7 files changed, 51774 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/4899.txt b/4899.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..13e5b63
--- /dev/null
+++ b/4899.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,25769 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life of John of Barneveld, 1609-23,
+Complete, by John Lothrop Motley
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Life of John of Barneveld, 1609-23, Complete
+
+Author: John Lothrop Motley
+
+Release Date: October 15, 2006 [EBook #4899]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN OF BARNEVELD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND
+
+WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR
+
+By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+
+1880
+
+
+MOTLEY'S HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS, Project Gutenberg Edition, Volume 99
+
+THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JOHN OF BARNEVELD, 1609-1623, Complete
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE:
+
+These volumes make a separate work in themselves. They form also the
+natural sequel to the other histories already published by the Author, as
+well as the necessary introduction to that concluding portion of his
+labours which he has always desired to lay before the public; a History
+of the Thirty Years' War.
+
+For the two great wars which successively established the independence of
+Holland and the disintegration of Germany are in reality but one; a
+prolonged Tragedy of Eighty Years. The brief pause, which in the
+Netherlands was known as the Twelve Years' Truce with Spain, was
+precisely the epoch in which the elements were slowly and certainly
+gathering for the renewal over nearly the whole surface of civilized
+Europe of that immense conflict which for more than forty years had been
+raging within the narrow precincts of the Netherlands.
+
+The causes and character of the two wars were essentially the same. There
+were many changes of persons and of scenery during a struggle which
+lasted for nearly three generations of mankind; yet a natural succession
+both of actors, motives, and events will be observed from the beginning
+to the close.
+
+The designs of Charles V. to establish universal monarchy, which he had
+passionately followed for a lifetime through a series of colossal crimes
+against humanity and of private misdeeds against individuals, such as it
+has rarely been permitted to a single despot to perpetrate, had been
+baffled at last. Disappointed, broken, but even to our own generation
+never completely unveiled, the tyrant had withdrawn from the stage of
+human affairs, leaving his son to carry on the great conspiracy against
+Human Right, independence of nations, liberty of thought, and equality of
+religions, with the additional vigour which sprang from intensity of
+conviction.
+
+For Philip possessed at least that superiority over his father that he
+was a sincere bigot. In the narrow and gloomy depths of his soul he had
+doubtless persuaded himself that it was necessary for the redemption of
+the human species that the empire of the world should be vested in his
+hands, that Protestantism in all its forms should be extirpated as a
+malignant disease, and that to behead, torture, burn alive, and bury
+alive all heretics who opposed the decree of himself and the Holy Church
+was the highest virtue by which he could merit Heaven.
+
+The father would have permitted Protestantism if Protestantism would have
+submitted to universal monarchy. There would have been small difficulty
+in the early part of his reign in effecting a compromise between Rome and
+Augsburg, had the gigantic secular ambition of Charles not preferred to
+weaken the Church and to convert conscientious religious reform into
+political mutiny; a crime against him who claimed the sovereignty of
+Christendom.
+
+The materials for the true history of that reign lie in the Archives of
+Spain, Austria, Rome, Venice, and the Netherlands, and in many other
+places. When out of them one day a complete and authentic narrative shall
+have been constructed, it will be seen how completely the policy of
+Charles foreshadowed and necessitated that of Philip, how logically,
+under the successors of Philip, the Austrian dream of universal empire
+ended in the shattering, in the minute subdivision, and the reduction to
+a long impotence of that Germanic Empire which had really belonged to
+Charles.
+
+Unfortunately the great Republic which, notwithstanding the aid of
+England on the one side and of France on the other, had withstood almost
+single-handed the onslaughts of Spain, now allowed the demon of religious
+hatred to enter into its body at the first epoch of peace, although it
+had successfully exorcised the evil spirit during the long and terrible
+war.
+
+There can be no doubt whatever that the discords within the interior of
+the Dutch Republic during the period of the Truce, and their tragic
+catastrophe, had weakened her purpose and partially paralysed her arm.
+When the noble Commonwealth went forward to the renewed and general
+conflict which succeeded the concentrated one in which it had been the
+chief actor, the effect of those misspent twelve years became apparent.
+
+Indeed the real continuity of the war was scarcely broken by the fitful,
+armistice. The death of John of Cleve, an event almost simultaneous with
+the conclusion of the Truce, seemed to those gifted with political vision
+the necessary precursor of a new and more general war.
+
+The secret correspondence of Barneveld shows the almost prophetic
+accuracy with which he indicated the course of events and the approach of
+an almost universal conflict, while that tragedy was still in the future,
+and was to be enacted after he had been laid in his bloody grave. No man
+then living was so accustomed as he was to sweep the political horizon,
+and to estimate the signs and portents of the times. No statesman was
+left in Europe during the epoch of the Twelve Years' Truce to compare
+with him in experience, breadth of vision, political tact, or
+administrative sagacity.
+
+Imbued with the grand traditions and familiar with the great personages
+of a most heroic epoch; the trusted friend or respected counsellor of
+William the Silent, Henry IV., Elizabeth, and the sages and soldiers on
+whom they leaned; having been employed during an already long lifetime in
+the administration of greatest affairs, he stood alone after the deaths
+of Henry of France and the second Cecil, and the retirement of Sully,
+among the natural leaders of mankind.
+
+To the England of Elizabeth, of Walsingham, Raleigh, and the Cecils, had
+succeeded the Great Britain of James, with his Carrs and Carletons,
+Nauntons, Lakes, and Winwoods. France, widowed of Henry and waiting for
+Richelieu, lay in the clutches of Concini's, Epernons, and Bouillons,
+bound hand and foot to Spain. Germany, falling from Rudolph to Matthias,
+saw Styrian Ferdinand in the background ready to shatter the fabric of a
+hundred years of attempted Reformation. In the Republic of the
+Netherlands were the great soldier and the only remaining statesman of
+the age. At a moment when the breathing space had been agreed upon before
+the conflict should be renewed; on a wider field than ever, between
+Spanish-Austrian world-empire and independence of the nations; between
+the ancient and only Church and the spirit of religious Equality; between
+popular Right and royal and sacerdotal Despotism; it would have been
+desirable that the soldier and the statesman should stand side by side,
+and that the fortunate Confederacy, gifted with two such champions and
+placed by its own achievements at the very head of the great party of
+resistance, should be true to herself.
+
+These volumes contain a slight and rapid sketch of Barneveld's career up
+to the point at which the Twelve Years' Truce with Spain was signed in
+the year 1609. In previous works the Author has attempted to assign the
+great Advocate's place as part and parcel of history during the
+continuance of the War for Independence. During the period of the Truce
+he will be found the central figure. The history of Europe, especially of
+the Netherlands, Britain, France, and Germany, cannot be thoroughly
+appreciated without a knowledge of the designs, the labours, and the fate
+of Barneveld.
+
+The materials for estimating his character and judging his judges lie in
+the national archives of the land of which he was so long the foremost
+citizen. But they have not long been accessible. The letters, state
+papers, and other documents remain unprinted, and have rarely been read.
+M. van Deventer has published three most interesting volumes of the
+Advocate's correspondence, but they reach only to the beginning of 1609.
+He has suspended his labours exactly at the moment when these volumes
+begin. I have carefully studied however nearly the whole of that
+correspondence, besides a mass of other papers. The labour is not light,
+for the handwriting of the great Advocate is perhaps the worst that ever
+existed, and the papers, although kept in the admirable order which
+distinguishes the Archives of the Hague, have passed through many hands
+at former epochs before reaching their natural destination in the
+treasure-house of the nation. Especially the documents connected with the
+famous trial were for a long time hidden from mortal view, for
+Barneveld's judges had bound themselves by oath to bury the proceedings
+out of sight. And the concealment lasted for centuries. Very recently a
+small portion of those papers has been published by the Historical
+Society of Utrecht. The "Verhooren," or Interrogatories of the Judges,
+and the replies of Barneveld, have thus been laid before the reading
+public of Holland, while within the last two years the distinguished and
+learned historian, Professor Fruin, has edited the "Verhooren" of Hugo
+Grotius.
+
+But papers like these, important as they are, make but a slender portion
+of the material out of which a judgment concerning these grave events can
+be constructed. I do not therefore offer an apology for the somewhat
+copious extracts which I have translated and given in these volumes from
+the correspondence of Barneveld and from other manuscripts of great
+value--most of them in the Royal Archives of Holland and Belgium--which
+are unknown to the public.
+
+I have avoided as much as possible any dealings with the theological
+controversies so closely connected with the events which I have attempted
+to describe. This work aims at being a political study. The subject is
+full of lessons, examples, and warnings for the inhabitants of all free
+states. Especially now that the republican system of government is
+undergoing a series of experiments with more or less success in one
+hemisphere--while in our own land it is consolidated, powerful, and
+unchallenged--will the conflicts between the spirits of national
+centralization and of provincial sovereignty, and the struggle between
+the church, the sword, and the magistracy for supremacy in a free
+commonwealth, as revealed in the first considerable republic of modern
+history, be found suggestive of deep reflection.
+
+Those who look in this work for a history of the Synod of Dordtrecht will
+look in vain. The Author has neither wish nor power to grapple with the
+mysteries and passions which at that epoch possessed so many souls. The
+Assembly marks a political period. Its political aspects have been
+anxiously examined, but beyond the ecclesiastical threshold there has
+been no attempt to penetrate.
+
+It was necessary for my purpose to describe in some detail the relations
+of Henry IV. with the Dutch Republic during the last and most pregnant
+year of his life, which makes the first of the present history. These
+relations are of European importance, and the materials for appreciating
+them are of unexpected richness, in the Dutch and Belgian Archives.
+
+Especially the secret correspondence, now at the Hague, of that very able
+diplomatist Francis Aerssens with Barneveld during the years 1609, 1610,
+and 1611, together with many papers at Brussels, are full of vital
+importance.
+
+They throw much light both on the vast designs which filled the brain of
+Henry at this fatal epoch and on his extraordinary infatuation for the
+young Princess of Conde by which they were traversed, and which was
+productive of such widespread political anal tragical results. This
+episode forms a necessary portion of my theme, and has therefore been set
+forth from original sources.
+
+I am under renewed obligations to my friend M. Gachard, the eminent
+publicist and archivist of Belgium, for his constant and friendly offices
+to me (which I have so often experienced before), while studying the
+documents under his charge relating to this epoch; especially the secret
+correspondence of Archduke Albert with Philip III, and his ministers, and
+with Pecquius, the Archduke's agent at Paris.
