CHAPTER LI.

Designs of Henry IV.--New marriage project between France and Spain

Formal proposition of negotiating for a truce between the States and

Spain--Exertions of Prince Maurice to counteract the designs of

Barneveld--Strife between the two parties in the republic--Animosity

of the people against Barneveld--Return of the Spanish

commissioners--Further trifling--Dismissal of the commissioners--

Close of the negotiations--Accidental discovery of the secret

instructions of the archdukes to the commissioners--Opposing

factions in the republic--Oration of President Jeannin before the

States-General--Comparison between the Dutch and Swiss republics--

Calumnies against the Advocate--Ambassador Lambert in France--

Henry's letter to Prince Maurice--Reconciliation of Maurice and

Barneveld--Agreement of the States to accept a truce.

President Jeannin had long been prepared for this result. It was also by

no means distasteful to him. A peace would not have accorded with the

ulterior and secretly cherished schemes of his sovereign, and during his

visit to Paris, he had succeeded in persuading Henry that a truce would

be far the most advantageous solution of the question, so far as his

interests were concerned.

For it had been precisely during that midsummer vacation of the President

at Paris that Henry had completed his plot against the liberty of the

republic, of which he professed himself the only friend. Another phase of

Spanish marriage-making had excited his ever scheming and insidious

brain. It had been proposed that the second son of the Spanish king

should espouse one of Henry's daughters.

The papal Nuncius asked what benefit the King of Spain would receive for

his share, in case of the marriage. The French king replied by plainly

declaring to the Nuncius that the United States should abstain from and

renounce all navigation to and commerce with the Indies, and should

permit public exercise of the Catholic religion. If they refused, would

incontinently abandon them to their fate. More than this, he said, could

not honestly be expected of him.

Surely this was enough. Honestly or dishonestly, what more could Spain

expect of the republic's best ally, than that he should use all his

efforts to bring her back into Spanish subjection, should deprive her of

commerce with three-quarters of the world, and compel her to re-establish

the religion which she believed, at that period, to be incompatible with

her constitutional liberties? It is difficult to imagine a more

profligate or heartless course than the one pursued at this juncture by

Henry. Secretly, he was intriguing, upon the very soil of the

Netherlands, to filch from them that splendid commerce which was the

wonder of the age, which had been invented and created by Dutch

navigators and men of science, which was the very foundation of their

State, and without which they could not exist, in order that he might

appropriate it to himself, and transfer the East India Company to France;

while at Paris he was solemnly engaging himself in a partnership with

their ancient and deadly enemy to rob them of their precious and nobly

gained liberty. Was better proof ever afforded that God alone can protect

us against those whom we trust? Who was most dangerous to the United

Provinces during those memorable peace negotiations, Spain the avowed

enemy, or France the friend?

The little republic had but her own sword, her own brain, and her own

purse to rely upon. Elizabeth was dead, and James loved Spain better than

he did the Netherlands, and quiet better than Spain. "I have told you

often," said Caron, "and I say it once more, the Spaniard is lucky that

he has such a peaceable king as this to deal with in England."

The details of the new marriage project were arranged at Paris between

the Nuncius, the Spanish ambassador, Don Pedro de Toledo, the diplomatic

agent of the archdukes, and Henry's ministers, precisely as if there had

been no negotiations going on between the States and Spain. Yet the

French king was supposed to be the nearest friend of the States, and was

consulted by them on every occasion, while his most intimate and trusted

counsellor, the ingenuous Jeannin, whose open brow was stamped with

sincerity, was privy to all their most secret deliberations.

But the statesman thus dealing with the Hollanders under such a mask of

friendly candour, knew perfectly well the reason why his Government

preferred a truce to a peace. During a prolonged truce, the two royal

children would grow old enough for the consummation of marriage, and the

States--so it was hoped--would be corrupted and cajoled into renouncing

their liberty. All the Netherlands would be then formed into a

secundogeniture for Spain, and the first sovereign would be the husband

of a French princess. Even as an object of ambition, the prize to be

secured by so much procrastination and so much treachery was paltry.

When the Spanish commissioners came to the French and English ambassadors

accordingly, complaining of the abrupt and peremptory tone of the States'

reply, the suggestion of conferences for truce, in place of fruitless

peace negotiations, was made at once, and of course favourably received.

It was soon afterwards laid before the States-General. To this end, in

truth, Richardot and his colleagues had long been secretly tending.

Moreover, the subject had been thoroughly but secretly discussed long

before between Jeannin and Barneveld.

The French and English ambassadors, accordingly, on the 27th August, came

before the States-General, and made a formal proposition for the opening

of negotiations for a truce. They advised the adoption of this course in

the strongest manner. "Let the truce be made with you," they said, "as

with free States, over which the king and the archdukes have no

pretensions, with the understanding that, during the time of the truce

you are to have free commerce as well to the Indies as to Spain and the

obedient Netherlands, and to every part of the Spanish dominions; that

you are to retain all that you possess at present, and that such other

conditions are to be added as you may find it reasonable to impose.

During this period of leisure you will have time to put your affairs in

order, to pay your debts, and to reform your Government, and if you

remain united, the truce will change into an absolute peace."

Maurice was more indignant when the new scheme was brought to his notice

than he had ever been before, and used more violent language in opposing

a truce than he had been used to employ when striving against a peace. To

be treated with, as with a free State, and to receive permission to trade

with the outside world until the truce should expire, seemed to him a

sorry result for the republic to accept.

The state-council declared, by way of answer to the foreign ambassadors,

that the principal points and conditions which had been solemnly fixed,

before the States had consented to begin the negotiations, had been

disputed with infinite effrontery and shamelessness by the enemy. The

pure and perfect sovereignty notoriously included religion and navigation

to any part of the world; and the republic would never consent to any

discussion of truce unless these points were confirmed beforehand with

the Spanish king's signature and seal.

This resolution of the council--a body which stood much under the

influence of the Nassaus--was adopted next day by the States-General, and

duly communicated to the friendly ambassadors.

The foreign commissioners, when apprised of this decision, begged for six

weeks' time; in order to be able to hear from Madrid.

Even the peace party was disgusted with this impertinence. Maurice boiled

over with wrath. The ambassadors recommended compliance with the

proposal. Their advice was discussed in the States-General, eighty

members being present, besides Maurice and Lewis William. The stadholder

made a violent and indignant speech.

He was justified in his vehemence. Nothing could exceed the perfidy of

their great ally.

"I know that the King of France calculates thus"--wrote Aerssens at that

moment from Paris--"'If the truce lasts seven years, my son will be old

enough to accomplish the proposed marriage, and they will be obliged to

fulfil their present offers. Otherwise; I would break the truce in the

Netherlands, and my own peace with them, in order to take from the

Spaniard by force what he led me to hope from alliance.' Thus it is,"

continued the States' envoy, "that his Majesty condescends to propose, to

us a truce, which may have a double interpretation, according to the

disposition of the strongest, and thus our commonwealth will be kept in

perpetual disquiet, without knowing whether it is sovereign or not. Nor

will it be sovereign unless it shall so please our neighbour, who by this

means will always keep his foot upon our throat."

"To treat with the States as if they were free," said Henry to the

Nuncius soon afterwards, "is not to make them free. This clause does no

prejudice to the rights of the King of Spain, except for the time of the

truce." Aerssens taxed the king with having said this. His Majesty flatly

denied it. The republican envoy bluntly adduced the testimony of the

ambassadors of Venice and of Wirtemberg. The king flew into a rage on

seeing that his secrets had been divulged, and burst out with these

words: "What you demand is not reasonable. You wish the king of Spain to

renounce his rights in order to arrive at a truce. You wish to dictate

the law to him. If you had just gained four battles over him, you could

not demand more. I have always held you for sovereigns, because I am your

friend, but if you would judge by equity and justice, you are not

sovereigns. It is not reasonable that the king of Spain should quit the

sovereignty for always, and you ought to be satisfied with having it so

long as the treaty shall last."

Here was playing at sovereignty with a vengeance. Sovereignty was a

rattle for the States to amuse themselves with, until the royal infants,

French and Spanish, should be grown old enough to take the sovereignty

for good. Truly this was indeed keeping the republic under the king's

heel to be crushed at his pleasure, as Aerssens, with just bitterness,

exclaimed.

Two days were passed at the Hague in vehement debate. The deputies of

Zeeland withdrew. The deputies from Holland were divided, but, on the

whole, it was agreed to listen to propositions of truce, provided the

freedom of the United Provinces--not under conditions nor during a

certain period, but simply and for all time--should be recognised

beforehand.

It was further decided on the 14th September to wait until the end of the

month for the answer from Spain.

After the 1st of October it was distinctly intimated to the Spanish

commissioners that they must at once leave the country unless the king

had then acknowledged the absolute independence of the provinces.

A suggestion which had been made by these diplomatists to prolong the

actually existing armistice into a truce of seven years, a step which

they professed themselves willing to take upon their own responsibility,

had been scornfully rejected by the States. It was already carrying them

far enough away, they said, to take them away from a peace to a truce,

which was something far less secure than a peace, but the continuance of

this floating, uncertain armistice would be the most dangerous insecurity

of all. This would be going from firm land to slippery ice, and from

slippery ice into the water. By such a process, they would have neither

war nor peace--neither liberty of government nor freedom of commerce--and

they unanimously refused to listen to any such schemes.

During the fortnight which followed this provisional consent of the

States, the prince redoubled his efforts to counteract the Barneveld

party.

He was determined, so far as in him lay, that the United Netherlands

should never fall back under the dominion of Spain. He had long

maintained the impossibility of effecting their thorough independence

except by continuing the war, and had only with reluctance acquiesced in

the arguments of the French ambassadors in favour of peace negotiations.

As to the truce, he vehemently assured those envoys that it was but a

trap. How could the Netherlanders know who their friends might be when

the truce should have expired, and under what unfavourable auspices they

might not be compelled to resume hostilities?

