day. And they can carry such a resolution

into effect at once. Our form of government does not permit this, so that

our republic must be conserved by distrust and good garrisons."

Thus during this long period of half hostilities Barneveld, while

sincerely seeking to preserve the peace in Europe, was determined, if

possible, that the Republic should maintain the strongest defensive

position when the war which he foreboded should actually begin. Maurice

and the war party had blamed him for the obstacles which he interposed to

the outbreak of hostilities, while the British court, as we have seen,

was perpetually urging him to abate from his demands and abandon both the

well strengthened fortresses in the duchies and that strong citadel of

distrust which in his often repeated language he was determined never to

surrender. Spinola and the military party of Spain, while preaching

peace, had been in truth most anxious for fighting. "The only honour I

desire henceforth," said that great commander, "is to give battle to

Prince Maurice." The generals were more anxious than the governments to

make use of the splendid armies arrayed against each other in such

proximity that, the signal for conflict not having been given, it was not

uncommon for the soldiers of the respective camps to aid each other in

unloading munition waggons, exchanging provisions and other articles of

necessity, and performing other small acts of mutual service.

But heavy thunder clouds hanging over the earth so long and so closely

might burst into explosion at any moment. Had it not been for the

distracted condition of France, the infatuation of the English king, and

the astounding inertness of the princes of the German Union, great

advantages might have been gained by the Protestant party before the

storm should break. But, as the French ambassador at the Hague well

observed, "the great Protestant Union of Germany sat with folded arms

while Hannibal was at their gate, the princes of which it was composed

amusing themselves with staring at each other. It was verifying," he

continued, bitterly, "the saying of the Duke of Alva, 'Germany is an old

dog which still can bark, but has lost its teeth to bite with.'"

To such imbecility had that noble and gifted people--which had never been

organized into a nation since it crushed the Roman empire and established

a new civilization on its ruins, and was to wait centuries longer until

it should reconstruct itself into a whole--been reduced by subdivision,

disintegration, the perpetual dissolvent of religious dispute, and the

selfish policy of infinitesimal dynasties.

CHAPTER XII.

James still presses for the Payment of the Dutch Republic's Debt to

him--A Compromise effected, with Restitution of the Cautionary

Towns--Treaty of Loudun--James's Dream of a Spanish Marriage

revives--James visits Scotland--The States-General agree to furnish

Money and Troops in fulfilment of the Treaty of 1609--Death of

Concini--Villeroy returns to Power.

Besides matters of predestination there were other subjects political and

personal which increased the King's jealousy and hatred. The debt of the

Republic to the British crown, secured by mortgage of the important

sea-ports and fortified towns of Flushing, Brielle, Rammekens, and other

strong places, still existed. The possession of those places by England

was a constant danger and irritation to the States. It was an axe

perpetually held over their heads. It threatened their sovereignty, their

very existence. On more than one occasion, in foreign courts, the

representatives of the Netherlands had been exposed to the taunt that the

Republic was after all not an independent power, but a British province.

The gibe had always been repelled in a manner becoming the envoys of a

proud commonwealth; yet it was sufficiently galling that English

garrisons should continue to hold Dutch towns; one of them among the most

valuable seaports of the Republic,--the other the very cradle of its

independence, the seizure of which in Alva's days had always been

reckoned a splendid achievement. Moreover, by the fifth article of the

treaty of peace between James and Philip III., although the King had

declared himself bound by the treaties made by Elizabeth to deliver up

the cautionary towns to no one but the United States, he promised Spain

to allow those States a reasonable time to make peace with the Archdukes

on satisfactory conditions. Should they refuse to do so, he held himself

bound by no obligations to them, and would deal with the cities as he

thought proper, and as the Archdukes themselves might deem just.

The King had always been furious at "the huge sum of money to be

advanced, nay, given, to the States," as he phrased it. "It is so far out

of all square," he had said, "as on my conscience I cannot think that

ever they craved it 'animo obtinendi,' but only by that objection to

discourage me from any thought of getting any repayment of my debts from

them when they shall be in peace. . . . Should I ruin myself for

maintaining them? Should I bestow as much on them as cometh to the value

of my whole yearly rent?" He had proceeded to say very plainly that, if

the States did not make great speed to pay him all his debt so soon as

peace was established, he should treat their pretence at independence

with contempt, and propose dividing their territory between himself and

the King of France.