+
+It is also a great pleasure to acknowledge the unceasing courtesy and
+zealous aid rendered me during my renewed studies in the Archives at the
+Hague--lasting through nearly two years--by the Chief Archivist, M. van
+den Berg, and the gentlemen connected with that institution, especially
+M. de Jonghe and M. Hingman, without whose aid it would have been
+difficult for me to decipher and to procure copies of the almost
+illegible holographs of Barneveld.
+
+I must also thank M. van Deventer for communicating copies of some
+curious manuscripts relating to my subject, some from private archives in
+Holland, and others from those of Simancas.
+
+A single word only remains to be said in regard to the name of the
+statesman whose career I have undertaken to describe.
+
+His proper appellation and that by which he has always been known in his
+own country is Oldenbarneveld, but in his lifetime and always in history
+from that time to this he has been called Barneveld in English as well as
+French, and this transformation, as it were, of the name has become so
+settled a matter that after some hesitation it has been adopted in the
+present work.
+
+The Author would take this opportunity of expressing his gratitude for
+the indulgence with which his former attempts to illustrate an important
+period of European history have been received by the public, and his
+anxious hope that the present volumes may be thought worthy of attention.
+They are the result at least of severe and conscientious labour at the
+original sources of history, but the subject is so complicated and
+difficult that it may well be feared that the ability to depict and
+unravel is unequal to the earnestness with which the attempt has been
+made.
+
+LONDON, 1873.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JOHN OF BARNEVELD, v1, 1609
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+   John of Barneveld the Founder of the Commonwealth of the United
+   Provinces--Maurice of Orange Stadholder, but Servant to the States-
+   General--The Union of Utrecht maintained--Barneveld makes a
+   Compromise between Civil Functionaries and Church Officials--
+   Embassies to France, England, and to Venice--the Appointment of
+   Arminius to be Professor of Theology at Leyden creates Dissension--
+   The Catholic League opposed by the Great Protestant Union--Death of
+   the Duke of Cleve and Struggle for his Succession--The Elector of
+   Brandenburg and Palatine of Neuburg hold the Duchies at Barneveld's
+   Advice against the Emperor, though having Rival Claims themselves--
+   Negotiations with the King of France--He becomes the Ally of the
+   States-General to Protect the Possessory Princes, and prepares for
+   war.
+
+I propose to retrace the history of a great statesman's career. That
+statesman's name, but for the dark and tragic scenes with which it was
+ultimately associated, might after the lapse of two centuries and a half
+have faded into comparative oblivion, so impersonal and shadowy his
+presence would have seemed upon the great European theatre where he was
+so long a chief actor, and where his efforts and his achievements were
+foremost among those productive of long enduring and widespread results.
+
+There is no doubt whatever that John of Barneveld, Advocate and Seal
+Keeper of the little province of Holland during forty years of as
+troubled and fertile an epoch as any in human history, was second to none
+of his contemporary statesmen. Yet the singular constitution and
+historical position of the republic whose destinies he guided and the
+peculiar and abnormal office which he held combined to cast a veil over
+his individuality. The ever-teeming brain, the restless almost
+omnipresent hand, the fertile pen, the eloquent and ready tongue, were
+seen, heard, and obeyed by the great European public, by the monarchs,
+statesmen, and warriors of the time, at many critical moments of history,
+but it was not John of Barneveld that spoke to the world. Those "high and
+puissant Lords my masters the States-General" personified the young but
+already majestic republic. Dignified, draped, and concealed by that
+overshadowing title the informing and master spirit performed its never
+ending task.
+
+Those who study the enormous masses of original papers in the archives of
+the country will be amazed to find how the penmanship, most difficult to
+decipher, of the Advocate meets them at every turn. Letters to monarchs,
+generals, ambassadors, resolutions of councils, of sovereign assemblies,
+of trading corporations, of great Indian companies, legal and historical
+disquisitions of great depth and length on questions agitating Europe,
+constitutional arguments, drafts of treaties among the leading powers of
+the world, instructions to great commissions, plans for European
+campaigns, vast combinations covering the world, alliances of empire,
+scientific expeditions and discoveries--papers such as these covered now
+with the satirical dust of centuries, written in the small, crabbed,
+exasperating characters which make Barneveld's handwriting almost
+cryptographic, were once, when fairly engrossed and sealed with the great
+seal of the haughty burgher-aristocracy, the documents which occupied the
+close attention of the cabinets of Christendom.
+
+It is not unfrequent to find four or five important despatches compressed
+almost in miniature upon one sheet of gigantic foolscap. It is also
+curious to find each one of these rough drafts conscientiously beginning
+in the statesman's own hand with the elaborate phrases of compliment
+belonging to the epoch such as "Noble, strenuous, severe, highly
+honourable, very learned, very discreet, and very wise masters," and
+ending with "May the Lord God Almighty eternally preserve you and hold
+you in His holy keeping in this world and for ever"--decorations which
+one might have thought it safe to leave to be filled in by the secretary
+or copying clerk.
+
+Thus there have been few men at any period whose lives have been more
+closely identical than his with a national history. There have been few
+great men in any history whose names have become less familiar to the
+world, and lived less in the mouths of posterity. Yet there can be no
+doubt that if William the Silent was the founder of the independence of
+the United Provinces Barneveld was the founder of the Commonwealth
+itself. He had never the opportunity, perhaps he might have never had the
+capacity, to make such prodigious sacrifices in the cause of country as
+the great prince had done. But he had served his country strenuously from
+youth to old age with an abiding sense of duty, a steadiness of purpose,
+a broad vision, a firm grasp, and an opulence of resource such as not one
+of his compatriots could even pretend to rival.
+
+Had that country of which he was so long the first citizen maintained
+until our own day the same proportionate position among the empires of
+Christendom as it held in the seventeenth century, the name of John of
+Barneveld would have perhaps been as familiar to all men as it is at this
+moment to nearly every inhabitant of the Netherlands. Even now political
+passion is almost as ready to flame forth either in ardent affection or
+enthusiastic hatred as if two centuries and a half had not elapsed since
+his death. His name is so typical of a party, a polity, and a faith, so
+indelibly associated with a great historical cataclysm, as to render it
+difficult even for the grave, the conscientious, the learned, the
+patriotic of his own compatriots to speak of him with absolute
+impartiality.
+
+A foreigner who loves and admires all that is great and noble in the
+history of that famous republic and can have no hereditary bias as to its
+ecclesiastical or political theories may at least attempt the task with
+comparative coldness, although conscious of inability to do thorough
+justice to a most complex subject.
+
+In former publications devoted to Netherland history I have endeavoured
+to trace the course of events of which the life and works of the Advocate
+were a vital ingredient down to the period when Spain after more than
+forty years of hard fighting virtually acknowledged the independence of
+the Republic and concluded with her a truce of twelve years.
+
+That convention was signed in the spring of 1609. The ten ensuing years
+in Europe were comparatively tranquil, but they were scarcely to be
+numbered among the full and fruitful sheaves of a pacific epoch. It was a
+pause, a breathing spell during which the sulphurous clouds which had
+made the atmosphere of Christendom poisonous for nearly half a century
+had sullenly rolled away, while at every point of the horizon they were
+seen massing themselves anew in portentous and ever accumulating
+strength. At any moment the faint and sickly sunshine in which poor
+exhausted Humanity was essaying a feeble twitter of hope as it plumed
+itself for a peaceful flight might be again obscured. To us of a remote
+posterity the momentary division of epochs seems hardly discernible. So
+rapidly did that fight of Demons which we call the Thirty Years' War
+tread on the heels of the forty years' struggle for Dutch Independence
+which had just been suspended that we are accustomed to think and speak
+of the Eighty Years' War as one pure, perfect, sanguinary whole.
+
+And indeed the Tragedy which was soon to sweep solemnly across Europe was
+foreshadowed in the first fitful years of peace. The throb of the
+elementary forces already shook the soil of Christendom. The fantastic
+but most significant conflict in the territories of the dead Duke of
+Clove reflected the distant and gigantic war as in a mirage. It will be
+necessary to direct the reader's attention at the proper moment to that
+episode, for it was one in which the beneficent sagacity of Barneveld was
+conspicuously exerted in the cause of peace and conservation. Meantime it
+is not agreeable to reflect that this brief period of nominal and armed
+peace which the Republic had conquered after nearly two generations of
+warfare was employed by her in tearing her own flesh. The heroic sword
+which had achieved such triumphs in the cause of freedom could have been
+bitter employed than in an attempt at political suicide.
+
+In a picture of the last decade of Barneveld's eventful life his
+personality may come more distinctly forward perhaps than in previous
+epochs. It will however be difficult to disentangle a single thread from
+the great historical tapestry of the Republic and of Europe in which his
+life and achievements are interwoven. He was a public man in the fullest
+sense of the word, and without his presence and influence the record of
+Holland, France, Spain, Britain, and Germany might have been essentially
+modified.
+
+The Republic was so integral a part of that system which divided Europe
+into two great hostile camps according to creeds rather than frontiers
+that the history of its foremost citizen touches at every point the
+general history of Christendom.
+
+The great peculiarity of the Dutch constitution at this epoch was that no
+principle was absolutely settled. In throwing off a foreign tyranny and
+successfully vindicating national independence the burghers and nobles
+had not had leisure to lay down any organic law. Nor had the day for
+profound investigation of the political or social contract arrived. Men
+dealt almost exclusively with facts, and when the facts arranged
+themselves illogically and incoherently the mischief was grave and
+difficult to remedy. It is not a trifling inconvenience for an organized
+commonwealth to be in doubt as to where, in whom, and of what nature is
+its sovereignty. Yet this was precisely the condition of the United
+Netherlands. To the eternal world so dazzling were the reputation and the
+achievements of their great captain that he was looked upon by many as
+the legitimate chief of the state and doubtless friendly monarchs would
+have cordially welcomed him into their brotherhood.
+
+During the war he had been surrounded by almost royal state. Two hundred
+officers lived daily at his table. Great nobles and scions of sovereign
+houses were his pupils or satellites. The splendour of military despotism
+and the awe inspired by his unquestioned supremacy in what was deemed the
+greatest of all sciences invested the person of Maurice of Nassau with a
+grandeur which many a crowned potentate might envy. His ample
+appointments united with the spoils of war provided him with almost royal
+revenues, even before the death of his elder brother Philip William had
+placed in his hands the principality and wealthy possessions of Orange.
