considerable sums of money to the negotiators made. Barneveld earnestly
protested against carrying out the custom on this occasion, and urged
that those presents should be given for the public use. He was overruled
by those who were more desirous of receiving their reward than he was,
and he accordingly, in common with the other diplomatists, accepted the
gifts.
The various details of these negotiations have been related by the author
in other volumes, to which the present one is intended as a sequel. It
has been thought necessary merely to recall very briefly a few salient
passages in the career of the Advocate up to the period when the present
history really opens.
Their bearing upon subsequent events will easily be observed. The truce
was the work of Barneveld. It was detested by Maurice and by Maurice's
partisans.
"I fear that our enemies and evil reports are the cause of many of our
difficulties," said the Advocate to the States' envoy in Paris, in 1606.
"You are to pay no heed to private advices. Believe and make others
believe that more than one half the inhabitants of the cities and in the
open country are inclined to peace. And I believe, in case of continuing
adversities, that the other half will not remain constant, principally
because the Provinces are robbed of all traffic, prosperity, and
navigation, through the actions of France and England. I have always
thought it for the advantage of his Majesty to sustain us in such wise as
would make us useful in his service. As to his remaining permanently at
peace with Spain, that would seem quite out of the question."
The King had long kept, according to treaty, a couple of French regiments
in the States' service, and furnished, or was bound to furnish, a certain
yearly sum for their support. But the expenses of the campaigning had
been rapidly increasing and the results as swiftly dwindling. The
Advocate now explained that, "without loss both of important places and
of reputation," the States could not help spending every month that they
took the field 200,000 florins over and above the regular contributions,
and some months a great deal more. This sum, he said, in nine months,
would more than eat up the whole subsidy of the King. If they were to be
in the field by March or beginning of April, they would require from him
an extraordinary sum of 200,000 crowns, and as much more in June or July.
Eighteen months later, when the magnificent naval victory of Heemskerk
in the Bay of Gibraltar had just made a startling interlude to the
languishing negotiations for peace, the Advocate again warned the French
King of the difficulty in which the Republic still laboured of carrying
on the mighty struggle alone. Spain was the common enemy of all. No
peace or hope was possible for the leading powers as long as Spain was
perpetually encamped in the very heart of Western Europe. The
Netherlands were not fighting their own battle merely, but that of
freedom and independence against the all-encroaching world-power. And
their means to carry on the conflict were dwindling, while at the same
time there was a favourable opportunity for cropping some fruit from
their previous labours and sacrifices.
"We are led to doubt," he wrote once more to the envoy in France,
"whether the King's full powers will come from Spain. This defeat is
hard for the Spaniards to digest. Meantime our burdens are quite above
our capacity, as you will understand by the enclosed statement, which is
made out with much exactness to show what is absolutely necessary for a
vigorous defence on land and a respectable position at sea to keep things
from entire confusion. The Provinces could raise means for the half of
this estimate. But, it is a great difference when the means differ one
half from the expenses. The sovereignst and most assured remedy would be
the one so often demanded, often projected, and sometimes almost prepared
for execution, namely that our neighbour kings, princes, and republics
should earnestly take the matter in hand and drive the Spaniards and
their adherents out of the Netherlands and over the mountains. Their own
dignity and security ought not to permit such great bodies of troops of
both belligerents permanently massed in the Netherlands. Still less
ought they to allow these Provinces to fall into the hands of the
Spaniards, whence they could with so much more power and convenience make
war upon all kings, princes, and republics. This must be prevented by
one means or another. It ought to be enough for every one that we have
been between thirty and forty years a firm bulwark against Spanish
ambition. Our constancy and patience ought to be strengthened by counsel
and by deed in order that we may exist; a Christian sympathy and a small
assistance not being sufficient. Believe and cause to be believed that
the present condition of our affairs requires more aid in counsel and
money than ever before, and that nothing could be better bestowed than to
further this end.
"Messieurs Jeannin, Buzenval, and de Russy have been all here these
twelve days. We have firm hopes that other kings, princes, and republics
will not stay upon formalities, but will also visit the patients here in
order to administer sovereign remedies.
"Lend no ear to any flying reports. We say with the wise men over there,
'Metuo Danaos et dons ferentes.' We know our antagonists well, and trust
their hearts no more than before, 'sed ultra posse non est esse.' To
accept more burthens than we can pay for will breed military mutiny;
to tax the community above its strength will cause popular tumults,
especially in 'rebus adversis,' of which the beginnings were seen last
year, and without a powerful army the enemy is not to be withstood. I
have received your letters to the 17th May. My advice is to trust to his
upright proceedings and with patience to overcome all things. Thus shall
the detractors and calumniators best be confounded. Assure his Majesty
and his ministers that I will do my utmost to avert our ruin and his
Majesty's disservice."