"If they be so weak as they cannot subsist either in peace or war," he

said, "without I ruin myself for upholding them, in that case surely

'minus malunv est eligendum,' the nearest harm is first to be eschewed, a

man will leap out of a burning ship and drown himself in the sea; and it

is doubtless a farther off harm for me to suffer them to fall again in

the hands of Spain, and let God provide for the danger that may with time

fall upon me or my posterity than presently to starve myself and mine

with putting the meat in their mouth. Nay, rather if they be so weak as

they can neither sustain themselves in peace nor war, let them leave this

vainglorious thirsting for the title of a free state (which no people are

worthy or able to enjoy that cannot stand by themselves like

substantives), and 'dividantur inter nos;' I mean, let their countries be

divided between France and me, otherwise the King of Spain shall be sure

to consume us."

Such were the eyes with which James had always regarded the great

commonwealth of which he affected to be the ally, while secretly aspiring

to be its sovereign, and such was his capacity to calculate political

forces and comprehend coming events.

Certainly the sword was hanging by a thread. The States had made no peace

either with the Archdukes or with Spain. They had made a truce, half the

term of which had already run by. At any moment the keys of their very

house-door might be placed in the hands of their arch enemy. Treacherous

and base as the deed would be, it might be defended by the letter of a

treaty in which the Republic had no part; and was there anything too

treacherous or too base to be dreaded from James Stuart?

But the States owed the crown of England eight millions of florins,

equivalent to about L750,000. Where was this vast sum to be found? It was

clearly impossible for the States to beg or to borrow it, although they

were nearly as rich as any of the leading powers at that day.

It was the merit of Barneveld, not only that he saw the chance for a good

bargain, but that he fully comprehended a great danger. Years long James

had pursued the phantom of a Spanish marriage for his son. To achieve

this mighty object, he had perverted the whole policy of the realm; he

had grovelled to those who despised him, had repaid attempts at wholesale

assassination with boundless sycophancy. It is difficult to imagine

anything more abject than the attitude of James towards Philip. Prince

Henry was dead, but Charles had now become Prince of Wales in his turn,

and there was a younger infanta whose hand was not yet disposed of.

So long as the possible prize of a Most Catholic princess was dangling

before the eyes of the royal champion of Protestantism, so long there was

danger that the Netherlanders might wake up some fine morning and see the

flag of Spain waving over the walls of Flushing, Brielle, and Rammekens.

It was in the interest of Spain too that the envoys of James at the Hague

were perpetually goading Barneveld to cause the States' troops to be

withdrawn from the duchies and the illusory treaty of Xanten to be

executed. Instead of an eighth province added to the free Netherlands,

the result of such a procedure would have been to place that territory

enveloping them in the hands of the enemy; to strengthen and sharpen the

claws, as the Advocate had called them, by which Spain was seeking to

clutch and to destroy the Republic.

The Advocate steadily refused to countenance such policy in the duchies,

and he resolved on a sudden stroke to relieve the Commonwealth from the

incubus of the English mortgage.

James was desperately pushed for money. His minions, as insatiable in

their demands on English wealth as the parasites who fed on the

Queen-Regent were exhaustive of the French exchequer, were greedier than

ever now that James, who feared to face a parliament disgusted with the

meanness of his policy and depravity of his life, could not be relied

upon to minister to their wants.

The Advocate judiciously contrived that the proposal of a compromise

should come from the English government. Noel de Caron, the veteran

ambassador of the States in London, after receiving certain proposals,

offered, under instructions' from Barneveld, to pay L250,000 in full of

all demands. It was made to appear that the additional L250,000 was in

reality in advance of his instructions. The mouths of the minions watered

at the mention of so magnificent a sum of money in one lump.

The bargain was struck. On the 11th June 1616, Sir Robert Sidney, who had

become Lord Lisle, gave over the city of Flushing to the States,

represented by the Seignior van Maldere, while Sir Horace Vere placed the

important town of Brielle in the hands of the Seignior van Mathenesse.