+Hating contradiction, arbitrary by instinct and by military habit,
+impatient of criticism, and having long acknowledged no master in the
+chief business of state, he found himself at the conclusion of the truce
+with his great occupation gone, and, although generously provided for by
+the treasury of the Republic, yet with an income proportionately limited.
+
+Politics and theology were fields in which he had hardly served an
+apprenticeship, and it was possible that when he should step forward as a
+master in those complicated and difficult pursuits, soon to absorb the
+attention of the Commonwealth and the world, it might appear that war was
+not the only science that required serious preliminary studies.
+
+Meantime he found himself not a king, not the master of a nominal
+republic, but the servant of the States-General, and the limited
+stadholder of five out of seven separate provinces.
+
+And the States-General were virtually John of Barneveld. Could antagonism
+be more sharply defined? Jealousy, that potent principle which controls
+the regular movements and accounts for the aberrations of humanity in
+widest spheres as well as narrowest circles far more generally and
+conclusively than philosophers or historians have been willing to admit,
+began forthwith to manifest its subtle and irresistible influence.
+
+And there were not to be wanting acute and dangerous schemers who saw
+their profit in augmenting its intensity.
+
+The Seven Provinces, when the truce of twelve years had been signed, were
+neither exhausted nor impoverished. Yet they had just emerged from a
+forty years' conflict such as no people in human history had ever waged
+against a foreign tyranny. They had need to repose and recruit, but they
+stood among the foremost great powers of the day. It is not easy in
+imagination to thrust back the present leading empires of the earth into
+the contracted spheres of their not remote past. But to feel how a little
+confederacy of seven provinces loosely tied together by an ill-defined
+treaty could hold so prominent and often so controlling a place in the
+European system of the seventeenth century, we must remember that there
+was then no Germany, no Russia, no Italy, no United States of America,
+scarcely even a Great Britain in the sense which belongs to that mighty
+empire now.
+
+France, Spain, England, the Pope, and the Emperor were the leading powers
+with which the Netherlands were daily called on to solve great problems
+and try conclusions; the study of political international equilibrium,
+now rapidly and perhaps fortunately becoming one of the lost arts, being
+then the most indispensable duty of kings and statesmen.
+
+Spain and France, which had long since achieved for themselves the
+political union of many independent kingdoms and states into which they
+had been divided were the most considerable powers and of necessity
+rivals. Spain, or rather the House of Austria divided into its two great
+branches, still pursued its persistent and by no means fantastic dream of
+universal monarchy. Both Spain and France could dispose of somewhat
+larger resources absolutely, although not relatively, than the Seven
+Provinces, while at least trebling them in population. The yearly revenue
+of Spain after deduction of its pledged resources was perhaps equal to a
+million sterling, and that of France with the same reservation was about
+as much. England had hardly been able to levy and make up a yearly income
+of more than L600,000 or L700,000 at the end of Elizabeth's reign or in
+the first years of James, while the Netherlands had often proved
+themselves capable of furnishing annually ten or twelve millions of
+florins, which would be the equivalent of nearly a million sterling.
+
+The yearly revenues of the whole monarchy of the Imperial house of
+Habsburg can scarcely be stated at a higher figure than L350,000.
+
+Thus the political game--for it was a game--was by no means a desperate
+one for the Netherlands, nor the resources of the various players so
+unequally distributed as at first sight it might appear.
+
+The emancipation of the Provinces from the grasp of Spain and the
+establishment by them of a commonwealth, for that epoch a very free one,
+and which contained within itself the germs of a larger liberty,
+religious, political, and commercial, than had yet been known, was
+already one of the most considerable results of the Reformation. The
+probability of its continued and independent existence was hardly
+believed in by potentate or statesman outside its own borders, and had
+not been very long a decided article of faith even within them. The
+knotty problem of an acknowledgment of that existence, the admission of
+the new-born state into the family of nations, and a temporary peace
+guaranteed by two great powers, had at last been solved mainly by the
+genius of Barneveld working amid many disadvantages and against great
+obstructions. The truce had been made, and it now needed all the skill,
+coolness, and courage of a practical and original statesman to conduct
+the affairs of the Confederacy. The troubled epoch of peace was even now
+heaving with warlike emotions, and was hardly less stormy than the war
+which had just been suspended.
+
+The Republic was like a raft loosely strung together, floating almost on
+a level of the ocean, and often half submerged, but freighted with
+inestimable treasures for itself and the world. It needed an unsleeping
+eye and a powerful brain to conduct her over the quicksands and through
+the whirlpools of an unmapped and intricate course.
+
+The sovereignty of the country so far as its nature could be
+satisfactorily analysed seemed to be scattered through, and inherent in
+each one of, the multitudinous boards of magistracy--close corporations,
+self-elected--by which every city was governed. Nothing could be more
+preposterous. Practically, however, these boards were represented by
+deputies in each of the seven provincial assemblies, and these again sent
+councillors from among their number to the general assembly which was
+that of their High Mightinesses the Lords States-General.
+
+The Province of Holland, being richer and more powerful than all its six
+sisters combined, was not unwilling to impose a supremacy which on the
+whole was practically conceded by the rest. Thus the Union of Utrecht
+established in 1579 was maintained for want of anything better as the
+foundation of the Commonwealth.
+
+The Advocate and Keeper of the Great Seal of that province was therefore
+virtually prime minister, president, attorney-general, finance minister,
+and minister of foreign affairs of the whole republic. This was
+Barneveld's position. He took the lead in the deliberations both of the
+States of Holland and the States-General, moved resolutions, advocated
+great measures of state, gave heed to their execution, collected the
+votes, summed up the proceedings, corresponded with and instructed
+ambassadors, received and negotiated with foreign ministers, besides
+directing and holding in his hands the various threads of the home policy
+and the rapidly growing colonial system of the Republic.
+
+All this work Barneveld had been doing for thirty years.
+
+The Reformation was by no mans assured even in the lands where it had at
+first made the most essential progress. But the existence of the new
+commonwealth depended on the success of that great movement which had
+called it into being. Losing ground in France, fluctuating in England,
+Protestantism was apparently more triumphant in vast territories where
+the ancient Church was one day to recover its mastery. Of the population
+of Bohemia, there were perhaps ten Protestants to one Papist, while in
+the United Netherlands at least one-third of the people were still
+attached to the Catholic faith.
+
+The great religious struggle in Bohemia and other dominions of the
+Habsburg family was fast leading to a war of which no man could even
+imagine the horrors or foresee the vast extent. The Catholic League and
+the Protestant Union were slowly arranging Europe into two mighty
+confederacies.
+
+They were to give employment year after year to millions of mercenary
+freebooters who were to practise murder, pillage, and every imaginable
+and unimaginable outrage as the most legitimate industry that could
+occupy mankind. The Holy Empire which so ingeniously combined the worst
+characteristics of despotism and republicanism kept all Germany and half
+Europe in the turmoil of a perpetual presidential election. A theatre
+where trivial personages and graceless actors performed a tragi-comedy of
+mingled folly, intrigue, and crime, and where earnestness and vigour were
+destined to be constantly baffled, now offered the principal stage for
+the entertainment and excitement of Christendom.
+
+There was but one king in Europe, Henry the Bearnese. The men who sat on
+the thrones in Madrid, Vienna, London, would have lived and died unknown
+but for the crowns they wore, and while there were plenty of bustling
+politicians here and there in Christendom, there were not many statesmen.
+
+Among them there was no stronger man than John of Barneveld, and no man
+had harder or more complicated work to do.
+
+Born in Amersfoort in 1547, of the ancient and knightly house of
+Oldenbarneveldt, of patrician blood through all his ancestors both male
+and female, he was not the heir to large possessions, and was a diligent
+student and hardworking man from youth upward. He was not wont to boast
+of his pedigree until in later life, being assailed by vilest slander,
+all his kindred nearest or most remote being charged with every possible
+and unmentionable crime, and himself stigmatized as sprung from the
+lowest kennels of humanity--as if thereby his private character and
+public services could be more legitimately blackened--he was stung into
+exhibiting to the world the purity and antiquity of his escutcheon, and a
+roll of respectably placed, well estated, and authentically noble, if not
+at all illustrious, forefathers in his country's records of the previous
+centuries.
+
+Without an ancestor at his back he might have valued himself still more
+highly on the commanding place he held in the world by right divine of
+intellect, but as the father of lies seemed to have kept his creatures so
+busy with the Barneveld genealogy, it was not amiss for the statesman
+once for all to make the truth known.
+
+His studies in the universities of Holland, France, Italy, and Germany
+had been profound. At an early age he was one of the first civilians of
+the time. His manhood being almost contemporary with the great war of
+freedom, he had served as a volunteer and at his own expense through
+several campaigns, having nearly lost his life in the disastrous attempt
+to relieve the siege of Haarlem, and having been so disabled by sickness
+and exposure at the heroic leaguer of Leyden as to have been deprived of
+the joy of witnessing its triumphant conclusion.
+
+Successfully practising his profession afterwards before the tribunals of
+Holland, he had been called at the comparatively early age of twenty-nine
+to the important post of Chief Pensionary of Rotterdam. So long as
+William the Silent lived, that great prince was all in all to his
+country, and Barneveld was proud and happy to be among the most trusted
+and assiduous of his counsellors.
+
+When the assassination of William seemed for an instant to strike the
+Republic with paralysis, Barneveld was foremost among the statesmen of
+Holland to spring forward and help to inspire it with renewed energy.
+
+The almost completed negotiations for conferring the sovereignty, not of
+the Confederacy, but of the Province of Holland, upon the Prince had been
+abruptly brought to an end by his death. To confer that sovereign
+countship on his son Maurice, then a lad of eighteen and a student at
+Leyden, would have seemed to many at so terrible a crisis an act of
+madness, although Barneveld had been willing to suggest and promote the
+scheme. The confederates under his guidance soon hastened however to lay
+the sovereignty, and if not the sovereignty, the protectorship, of all
+the provinces at the feet first of England and then of France.
+
+Barneveld was at the head of the embassy, and indeed was the
+indispensable head of all important, embassies to each of those two
+countries throughout all this portion of his career. Both monarchs
+refused, almost spurned, the offered crown in which was involved a war
+with the greatest power in the world, with no compensating dignity or
+benefit, as it was thought, beside.