As if he had been actually present at the council boards in Madrid and

Valladolid, or had been reading the secret letters of Friar John to

Spinola, he affirmed that the only object of Spain was to recruit her

strength and improve her finances, now entirely exhausted. He believed,

on the other hand, that the people of the provinces, after they should

have once become accustomed to repose; would shrink from exchanging their

lucrative pursuits for war, and would prefer to fall back under the yoke

of Spain. During the truce they would object to the furnishing of

necessary contributions for garrison expenses, and the result would be

that the most important cities and strongholds, especially those on the

frontier, which were mainly inhabited by Catholics, would become

insecure. Being hostile to a Government which only controlled them by

force, they would with difficulty be kept in check by diminished

garrisons, unless they should obtain liberty of Catholic worship.

It is a dismal proof of the inability of a leading mind, after half a

century's war, to comprehend the true lesson of the war--that toleration

of the Roman religion seemed to Maurice an entirely inadmissible idea.

The prince could not rise to the height on which his illustrious father

had stood; and those about him, who encouraged him in his hostility to

Catholicism, denounced Barneveld and Arminius as no better than traitors

and atheists. In the eyes of the extreme party, the mighty war had been

waged, not to liberate human thought, but to enforce predestination; and

heretics to Calvinism were as offensive in their eyes as Jews and

Saracens had ever been to Torquemada.

The reasons were unanswerable for the refusal of the States to bind

themselves to a foreign sovereign in regard to the interior

administration of their commonwealth; but that diversity of religious

worship should be considered incompatible with the health of the young

republic--that the men who had so bravely fought the Spanish Inquisition

should now claim their own right of inquisition into the human

conscience--this was almost enough to create despair as to the

possibility of the world's progress. The seed of intellectual advancement

is slow in ripening, and it is almost invariably the case that the

generation which plants--often but half conscious of the mightiness of

its work--is not the generation which reaps the harvest. But all mankind

at last inherits what is sown in the blood and tears of a few. That

Government, whether regal or democratic, should dare to thrust itself

between man and his Maker--that the State, not with interfering in a

thousand superfluous ways with the freedom of individual human action in

the business of life, should combine with the Church to reduce human

thought to slavery in regard to the sacred interests of eternity, was one

day to be esteemed a blasphemous presumption in lands which deserved to

call themselves free. But that hour had not yet come.

"If the garrisons should be weakened," said the prince, "nothing could be

expected from the political fidelity of the town populations in question,

unless they should be allowed the exercise of their own religion. But the

States could hardly be disposed to grant this voluntarily, for fear of

injuring the general insecurity and violating the laws of the

commonwealth, built as it is upon a foundation which cannot suffer this

diversity in the public exercise of religion. Already," continued

Maurice, "there are the seeds of dissension in the provinces and in the

cities, sure to ripen in the idleness and repose of peace to an open

division. This would give the enemy a means of intriguing with and

corrupting those who are already wickedly inclined."

Thus in the year 1608, the head of the Dutch republic, the son of William

the Silent, seemed to express himself in favour of continuing a horrible

war, not to maintain the political independence of his country, but to

prevent Catholics from acquiring the right of publicly worshipping God

according to the dictates of their conscience.

Yet it would be unjust to the prince, whose patriotism was as pure and

unsullied as his sword, to confound his motives with his end. He was

firmly convinced that liberty of religious worship, to be acquired during

the truce, would inevitably cause the United Provinces to fall once more

under the Spanish yoke. The French ambassador, with whom he conferred

every day, never doubted his sincerity. Gelderland, Friesland, Overyssel,

Groningen, and Utrecht, five provinces out of the united seven, the

prince declared to be chiefly inhabited by Catholics. They had only

entered the union, he said, because compelled by force. They could only

be kept in the union by force, unless allowed freedom of religion. His

inference from such a lamentable state of affairs was, not that the

experiment of religious worship should be tried, but that the garrisons

throughout the five provinces ought to be redoubled, and the war with

Spain indefinitely waged. The President was likewise of opinion that "a

revolt of these five provinces against the union might be at any moment

expected, ill disposed as they were to recognise a sovereignty which

abolished their religion." Being himself a Catholic, however, it was not

unnatural that he should make a different deduction from that of the

prince, and warmly recommend, not more garrisons, but more liberty of

worship.

Thus the very men who were ready to dare all, and to sacrifice all in

behalf of their country, really believed themselves providing for the

imperishable security of the commonwealth by placing it on the narrow

basis of religious intolerance.

Maurice, not satisfied with making these vehement arguments against the

truce in his conferences with the envoys of the French and British

sovereigns, employed the brief interval yet to elapse before definitely

breaking off or resuming the conferences with the Spanish commissioners

in making vigorous appeals to the country.

"The weal or woe of the United Provinces for all time," he said, "is

depending on the present transactions." Weigh well the reasons we urge,

and make use of those which seem to you convincing. You know that the

foe, according to his old deceitful manner, laid down very specious

conditions at the beginning, in order to induce my lords the

States-General to treat.

"If the king and the archdudes sincerely mean to relinquish absolutely

their pretensions to these provinces, they can certainly have no

difficulty in finding honest and convenient words to express their

intention. As they are seeking other phrases than the usual and

straightforward ones, they give certain proof that they mean to keep back

from us the substance. They are trying to cheat us with dark, dubious,

loosely-screwed terms, which secure nothing and bind to nothing. If it be

wise to trust the welfare of our State to ambiguous words, you can judge

according to your own discretion.

"Recognition of our sovereignty is the foundation-stone of these

negotiations.

"Let every man be assured that, with such mighty enemies, we can do

nothing by halves. We cannot afford to retract, mutilate, or moderate our

original determination. He who swerves from the straight road at the

beginning is lost; he who stumbles at the first step is apt to fall down

the whole staircase. If, on account of imaginable necessity, we postpone

that most vital point, the assurance of our freedom, we shall very easily

allow less important points to pass muster, and at last come tamely into

the path of reconciliation. That was exactly the danger which our

ancestors in similar negotiations always feared, and against which we too

have always done our best to guard ourselves.

"Wherefore, if the preservation of our beloved fatherland is dear to you,

I exhort you to maintain that great fundamental resolution, at all times

and against all men, even if this should cause the departure of the

enemy's commissioners. What can you expect from them but evil fruit?"

He then advised all the estates and magistracies which he was addressing

to instruct their deputies, at the approaching session of the

States-General, to hold on to the first article of the often-cited

preliminary resolution without allowing one syllable to be altered.

Otherwise nothing could save the commonwealth from dire and notorious

confusion. Above all, he entreated them to act in entire harmony and

confidence with himself and his cousin, even as they had ever done with

his illustrious father.

Certainly the prince fully deserved the confidence of the States, as well

for his own signal services and chivalrous self-devotion, as for the

unexampled sacrifices and achievements of William the Silent. His words

had the true patriotic ring of his father's frequent and eloquent

appeals; and I have not hesitated to give these extracts from his

discourse, because comparatively few of such utterances of Maurice have

been preserved, and because it gives a vivid impression of the condition

of the republic and the state of parties at that momentous epoch. It was

not merely the fate of the United Netherlands and the question of peace

or war between the little republic and its hereditary enemy that were

upon the issue. The peace of all Christendom, the most considerable

material interests of civilization, and the highest political and moral

principles that can influence human action, were involved in those

negotiations.

There were not wanting many to impeach the purity of the stadholder's

motives. As admiral or captain-general, he received high salaries,

besides a tenth part of all prize-money gained at sea by the fleets, or

of ransom and blackmail on land by the armies of the republic. His

profession, his ambition, his delights, were those of a soldier. As a

soldier in a great war, he was more necessary to his countrymen than he

could expect to be as a statesman in time of peace. But nothing ever

appeared in public or in private, which threw a reasonable suspicion upon

his lofty patriotism. Peace he had always believed to be difficult of

attainment. It had now been proved impossible. A truce he honestly

considered a pitfall of destruction, and he denounced it, as we have

seen, in the language of energetic conviction. He never alluded to his

pecuniary losses in case peace should be made. His disinterested

patriotism was the frequent subject of comment in the most secret letters

of the French ambassadors to the king. He had repeatedly refused enormous

offers if he would forsake the cause of the republic. The King of France

was ever ready to tempt him with bribes, such as had proved most

efficacious with men as highly born and as highly placed as a cadet of

the house of Orange-Nassau. But there is no record that Jeannin assailed

him at this crisis with such temptations, although it has not been

pretended that the prince was obdurate to the influence of Mammon when

that deity could be openly approached.

That Maurice loved power, pelf, and war, can hardly be denied. That he

had a mounting ambition; that he thought a monarchy founded upon the

historical institutions and charters of the provinces might be better

than the burgher-aristocracy which, under the lead of Barneveld, was

establishing itself in the country; that he knew no candidate so eligible

for such a throne as his father's son, all this is highly probable and

scarcely surprising. But that such sentiments or aspirations caused him

to swerve the ninth part of a hair from what he considered the direct

path of duty; that he determined to fight out the great fight with Spain

and Rome until the States were free in form, in name, and in fact; only

that he might then usurp a sovereignty which would otherwise revert to

Philip of Spain or be snatched by Henry of Navarre--of all this there is

no proof whatever.

The language of Lewis William to the provinces under his government was

quite as vigorous as the appeals of Maurice.

During the brief interval remaining before the commissioners should

comply with the demands of the States or take their departure, the press

throughout the Netherlands was most active. Pamphlets fell thick as hail.

The peace party and the war party contended with each other, over all the

territory of the provinces, as vigorously as the troops of Fuentes or

Bucquoy had ever battled with the columns of Bax and Meetkerke. The types

of Blaauw and Plantin were as effective during the brief armistice, as

pike and arquebus in the field, but unfortunately they were used by

Netherlanders against each other. As a matter of course, each party

impeached the motives as well as the actions of its antagonist. The

adherents of the Advocate accused the stadholder of desiring the

continuance of the war for personal aims. They averred that six thousand

men for guarding the rivers would be necessary, in addition to the

forty-five thousand men, now kept constantly on foot. They placed the

requisite monthly expenses, if hostilities were resumed, at 800,000

florins, while they pointed to the 27,000,000 of debt over and above the

8,000,000 due to the British crown, as a burthen under which the republic

could scarcely stagger much longer. Such figures seem modest enough, as

the price of a war of independence.