According to the terms of the bargain, the English garrisons were

converted into two regiments, respectively to be commanded by Lord

Lisle's son, now Sir Robert Sidney, and by Sir Horace Vere, and were to

serve the States. Lisle, who had been in the Netherlands since the days

of his uncle Leicester and his brother Sir Philip Sidney, now took his

final departure for England.

Thus this ancient burthen had been taken off the Republic by the masterly

policy of the Advocate. A great source of dread for foreign complication

was closed for ever.

The French-Spanish marriages had been made. Henry IV. had not been

murdered in vain. Conde and his confederates had issued their manifesto.

A crisis came to the States, for Maurice, always inclined to take part

for the princes, and urged on by Aerssens, who was inspired by a deadly

hatred for the French government ever since they had insisted on his

dismissal from his post, and who fed the Stadholder's growing jealousy of

the Advocate to the full, was at times almost ready for joining in the

conflict. It was most difficult for the States-General, led by Barneveld,

to maintain relations of amity with a government controlled by Spain,

governed by the Concini's, and wafted to and fro by every wind that blew.

Still it was the government, and the States might soon be called upon, in

virtue of their treaties with Henry, confirmed by Mary de' Medici, not

only to prevent the daily desertion of officers and soldiers of the

French regiments to the rebellious party, but to send the regiments

themselves to the assistance of the King and Queen.

There could be no doubt that the alliance of the French Huguenots at

Grenoble with the princes made the position of the States very critical.

Bouillon was loud in his demands upon Maurice and the States for money

and reinforcements, but the Prince fortunately understood the character

of the Duke and of Conde, and comprehended the nature of French politics

too clearly to be led into extremities by passion or by pique. He said

loudly to any one that chose to listen:

"It is not necessary to ruin the son in order to avenge the death of the

father. That should be left to the son, who alone has legitimate

authority to do it." Nothing could be more sensible, and the remark

almost indicated a belief on the Prince's part in Mary's complicity in

the murder of her husband. Duplessis-Mornay was in despair, and, like all

true patriots and men of earnest character, felt it almost an

impossibility to choose between the two ignoble parties contending for

the possession of France, and both secretly encouraged by France's deadly

enemy.

The Treaty of Loudun followed, a treaty which, said du Maurier, had about

as many negotiators as there were individuals interested in the

arrangements. The rebels were forgiven, Conde sold himself out for a

million and a half livres and the presidency of the council, came to

court, and paraded himself in greater pomp and appearance of power than

ever. Four months afterwards he was arrested and imprisoned. He submitted

like a lamb, and offered to betray his confederates.

King James, faithful to his self-imposed part of mediator-general, which

he thought so well became him, had been busy in bringing about this

pacification, and had considered it eminently successful. He was now

angry at this unexpected result. He admitted that Conde had indulged in

certain follies and extravagancies, but these in his opinion all came out

of the quiver of the Spaniard, "who was the head of the whole intrigue."

He determined to recall Lord Hayes from Madrid and even Sir Thomas

Edmonds from Paris, so great was his indignation. But his wrath was

likely to cool under the soothing communications of Gondemar, and the

rumour of the marriage of the second infanta with the Prince of Wales

soon afterwards started into new life. "We hope," wrote Barneveld, "that

the alliance of his Highness the Prince of Wales with the daughter of the

Spanish king will make no further progress, as it will place us in the

deepest embarrassment and pain."

For the reports had been so rife at the English court in regard to this

dangerous scheme that Caron had stoutly gone to the King and asked him

what he was to think about it. "The King told me," said the Ambassador,

"that there was nothing at all in it, nor any appearance that anything

ever would come of it. It was true, he said, that on the overtures made

to him by the Spanish ambassador he had ordered his minister in Spain to

listen to what they had to say, and not to bear himself as if the

overtures would be rejected."

The coyness thus affected by James could hardly impose on so astute a

diplomatist as Noel de Caron, and the effect produced upon the policy of

one of the Republic's chief allies by the Spanish marriages naturally

made her statesmen shudder at the prospect of their other powerful friend

coming thus under the malign influence of Spain.