+
+Then Elizabeth, although declining the sovereignty, promised assistance
+and sent the Earl of Leicester as governor-general at the head of a
+contingent of English troops. Precisely to prevent the consolidation thus
+threatened of the Provinces into one union, a measure which had been
+attempted more than once in the Burgundian epoch, and always successfully
+resisted by the spirit of provincial separatism, Barneveld now proposed
+and carried the appointment of Maurice of Nassau to the stadholdership of
+Holland. This was done against great opposition and amid fierce debate.
+Soon afterwards Barneveld was vehemently urged by the nobles and regents
+of the cities of Holland to accept the post of Advocate of that province.
+After repeatedly declining the arduous and most responsible office, he
+was at last induced to accept it. He did it under the remarkable
+condition that in case any negotiation should be undertaken for the
+purpose of bringing back the Province of Holland under the dominion of
+the King of Spain, he should be considered as from that moment relieved
+from the service.
+
+His brother Elias Barneveld succeeded him as Pensionary of Rotterdam, and
+thenceforth the career of the Advocate is identical with the history of
+the Netherlands. Although a native of Utrecht, he was competent to
+exercise such functions in Holland, a special and ancient convention
+between those two provinces allowing the citizens of either to enjoy
+legal and civic rights in both. Gradually, without intrigue or inordinate
+ambition, but from force of circumstances and the commanding power of the
+man, the native authority stamped upon his forehead, he became the
+political head of the Confederacy. He created and maintained a system of
+public credit absolutely marvellous in the circumstances, by means of
+which an otherwise impossible struggle was carried to a victorious end.
+
+When the stadholderate of the provinces of Gelderland, Utrecht, and
+Overyssel became vacant, it was again Barneveld's potent influence and
+sincere attachment to the House of Nassau that procured the election of
+Maurice to those posts. Thus within six years after his father's death
+the youthful soldier who had already given proof of his surpassing
+military genius had become governor, commander-in-chief, and high
+admiral, of five of the seven provinces constituting the Confederacy.
+
+At about the same period the great question of Church and State, which
+Barneveld had always felt to be among the vital problems of the age, and
+on which his opinions were most decided, came up for partial solution. It
+would have been too much to expect the opinion of any statesman to be so
+much in advance of his time as to favor religious equality. Toleration of
+various creeds, including the Roman Catholic, so far as abstinence from
+inquisition into consciences and private parlours could be called
+toleration, was secured, and that was a considerable step in advance of
+the practice of the sixteenth century. Burning, hanging, and burying
+alive of culprits guilty of another creed than the dominant one had
+become obsolete. But there was an established creed--the Reformed
+religion, founded on the Netherland Confession and the Heidelberg
+Catechism. And there was one established principle then considered
+throughout Europe the grand result of the Reformation; "Cujus regio ejus
+religio;" which was in reality as impudent an invasion of human right as
+any heaven-born dogma of Infallibility. The sovereign of a country,
+having appropriated the revenues of the ancient church, prescribed his
+own creed to his subjects. In the royal conscience were included the
+million consciences of his subjects. The inevitable result in a country
+like the Netherlands, without a personal sovereign, was a struggle
+between the new church and the civil government for mastery. And at this
+period, and always in Barneveld's opinion, the question of dogma was
+subordinate to that of church government. That there should be no
+authority over the King had been settled in England.
+
+Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and afterwards James, having become popes in
+their own realm, had no great hostility to, but rather an affection for,
+ancient dogma and splendid ceremonial. But in the Seven Provinces, even
+as in France, Germany, and Switzerland, the reform where it had been
+effected at all had been more thorough, and there was little left of
+Popish pomp or aristocratic hierarchy. Nothing could be severer than the
+simplicity of the Reformed Church, nothing more imperious than its dogma,
+nothing more infallible than its creed. It was the true religion, and
+there was none other. But to whom belonged the ecclesiastical edifices,
+the splendid old minsters in the cities--raised by the people's confiding
+piety and the purchased remission of their sins in a bygone age--and the
+humbler but beautiful parish churches in every town and village? To the
+State; said Barneveld, speaking for government; to the community
+represented by the states of the provinces, the magistracies of the
+cities and municipalities. To the Church itself, the one true church
+represented by its elders, and deacons, and preachers, was the reply.
+
+And to whom belonged the right of prescribing laws and ordinances of
+public worship, of appointing preachers, church servants, schoolmasters,
+sextons? To the Holy Ghost inspiring the Class and the Synod, said the
+Church.
+
+To the civil authority, said the magistrates, by which the churches are
+maintained, and the salaries of the ecclesiastics paid. The states of
+Holland are as sovereign as the kings of England or Denmark, the electors
+of Saxony or Brandenburg, the magistrates of Zurich or Basel or other
+Swiss cantons. "Cujus regio ejus religio."
+
+In 1590 there was a compromise under the guidance of Barneveld. It was
+agreed that an appointing board should be established composed of civil
+functionaries and church officials in equal numbers. Thus should the
+interests of religion and of education be maintained.
+
+The compromise was successful enough during the war. External pressure
+kept down theological passion, and there were as yet few symptoms of
+schism in the dominant church. But there was to come a time when the
+struggle between church and government was to break forth with an
+intensity and to rage to an extent which no man at that moment could
+imagine.
+
+Towards the end of the century Henry IV. made peace with Spain. It was a
+trying moment for the Provinces. Barneveld was again sent forth on an
+embassy to the King. The cardinal point in his policy, as it had ever
+been in that of William the Silent, was to maintain close friendship with
+France, whoever might be its ruler. An alliance between that kingdom and
+Spain would be instantaneous ruin to the Republic. With the French and
+English sovereigns united with the Provinces, the cause of the
+Reformation might triumph, the Spanish world-empire be annihilated,
+national independence secured.
+
+Henry assured the Ambassador that the treaty of Vervins was
+indispensable, but that he would never desert his old allies. In proof of
+this, although he had just bound himself to Spain to give no assistance
+to the Provinces, open or secret, he would furnish them with thirteen
+hundred thousand crowns, payable at intervals during four years. He was
+under great obligations to his good friends the States, he said, and
+nothing in the treaty forbade him to pay his debts.
+
+It was at this period too that Barneveld was employed by the King to
+attend to certain legal and other private business for which he professed
+himself too poor at the moment to compensate him. There seems to have
+been nothing in the usages of the time or country to make the
+transaction, innocent in itself, in any degree disreputable. The King
+promised at some future clay, when he should be more in funds, to pay him
+a liberal fee. Barneveld, who a dozen years afterwards received 20,000
+florins for his labour, professed that he would much rather have had one
+thousand at the time.
+
+Thence the Advocate, accompanied by his colleague, Justinus de Nassau,
+proceeded to England, where they had many stormy interviews with
+Elizabeth. The Queen swore with many an oath that she too would make
+peace with Philip, recommended the Provinces to do the same thing with
+submission to their ancient tyrant, and claimed from the States immediate
+payment of one million sterling in satisfaction of their old debts to
+her. It would have been as easy for them at that moment to pay a thousand
+million. It was at last agreed that the sum of the debt should be fixed
+at L800,000, and that the cautionary towns should be held in Elizabeth's
+hands by English troops until all the debt should be discharged. Thus
+England for a long time afterwards continued to regard itself, as in a
+measure the sovereign and proprietor of the Confederacy, and Barneveld
+then and there formed the resolve to relieve the country of the incubus,
+and to recover those cautionary towns and fortresses at the earliest
+possible moment. So long as foreign soldiers commanded by military
+governors existed on the soil of the Netherlands, they could hardly
+account themselves independent. Besides, there was the perpetual and
+horrid nightmare, that by a sudden pacification between Spain and England
+those important cities, keys to the country's defence, might be handed
+over to their ancient tyrant.
+
+Elizabeth had been pacified at last, however, by the eloquence of the
+Ambassador. "I will assist you even if you were up to the neck in water,"
+she said. "Jusque la," she added, pointing to her chin.
+
+Five years later Barneveld, for the fifth time at the head of a great
+embassy, was sent to England to congratulate James on his accession. It
+was then and there that he took measure of the monarch with whom he was
+destined to have many dealings, and who was to exert so baleful an
+influence on his career. At last came the time when it was felt that
+peace between Spain and her revolted provinces might be made. The
+conservation of their ancient laws, privileges, and charters, the
+independence of the States, and included therein the freedom to establish
+the Reformed religion, had been secured by forty years of fighting.
+
+The honour of Spain was saved by a conjunction. She agreed to treat with
+her old dependencies "as" with states over which she had no pretensions.
+Through virtue of an "as," a truce after two years' negotiation,
+perpetually traversed and secretly countermined by the military party
+under the influence of Maurice, was carried by the determination of
+Barneveld. The great objects of the war had been secured. The country was
+weary of nearly half a century of bloodshed. It was time to remember that
+there could be such a condition as Peace.
+
+The treaty was signed, ratifications exchanged, and the usual presents of
+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.
+
+Even at the court of the best friend of the Republic, the French king,
+men looked coldly at the upstart commonwealth. Francis Aerssens, the keen
+and accomplished minister of the States, resident in Paris for many
+years, was received as ambassador after the truce with all the ceremonial
+befitting the highest rank in the diplomatic service; yet Henry could not
+yet persuade himself to look upon the power accrediting him as a
+thoroughly organized commonwealth.
+
+The English ambassador asked the King if he meant to continue his aid and
+assistance to the States during the truce. "Yes," answered Henry.
+
+"And a few years beyond it?"
+
+"No. I do not wish to offend the King of Spain from mere gaiety of
+heart."
+
+"But they are free," replied the Ambassador; "the King of Spain could
+have no cause for offence."
+
+"They are free," said the King, "but not sovereign."--"Judge then," wrote
+Aerssens to Barneveld, "how we shall be with the King of Spain at the end
+of our term when our best friends make this distinction among themselves
+to our disadvantage. They insist on making a difference between liberty
+and sovereignty; considering liberty as a mean term between servitude and
+sovereignty."
+
+"You would do well," continued the Dutch ambassador, "to use the word
+'sovereignty' on all occasions instead of 'liberty.'" The hint was
+significant and the advice sound.
+
+The haughty republic of Venice, too, with its "golden Book" and its
+pedigree of a thousand years, looked askance at the republic of yesterday
+rising like herself out of lagunes and sand banks, and affecting to place
+herself side by side with emperors, kings, and the lion of St. Mark. But
+the all-accomplished council of that most serene commonwealth had far too
+much insight and too wide experience in political combinations to make
+the blunder of yielding to this aristocratic sentiment.