Familiar with the gigantic budgets of our own day, we listen with

something like wonder, now that two centuries and a half have passed, to

the fierce denunciations by the war party of these figures as wilful

fictions. Science has made in that interval such gigantic strides. The

awful intellect of man may at last make war impossible for his physical

strength. He can forge but cannot wield the hammer of Thor; nor has

Science yet discovered the philosopher's stone. Without it, what

exchequer can accept chronic warfare and escape bankruptcy? After what

has been witnessed in these latest days, the sieges and battles of that

distant epoch seem like the fights of pigmies and cranes. Already an

eighty years' war, such as once was waged, has become inconceivable. Let

two more centuries pass away, and perhaps a three weeks' campaign may

exhaust an empire.

Meantime the war of words continued. A proclamation with penalties was

issued by the States against the epidemic plague of pamphlets or

"blue-books," as those publications were called in Holland, but with

little result. It was not deemed consistent with liberty by those

republicans to put chains on the press because its utterances might

occasionally be distasteful to magistrates. The writers, printers, and

sellers of the "blue-books" remained unpunished and snapped their fingers

at the placard.

We have seen the strenuous exertions of the Nassaus and their adherents

by public appeals and private conversation to defeat all schemes of

truce. The people were stirred by the eloquence of the two stadholders.

They were stung to fury against Spain and against Barneveld by the

waspish effusions of the daily press. The magistrates remained calm, and

took part by considerable majorities with Barneveld. That statesman,

while exercising almost autocratic influence in the estates, became more

and more odious to the humbler classes, to the Nassaus, and especially to

the Calvinist clergy. He was denounced, as a papist, an atheist, a

traitor, because striving for an honourable peace with the foe, and

because admitting the possibility of more than one road to the kingdom of

Heaven. To doubt the infallibility of Calvin was as heinous a crime, in

the eyes of his accusers, as to kneel to the host. Peter Titelmann, half

a century earlier, dripping with the blood of a thousand martyrs, seemed

hardly a more loathsome object to all Netherlanders than the Advocate now

appeared to his political enemies, thus daring to preach religious

toleration, and boasting of, humble ignorance as the safest creed. Alas!

we must always have something to persecute, and individual man is never

so convinced of his own wisdom as when dealing with subjects beyond human

comprehension.

Unfortunately, however, while the great Advocate was clear in his

conscience he had scarcely clean hands. He had very recently accepted a

present of twenty thousand florins from the King of France. That this was

a bribe by which his services were to be purchased for a cause not in

harmony with his own convictions it would be unjust to say. We of a later

generation, who have had the advantage of looking through the portfolio

of President Jeannin, and of learning the secret intentions of that

diplomatist and of his master, can fully understand however that there

was more than sufficient cause at the time for suspecting the purity of

the great Advocate's conduct. We are perfectly aware that the secret

instructions of Henry gave his plenipotentiaries almost unlimited power

to buy up as many influential personages in the Netherlands as could be

purchased. So they would assist in making the king master of the United

Provinces at the proper moment there was scarcely any price that he was

not willing to pay.

Especially Prince Maurice, his cousin, and the Advocate of Holland, were

to be secured by life pensions, property, offices, and dignities, all

which Jeannin might offer to an almost unlimited amount, if by such means

those great personages could possibly be induced to perform the king's

work.

There is no record that the president ever held out such baits at this

epoch to the prince. There could never be a doubt however in any one's

mind that if the political chief of the Orange-Nassau house ever wished

to make himself the instrument by which France should supplant Spain in

the tyranny of the Netherlands, he might always name his own price.

Jeannin never insulted him with any such trading propositions. As for

Barneveld, he avowed long years afterwards that he had accepted the

twenty thousand florins, and that the king had expressly exacted secrecy

in regard to the transaction. He declared however that the money was a

reward for public services rendered by him to the French Government ten

years before, in the course of his mission to France at the time of the

peace of Vervins. The reward had been promised in 1598, and the pledge

was fulfilled in 1608. In accepting wages fairly earned, however, he

protested that he had bound himself to no dishonourable service, and that

he had never exchanged a word with Jeannin or with any man in regard to

securing for Henry the sovereignty of the Netherlands.

His friends moreover maintained in his defence that there were no laws in

the Netherlands forbidding citizens to accept presents or pensions from

foreign powers. Such an excuse was as bad as the accusation. Woe to the

republic whose citizens require laws to prevent them from becoming

stipendiaries of foreign potentates! If public virtue, the only

foundation of republican institutions, be so far washed away that laws in

this regard are necessary to save it from complete destruction, then

already the republic is impossible. Many who bore illustrious names, and

occupied the highest social positions at, that day in France, England,

and the obedient provinces, were as venal as cattle at a fair. Philip and

Henry had bought them over and over again, whenever either was rich

enough to purchase and strong enough to enforce the terms of sale. Bribes

were taken with both hands in overflowing measure; the difficulty was

only in obtaining the work for the wage.

But it would have been humiliating beyond expression had the new

commonwealth, after passing through the fiery furnace of its great war,

proved no purer than leading monarchies at a most corrupt epoch. It was

no wonder therefore that men sought to wipe off the stain from the

reputation of Barneveld, and it is at least a solace that there was no

proof of his ever rendering, or ever having agreed to render, services

inconsistent with his convictions as to the best interests of the

commonwealth. It is sufficiently grave that he knew the colour of the

king's money, and that in a momentous crisis of history he accepted a

reward for former professional services, and that the broker in the

transaction, President Jeannin, seriously charged him by Henry's orders

to keep the matter secret. It would be still more dismal if Jeannin, in

his private letters, had ever intimated to Villeroy or his master that he

considered it a mercantile transaction, or if any effort had ever been

made by the Advocate to help Henry to the Batavian throne. This however

is not the case.

In truth, neither Maurice nor Barneveld was likely to assist the French

king in his intrigues against the independence of their fatherland. Both

had higher objects of ambition than to become the humble and well-paid

servants of a foreign potentate. The stadholder doubtless dreamed of a

crown which might have been his father's, and which his own illustrious

services might be supposed to have earned for himself. If that tempting

prize were more likely to be gained by a continuance of the war, it is

none the less certain that he considered peace, and still more truce, as

fatal to the independence of the provinces.

The Advocate, on the other hand, loved his country well. Perhaps he loved

power even better. To govern the city magistracies of Holland, through

them the provincial estates; and through them again the States-General of

the whole commonwealth; as first citizen of a republic to wield; the

powers of a king; as statesman, diplomatist, and financier, to create a

mighty empire out of those slender and but recently emancipated provinces

of Spain, was a more flattering prospect for a man of large intellect,

iron will, and infinite resources, than to sink into the contemptible

position of stipendiary to a foreign master. He foresaw change, growth,

transformation in the existing condition of things. Those great

corporations the East and West India Companies were already producing a

new organism out of the political and commercial chaos which had been so

long brooding over civilization. Visions of an imperial zone extending

from the little Batavian island around the earth, a chain of forts and

factories dotting the newly-discovered and yet undiscovered points of

vantage, on island or promontory, in every sea; a watery, nebulous, yet

most substantial empire--not fantastic, but practical--not picturesque

and mediaeval, but modern and lucrative--a world-wide commonwealth with a

half-submerged metropolis, which should rule the ocean with its own

fleets and, like Venice and Florence, job its land wars with mercenary

armies--all these dreams were not the cloudy pageant of a poet but the

practical schemes of a great creative mind. They were destined to become

reality. Had the geographical conditions been originally more favourable

than they were, had Nature been less a stepmother to the metropolis of

the rising Batavian realm, the creation might have been more durable.

Barneveld, and the men who acted with him, comprehended their age, and

with slender materials were prepared to do great things. They did not

look very far perhaps into futurity, but they saw the vast changes

already taking place, and felt the throb of forces actually at work.

The days were gone when the iron-clad man on horseback conquered a

kingdom with his single hand. Doubtless there is more of poetry and

romance in his deeds than in the achievements of the counting-house

aristocracy, the hierarchy of joint-stock corporations that was taking

the lead in the world's affairs. Enlarged views of the social compact and

of human liberty, as compared with those which later generations ought to

take, standing upon the graves, heaped up mountains high, of their

predecessors, could hardly be expected of them. But they knew how to do

the work before them. They had been able to smite a foreign and

sacerdotal tyranny into the dust at the expense of more blood and more

treasure, and with sacrifices continued through a longer cycle of years,

than had ever been recorded by history.

Thus the Advocate believed that the chief fruits of the war--political

independence, religious liberty, commercial expansion--could be now

secured by diplomacy, and that a truce could be so handled as to become

equivalent to a peace. He required no bribes therefore to labour for that

which he believed to be for his own interests and for those of the

country.

First citizen of Holland, perpetual chairman of a board of ambitious

shopkeepers who purposed to dictate laws to the world from their

counting-house table, with an unerring eye for the interests of the

commonwealth and his own, with much vision, extraordinary eloquence, and

a magnificent will, he is as good a sample of a great burgher--an

imposing not a heroic figure--as the times had seen.

A vast stride had been taken in the world's progress. Even monopoly was

freedom compared to the sloth and ignorance of an earlier epoch and of

other lands, and although the days were still far distant when the earth

was to belong to mankind, yet the modern republic was leading, half

unconsciously, to a period of wider liberty of government, commerce, and

above all of thought.

Meantime, the period assigned for the departure of the Spanish

commissioners, unless they brought a satisfactory communication from the

king, was rapidly approaching.