"He assured me, however," said the Envoy, "that the Spaniard is not

sincere in the matter, and that he has himself become so far alienated

from the scheme that we may sleep quietly upon it." And James appeared at

that moment so vexed at the turn affairs were taking in France, so

wounded in his self-love, and so bewildered by the ubiquitous nature of

nets and pitfalls spreading over Europe by Spain, that he really seemed

waking from his delusion. Even Caron was staggered? "In all his talk he

appears so far estranged from the Spaniard," said he, "that it would seem

impossible that he should consider this marriage as good for his state. I

have also had other advices on the subject which in the highest degree

comfort me. Now your Mightinesses may think whatever you like about it."

The mood of the King was not likely to last long in so comfortable a

state. Meantime he took the part of Conde and the other princes,

justified their proceedings to the special envoy sent over by Mary de'

Medici, and wished the States to join with him in appealing to that Queen

to let the affair, for his sake, pass over once more.

"And now I will tell your Mightinesses," said Caron, reverting once more

to the dreaded marriage which occupies so conspicuous a place in the

strangely mingled and party-coloured tissue of the history of those days,

"what the King has again been telling me about the alliance between his

son and the Infanta. He hears from Carleton that you are in very great

alarm lest this event may take place. He understands that the special

French envoy at the Hague, M. de la None, has been representing to you

that the King of Great Britain is following after and begging for the

daughter of Spain for his son. He says it is untrue. But it is true that

he has been sought and solicited thereto, and that in consequence there

have been talks and propositions and rejoinders, but nothing of any

moment. As he had already told me not to be alarmed until he should

himself give me cause for it, he expressed his amazement that I had not

informed your Mightinesses accordingly. He assured me again that he

should not proceed further in the business without communicating it to

his good friends and neighbours, that he considered My Lords the States

as his best friends and allies, who ought therefore to conceive no

jealousy in the matter."

This certainly was cold comfort. Caron knew well enough, not a clerk in

his office but knew well enough, that James had been pursuing this prize

for years. For the King to represent himself as persecuted by Spain to

give his son to the Infanta was about as ridiculous as it would have been

to pretend that Emperor Matthias was persuading him to let his son-in-law

accept the crown of Bohemia. It was admitted that negotiations for the

marriage were going on, and the assertion that the Spanish court was more

eager for it than the English government was not especially calculated to

allay the necessary alarm of the States at such a disaster. Nor was it

much more tranquillizing for them to be assured, not that the marriage

was off, but that, when it was settled, they, as the King's good friends

and neighbours, should have early information of it.

"I told him," said the Ambassador, "that undoubtedly this matter was of

the highest 'importance to your Mightinesses, for it was not good for us

to sit between two kingdoms both so nearly allied with the Spanish

monarch, considering the pretensions he still maintained to sovereignty

over us. Although his Majesty might not now be willing to treat to our

prejudice, yet the affair itself in the sequence of time must of

necessity injure our commonwealth. We hoped therefore that it would never

come to pass."

Caron added that Ambassador Digby was just going to Spain on

extraordinary mission in regard to this affair, and that eight or ten

gentlemen of the council had been deputed to confer with his Majesty

about it. He was still inclined to believe that the whole negotiation

would blow over, the King continuing to exhort him not to be alarmed, and

assuring him that there were many occasions moving princes to treat of

great affairs although often without any effective issue.

At that moment too the King was in a state of vehement wrath with the

Spanish Netherlands on account of a stinging libel against himself, "an

infamous and wonderfully scandalous pamphlet," as he termed it, called

'Corona Regis', recently published at Louvain. He had sent Sir John

Bennet as special ambassador to the Archdukes to demand from them justice

and condign and public chastisement on the author of the work--a rector

Putianus as he believed, successor of Justus Lipsius in his professorship

at Louvain--and upon the printer, one Flaminius. Delays and excuses

having followed instead of the punishment originally demanded, James had

now instructed his special envoy in case of further delay or evasion to

repudiate all further friendship or intercourse with the Archduke, to

ratify the recall of his minister-resident Trumbull, and in effect to

announce formal hostilities.

"The King takes the thing wonderfully to heart," said Caron.

James in effect hated to be made ridiculous, and we shall have occasion

to see how important a part other publications which he deemed

detrimental to the divinity of his person were to play in these affairs.