The treaty was made, and from that time forth the antagonism between the
eminent statesman and the great military chieftain became inevitable.
The importance of the one seemed likely to increase day by day. The
occupation of the other for a time was over.
During the war Maurice had been, with exception of Henry IV., the most
considerable personage in Europe. He was surrounded with that visible
atmosphere of power the poison of which it is so difficult to resist, and
through the golden haze of which a mortal seems to dilate for the vulgar
eye into the supernatural. The attention of Christendom was perpetually
fixed upon him. Nothing like his sieges, his encampments, his military
discipline, his scientific campaigning had been seen before in modern
Europe. The youthful aristocracy from all countries thronged to his camp
to learn the game of war, for he had restored by diligent study of the
ancients much that was noble in that pursuit, and had elevated into an
art that which had long since degenerated into a system of butchery,
marauding, and rapine. And he had fought with signal success and
unquestionable heroism the most important and most brilliant pitched
battle of the age. He was a central figure of the current history of
Europe. Pagan nations looked up to him as one of the leading sovereigns
of Christendom. The Emperor of Japan addressed him as his brother
monarch, assured him that his subjects trading to that distant empire
should be welcomed and protected, and expressed himself ashamed that so
great a prince, whose name and fame had spread through the world, should
send his subjects to visit a country so distant and unknown, and offer
its emperor a friendship which he was unconscious of deserving.
He had been a commander of armies and a chief among men since he came to
man's estate, and he was now in the very vigour of life, in his forty-
second year. Of Imperial descent and closely connected by blood or
alliance with many of the most illustrious of reigning houses, the
acknowledged master of the most royal and noble of all sciences, he was
of the stuff of which kings were made, and belonged by what was then
accounted right divine to the family of kings. His father's death had
alone prevented his elevation to the throne of Holland, and such
possession of half the sovereignty of the United Netherlands would
probably have expanded into dominion over all the seven with a not
fantastic possibility of uniting the ten still obedient provinces into a
single realm. Such a kingdom would have been more populous and far
wealthier than contemporary Great Britain and Ireland. Maurice, then a
student at Leyden, was too young at that crisis, and his powers too
undeveloped to justify any serious attempt to place him in his father's
place.
The Netherlands drifted into a confederacy of aristocratic republics, not
because they had planned a republic, but because they could not get a
king, foreign or native. The documents regarding the offer of the
sovereign countship to William remained in the possession of Maurice, and
a few years before the peace there had been a private meeting of leading
personages, of which Barneveld was the promoter and chief spokesman, to
take into consideration the propriety and possibility of conferring that
sovereignty upon the son which had virtually belonged to the father. The
obstacles were deemed so numerous, and especially the scheme seemed so
fraught with danger to Maurice, that it was reluctantly abandoned by his
best friends, among whom unquestionably was the Advocate.
There was no reason whatever why the now successful and mature soldier,
to whom the country was under such vast obligations, should not aspire
to the sovereignty. The Provinces had not pledged themselves to
republicanism, but rather to monarchy, and the crown, although secretly
coveted by Henry IV., could by no possibility now be conferred on any
other man than Maurice. It was no impeachment on his character that he
should nourish thoughts in which there was nothing criminal.
But the peace negotiations had opened a chasm. It was obvious enough
that Barneveld having now so long exercised great powers, and become as
it were the chief magistrate of an important commonwealth, would not be
so friendly as formerly to its conversion into a monarchy and to the
elevation of the great soldier to its throne. The Advocate had even been
sounded, cautiously and secretly, so men believed, by the Princess-
Dowager, Louise de Coligny, widow of William the silent, as to the
feasibility of procuring the sovereignty for Maurice. She had done this
at the instigation of Maurice, who had expressed his belief that the
favourable influence of the Advocate would make success certain and who
had represented to her that, as he was himself resolved never to marry,
the inheritance after his death would fall to her son Frederick Henry.
The Princess, who was of a most amiable disposition, adored her son.
Devoted to the House of Nassau and a great admirer of its chief, she had
a long interview with Barneveld, in which she urged the scheme upon his
attention without in any probability revealing that she had come to him
at the solicitation of Maurice.
The Advocate spoke to her with frankness and out of the depths of his
heart. He professed an ardent attachment to her family, a profound
reverence for the virtues, sacrifices, and achievements of her lamented
husband, and a warm desire to do everything to further the interests of
the son who had proved himself so worthy of his parentage.
But he proved to her that Maurice, in seeking the sovereignty, was
seeking his ruin. The Hollanders, he said, liked to be persuaded and not
forced. Having triumphantly shaken off the yoke of a powerful king, they
would scarcely consent now to accept the rule of any personal sovereign.