On the 24th September Verreyken returned from Brussels, but it was soon

known that he came empty handed. He informed the French and English

ambassadors that the archdukes, on their own responsibility, now

suggested the conclusion of a truce of seven years for Europe only. This

was to be negotiated with the States-General as with free people, over

whom no pretensions of authority were made, and the hope was expressed

that the king would give his consent to this arrangement.

The ambassadors naturally refused to carry the message to the States. To

make themselves the mouthpieces of such childish suggestions was to bring

themselves and their masters into contempt. There had been trifling

enough, and even Jeannin saw that the storm of indignation about to burst

forth would be irresistible. There was no need of any attempt on the part

of the commissioners to prolong their stay if this was the result of the

fifteen days' grace which had so reluctantly been conceded to them. To

express a hope that the king might perhaps give his future approval to a

proceeding for which his signed and sealed consent had been exacted as an

indispensable preliminary, was carrying effrontery further than had yet

been attempted in these amazing negotiations.

Prince Maurice once more addressed the cities of Holland, giving vent to

his wrath in language with which there was now more sympathy than there

had been before. "Verreyken has come back," he said, "not with a

signature, but with a hope. The longer the enemy remains in the country

the more he goes back from what he had originally promised. He is seeking

for nothing more than, in this cheating way and in this pretence of

waiting for the king's consent--which we have been expecting now for more

than eighteen months--to continue the ruinous armistice. Thus he keeps

the country in a perpetual uncertainty, the only possible consequence of

which is our complete destruction. We adjure you therefore to send a

resolution in conformity with our late address, in order that through

these tricks and snares the fatherland may not fall into the clutch of

the enemy, and thus into eternal and intolerable slavery. God save us all

from such a fate!"

Neither Barneveld nor Jeannin attempted to struggle against the almost

general indignation. The deputies of Zeeland withdrew from the assembly

of the States-General, protesting that they would never appear there

again so long as the Spanish commissioners remained in the country. The

door was opened wide, and it was plain that those functionaries must take

their departure. Pride would not allow them to ask permission of the

States to remain, although they intimated to the ambassadors their

intense desire to linger for ten or twelve days longer. This was

obviously inadmissible, and on the 30th September they appeared before

the Assembly to take leave.

There were but three of them, the Genoese, the Spaniard, and the

Burgundian--Spinola, Mancicidor; and Richardot. Of the two Netherlanders,

brother John was still in Spain, and Verreyken found it convenient that

day to have a lame leg.

President Richardot, standing majestically before the States-General,

with his robes wrapped around his tall, spare form, made a solemn

farewell speech of mingled sorrow, pity, and the resentment of injured

innocence. They had come to the Hague, he said, sent by the King of Spain

and the archdukes to treat for a good and substantial peace, according to

the honest intention of his Majesty and their Highnesses. To this end

they had sincerely and faithfully dealt with the gentlemen deputed for

that purpose by their High Mightinesses the States, doing everything they

could think of to further the cause of peace. They lamented that the

issue had not been such as they had hoped, notwithstanding that the king

and archdukes had so far derogated from their reputation as to send their

commissioners into the United Netherlands, it having been easy enough to

arrange for negotiations on other soil. It had been their wish thus to

prove to the world how straightforward were their intentions by not

requiring the States to send deputies to them. They had accorded the

first point in the negotiations, touching the free state of the country.

Their High Mightinesses had taken offence upon the second, regarding the

restoration of religion in the United Provinces. Thereupon the father

commissary had gone to Spain, and had remained longer than was agreeable.

Nevertheless, they had meantime treated of other points. Coming back at

last to the point of religion, the States-General had taken a resolution,

and had given them their dismissal, without being willing to hear a word

more, or to make a single proposition of moderation or accommodation.

He could not refrain from saying that the commissioners had been treated

roughly. Their High Mightinesses had fixed the time for their dismissal

more precisely than one would do with a servant who was discharged for

misconduct; for the lackey, if he asked for it, would be allowed at least

a day longer to pack his trunk for the journey. They protested before God

and the assembly of the States that the king and princes had meant most

sincerely, and had dealt with all roundness and sincerity. They at least

remained innocent of all the disasters and calamities to come from the

war.

"As for myself," said Richardot, "I am no prophet, nor the son of a

prophet; yet I will venture the prediction to you, my lords the

States-General, that you will bitterly rue it that you did not embrace

the peace thus presented, and which you might have had. The blood which

is destined to flow, now that you have scorned our plan of

reconciliation, will be not on our heads but your own."

Barneveld replied by temperately but firmly repelling the charges brought

against the States in this artful oration of the president. They had

proceeded in the most straightforward manner, never permitting themselves

to enter into negotiations except on the preliminary condition that their

freedom should be once for all conceded and recognised. "You and you

only," he continued, "are to bear the blame that peace has not been

concluded; you who have not been willing or not been able to keep your

promises. One might, with better reason, hold you guilty of all the

bloodshed; you whose edicts, bloodier and more savage than war itself,

long, ago forced these provinces into the inevitable necessity of waging

war; you whose cruelty, but yesterday exercised on the crews of

defenceless and innocent merchantmen and fishing-vessels, has been fully

exhibited to the world."

Spinola's countenance betrayed much emotion as he listened to the

exchange of bitter recriminations which took place on this farewell

colloquy. It was obvious that the brave and accomplished soldier honestly

lamented the failure of the attempt to end the war.

But the rupture was absolute. The marquis and the president dined that

day with Prince Maurice, by whom they were afterwards courteously

accompanied a part of the way on their journey to Brussels.

Thus ended the comedy which had lasted nearly two years. The dismal

leave-taking, as the curtain fell, was not as, entertaining to the public

outside as the dramatic meeting between Maurice and Spinola had been at

the opening scene near Ryswyk. There was no populace to throw up their

hats for the departing guests. From the winter's night in which the

subtle Franciscan had first stolen into the prince's cabinet down to this

autumn evening, not a step of real progress could be recorded as the

result of the intolerable quantity of speech-making and quill-driving.

There were boat-loads of documents, protocols, and notes, drowsy and

stagnant as the canals on which they were floated off towards their tombs

in the various archives. Peace to the dust which we have not wantonly

disturbed, believing it to be wholesome for the cause of human progress

that the art of ruling the world by doing nothing, as practised some

centuries since, should once and again be exhibited.

Not in vain do we listen to those long-bearded, venerable, very tedious

old presidents, advocates, and friars of orders gray, in their high

ruffs, taffety robes or gowns of frieze, as they squeak and gibber, for a

fleeting moment, to a world which knew them not. It is something to learn

that grave statesmen, kings, generals, and presidents could negotiate for

two years long; and that the only result should be the distinction

between a conjunction, a preposition, and an adverb. That the provinces

should be held as free States, not for free States--that they should be

free in similitude, not in substance--thus much and no more had been

accomplished.

And now to all appearance every chance of negotiation was gone. The

half-century war, after this brief breathing space, was to be renewed for

another century or so, and more furiously than ever. So thought the

public. So meant Prince Maurice. Richardot and Jeannin knew better.

The departure of the commissioners was recorded upon the register of the

resolutions of Holland, with the ominous note: "God grant that they may

not have sown, evil seed here; the effects of which will one day be

visible in the ruin of this commonwealth."

Hardly were the backs of the commissioners turned, before the

indefatigable Jeannin was ready with his scheme for repatching the

rupture. He was at first anxious that the deputies of Zeeland should be

summoned again, now that the country was rid of the Spaniards. Prince

Maurice, however, was wrathful when the president began to talk once more

of truce. The proposition, he said, was simply the expression of a wish

to destroy the State. Holland and Zeeland would never agree to any such

measure, and they would find means to compel the other provinces to

follow their example. If there were but three or four cities in the whole

country to reject the truce, he would, with their assistance alone,

defend the freedom of the republic, or at least die an honourable death

in its defence. This at least would be better than after a few months to

become slaves of Spain. Such a result was the object of those who began

this work, but he would resist it at the peril of his life.

A singular incident now seemed to justify the wrath of the stadholder,

and to be likely to strengthen his party. Young Count John of Nassau

happened to take possession of the apartments in Goswyn Meursken's

hostelry at the Hague, just vacated by Richardot. In the drawer of a

writing-table was found a document, evidently left there by the

president. This paper was handed by Count John to his cousin, Frederic

Henry, who at once delivered it to his brother Maurice. The prince

produced it in the assembly of the States-General, members from each

province were furnished with a copy of it within two or three hours, and

it was soon afterwards printed, and published. The document, being

nothing less than the original secret instructions of the archdukes to

their commissioners, was naturally read with intense interest by the

States-General, by the foreign envoys, and by the general public.

It appeared, from an inspection of the paper, that the commissioners had

been told that, if they should find the French, English, and Danish

ambassadors desirous of being present at the negotiations for the treaty,

they were to exclude them from all direct participation in the

proceedings. They were to do this however so sweetly and courteously that

it would be impossible for those diplomats to take offence or to imagine

themselves distrusted. On the contrary, the States-General were to be

informed that their communication in private on the general subject with

the ambassadors was approved by the archdukes, because they believed the

sovereigns of France, England, and Denmark, their sincere and

affectionate friends. The commissioners were instructed to domesticate

themselves as much as possible with President Jeannin and to manifest the

utmost confidence in his good intentions. They were to take the same

course with the English envoys, but in more general terms, and were very

discreetly to communicate to them whatever they already knew, and, on the

other hand, carefully to conceal from them all that was still a secret.

They were distinctly told to make the point of the Catholic religion

first and foremost in the negotiations; the arguments showing the

indispensable necessity of securing its public exercise in the United

Provinces being drawn up with considerable detail. They were to insist

that the republic should absolutely renounce the trade with the East and

West Indies, and should pledge itself to chastise such of its citizens as

might dare to undertake those voyages, as disturbers of the peace and

enemies of the public repose, whether they went to the Indies in person

or associated themselves with men of other nations for that purpose,

under any pretext whatever. When these points, together with many matters

of detail less difficult of adjustment, had been satisfactorily settled,

the commissioners were to suggest measures of union for the common

defence between the united and the obedient Provinces. This matter was to

be broached very gently. "In the sweetest terms possible," it was to be

hinted that the whole body of the Netherlanders could protect itself

against every enemy, but if dismembered as it was about to be, neither

the one portion nor the ocher would be safe. The commissioners were

therefore to request the offer of some proposition from the

States-General for the common defence. In case they remained silent,

however, then the commissioners were to declare that the archdukes had no

wish to speak of sovereignty over the United Provinces, however limited.