Meantime it was characteristic of this sovereign that--while ready to

talk of war with Philip's brother-in-law for a pamphlet, while seeking

the hand of Philip's daughter for his son--he was determined at the very

moment when the world was on fire to take himself, the heaven-born

extinguisher of all political conflagrations, away from affairs and to

seek the solace of along holiday in Scotland. His counsellors

persistently and vehemently implored him to defer that journey until the

following year at least, all the neighbouring nations being now in a

state of war and civil commotion. But it was in vain. He refused to

listen to them for a moment, and started for Scotland before the middle

of March.

Conde, who had kept France in a turmoil, had sought aid alternately from

the Calvinists at Grenoble and the Jesuits in Rome, from Spain and from

the Netherlands, from the Pope and from Maurice of Nassau, had thus been

caged at last. But there was little gained. There was one troublesome but

incompetent rebel the less, but there was no king in the land. He who

doubts the influence of the individual upon the fate of a country and

upon his times through long passages of history may explain the

difference between France of 1609, with a martial king aided by great

statesmen at its head, with an exchequer overflowing with revenue hoarded

for a great cause--and that cause an attempt at least to pacificate

Christendom and avert a universal and almost infinite conflict now

already opening--and the France of 1617, with its treasures already

squandered among ignoble and ruffianly favourites, with every office in

state, church, court, and magistracy sold to the highest bidder, with a

queen governed by an Italian adventurer who was governed by Spain, and

with a little king who had but lately expressed triumph at his

confirmation because now he should no longer be whipped, and who was just

married to a daughter of the hereditary and inevitable foe of France.

To contemplate this dreary interlude in the history of a powerful state

is to shiver at the depths of inanity and crime to which mankind can at

once descend. What need to pursue the barren, vulgar, and often repeated

chronicle? France pulled at by scarcely concealed strings and made to

perform fantastic tricks according as its various puppets were swerved

this way or that by supple bands at Madrid and Rome is not a refreshing

spectacle. The States-General at last, after an agitated discussion,

agreed in fulfilment of the treaty of 1609 to send 4000 men, 2000 being

French, to help the King against the princes still in rebellion. But the

contest was a most bitter one, and the Advocate had a difficult part to

play between a government and a rebellion, each more despicable than the

other. Still Louis XIII. and his mother were the legitimate government

even if ruled by Concini. The words of the treaty made with Henry IV.

were plain, and the ambassadors of his son had summoned the States to

fulfil it. But many impediments were placed in the path of obvious duty

by the party led by Francis Aerssens.

"I know very well," said the Advocate to ex-Burgomaster Hooft of

Amsterdam, father of the great historian, sending him confidentially a

copy of the proposals made by the French ambassadors, "that many in this

country are striving hard to make us refuse to the King the aid demanded,

notwithstanding that we are bound to do it by the pledges given not only

by the States-General but by each province in particular. By this no one

will profit but the Spaniard, who unquestionably will offer much, aye,

very much, to bring about dissensions between France and us, from which I

foresee great damage, inconvenience, and difficulties for the whole

commonwealth and for Holland especially. This province has already

advanced 1,000,000 florins to the general government on the money still

due from France, which will all be lost in case the subsidy should be

withheld, besides other evils which cannot be trusted to the pen."

On the same day on which it had been decided at the Hague to send the

troops, a captain of guards came to the aid of the poor little king and

shot Concini dead one fine spring morning on the bridge of the Louvre.

"By order of the King," said Vitry. His body was burned before the statue

of Henry IV. by the people delirious with joy. "L'hanno ammazzato" was

shouted to his wife, Eleanora Galigai, the supposed sorceress. They were

the words in which Concini had communicated to the Queen the murder of

her husband seven years before. Eleanora, too, was burned after having

been beheaded. Thus the Marshal d'Ancre and wife ceased to reign in

France.

The officers of the French regiments at the Hague danced for joy on the

Vyverberg when the news arrived there. The States were relieved from an

immense embarrassment, and the Advocate was rewarded for having pursued

what was after all the only practicable policy. "Do your best," said he

to Langerac, "to accommodate differences so far as consistent with the

conservation of the King's authority. We hope the princes will submit

themselves now that the 'lapis offensionis,' according to their pretence,

is got rid of. We received a letter from them to-day sealed with the

King's arms, with the circumscription 'Periclitante Regno, Regis vita et

Regia familia."