+
+The natural enemy of the Pope, of Spain, of Austria, must of necessity be
+the friend of Venice, and it was soon thought highly desirable to
+intimate half officially that a legation from the States-General to the
+Queen of the Adriatic, announcing the conclusion of the Twelve Years'
+Truce, would be extremely well received.
+
+The hint was given by the Venetian ambassador at Paris to Francis
+Aerssens, who instantly recommended van der Myle, son-in-law of
+Barneveld, as a proper personage to be entrusted with this important
+mission. At this moment an open breach had almost occurred between Spain
+and Venice, and the Spanish ambassador at Paris, Don Pedro de Toledo,
+naturally very irate with Holland, Venice, and even with France, was
+vehement in his demonstrations. The arrogant Spaniard had for some time
+been employed in an attempt to negotiate a double marriage between the
+Dauphin and the eldest daughter of Philip III., and between the eldest
+son of that king and the Princess Elizabeth of France. An indispensable
+but secret condition of this negotiation was the absolute renunciation by
+France of its alliance and friendly relations with the United Provinces.
+The project was in truth a hostile measure aimed directly at the life of
+the Republic. Henry held firm however, and Don Pedro was about to depart
+malcontent, his mission having totally failed. He chanced, when going to
+his audience of leave-taking, after the arrival of his successor, Don
+Inigo de Cardenas, to meet the Venetian ambassador, Antonio Foscarini. An
+altercation took place between them, during which the Spaniard poured out
+his wrath so vehemently, calling his colleague with neat alliteration "a
+poltroon, a pantaloon, and a pig," that Henry heard him.
+
+What Signor Antonio replied has not been preserved, but it is stated that
+he was first to seek a reconciliation, not liking, he said, Spanish
+assassinations.
+
+Meantime the double marriage project was for a season at least suspended,
+and the alliance between the two republics went forwards. Van der Myle,
+appointed ambassador to Venice, soon afterwards arrived in Paris, where
+he made a very favourable impression, and was highly lauded by Aerssens
+in his daily correspondence with Barneveld. No portentous shadow of
+future and fatal discord between those statesmen fell upon the cheerful
+scene. Before the year closed, he arrived at his post, and was received
+with great distinction, despite the obstacles thrown in his way by Spain
+and other powers; the ambassador of France itself, de Champigny, having
+privately urged that he ought to be placed on the same footing with the
+envoys of Savoy and of Florence.
+
+Van der Myle at starting committed the trifling fault of styling the
+States-General "most illustrious" (illustrissimi) instead of "most
+serene," the title by which Venice designated herself.
+
+The fault was at once remedied, however, Priuli the Doge seating the
+Dutch ambassador on his right hand at his solemn reception, and giving
+directions that van der Myle should be addressed as Excellency, his post
+being assigned him directly after his seniors, the ambassadors of Pope,
+Emperor, and kings. The same precedence was settled in Paris, while
+Aerssens, who did not consider himself placed in a position of greater
+usefulness by his formal installation as ambassador, received private
+intimation from Henry, with whom he was on terms of great confidence and
+intimacy, that he should have private access to the King as frequently
+and as in formally as before. The theory that the ambassador,
+representing the personality of his sovereign, may visit the monarch to
+whom he is accredited, without ceremony and at his own convenience, was
+as rarely carried into practice in the sixteenth century as in the
+nineteenth, while on the other hand Aerssens, as the private and
+confidential agent of a friendly but not publicly recognized
+commonwealth, had been for many years in almost daily personal
+communication with the King.
+
+It is also important to note that the modern fallacy according to which
+republics being impersonal should not be represented by ambassadors had
+not appeared in that important epoch in diplomatic history. On the
+contrary, the two great republics of the age, Holland and Venice,
+vindicated for themselves, with as much dignity and reason as success,
+their right to the highest diplomatic honours.
+
+The distinction was substantial not shadowy; those haughty commonwealths
+not considering it advantageous or decorous that their representatives
+should for want of proper official designations be ranked on great
+ceremonial occasions with the ministers of petty Italian principalities
+or of the three hundred infinitesimal sovereignties of Germany.
+
+It was the advice of the French king especially, who knew politics and
+the world as well as any man, that the envoys of the Republic which he
+befriended and which stood now on the threshold of its official and
+national existence, should assert themselves at every court with the
+self-reliance and courtesy becoming the functionaries of a great power.
+That those ministers were second to the representatives of no other
+European state in capacity and accomplishment was a fact well known to
+all who had dealings with them, for the States required in their
+diplomatic representatives knowledge of history and international law,
+modern languages, and the classics, as well as familiarity with political
+customs and social courtesies; the breeding of gentlemen in short, and
+the accomplishments of scholars. It is both a literary enjoyment and a
+means of historical and political instruction to read after the lapse of
+centuries their reports and despatches. They worthily compare as works of
+art with those diplomatic masterpieces the letters and 'Relazioni' of the
+Venetian ambassadors; and it is well known that the earlier and some of
+the most important treatises on public and international law ever written
+are from the pens of Hollanders, who indeed may be said to have invented
+that science.'
+
+The Republic having thus steadily shouldered its way into the family of
+nations was soon called upon to perform a prominent part in the world's
+affairs. More than in our own epoch there was a close political
+commingling of such independent states as held sympathetic views on the
+great questions agitating Europe. The policy of isolation so wisely and
+successfully carried out by our own trans-Atlantic commonwealth was
+impossible for the Dutch republic, born as it was of a great religious
+schism, and with its narrow territory wedged between the chief political
+organizations of Christendom. Moreover the same jealousy on the part of
+established powers which threw so many obstacles in its path to
+recognized sovereignty existed in the highest degree between its two
+sponsors and allies, France and England, in regard to their respective
+relations to the new state.
+
+"If ever there was an obliged people," said Henry's secretary of state,
+Villeroy, to Aerssens, "then it is you Netherlanders to his Majesty. He
+has converted your war into peace, and has never abandoned you. It is for
+you now to show your affection and gratitude."
+
+In the time of Elizabeth, and now in that of her successor, there was
+scarcely a day in which the envoys of the States were not reminded of the
+immense load of favour from England under which they tottered, and of the
+greater sincerity and value of English friendship over that of France.
+
+Sully often spoke to Aerssens on the subject in even stronger language,
+deeming himself the chief protector and guardian angel of the Republic,
+to whom they were bound by ties of eternal gratitude. "But if the
+States," he said, "should think of caressing the King of England more
+than him, or even of treating him on an equality with his Majesty, Henry
+would be very much affronted. He did not mean that they should neglect
+the friendship of the King of Britain, but that they should cultivate it
+after and in subordination to his own, for they might be sure that James
+held all things indifferent, their ruin or their conservation, while his
+Majesty had always manifested the contrary both by his counsels and by
+the constant furnishing of supplies."
+
+Henry of France and Navarre--soldier, statesman, wit, above all a man and
+every inch a king--brimful of human vices, foibles, and humours, and
+endowed with those high qualities of genius which enabled him to mould
+events and men by his unscrupulous and audacious determination to conform
+to the spirit of his times which no man better understood than himself,
+had ever been in such close relations with the Netherlands as to seem in
+some sort their sovereign.
+
+James Stuart, emerging from the school of Buchanan and the atmosphere of
+Calvinism in which he had been bred, now reigned in those more sunny and
+liberal regions where Elizabeth so long had ruled. Finding himself at
+once, after years of theological study, face to face with a foreign
+commonwealth and a momentous epoch, in which politics were so commingled
+with divinity as to offer daily the most puzzling problems, the royal
+pedant hugged himself at beholding so conspicuous a field for his
+talents.
+
+To turn a throne into a pulpit, and amaze mankind with his learning, was
+an ambition most sweet to gratify. The Calvinist of Scotland now
+proclaimed his deadly hatred of Puritans in England and Holland, and
+denounced the Netherlanders as a pack of rebels whom it always pleased
+him to irritate, and over whom he too claimed, through the possession of
+the cautionary towns, a kind of sovereignty. Instinctively feeling that
+in the rough and unlovely husk of Puritanism was enclosed the germ of a
+wider human liberty than then existed, he was determined to give battle
+to it with his tongue, his pen, with everything but his sword.
+
+Doubtless the States had received most invaluable assistance from both
+France and England, but the sovereigns of those countries were too apt to
+forget that it was their own battles, as well as those of the Hollanders,
+that had been fought in Flanders and Brabant. But for the alliance and
+subsidies of the faithful States, Henry would not so soon have ascended
+the throne of his ancestors, while it was matter of history that the
+Spanish government had for years been steadily endeavouring to subjugate
+England not so much for the value of the conquest in itself as for a
+stepping-stone to the recovery of the revolted Netherlands.
+
+For the dividing line of nations or at least of national alliances was a
+frontier not of language but of faith. Germany was but a geographical
+expression. The union of Protestantism, subscribed by a large proportion
+of its three hundred and seven sovereigns, ran zigzag through the
+country, a majority probably of the people at that moment being opposed
+to the Roman Church.
+
+It has often been considered amazing that Protestantism having
+accomplished so much should have fallen backwards so soon, and yielded
+almost undisputed sway in vast regions to the long dominant church. But
+in truth there is nothing surprising about it. Catholicism was and
+remained a unit, while its opponents were eventually broken up into
+hundreds of warring and politically impotent organizations. Religious
+faith became distorted into a weapon for selfish and greedy territorial
+aggrandizement in the hands of Protestant princes. "Cujus regio ejus
+religio" was the taunt hurled in the face of the imploring Calvinists of
+France and the Low Countries by the arrogant Lutherans of Germany. Such a
+sword smote the principle of religious freedom and mutual toleration into
+the dust, and rendered them comparatively weak in the conflict with the
+ancient and splendidly organized church.
+
+The Huguenots of France, notwithstanding the protection grudgingly
+afforded them by their former chieftain, were dejected and discomfited by
+his apostasy, and Henry, placed in a fearfully false position, was an
+object of suspicion to both friends and foes. In England it is difficult
+to say whether a Jesuit or a Puritan was accounted the more noxious
+animal by the dominant party.
+
+In the United Provinces perhaps one half the population was either openly
+or secretly attached to the ancient church, while among the Protestant
+portion a dire and tragic convulsion was about to break forth, which for
+a time at least was to render Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants more
+fiercely opposed to each other than to Papists.