"Having once given them that morsel to swallow," said their Highnesses,

"we have nothing of the kind in our thoughts. But if they reflect, it is

possible that they may see fit to take us for protectors."

The scheme was to be managed with great discreetness and delicacy, and

accomplished by hook or by crook, if the means could be found. "You need

not be scrupulous as to the form or law of protection, provided the name

of protector can be obtained," continued the archdukes.

At least the greatest pains were to be taken that the two sections of the

Netherlands might remain friends. "We are in great danger unless we rely

upon each other," it was urged. "But touch this chord very gently, lest

the French and English hearing of it suspect some design to injure them.

At least we may each mutually agree to chastise such of our respective

subjects as may venture to make any alliance with the enemies of the

other."

It was much disputed whether these instructions had been left purposely

or by accident in the table-drawer. Jeannin could not make up his mind

whether it was a trick or not, and the vociferous lamentations of

Richardot upon his misfortunes made little impression upon his mind. He

had small confidence in any austerity of principle on the part of his

former fellow-leaguer that would prevent him from leaving the document by

stealth, and then protesting that he had been foully wronged by its

coming to light. On the whole, he was inclined to think, however, that

the paper had been stolen from him.

Barneveld, after much inquiry, was convinced that it had been left in the

drawer by accident.

Richardot himself manifested rage and dismay when he found that a paper,

left by chance in his lodgings, had been published by the States. Such a

proceeding was a violation, he exclaimed, of the laws of hospitality.

With equal justice, he declared it to be an offence against the religious

respect due to ambassadors, whose persons and property were sacred in

foreign countries. "Decency required the States," he said, "to send the

document back to him, instead of showing it as a trophy, and he was ready

to die of shame and vexation at the unlucky incident."

Few honourable men will disagree with him in these complaints, although

many contemporaries obstinately refused to believe that the crafty and

experienced diplomatist could have so carelessly left about his most

important archives. He was generally thought by those who had most dealt

with him, to prefer, on principle, a crooked path to a straight one.

"'Tis a mischievous old monkey," said Villeroy on another occasion, "that

likes always to turn its tail instead of going directly to the purpose."

The archduke, however, was very indulgent to his plenipotentiary. "My

good master," said the president, "so soon as he learned the loss of

that accursed paper, benignantly consoled, instead of chastising me; and,

after having looked over the draught, was glad that the accident had

happened; for thus his sincerity had been proved, and those who sought

profit by the trick had been confounded." On the other hand, what good

could it do to the cause of peace, that these wonderful instructions

should be published throughout the republic? They might almost seem a

fiction, invented by the war party to inspire a general disgust for any

further negotiation. Every loyal Netherlander would necessarily be

qualmish at the word peace, now that the whole design of the Spanish

party was disclosed.

The public exercise of the Roman religion was now known to be the

indispensable condition--first, last, and always--to any possible peace.

Every citizen of the republic was to be whipped out of the East and West

Indies, should he dare to show his face in those regions. The

States-General, while swallowing the crumb of sovereignty vouchsafed by

the archdukes, were to accept them as protectors, in order not to fall a

prey to the enemies whom they imagined to be their friends.

What could be more hopeless than such negotiations? What more dreary than

the perpetual efforts of two lines to approach each other which were

mathematically incapable of meeting? That the young republic, conscious

of her daily growing strength, should now seek refuge from her nobly won

independence in the protectorate of Albert, who was himself the vassal of

Philip, was an idea almost inconceivable to the Dutch mind. Yet so

impossible was it for the archdukes to put themselves into human

relations with this new and popular Government, that in the inmost

recesses of their breasts they actually believed themselves, when making

the offer, to be performing a noble act of Christian charity.

The efforts of Jeannin and of the English ambassador were now

unremitting, and thoroughly seconded by Barneveld. Maurice was almost at

daggers drawn, not only with the Advocate but with the foreign envoys.

Sir Ralph Winwood, who had, in virtue of the old treaty arrangements with

England, a seat in the state-council at the Hague, and who was a man of a

somewhat rough and insolent deportment, took occasion at a session of

that body, when the prince was present, to urge the necessity of at once

resuming the ruptured negotiations. The King of Great Britain; he said,

only recommended a course which he was himself always ready to pursue.

Hostilities which were necessary, and no others, were just. Such, and

such only, could be favoured by God or by pious kings. But wars were not

necessary which could be honourably avoided. A truce was not to be

despised, by which religious liberty and commerce were secured, and it

was not the part of wisdom to plunge into all the horrors of immediate

war in order to escape distant and problematical dangers; that might

arise when the truce should come to an end. If a truce were now made, the

kings of both France and England would be guarantees for its faithful

observance. They would take care that no wrong or affront was offered to

the States-General.

Maurice replied, with a sneer, to these sententious commonplaces derived

at second-hand from King James that great kings were often very

indifferent to injuries sustained by their friends. Moreover, there was

an eminent sovereign, he continued, who was even very patient under

affronts directly offered to himself. It was not very long since a

horrible plot had been discovered to murder the King of England, with his

wife, his children, and all the great personages of the realm. That this

great crime had been attempted under the immediate instigation of the

King of Spain was notorious to the whole world, and certainly no secret

to King James. Yet his Britannic Majesty had made haste to exonerate the

great criminal from all complicity in the crime; and had ever since been

fawning upon the Catholic king, and hankering for a family alliance with

him. Conduct like this the prince denounced in plain terms as cringing

and cowardly, and expressed the opinion that guarantees of Dutch

independence from such a monarch could hardly be thought very valuable.

These were terrible words for the representative of James to have hurled

in his face in full council by the foremost personage of the republic

Winwood fell into a furious passion, and of course there was a violent

scene, with much subsequent protesting and protocolling.

The British king insisted that the prince should make public amends for

the insult, and Maurice firmly refused to do anything of the kind. The

matter was subsequently arranged by some amicable concessions made by the

prince in a private letter to James, but there remained for the time a

abate of alienation between England and the republic, at which the French

sincerely rejoiced. The incident, however, sufficiently shows the point

of exasperation which the prince had reached, for, although choleric, he

was a reasonable man, and it was only because the whole course of the

negotiations had offended his sense of honour and of right that he had at

last been driven quite beyond self-control.

On the 13th of October, the envoys of France, England, Denmark, and of

the Elector Palatine, the Elector of Brandeburg, and other German

princes, came before the States-General.

Jeannin, in the name of all these foreign ministers, made a speech warmly

recommending the truce.

He repelled the insinuation that the measure proposed had been brought

about by the artifices of the enemy, and was therefore odious. On the

contrary, it was originated by himself and the other good friends of the

republic.

In his opinion, the terms of the suggested truce contained sufficient

guarantees for the liberty of the provinces, not only during the truce,

but for ever.

No stronger recognition of their independence could be expected than the

one given. It was entirely without example, argued the president, that in

similar changes brought about by force of arms, sovereigns after having

been despoiled of their states have been compelled to abandon their

rights shamefully by a public confession, unless they had absolutely

fallen into the hands of their enemies and were completely at their

mercy. "Yet the princes who made this great concession," continued

Jeannin, "are not lying vanquished at your feet, nor reduced by dire

necessity to yield what they have yielded."

He reminded the assembly that the Swiss enjoyed at that moment their

liberty in virtue of a simple truce, without ever having obtained from

their former sovereign a declaration such as was now offered to the

United Provinces.

The president argued, moreover, with much force and acuteness that it was

beneath the dignity of the States, and inconsistent with their

consciousness of strength, to lay so much stress on the phraseology by

which their liberty was recognised. That freedom had been won by the

sword, and would be maintained against all the world by the sword.

"In truth," said the orator, "you do wrong to your liberty by calling it

so often in doubt, and in claiming with so much contentious anxiety from

your enemies a title-deed for your independence. You hold it by your own

public decree. In virtue of that decree, confirmed by the success of your

arms, you have enjoyed it long. Nor could anything obtained from your

enemies be of use to you if those same arms with which you gained your

liberty could not still preserve it for you."

Therefore, in the opinion of the president, this persistence in demanding

a more explicit and unlimited recognition of independence was only a

pretext for continuing the war, ingeniously used by those who hated

peace.

Addressing himself more particularly to the celebrated circular letter of

Prince Maurice against the truce, the president maintained that the

liberty of the republic was as much acknowledged in the proposed articles

as if the words "for ever" had been added. "To acknowledge liberty is an

act which, by its very nature, admits of no conditions," he observed,

with considerable force.

The president proceeded to say that in the original negotiations the

qualifications obtained had seemed to him enough. As there was an ardent

desire, however, on the part of many for a more explicit phraseology, as

something necessary to the public safety, he had thought it worth

attempting.

"We all rejoiced when you obtained it," continued Jeannin, "but not when

they agreed to renounce the names, titles, and arms of the United

Provinces; for that seemed to us shameful for them beyond all example.

That princes should make concessions so entirely unworthy of their

grandeur, excited at once our suspicion, for we could not imagine the

cause of an offer so specious. We have since found out the reason."

The archdukes being unable, accordingly, to obtain for the truce those

specious conditions which Spain had originally pretended to yield, it was

the opinion of the old diplomatist that the king should be permitted to

wear the paste substitutes about which so many idle words had been

wasted.

It would be better, he thought, for the States to be contented with what

was precious and substantial, and not to lose the occasion of making a

good treaty of truce, which was sure to be converted with time into an

absolute peace.