The desire to save themselves from the claws of Spain had led them
formerly to offer the dominion over them to various potentates. Now that
they had achieved peace and independence and were delivered from the
fears of Spanish ferocity and French intrigue, they shuddered at the
dangers from royal hands out of which they had at last escaped. He
believed that they would be capable of tearing in pieces any one who
might make the desired proposition. After all, he urged, Maurice was a
hundred times more fortunate as he was than if he should succeed in
desires so opposed to his own good. This splendour of sovereignty was a
false glare which would lead him to a precipice. He had now the power of
a sovereign without the envy which ever followed it. Having essentially
such power, he ought, like his father, to despise an empty name, which
would only make him hated. For it was well known that William the Silent
had only yielded to much solicitation, agreeing to accept that which then
seemed desirable for the country's good but to him was more than
indifferent.
Maurice was captain-general and admiral-general of five provinces. He
appointed to governments and to all military office. He had a share of
appointment to the magistracies. He had the same advantages and the same
authority as had been enjoyed in the Netherlands by the ancient sovereign
counts, by the dukes of Burgundy, by Emperor Charles V. himself.
Every one now was in favour of increasing his pensions, his salaries, his
material splendour. Should he succeed in seizing the sovereignty, men
would envy him even to the ribbands of his pages' and his lackeys' shoes.
He turned to the annals of Holland and showed the Princess that there had
hardly been a sovereign count against whom his subjects had not revolted,
marching generally into the very courtyard of the palace at the Hague in
order to take his life.
Convinced by this reasoning, Louise de Coligny had at once changed her
mind, and subsequently besought her stepson to give up a project sure to
be fatal to his welfare, his peace of mind, and the good of the country.
Maurice listened to her coldly, gave little heed to the Advocate's logic,
and hated him in his heart from that day forth.
The Princess remained loyal to Barneveld to the last.
Thus the foundation was laid of that terrible enmity which, inflamed by
theological passion, was to convert the period of peace into a hell, to
rend the Provinces asunder when they had most need of repose, and to lead
to tragical results for ever to be deplored. Already in 1607 Francis
Aerssens had said that the two had become so embroiled and things had
gone so far that one or the other would have to leave the country. He
permitted also the ridiculous statement to be made in his house at Paris,
that Henry IV. believed the Advocate to have become Spanish, and had
declared that Prince Maurice would do well to have him put into a sack
and thrown into the sea.
His life had been regularly divided into two halves, the campaigning
season and the period of winter quarters. In the one his business, and
his talk was of camps, marches, sieges, and battles only. In the other
he was devoted to his stud, to tennis, to mathematical and mechanical
inventions, and to chess, of which he was passionately fond, and which he
did not play at all well. A Gascon captain serving in the States' army
was his habitual antagonist in that game, and, although the stakes were
but a crown a game, derived a steady income out of his gains, which were
more than equal to his pay. The Prince was sulky when he lost, sitting,
when the candles were burned out and bed-time had arrived, with his hat
pulled over his brows, without bidding his guest good night, and leaving
him to find his way out as he best could; and, on the contrary, radiant
with delight when successful, calling for valets to light the departing
captain through the corridor, and accompanying him to the door of the
apartment himself. That warrior was accordingly too shrewd not to allow
his great adversary as fair a share of triumph as was consistent with
maintaining the frugal income on which he reckoned.
He had small love for the pleasures of the table, but was promiscuous
and unlicensed in his amours. He was methodical in his household
arrangements, and rather stingy than liberal in money matters. He
personally read all his letters, accounts, despatches, and other
documents trivial or important, but wrote few letters with his own hand,
so that, unlike his illustrious father's correspondence, there is little
that is characteristic to be found in his own. He was plain but not
shabby in attire, and was always dressed in exactly the same style,
wearing doublet and hose of brown woollen, a silk under vest, a short
cloak lined with velvet, a little plaited ruff on his neck, and very
loose boots. He ridiculed the smart French officers who, to show their
fine legs, were wont to wear such tight boots as made them perspire to
get into them, and maintained, in precept and practice, that a man should
be able to jump into his boots and mount and ride at a moment's notice.
The only ornaments he indulged in, except, of course, on state occasions,
were a golden hilt to his famous sword, and a rope of diamonds tied
around his felt hat.
He was now in the full flower of his strength and his fame, in his forty-
second year, and of a noble and martial presence. The face, although
unquestionably handsome, offered a sharp contrast within itself; the
upper half all intellect, the lower quite sensual. Fair hair growing
thin, but hardly tinged with grey, a bright, cheerful, and thoughtful
forehead, large hazel eyes within a singularly large orbit of brow; a
straight, thin, slightly aquiline, well-cut nose--such features were at
open variance with the broad, thick-lipped, sensual mouth, the heavy
pendant jowl, the sparse beard on the glistening cheek, and the moleskin-
like moustachio and chin tuft. Still, upon the whole, it was a face and
figure which gave the world assurance of a man and a commander of men.