+
+The doctrine of predestination in its sternest and strictest sense had
+long been the prevailing one in the Reformed Church of the revolted
+Netherlands, as in those of Scotland, France, Geneva, and the Palatinate.
+No doubt up to the period of the truce a majority had acquiesced in that
+dogma and its results, although there had always been many preachers to
+advocate publicly a milder creed. It was not until the appointment of
+Jacob Arminius to the professorship of theology at Leyden, in the place
+of Francis Junius, in the year 1603, that a danger of schism in the
+Church, seemed impending. Then rose the great Gomarus in his wrath, and
+with all the powers of splendid eloquence, profound learning, and the
+intense bigotry of conviction, denounced the horrible heresy. Conferences
+between the two before the Court of Holland, theological tournaments
+between six champions on a side, gallantly led by their respective
+chieftains, followed, with the usual result of confirming both parties in
+the conviction that to each alone belonged exclusively the truth.
+
+The original influence of Arminius had however been so great that when
+the preachers of Holland had been severally called on by a synod to sign
+the Heidelberg Catechism, many of them refused. Here was open heresy and
+revolt. It was time for the true church to vindicate its authority. The
+great war with Spain had been made, so it was urged and honestly
+believed, not against the Inquisition, not to prevent Netherlanders from
+being burned and buried alive by the old true church, not in defence of
+ancient charters, constitutions, and privileges--the precious result of
+centuries of popular resistance to despotic force--not to maintain an
+amount of civil liberty and local self-government larger in extent than
+any then existing in the world, not to assert equality of religion for
+all men, but simply to establish the true religion, the one church, the
+only possible creed; the creed and church of Calvin.
+
+It is perfectly certain that the living fire which glowed in the veins of
+those hot gospellers had added intense enthusiasm to the war spirit
+throughout that immense struggle. It is quite possible that without that
+enthusiasm the war might not have been carried on to its successful end.
+But it is equally certain that Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists, and
+devotees of many other creeds, had taken part in the conflict in defence
+both of hearth and altar, and that without that aid the independence of
+the Provinces would never have been secured.
+
+Yet before the war was ended the arrogance of the Reformed priesthood had
+begun to dig a chasm. Men who with William the Silent and Barneveld had
+indulged in the vision of religious equality as a possible result of so
+much fighting against the Holy Inquisition were perhaps to be
+disappointed.
+
+Preachers under the influence of the gentle Arminius having dared to
+refuse signing the Creed were to be dealt with. It was time to pass from
+censure to action.
+
+Heresy must be trampled down. The churches called for a national synod,
+and they did this as by divine right. "My Lords the States-General must
+observe," they said, "that this assembly now demanded is not a human
+institution but an ordinance of the Holy Ghost in its community, not
+depending upon any man's authority, but proceeding from God to the
+community." They complained that the true church was allowed to act only
+through the civil government, and was thus placed at a disadvantage
+compared even with Catholics and other sects, whose proceedings were
+winked at. "Thus the true church suffered from its apparent and public
+freedom, and hostile sects gained by secret connivance."
+
+A crisis was fast approaching. The one church claimed infallibility and
+superiority to the civil power. The Holy Ghost was placed in direct,
+ostentatious opposition to My Lords the States-General. It was for
+Netherlanders to decide whether, after having shaken off the Holy
+Inquisition, and subjected the old true church to the public authority,
+they were now to submit to the imperious claims of the new true church.
+
+There were hundreds of links connecting the Church with the State. In
+that day a divorce between the two was hardly possible or conceivable.
+The system of Congregationalism so successfully put into practice soon
+afterwards in the wilderness of New England, and to which so much of
+American freedom political as well as religious is due, was not easy to
+adopt in an old country like the Netherlands. Splendid churches and
+cathedrals, the legal possession of which would be contended for by rival
+sects, could scarcely be replaced by temporary structures of lath and
+plaster, or by humble back parlours of mechanics' shops. There were
+questions of property of complicated nature. Not only the states and the
+communities claimed in rivalry the ownership of church property, but many
+private families could show ancient advowsons and other claims to present
+or to patronize, derived from imperial or ducal charters.
+
+So long as there could be liberty of opinion within the Church upon
+points not necessarily vital, open schism could be avoided, by which the
+cause of Protestantism throughout Europe must be weakened, while at the
+same time subordination of the priesthood to the civil authority would be
+maintained. But if the Holy Ghost, through the assembled clergy, were to
+dictate an iron formulary to which all must conform, to make laws for
+church government which every citizen must obey, and to appoint preachers
+and school-masters from whom alone old and young could receive
+illumination and instruction religious or lay, a theocracy would be
+established which no enlightened statesman could tolerate.
+
+The States-General agreed to the synod, but imposed a condition that
+there should be a revision of Creed and Catechism. This was thundered
+down with one blast. The condition implied a possibility that the vile
+heresy of Arminius might be correct. An unconditional synod was demanded.
+The Heidelberg Creed and Netherland Catechism were sacred, infallible,
+not to be touched. The answer of the government, through the mouth of
+Barneveld, was that "to My Lords the States-General as the foster-fathers
+and protectors of the churches every right belonged."
+
+Thus far the States-General under the leadership of the Advocate were
+unanimous. The victory remained with State against Church. But very soon
+after the truce had been established, and men had liberty to devote
+themselves to peaceful pursuits, the ecclesiastical trumpet again sounded
+far and wide, and contending priests and laymen rushed madly to the fray.
+The Remonstrance and Contra-Remonstrance, and the appointment of Conrad
+Vorstius, a more abominable heretic than Arminius, to the vacant chair of
+Arminius--a step which drove Gomarus and the Gomarites to frenzy,
+although Gomarus and Vorstius remained private and intimate friends to
+the last--are matters briefly to be mentioned on a later page.
+
+Thus to the four chief actors in the politico-religious drama, soon to be
+enacted as an interlude to an eighty years' war, were assigned parts at
+first sight inconsistent with their private convictions. The King of
+France, who had often abjured his religion, and was now the best of
+Catholics, was denounced ferociously in every Catholic pulpit in
+Christendom as secretly an apostate again, and the open protector of
+heretics and rebels. But the cheerful Henry troubled himself less than he
+perhaps had cause to do with these thunderblasts. Besides, as we shall
+soon see, he had other objects political and personal to sway his
+opinions.
+
+James the ex-Calvinist, crypto-Arminian, pseudo-Papist, and avowed
+Puritan hater, was girding on his armour to annihilate Arminians and to
+defend and protect Puritans in Holland, while swearing that in England he
+would pepper them and harry them and hang them and that he would even
+like to bury them alive.
+
+Barneveld, who turned his eyes, as much as in such an inflammatory age it
+was possible, from subtle points of theology, and relied on his
+great-grandfather's motto of humility, "Nil scire tutissima fides" was
+perhaps nearer to the dogma of the dominant Reformed Church than he knew,
+although always the consistent and strenuous champion of the civil
+authority over Church as well as State.
+
+Maurice was no theologian. He was a steady churchgoer, and his favorite
+divine, the preacher at his court chapel, was none other than
+Uytenbogaert. The very man who was instantly to be the champion of the
+Arminians, the author of the Remonstrance, the counsellor and comrade of
+Barneveld and Grotius, was now sneered at by the Gomarites as the "Court
+Trumpeter." The preacher was not destined to change his opinions. Perhaps
+the Prince might alter. But Maurice then paid no heed to the great point
+at issue, about which all the Netherlanders were to take each other by
+the throat--absolute predestination. He knew that the Advocate had
+refused to listen to his stepmother's suggestion as to his obtaining the
+sovereignty. "He knew nothing of predestination," he was wont to say,
+"whether it was green or whether it was blue. He only knew that his pipe
+and the Advocate's were not likely to make music together." This much of
+predestination he did know, that if the Advocate and his friends were to
+come to open conflict with the Prince of Orange-Nassau, the conqueror of
+Nieuwpoort, it was predestined to go hard with the Advocate and his
+friends.
+
+The theological quibble did not interest him much, and he was apt to
+blunder about it.
+
+"Well, preacher," said he one day to Albert Huttenus, who had come to him
+to intercede for a deserter condemned to be hanged, "are you one of those
+Arminians who believe that one child is born to salvation and another to
+damnation?"
+
+Huttenus, amazed to the utmost at the extraordinary question, replied,
+"Your Excellency will be graciously pleased to observe that this is not
+the opinion of those whom one calls by the hateful name of Arminians, but
+the opinion of their adversaries."
+
+"Well, preacher," rejoined Maurice, "don't you think I know better?" And
+turning to Count Lewis William, Stadholder of Friesland, who was present,
+standing by the hearth with his hand on a copper ring of the
+chimneypiece, he cried,
+
+"Which is right, cousin, the preacher or I?"
+
+"No, cousin," answered Count Lewis, "you are in the wrong."
+
+Thus to the Catholic League organized throughout Europe in solid and
+consistent phalanx was opposed the Great Protestant Union, ardent and
+enthusiastic in detail, but undisciplined, disobedient, and inharmonious
+as a whole.
+
+The great principle, not of religious toleration, which is a phrase of
+insult, but of religious equality, which is the natural right of mankind,
+was to be evolved after a lapse of, additional centuries out of the
+elemental conflict which had already lasted so long. Still later was the
+total divorce of State and Church to be achieved as the final
+consummation of the great revolution. Meantime it was almost inevitable
+that the privileged and richly endowed church, with ecclesiastical armies
+and arsenals vastly superior to anything which its antagonist could
+improvise, should more than hold its own.
+
+At the outset of the epoch which now occupies our attention, Europe was
+in a state of exhaustion and longing for repose. Spain had submitted to
+the humiliation of a treaty of truce with its rebellious subjects which
+was substantially a recognition of their independence. Nothing could be
+more deplorable than the internal condition of the country which claimed
+to be mistress of the world and still aspired to universal monarchy.
+
+It had made peace because it could no longer furnish funds for the war.
+The French ambassador, Barante, returning from Madrid, informed his
+sovereign that he had often seen officers in the army prostrating
+themselves on their knees in the streets before their sovereign as he
+went to mass, and imploring him for payment of their salaries, or at
+least an alms to keep them from starving, and always imploring in vain.