"It is certain," he said, "that the princes with whom you are treating

will never go to law with you to get an exposition of the article in

question. After the truce has expired, they will go to war with you if

you like, but they will not trouble themselves to declare whether they

are fighting you as rebels or as enemies, nor will it very much signify.

If their arms are successful, they will give you no explanations. If you

are the conquerors, they will receive none. The fortune of war will be

the supreme judge to decide the dispute; not the words of a treaty. Those

words are always interpreted to the disadvantage of the weak and the

vanquished, although they may be so perfectly clear that no man could

doubt them; never to the prejudice of those who have proved the validity

of their rights by the strength of their arms."

This honest, straightforward cynicism, coming from the lips of one of the

most experienced diplomatists of Europe, was difficult to gainsay.

Speaking as one having authority, the president told the States-General

in full assembly, that there was no law in Christendom, as between

nations, but the good old fist-law, the code of brute force.

Two centuries and a half have rolled by since that oration was

pronounced, and the world has made immense progress in science during

that period. But there is still room for improvement in this regard in

the law of nations. Certainly there is now a little more reluctance to

come so nakedly before the world. But has the cause of modesty or

humanity gained very much by the decorous fig-leaves of modern diplomacy?

The president alluded also to the ungrounded fears that bribery and

corruption would be able to effect much, during the truce, towards the

reduction of the provinces under their repudiated sovereign. After all,

it was difficult to buy up a whole people. In a commonwealth, where the

People was sovereign, and the persons of the magistrates ever changing,

those little comfortable commercial operations could not be managed so

easily as in civilized realms like France and England. The old Leaguer

thought with pensive regret, no doubt, of the hard, but still profitable

bargains by which the Guises and Mayennes and Mercoeurs, and a few

hundred of their noble adherents, had been brought over to the cause of

the king. He sighed at the more recent memories of the Marquis de Rosny's

embassy in England, and his largess scattered broadcast among the great

English lords. It would be of little use he foresaw--although the

instructions of Henry were in his portfolio, giving him almost unlimited

powers to buy up everybody in the Netherlands that could be bought--to

attempt that kind of traffic on a large scale in the Netherlands.

Those republicans were greedy enough about the navigation to the East and

West Indies, and were very litigious about the claim of Spain to put up

railings around the Ocean as her private lake, but they were less keen

than were their more polished contemporaries for the trade in human

souls.

"When we consider," said Jeannin, "the constitution of your State, and

that to corrupt a few people among you does no good at all, because the

frequent change of magistracies takes away the means of gaining over many

of them at the same time, capable by a long duration of their power to

conduct an intrigue against the commonwealth, this fear must appear

wholly vain."

And then the old Leaguer, who had always refused bribes himself, although

he had negotiated much bribery of others, warmed into sincere eloquence

as he spoke of the simple virtues on which the little republic, as should

be the case with all republics, was founded. He did homage to the Dutch

love of liberty.

"Remember," he said, "the love of liberty which is engraved in the hearts

of all your inhabitants, and that there are few persons now living who

were born in the days of the ancient subjection, or who have not been

nourished and brought up for so long a time in liberty that they have a

horror for the very name of servitude. You will then feel that there is

not one man in your commonwealth who would wish or dare to open his mouth

to bring you back to subjection, without being in danger of instant

punishment as a traitor to his country."

He again reminded his hearers that the Swiss had concluded a long and

perilous war with their ancient masters by a simple truce, during which

they had established so good a government that they were never more

attacked. Honest republican principles, and readiness at any moment to

defend dearly won liberties, had combined with geographical advantages to

secure the national independence of Switzerland.

Jeannin paid full tribute to the maritime supremacy of the republic.

"You may have as much good fortune," he said, "as the Swiss, if you are

wise. You have the ocean at your side, great navigable rivers enclosing

you in every direction, a multitude of ships, with sailors, pilots, and

seafaring men of every description, who are the very best soldiers in

battles at sea to be found in Christendom. With these you will preserve

your military vigour and your habits of navigation, the long voyages to

which you are accustomed continuing as usual. And such is the kind of

soldiers you require. As for auxiliaries, should you need them you know

where to find them."

The president implored the States-General accordingly to pay no attention

to the writings which were circulated among the people to prejudice them

against the truce.

This was aimed directly at the stadholder, who had been making so many

direct personal appeals to the people, and who was now the more incensed,

recognising the taunt of the president as an arrow taken from Barneveld's

quiver. There had long ceased to be any communication between the Prince

and the Advocate, and Maurice made no secret of his bitter animosity both

to Barneveld and to Jeannin.

He hesitated on no occasion to denounce the Advocate as travelling

straight on the road to Spain, and although he was not aware of the

twenty thousand florins recently presented by the French king, he had

accustomed himself, with the enormous exaggeration of party spirit, to

look upon the first statesman of his country and of Europe as a traitor

to the republic and a tool of the archdukes. As we look back upon those

passionate days, we cannot but be appalled at the depths to which

theological hatred could descend.

On the very morning after the session of the assembly in which Jeannin

had been making his great speech, and denouncing the practice of secret

and incendiary publication, three remarkable letters were found on the

doorstep of a house in the Hague. One was addressed to the

States-General, another to the Mates of Holland, and a third to the

burgomaster of Amsterdam. In all these documents, the Advocate was

denounced as an infamous traitor, who was secretly intriguing to bring

about a truce for the purpose of handing over the commonwealth to the

enemy. A shameful death, it was added, would be his fitting reward.

These letters were read in the Assembly of the States-General, and

created great wrath among the friends of Barneveld. Even Maurice

expressed indignation, and favoured a search for the anonymous author, in

order that he might be severely punished.

It seems strange enough that anonymous letters picked up in the street

should have been deemed a worthy theme of discussion before their High

Mightinesses the States-General. Moreover, it was raining pamphlets and

libels against Barneveld and his supporters every day, and the stories

which grave burghers and pious elders went about telling to each other,

and to everybody who would listen to them, about the Advocate's

depravity, were wonderful to hear.

At the end of September, just before the Spanish commissioners left the

Hague, a sledge of the kind used in the Dutch cities as drays stopped

before Barneveld's front-door one fine morning, and deposited several

large baskets, filled with money, sent by the envoys for defraying

certain expenses of forage, hire of servants, and the like, incurred by

them during their sojourn at the Hague, and disbursed by the States. The

sledge, with its contents, was at once sent by order of the Advocate,

under guidance of Commissary John Spronsen, to the Receiver-General of

the republic.

Yet men wagged their beards dismally as they whispered this fresh proof

of Barneveld's venality. As if Spinola and his colleagues were such

blunderers in bribing as to send bushel baskets full of Spanish dollars

on a sledge, in broad daylight, to the house of a great statesman whom

they meant to purchase, expecting doubtless a receipt in full to be

brought back by the drayman! Well might the Advocate say at a later

moment, in the bitterness of his spirit, that his enemies, not satisfied

with piercing his heart with their false, injurious and honour-filching

libels and stories, were determined to break it. "He begged God

Almighty," he said, "to be merciful to him, and to judge righteously

between him and them."

Party spirit has rarely run higher in any commonwealth than in Holland

during these memorable debates concerning a truce. Yet the leaders both

of the war party and the truce party were doubtless pure, determined

patriots, seeking their country's good with all their souls and strength.

Maurice answered the discourse of Jeannin by a second and very elaborate

letter. In this circular, addressed to the magistracies of Holland, he

urged his countrymen once more with arguments already employed by him,

and in more strenuous language than ever, to beware of a truce even more

than of a peace, and warned them not to swerve by a hair's breadth from

the formula in regard to the sovereignty agreed upon at the very

beginning of the negotiations. To this document was appended a paper of

considerations, drawn up by Maurice and Lewis William, in refutation,

point by point, of all the arguments of President Jeannin in his late

discourse.

It is not necessary to do more than allude to these documents, which were

marked by the close reasoning and fiery spirit which characterized all

the appeals of the prince and his cousin at this period, because the time

had now come which comes to all controversies when argument is exhausted

and either action or compromise begins.

Meantime, Barneveld, stung almost to madness by the poisonous though

ephemeral libels which buzzed so perpetually about him, had at last

resolved to retire from the public service. He had been so steadily

denounced as being burthensome to his superiors in birth by the power

which he had acquired, and to have shot up so far above the heads of his

equals; that he felt disposed to withdraw from a field where his presence

was becoming odious.

His enemies, of course, considered this determination a trick by which he

merely wished to prove to the country how indispensable he was, and to

gain a fresh lease of his almost unlimited power by the alarm which his

proposed abdication would produce. Certainly, however, if it were a

trick, and he were not indispensable, it was easy enough to prove it and

to punish him by taking him at his word.

On the morning after the anonymous letters had been found in the street

he came into the House of Assembly and made a short speech. He spoke

simply of his thirty-one years of service, during which he believed

himself to have done his best for the good of the fatherland and for the

welfare of the house of Nassau. He had been ready thus to go on to the

end, but he saw himself environed by enemies, and felt that his

usefulness had been destroyed. He wished, therefore, in the interest of

the country, not from any fear for himself, to withdraw from the storm,

and for a time at least to remain in retirement. The displeasure and

hatred of the great were nothing new to him, he said. He had never shrunk

from peril when he could serve his fatherland; for against all calumnies

and all accidents he had worn the armour of a quiet conscience. But he

now saw that the truce, in itself an unpleasant affair, was made still

more odious by the hatred felt towards him. He begged the provinces,

therefore, to select another servant less hated than himself to provide

for the public welfare.

Having said these few words with the dignity which was natural to him he

calmly walked out of the Assembly House.