Power and intelligence were stamped upon him from his birth.
Barneveld was tall and majestic of presence, with large quadrangular
face, austere, blue eyes looking authority and command, a vast forehead,
and a grizzled beard. Of fluent and convincing eloquence with tongue and
pen, having the power of saying much in few words, he cared much more for
the substance than the graces of speech or composition. This tendency
was not ill exemplified in a note of his written on a sheet of questions
addressed to him by a States' ambassador about to start on an important
mission, but a novice in his business, the answers to which questions
were to serve for his diplomatic instructions.
"Item and principally," wrote the Envoy, "to request of M. de Barneveld
a formulary or copy of the best, soundest, wisest, and best couched
despatches done by several preceding ambassadors in order to regulate
myself accordingly for the greater service of the Province and for my
uttermost reputation."
The Advocate's answer, scrawled in his nearly illegible hand, was--
"Unnecessary. The truth in shortest about matters of importance shall be
taken for good style."
With great love of power, which he was conscious of exerting with ease to
himself and for the good of the public, he had little personal vanity,
and not the smallest ambition of authorship. Many volumes might be
collected out of the vast accumulation of his writings now mouldering and
forgotten in archives. Had the language in which they are written become
a world's language, they would be worthy of attentive study, as
containing noble illustrations of the history and politics of his age,
with theories and sentiments often far in advance of his age. But he
cared not for style. "The truth in shortest about matters of importance"
was enough for him; but the world in general, and especially the world of
posterity, cares much for style. The vehicle is often prized more than
the freight. The name of Barneveld is fast fading out of men's memory.
The fame of his pupil and companion in fortune and misfortune, Hugo
Grotius, is ever green. But Grotius was essentially an author rather
than a statesman: he wrote for the world and posterity with all the love,
pride, and charm of the devotee of literature, and he composed his
noblest works in a language which is ever living because it is dead.
Some of his writings, epochmaking when they first appeared, are text-
books still familiar in every cultivated household on earth. Yet
Barneveld was vastly his superior in practical statesmanship, in law, in
the science of government, and above all in force of character, while
certainly not his equal in theology, nor making any pretensions to
poetry. Although a ripe scholar, he rarely wrote in Latin, and not often
in French. His ambition was to do his work thoroughly according to his
view of duty, and to ask God's blessing upon it without craving overmuch
the applause of men.
Such were the two men, the soldier and the statesman. Would the
Republic, fortunate enough to possess two such magnificent and widely
contrasted capacities, be wise enough to keep them in its service, each
supplementing the other, and the two combining in a perfect whole?
Or was the great law of the Discords of the World, as potent as that
other principle of Universal Harmony and planetary motion which an
illustrious contemporary--that Wurtemberg astronomer, once a soldier of
the fierce Alva, now the half-starved astrologer of the brain-sick
Rudolph--was at that moment discovering, after "God had waited six
thousand years for him to do it," to prevail for the misery of the
Republic and shame of Europe? Time was to show.
The new state had forced itself into the family of sovereignties somewhat
to the displeasure of most of the Lord's anointed. Rebellious and
republican, it necessarily excited the jealousy of long-established and
hereditary governments.
The King of Spain had not formally acknowledged the independence of the
United Provinces. He had treated with them as free, and there was
supposed to be much virtue in the conjunction. But their sovereign
independence was virtually recognized by the world. Great nations had
entered into public and diplomatic relations and conventions with them,
and their agents at foreign courts were now dignified with the rank and
title of ambassadors.
The Spanish king had likewise refused to them the concession of the right
of navigation and commerce in the East Indies, but it was a matter of
notoriety that the absence of the word India, suppressed as it was in the
treaty, implied an immense triumph on the part of the States, and that
their flourishing and daily increasing commerce in the farthest East and
the imperial establishments already rising there were cause of envy and
jealousy not to Spain alone, but to friendly powers.
Yet the government of Great Britain affected to regard them as
something less than a sovereign state. Although Elizabeth had refused
the sovereignty once proffered to her, although James had united with
Henry IV. in guaranteeing the treaty just concluded between the States
and Spain, that monarch had the wonderful conception that the Republic
was in some sort a province of his own, because he still held the
cautionary towns in pledge for the loans granted by his predecessor.
His agents at Constantinople were instructed to represent the new state
as unworthy to accredit its envoys as those of an independent power.
The Provinces were represented as a collection of audacious rebels,
a piratical scum of the sea. But the Sultan knew his interests better
than to incur the enmity of this rising maritime power. The Dutch envoy
declaring that he would sooner throw himself into the Bosphorus than
remain to be treated with less consideration than that accorded to the
ministers of all great powers, the remonstrances of envious colleagues
were hushed, and Haga was received with all due honours.