+
+The King, who was less than a cipher, had neither capacity to feel
+emotion, nor intelligence to comprehend the most insignificant affair of
+state. Moreover the means were wanting to him even had he been disposed
+to grant assistance. The terrible Duke of Lerma was still his inexorably
+lord and master, and the secretary of that powerful personage, who kept
+an open shop for the sale of offices of state both high and low, took
+care that all the proceeds should flow into the coffers of the Duke and
+his own lap instead of the royal exchequer.
+
+In France both king and people declared themselves disgusted with war.
+Sully disapproved of the treaty just concluded between Spain and the
+Netherlands, feeling sure that the captious and equivocal clauses
+contained in it would be interpreted to the disadvantage of the Republic
+and of the Reformed religion whenever Spain felt herself strong enough to
+make the attempt. He was especially anxious that the States should make
+no concessions in regard to the exercise of the Catholic worship within
+their territory, believing that by so doing they would compromise their
+political independence besides endangering the cause of Protestantism
+everywhere. A great pressure was put upon Sully that moment by the King
+to change his religion.
+
+"You will all be inevitably ruined if you make concessions in this
+regard," said he to Aerssens. "Take example by me. I should be utterly
+undone if I had listened to any overture on this subject."
+
+Nevertheless it was the opinion of the astute and caustic envoy that the
+Duke would be forced to yield at last. The Pope was making great efforts
+to gain him, and thus to bring about the extirpation of Protestantism in
+France. And the King, at that time much under the influence of the
+Jesuits, had almost set his heart on the conversion. Aerssens insinuated
+that Sully was dreading a minute examination into the affairs of his
+administration of the finances--a groundless calumny--and would be thus
+forced to comply. Other enemies suggested that nothing would effect this
+much desired apostasy but the office of Constable of France, which it was
+certain would never be bestowed on him.
+
+At any rate it was very certain that Henry at this period was bent on
+peace.
+
+"Make your account," said Aerssens to Barneveld, as the time for signing
+the truce drew nigh, "on this indubitable foundation that the King is
+determined against war, whatever pretences he may make. His bellicose
+demeanour has been assumed only to help forward our treaty, which he
+would never have favoured, and ought never to have favoured, if he had
+not been too much in love with peace. This is a very important secret if
+we manage it discreetly, and a very dangerous one if our enemies discover
+it."
+
+Sully would have much preferred that the States should stand out for a
+peace rather than for a truce, and believed it might have been obtained
+if the King had not begun the matter so feebly, and if he had let it be
+understood that he would join his arms to those of the Provinces in case
+of rupture.
+
+He warned the States very strenuously that the Pope, and the King of
+Spain, and a host of enemies open and covert, were doing their host to
+injure them at the French court. They would find little hindrance in this
+course if the Republic did not show its teeth, and especially if it did
+not stiffly oppose all encroachments of the Roman religion, without even
+showing any deference to the King in this regard, who was much importuned
+on the subject.
+
+He advised the States to improve the interval of truce by restoring order
+to their finances and so arranging their affairs that on the resumption
+of hostilities, if come they must, their friends might be encouraged to
+help them, by the exhibition of thorough vigour on their part.
+
+France then, although utterly indisposed for war at that moment, was
+thoroughly to be relied on as a friend and in case of need an ally, so
+long as it was governed by its present policy. There was but one king
+left in Europe since the death of Elizabeth of England.
+
+But Henry was now on the abhorred threshold of old age which he
+obstinately refused to cross.
+
+There is something almost pathetic, in spite of the censure which much of
+his private life at this period provokes, in the isolation which now
+seemed his lot.
+
+Deceived and hated by his wife and his mistresses, who were conspiring
+with each other and with his ministers, not only against his policy but
+against his life; with a vile Italian adventurer, dishonouring his
+household, entirely dominating the queen, counteracting the royal
+measures, secretly corresponding, by assumed authority, with Spain, in
+direct violation of the King's instructions to his ambassadors, and
+gorging himself with wealth and offices at the expense of everything
+respectable in France; surrounded by a pack of malignant and greedy
+nobles, who begrudged him his fame, his authority, his independence;
+without a home, and almost without a friend, the Most Christian King in
+these latter days led hardly as merry a life as when fighting years long
+for his crown, at the head of his Gascon chivalry, the beloved chieftain
+of Huguenots.
+
+Of the triumvirate then constituting his council, Villeroy, Sillery, and
+Sully, the two first were ancient Leaguers, and more devoted at heart to
+Philip of Spain than to Henry of France and Navarre.
+
+Both silent, laborious, plodding, plotting functionaries, thriftily
+gathering riches; skilled in routine and adepts at intrigue; steady
+self-seekers, and faithful to office in which their lives had passed,
+they might be relied on at any emergency to take part against their
+master, if to ruin would prove more profitable than to serve him.
+
+There was one man who was truer to Henry than Henry had been to himself.
+The haughty, defiant, austere grandee, brave soldier, sagacious
+statesman, thrifty financier, against whom the poisoned arrows of
+religious hatred, envious ambition, and petty court intrigue were daily
+directed, who watched grimly over the exchequer confided to him, which
+was daily growing fuller in despite of the cormorants who trembled at his
+frown; hard worker, good hater, conscientious politician, who filled his
+own coffers without dishonesty, and those of the state without tyranny;
+unsociable, arrogant; pious, very avaricious, and inordinately vain,
+Maximilian de Bethune, Duke of Sully, loved and respected Henry as no man
+or woman loved and respected him. In truth, there was but one living
+being for whom the Duke had greater reverence and affection than for the
+King, and that was the Duke of Sully himself.
+
+At this moment he considered himself, as indeed he was, in full
+possession of his sovereign's confidence. But he was alone in this
+conviction. Those about the court, men like Epernon and his creatures,
+believed the great financier on the brink of perdition. Henry, always the
+loosest of talkers even in regard to his best friends, had declared, on
+some temporary vexation in regard to the affair between Aiguillon and
+Balagny, that he would deal with the Duke as with the late Marshal de
+Biron, and make him smaller than he had ever made him great: goading him
+on this occasion with importunities, almost amounting to commands, that
+both he and his son should forthwith change their religion or expect
+instant ruin. The blow was so severe that Sully shut himself up, refused
+to see anyone, and talked of retiring for good to his estates. But he
+knew, and Henry knew, how indispensable he was, and the anger of the
+master was as shortlived as the despair of the minister.
+
+There was no living statesman for whom Henry had a more sincere respect
+than for the Advocate of Holland. "His Majesty admires and greatly extols
+your wisdom, which he judges necessary for the preservation of our State;
+deeming you one of the rare and sage counsellors of the age." It is true
+that this admiration was in part attributed to the singular coincidence
+of Barneveld's views of policy with the King's own. Sully, on his part,
+was a severe critic of that policy. He believed that better terms might
+have been exacted from Spain in the late negotiations, and strongly
+objected to the cavilling and equivocal language of the treaty. Rude in
+pen as in speech, he expressed his mind very freely in his conversation
+and correspondence with Henry in regard to leading personages and great
+affairs, and made no secret of his opinions to the States' ambassador.
+
+He showed his letters in which he had informed the King that he ought
+never to have sanctioned the truce without better securities than
+existed, and that the States would never have moved in any matter without
+him. It would have been better to throw himself into a severe war than to
+see the Republic perish. He further expressed the conviction that Henry
+ought to have such authority over the Netherlands that they would embrace
+blindly whatever counsel he chose to give them, even if they saw in it
+their inevitable ruin; and this not so much from remembrance of
+assistance rendered by him, but from the necessity in which they should
+always feel of depending totally upon him.
+
+"You may judge, therefore," concluded Aerssens, "as to how much we can
+build on such foundations as these. I have been amazed at these frank
+communications, for in those letters he spares neither My Lords the
+States, nor his Excellency Prince Maurice, nor yourself; giving his
+judgment of each of you with far too much freedom and without sufficient
+knowledge."
+
+Thus the alliance between the Netherlands and France, notwithstanding
+occasional traces of caprice and flaws of personal jealousy, was on the
+whole sincere, for it was founded on the surest foundation of
+international friendship, the self-interest of each. Henry, although
+boasting of having bought Paris with a mass, knew as well as his worst
+enemy that in that bargain he had never purchased the confidence of the
+ancient church, on whose bosom he had flung himself with so much dramatic
+pomp. His noble position, as champion of religious toleration, was not
+only unappreciated in an age in which each church and every sect
+arrogated to itself a monopoly of the truth, but it was one in which he
+did not himself sincerely believe.
+
+After all, he was still the chieftain of the Protestant Union, and,
+although Eldest Son of the Church, was the bitter antagonist of the
+League and the sworn foe to the House of Austria. He was walking through
+pitfalls with a crowd of invisible but relentless foes dogging his every
+footstep. In his household or without were daily visions of dagger and
+bowl, and he felt himself marching to his doom. How could the man on whom
+the heretic and rebellious Hollanders and the Protestant princes of
+Germany relied as on their saviour escape the unutterable wrath and the
+patient vengeance of a power that never forgave?
+
+In England the jealousy of the Republic and of France as co-guardian and
+protector of the Republic was even greater than in France. Though placed
+by circumstances in the position of ally to the Netherlands and enemy to
+Spain, James hated the Netherlands and adored Spain. His first thought on
+escaping the general destruction to which the Gunpowder Plot was to have
+involved himself and family and all the principal personages of the realm
+seems to have been to exculpate Spain from participation in the crime.
+His next was to deliver a sermon to Parliament, exonerating the Catholics
+and going out of his way to stigmatize the Puritans as entertaining
+doctrines which should be punished with fire. As the Puritans had
+certainly not been accused of complicity with Guy Fawkes or Garnet, this
+portion of the discourse was at least superfluous. But James loathed
+nothing so much as a Puritan. A Catholic at heart, he would have been the
+warmest ally of the League had he only been permitted to be Pope of Great
+Britain. He hated and feared a Jesuit, not for his religious doctrines,
+for with these he sympathized, but for his political creed. He liked not
+that either Roman Pontiff or British Presbyterian should abridge his
+heaven-born prerogative. The doctrine of Papal superiority to temporal
+sovereigns was as odious to him as Puritan rebellion to the hierarchy of
+which he was the chief. Moreover, in his hostility to both Papists and
+Presbyterians, there was much of professional rivalry. Having been
+deprived by the accident of birth of his true position as theological
+professor, he lost no opportunity of turning his throne into a pulpit and
+his sceptre into a controversial pen.