The personal friends of Barneveld and the whole truce party were in

consternation. Even the enemies of the Advocate shrank appalled at the

prospect of losing the services of the foremost statesman of the

commonwealth at this critical juncture. There was a brief and animated

discussion as soon as his back was turned. Its result was the appointment

of a committee of five to wait upon Barneveld and solemnly to request him

to reconsider his decision. Their efforts were successful. After a

satisfactory interview with the committee he resumed his functions with

greater authority than ever. Of course there were not wanting many to

whisper that the whole proceeding had been a comedy, and that Barneveld

would have been more embarrassed than he had ever been in his life had

his resignation been seriously accepted. But this is easy to say, and is

always said, whenever a statesman who feels himself aggrieved, yet knows

himself useful, lays dawn his office. The Advocate had been the mark of

unceasing and infamous calumnies. He had incurred the deadly hatred of

the highest placed, the most powerful, and the most popular man in the

commonwealth. He had more than once been obliged to listen to opprobrious

language from the prince, and it was even whispered that he had been

threatened with personal violence. That Maurice was perpetually

denouncing him in public and private, as a traitor, a papist, a Spanish

partisan, was notorious. He had just been held up to the States of the

union and of his own province by unknown voices as a criminal worthy of

death. Was it to be wondered at that a man of sixty, who had passed his

youth, manhood, and old age in the service of the republic, and was

recognised by all as the ablest, the most experienced, the most

indefatigable of her statesmen, should be seriously desirous of

abandoning an office which might well seem to him rather a pillory than a

post of honour?

"As for neighbour Barneveld," said recorder Aerssens, little dreaming of

the foul witness he was to bear against that neighbour at a terrible

moment to come, "I do what I can and wish to help him with my blood. He

is more courageous than I. I should have sunk long ago, had I been

obliged to stand against such tempests. The Lord God will, I hope, help

him and direct his understanding for the good of all Christendom, and for

his own honour. If he can steer this ship into a safe harbour we ought to

raise a golden statue of him. I should like to contribute my mite to it.

He deserves twice much honour, despite all his enemies, of whom he has

many rather from envy than from reason. May the Lord keep him in health,

or it will go hardly with us all."

Thus spoke some of his grateful countrymen when the Advocate was

contending at a momentous crisis with storms threatening to overwhelm the

republic. Alas! where is the golden statue?

He believed that the truce was the most advantageous measure that the

country could adopt. He believed this with quite as much sincerity as

Maurice held to his conviction that war was the only policy. In the

secret letter of the French ambassador there is not a trace of suspicion

as to his fidelity to the commonwealth, not the shadow of proof of the

ridiculous accusation that he wished to reduce the provinces to the

dominion of Spain. Jeannin, who had no motive for concealment in his

confidential correspondence with his sovereign, always rendered

unequivocal homage to the purity and patriotism of the Advocate and the

Prince.

He returned to the States-General and to the discharge of his functions

as Advocate-General of Holland. His policy for the time was destined to

be triumphant, his influence more extensive than ever. But the end of

these calumnies and anonymous charges was not yet.

Meantime the opposition to the truce was confined to the States of

Zeeland and two cities of Holland. Those cities were very important ones,

Amsterdam and Delft, but they were already wavering in their opposition.

Zeeland stoutly maintained that the treaty of Utrecht forbade a decision

of the question of peace and war except by a unanimous vote of the whole

confederacy. The other five provinces and the friends of the truce began

with great vehemence to declare that the question at issue was now

changed. It was no longer to be decided whether there should be truce or

war with Spain, but whether a single member of the confederacy could

dictate its law to the other six States. Zeeland, on her part, talked

loudly of seceding from the union, and setting up for an independent,

sovereign commonwealth. She would hardly have been a very powerful one,

with her half-dozen cities, one prelate, one nobleman, her hundred

thousand burghers at most, bustling and warlike as they were, and her few

thousand mariners, although the most terrible fighting men that had ever

sailed on blue water. She was destined ere long to abandon her doughty

resolution of leaving her sister provinces to their fate.

Maurice had not slackened in his opposition to the truce, despite the

renewed vigour with which Barneveld pressed the measure since his return

to the public councils. The prince was firmly convinced that the kings of

France and England would assist the republic in the war with Spain so

soon as it should be renewed. His policy had been therefore to force the

hand of those sovereigns, especially that of Henry, and to induce him to

send more stringent instructions to Jeannin than those with which he

believed him to be furnished. He had accordingly despatched a secret

emissary to the French king, supplied with confidential and explicit

instructions. This agent was a Captain Lambert. Whether it was "Pretty

Lambert," "Dandy Lambert"--the vice-admiral who had so much distinguished

himself at the great victory of Gibraltar--does not distinctly appear. If

it were so, that hard-hitting mariner would seem to have gone into action

with the French Government as energetically as he had done eighteen

months before, when, as master of the Tiger, he laid himself aboard the

Spanish admiral and helped send the St. Augustine to the bottom. He

seemed indisposed to mince matters in diplomacy. He intimated to the king

and his ministers that Jeannin and his colleagues were pushing the truce

at the Hague much further and faster than his Majesty could possibly

approve, and that they were obviously exceeding their instructions.

Jeannin, who was formerly so much honoured and cherished throughout the

republic, was now looked upon askance because of his intimacy with

Barneveld and his partisans. He assured the king that nearly all the

cities of Holland, and the whole of Zeeland, were entirely agreed with

Maurice, who would rather die than consent to the proposed truce. The

other provinces, added Lambert, would be obliged, will ye nill ye, to

receive the law from Holland and Zeeland. Maurice, without assistance

from France or any other power, would give Spain and the archdukes as

much exercise as they could take for the next fifty years before he would

give up, and had declared that he would rather die sword in hand than

basely betray his country by consenting to such a truce. As for

Barneveld, he was already discovering the blunders which he had made, and

was trying to curry favour with Maurice. Barneveld and both the Aprasens

were traitors to the State, had become the objects of general hatred and

contempt, and were in great danger of losing their lives, or at least of

being expelled from office.

Here was altogether too much zeal on the part of Pretty Lambert; a

quality which, not for the first time, was thus proved to be less useful

in diplomatic conferences than in a sea-fight. Maurice was obliged to

disavow his envoy, and to declare that his secret instructions had never

authorized him to hold such language. But the mischief was done. The

combustion in the French cabinet was terrible. The Dutch admiral had

thrown hot shot into the powder-magazine of his friends, and had done no

more good by such tactics than might be supposed. Such diplomacy was

denounced as a mere mixture of "indiscretion and impudence." Henry was

very wroth, and forthwith indited an imperious letter to his cousin

Maurice.

"Lambert's talk to me by your orders," said the king, "has not less

astonished than scandalized me. I now learn the new resolution which you

have taken, and I observe that you have begun to entertain suspicions as

to my will and my counsels on account of the proposition of truce."

Henry's standing orders to Jeannin, as we know, were to offer Maurice a

pension of almost unlimited amount, together with ample rewards to all

such of his adherents as could be purchased, provided they would bring

about the incorporation of the United Provinces into France. He was

therefore full of indignation that the purity of his intentions and the

sincerity of his wish for the independence of the republic could be

called in question.

"People have dared to maliciously invent," he continued, "that I am the

enemy of the repose and the liberty of the United Provinces, and that I

was afraid lest they should acquire the freedom which had been offered

them by their enemies, because I derived a profit from their war, and

intended in time to deprive them of their liberty. Yet these falsehoods

and jealousies have not been contradicted by you nor by anyone else,

although you know that the proofs of my sincerity and good faith have

been entirely without reproach or example. You knew what was said,

written, and published everywhere, and I confess that when I knew this

malice, and that you had not taken offence at it, I was much amazed and

very malcontent."

Queen Elizabeth, in her most waspish moods, had not often lectured the

States-General more roundly than Henry now lectured his cousin Maurice.

The king once more alluded to the secret emissary's violent talk, which

had so much excited his indignation.

"If by weakness and want of means," he said, "you are forced to abandon

to your enemies one portion of your country in order to defend the

other-as Lambert tells me you are resolved to do, rather than agree to

the truce without recognition of your sovereignty for ever--I pray you to

consider how many accidents and reproaches may befal you. Do you suppose

that any ally of the States, or of your family, would risk his reputation

and his realms in such a game, which would seem to be rather begun in

passion and despair than required by reason or necessity?"

Here certainly was plain speaking enough, and Maurice could no longer

expect the king for his partner, should he decide to risk once more the

bloody hazard of the die.

But Henry was determined to leave no shade of doubt on the subject.

"Lambert tells me," he said, "that you would rather perish with arms in

your hands than fall shamefully into inevitable ruin by accepting truce.

I have been and am of a contrary opinion. Perhaps I am mistaken, not

knowing as well as you do the constitution of your country and the wishes

of your people. But I know the general affairs of Christendom better than

you do, and I can therefore judge more soundly on the whole matter than

you can, and I know that the truce, established and guaranteed as

proposed, will bring you more happiness than you can derive from war."

Thus the king, in the sweeping, slashing way with which he could handle

an argument as well as a sword, strode forward in conscious strength,

cutting down right and left all opposition to his will. He was

determined, once for all, to show the stadholder and his adherents that

the friendship of a great king was not to be had by a little republic on

easy terms, nor every day. Above all, the Prince of Nassau was not to

send a loud-talking, free and easy Dutch sea-captain to dictate terms to

the King of France and Navarre. "Lambert tells me"--and Maurice might

well wish that Pretty Lambert had been sunk in the bay of Gibraltar,

Tiger and all, before he had been sent on this diplomatic errand,

"Lambert tells me," continued his Majesty, "that you and the

States-General would rather that I should remain neutral, and let you

make war in your own fashion, than that I should do anything more to push

on this truce. My cousin, it would be very easy for me, and perhaps more

advantageous for me and my kingdom than you think, if I could give you

this satisfaction, whatever might be the result. If I chose to follow

this counsel, I am, thanks be to God, in such condition, that I have no

neighbour who is not as much in need of me as I can be of him, and who is

not glad to seek for and to preserve my friendship. If they should all

conspire against me moreover, I can by myself, and with no assistance but

heaven's, which never failed me yet, wrestle with them altogether, and

fling them all, as some of my royal predecessors have done. Know then,

that I do not favour war nor truce for the United Provinces because of

any need I may have of the one or the other for the defence of my own

sceptre. The counsels and the succours, which you have so largely

received from me, were given because of my consideration for the good of

the States, and of yourself in particular, whom I have always favoured

and cherished, as I have done others of your house on many occasions."

The king concluded his lecture by saying, that after his ambassadors had

fulfilled their promise, and had spoken the last word of their master at

the Hague, he should leave Maurice and the States to do as they liked.

"But I desire," he said, "that you and the States should not do that

wrong to yourselves or to me as to doubt the integrity of my counsels nor

the actions of my ambassadors: I am an honest man and a prince of my

word, and not ignorant of the things of this world. Neither the States

nor you, with your adherents, can permit my honour to be compromised

without tarnishing your own, and without being branded for ingratitude. I

say not this in order to reproach you for the past nor to make you

despair of the future, but to defend the truth. I expect, therefore, that

you will not fall into this fault, knowing you as I do. I pay more heed

to what you said in your letter than in all Lambert's fine talk, and you

will find out that nobody wishes your prosperity and that of the States

more sincerely than I do, or can be more useful to you than I can."

[I have abbreviated this remarkable letter, but of course the text

of the passages cited is literally given. J.L.M.]

There could be but little doubt in the mind of Prince Maurice, after this

letter had been well pondered, that Barneveld had won the game, and that

the peace party had triumphed.

To resume the war, with the French king not merely neutral but angry and

covertly hostile, and with the sovereign of Great Britain an almost open

enemy in the garb of an ally, might well seem a desperate course.

And Maurice, although strongly opposed to the truce, and confident in his

opinions at this crisis, was not a desperado.

He saw at once the necessity of dismounting from the high horse upon

which, it must be confessed, he had been inclined for more rough-riding

of late than the situation warranted. Peace was unattainable, war was

impossible, truce was inevitable; Barneveld was master of the field.

The prince acquiesced in the result which the letter from the French king

so plainly indicated. He was, however, more incensed than ever against

Barneveld; for he felt himself not only checkmated but humiliated by the

Advocate, and believed him a traitor, who was selling the republic to

Spain. It was long since the two had exchanged a word.

Maurice now declared, on more than one occasion, that it was useless for

him any longer to attempt opposition to the policy of truce. The States

must travel on the road which they had chosen, but it should not be under

his guidance, and he renounced all responsibility for the issue.

Dreading disunion, however, more than ought else that could befal the

republic, he now did his best to bring about the return of Zeeland to the

federal councils. He was successful. The deputies from that province

reappeared in the States-General on the 11th November. They were still

earnest, however, in their opposition to the truce, and warmly

maintained, in obedience to instructions, that the Union of Utrecht

forbade the conclusion of a treaty except by unanimous consent of the

Seven Provinces. They were very fierce in their remonstrances, and again

talked loudly of secession.

After consultation with Barneveld, the French envoys now thought it their

duty to take the recalcitrant Zeelanders in hand; Maurice having, as it

were, withdrawn from the contest.

On the 18th November, accordingly, Jeannin once more came very solemnly

before the States-General, accompanied by his diplomatic colleagues.

He showed the impossibility of any arrangement, except by the submission

of Zeeland to a vote of the majority. "It is certain," he said, "that six

provinces will never be willing to be conquered by a single one, nor

permit her to assert that, according to a fundamental law of the

commonwealth, her dissent can prevent the others from forming a definite

conclusion.

"It is not for us," continued the president, "who are strangers in your

republic, to interpret your laws, but common sense teaches us that, if

such a law exist, it could only have been made in order to forbid a

surrender.

"If any one wishes to expound it otherwise, to him we would reply, in the

words of an ancient Roman, who said of a law which seemed to him

pernicious, that at least the tablet upon which it was inscribed, if it

could not be destroyed, should be hidden out of sight. Thus at least the

citizens might escape observing it, when it was plain that it would cause

detriment to the republic, and they might then put in its place the most

ancient of all laws, 'salus populi suprema lex.'"

The president, having suggested this ingenious expedient of the antique

Roman for getting rid of a constitutional provision by hiding the

statute-book, proceeded to give very practical reasons for setting, up

the supreme law of the people's safety on this occasion. And, certainly,

that magnificent common-place, which has saved and ruined so many States,

the most effective weapon in the political arsenal, whether wielded by

tyrants or champions of freedom, was not unreasonably recommended at this

crisis to the States in their contest with the refractory Zeelanders. It

was easy to talk big, but after all it would be difficult for that

doughty little sandbank, notwithstanding the indomitable energy which it

had so often shown by land and sea, to do battle by itself with the whole

Spanish empire. Nor was it quite consistent with republican principles

that the other six provinces should be plunged once more into war, when

they had agreed to accept peace and independence instead, only that

Zeeland should have its way.

The orator went on to show the absurdity, in his opinion, of permitting

one province to continue the war, when all seven united had not the means

to do it without the assistance of their allies. He pointed out, too, the

immense blunders that would be made, should it be thought that the Kings

of France and England were so much interested in saving the provinces

from perdition as to feel obliged in any event to render them assistance.

"Beware of committing an irreparable fault," he said, "on so insecure a

foundation. You are deceiving yourselves: And, in order that there may be

no doubt on the subject, we declare to you by express command that if

your adversaries refuse the truce, according to the articles presented to

you by us, it is the intention of our kings to assist you with armies and

subsidies, not only as during the past, but more powerfully than before.

If, on the contrary, the rupture comes from your side, and you despise

the advice they are giving you, you have no succour to expect from them.

The refusal of conditions so honourable and advantageous to your

commonwealth will render the war a useless one, and they are determined

to do nothing to bring the reproach upon themselves."

The president then intimated; not without adroitness, that the republic

was placing herself in a proud position by accepting the truce, and that

Spain was abasing herself by giving her consent to it. The world was

surprised that the States should hesitate at all.

There was much more of scholastic dissertation in the president's

address, but enough has been given to show its very peremptory character.

If the war was to go on it was to be waged mainly by Zeeland alone. This

was now plain beyond all peradventure. The other provinces had resolved

to accept the proposed treaty. The cities of Delft and Amsterdam, which

had stood out so long among the estates of Holland, soon renounced their

opposition. Prince Maurice, with praiseworthy patriotism, reconciled

himself with the inevitable, and now that the great majority had spoken,

began to use his influence with the factious minority.

On the day after Jeannin's speech he made a visit to the French

ambassadors. After there had been some little discussion among them,

Barneveld made his appearance. His visit seemed an accidental one, but it

had been previously arranged with the envoys.

The general conversation went on a little longer, when the Advocate,

frankly turning to the Prince, spoke of the pain which he felt at the

schism between them. He defended himself with honest warmth against the

rumours circulated, in which he was accused of being a Spanish partisan.

His whole life had been spent in fighting Spain, and he was now more

determined than ever in his hostility to that monarchy. He sincerely

believed that by the truce now proposed all the solid advantages of the

war would be secured, and that such a result was a triumphant one for the

republic. He was also most desirous of being restored to the friendship

and good opinion of the house of Nassau; having proved during his whole

life his sincere attachment to their interests--a sentiment never more

lively in his breast than at that moment.

This advance was graciously met by the stadholder, and the two

distinguished personages were, for the time at least, reconciled.

It was further debated as to the number of troops that it be advisable

for the States to maintain during the truce and Barneveld expressed his

decided opinion that thirty thousand men, at least, would be required.

This opinion gave the prince at least as much pleasure as did the

personal devotion expressed by the Advocate, and he now stated his

intention of working with the peace party.

The great result was now certain. Delft and Amsterdam withdrew from their

opposition to the treaty, so that Holland was unanimous before the year

closed; Zeeland, yielding to the influence of Maurice, likewise gave in

her adhesion to the truce.

The details of the mode in which the final arrangement was made are not

especially interesting. The discussion was fairly at an end. The subject

had been picked to the bones. It was agreed that the French ambassadors

should go over the frontier, and hold a preliminary interview with the

Spanish commissioners at Antwerp.

The armistice was to be continued by brief and repeated renewals, until

it should be superseded by the truce of years:

Meantime, Archduke Albert sent his father confessor, Inigo Brizuela, to

Spain, in order to make the treaty posed by Jeannin palatable to the

king?

The priest was to set forth to Philip, as only a ghostly confessor could

do with full effect, that he need not trouble himself about the

recognition by the proposed treaty of the independence of the United

Provinces. Ambiguous words had been purposely made use of in this regard,

he was to explain, so that not only the foreign ambassadors were of

opinion that the rights of Spain were not curtailed, but the emptiness of

the imaginary recognition of Dutch freedom had been proved by the sharp

criticism of the States.

It is true that Richardot, in the name of the archduke, had three months

before promised the consent of the king, as having already been obtained.

But Richardot knew very well when he made the statement that it was

false. The archduke, in subsequent correspondence with the ambassadors in

December, repeated the pledge. Yet, not only had the king not given that

consent, but he had expressly refused it by a courier sent in November.

Philip, now convinced by Brother Inigo that while agreeing to treat with

the States-General as with a free commonwealth, over which he pretended

to no authority, he really meant that he was dealing with vassals over

whom his authority was to be resumed when it suited his convenience, at

last gave his consent to the proposed treaty. The royal decision was,

however, kept for a time concealed, in order that the States might become

more malleable.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

A truce he honestly considered a pitfall of destruction

Alas! we must always have something to persecute

Argument is exhausted and either action or compromise begins

Beware of a truce even more than of a peace

Could handle an argument as well as a sword

God alone can protect us against those whom we trust

Humble ignorance as the safest creed

Man is never so convinced of his own wisdom

Peace was unattainable, war was impossible, truce was inevitable

Readiness at any moment to defend dearly won liberties

Such an excuse was as bad as the accusation

The art of ruling the world by doing nothing

To doubt the infallibility of Calvin was as heinous a crime

What exchequer can accept chronic warfare and escape bankruptcy

Words are always interpreted to the disadvantage of the weak

HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS

From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609

By John Lothrop Motley

History United Netherlands, Volume 83, 1609