+
+Henry of France, who rarely concealed his contempt for Master Jacques, as
+he called him, said to the English ambassador, on receiving from him one
+of the King's books, and being asked what he thought of it--"It is not
+the business of us kings to write, but to fight. Everybody should mind
+his own business, but it is the vice of most men to wish to appear
+learned in matters of which they are ignorant."
+
+The flatterers of James found their account in pandering to his
+sacerdotal and royal vanity. "I have always believed," said the Lord
+Chancellor, after hearing the King argue with and browbeat a Presbyterian
+deputation, "that the high-priesthood and royalty ought to be united, but
+I never witnessed the actual junction till now, after hearing the learned
+discourse of your Majesty." Archbishop Whitgift, grovelling still lower,
+declared his conviction that James, in the observations he had deigned to
+make, had been directly inspired by the Holy Ghost.
+
+Nothing could be more illogical and incoherent with each other than his
+theological and political opinions. He imagined himself a defender of the
+Protestant faith, while hating Holland and fawning on the House of
+Austria.
+
+In England he favoured Arminianism, because the Anglican Church
+recognized for its head the temporal chief of the State. In Holland he
+vehemently denounced the Arminians, indecently persecuting their
+preachers and statesmen, who were contending for exactly the same
+principle--the supremacy of State over Church. He sentenced Bartholomew
+Legate to be burned alive in Smithfield as a blasphemous heretic, and did
+his best to compel the States of Holland to take the life of Professor
+Vorstius of Leyden. He persecuted the Presbyterians in England as
+furiously as he defended them in Holland. He drove Bradford and Carver
+into the New England wilderness, and applauded Gomarus and Walaeus and
+the other famous leaders of the Presbyterian party in the Netherlands
+with all his soul and strength.
+
+He united with the French king in negotiations for Netherland
+independence, while denouncing the Provinces as guilty of criminal
+rebellion against their lawful sovereign.
+
+"He pretends," said Jeannin, "to assist in bringing about the peace, and
+nevertheless does his best openly to prevent it."
+
+Richardot declared that the firmness of the King of Spain proceeded
+entirely from reliance on the promise of James that there should be no
+acknowledgment in the treaty of the liberty of the States. Henry wrote to
+Jeannin that he knew very well "what that was capable of, but that he
+should not be kept awake by anything he could do."
+
+As a king he spent his reign--so much of it as could be spared from
+gourmandizing, drunkenness, dalliance with handsome minions of his own
+sex, and theological pursuits--in rescuing the Crown from dependence on
+Parliament; in straining to the utmost the royal prerogative; in
+substituting proclamations for statutes; in doing everything in his
+power, in short, to smooth the path for his successor to the scaffold. As
+father of a family he consecrated many years of his life to the wondrous
+delusion of the Spanish marriages.
+
+The Gunpowder Plot seemed to have inspired him with an insane desire for
+that alliance, and few things in history are more amazing than the
+persistency with which he pursued the scheme, until the pursuit became
+not only ridiculous, but impossible.
+
+With such a man, frivolous, pedantic, conceited, and licentious, the
+earnest statesmen of Holland were forced into close alliance. It is
+pathetic to see men like Barneveld and Hugo Grotius obliged, on great
+occasions of state, to use the language of respect and affection to one
+by whom they were hated, and whom they thoroughly despised.
+
+But turning away from France, it was in vain for them to look for kings
+or men either among friends or foes. In Germany religious dissensions
+were gradually ripening into open war, and it would be difficult to
+imagine a more hopelessly incompetent ruler than the man who was
+nominally chief of the Holy Roman Realm. Yet the distracted Rudolph was
+quite as much an emperor as the chaos over which he was supposed to
+preside was an empire. Perhaps the very worst polity ever devised by
+human perverseness was the system under which the great German race was
+then writhing and groaning. A mad world with a lunatic to govern it; a
+democracy of many princes, little and big, fighting amongst each other,
+and falling into daily changing combinations as some masterly or
+mischievous hand whirled the kaleidoscope; drinking Rhenish by hogsheads,
+and beer by the tun; robbing churches, dictating creeds to their
+subjects, and breaking all the commandments themselves; a people at the
+bottom dimly striving towards religious freedom and political life out of
+abject social, ecclesiastical, and political serfdom, and perhaps even
+then dumbly feeling within its veins, with that prophetic instinct which
+never abandons great races, a far distant and magnificent Future of
+national unity and Imperial splendour, the very reverse of the confusion
+which was then the hideous Present; an Imperial family at top with many
+heads and slender brains; a band of brothers and cousins wrangling,
+intriguing, tripping up each others' heels, and unlucky Rudolph, in his
+Hradschin, looking out of window over the peerless Prague, spread out in
+its beauteous landscape of hill and dale, darkling forest, dizzy cliffs,
+and rushing river, at his feet, feebly cursing the unhappy city for its
+ingratitude to an invisible and impotent sovereign; his excellent brother
+Matthias meanwhile marauding through the realms and taking one crown
+after another from his poor bald head.
+
+It would be difficult to depict anything more precisely what an emperor
+in those portentous times should not be. He collected works of art of
+many kinds--pictures, statues, gems. He passed his days in his galleries
+contemplating in solitary grandeur these treasures, or in his stables,
+admiring a numerous stud of horses which he never drove or rode.
+Ambassadors and ministers of state disguised themselves as grooms and
+stable-boys to obtain accidental glimpses of a sovereign who rarely
+granted audiences. His nights were passed in star-gazing with Tycho de
+Brake, or with that illustrious Suabian whose name is one of the great
+lights and treasures of the world. But it was not to study the laws of
+planetary motion nor to fathom mysteries of divine harmony that the
+monarch stood with Kepler in the observatory. The influence of countless
+worlds upon the destiny of one who, by capricious accident, if accident
+ever exists in history, had been entrusted with the destiny of so large a
+portion of one little world; the horoscope, not of the Universe, but of
+himself; such were the limited purposes with which the Kaiser looked upon
+the constellations.
+
+For the Catholic Rudolph had received the Protestant Kepler, driven from
+Tubingen because Lutheran doctors, knowing from Holy Writ that the sun
+had stood still in Ajalon, had denounced his theory of planetary motion.
+His mother had just escaped being burned as a witch, and the world owes a
+debt of gratitude to the Emperor for protecting the astrologer, when
+enlightened theologians might, perhaps, have hanged the astronomer.
+
+A red-faced, heavy fowled, bald-headed, somewhat goggle-eyed old
+gentleman, Rudolph did his best to lead the life of a hermit, and escape
+the cares of royalty. Timid by temperament, yet liable to fits of
+uncontrollable anger, he broke his furniture to pieces when irritated,
+and threw dishes that displeased him in his butler's face, but left
+affairs of state mainly to his valet, who earned many a penny by selling
+the Imperial signature.
+
+He had just signed the famous "Majestatsbrief," by which he granted vast
+privileges to the Protestants of Bohemia, and had bitten the pen to
+pieces in a paroxysm of anger, after dimly comprehending the extent of
+the concessions which he had made.
+
+There were hundreds of sovereign states over all of which floated the
+shadowy and impalpable authority of an Imperial crown scarcely fixed on
+the head of any one of the rival brethren and cousins; there was a
+confederation of Protestants, with the keen-sighted and ambitious
+Christian of Anhalt acting as its chief, and dreaming of the Bohemian
+crown; there was the just-born Catholic League, with the calm,
+far-seeing, and egotistical rather than self-seeking Maximilian at its
+head; each combination extending over the whole country, stamped with
+imbecility of action from its birth, and perverted and hampered by
+inevitable jealousies. In addition to all these furrows ploughed by the
+very genius of discord throughout the unhappy land was the wild and
+secret intrigue with which Leopold, Archduke and Bishop, dreaming also of
+the crown of Wenzel, was about to tear its surface as deeply as he dared.
+
+Thus constituted were the leading powers of Europe in the earlier part of
+1609--the year in which a peaceful period seemed to have begun. To those
+who saw the entangled interests of individuals, and the conflict of
+theological dogmas and religious and political intrigue which furnished
+so much material out of which wide-reaching schemes of personal ambition
+could be spun, it must have been obvious that the interval of truce was
+necessarily but a brief interlude between two tragedies.
+
+It seemed the very mockery of Fate that, almost at the very instant when
+after two years' painful negotiation a truce had been made, the signal
+for universal discord should be sounded. One day in the early summer of
+1609, Henry IV. came to the Royal Arsenal, the residence of Sully,
+accompanied by Zamet and another of his intimate companions. He asked for
+the Duke and was told that he was busy in his study. "Of course," said
+the King, turning to his followers, "I dare say you expected to be told
+that he was out shooting, or with the ladies, or at the barber's. But who
+works like Sully? Tell him," he said, "to come to the balcony in his
+garden, where he and I are not accustomed to be silent."
+
+As soon as Sully appeared, the King observed: "Well; here the Duke of
+Cleve is dead, and has left everybody his heir."
+
+It was true enough, and the inheritance was of vital importance to the
+world.
+
+It was an apple of discord thrown directly between the two rival camps
+into which Christendom was divided. The Duchies of Cleve, Berg, and
+Julich, and the Counties and Lordships of Mark, Ravensberg, and
+Ravenstein, formed a triangle, political and geographical, closely wedged
+between Catholicism and Protestantism, and between France, the United
+Provinces, Belgium, and Germany. Should it fall into Catholic hands, the
+Netherlands were lost, trampled upon in every corner, hedged in on all
+sides, with the House of Austria governing the Rhine, the Meuse, and the
+Scheldt. It was vital to them to exclude the Empire from the great
+historic river which seemed destined to form the perpetual frontier of
+jealous powers and rival creeds.
+
+Should it fall into heretic hands, the States were vastly strengthened,
+the Archduke Albert isolated and cut off from the protection of Spain and
+of the Empire. France, although Catholic, was the ally of Holland and the
+secret but well known enemy of the House of Austria. It was inevitable
+that the king of that country, the only living statesman that wore a
+crown, should be appealed to by all parties and should find himself in
+the proud but dangerous position of arbiter of Europe.
+
+In this emergency he relied upon himself and on two men besides,
+Maximilian de Bethune and John of Barneveld. The conference between the
+King and Sully and between both and Francis Aerssens, ambassador of the
+States, were of almost daily occurrence. The minute details given in the
+adroit diplomatist's correspondence indicate at every stage the extreme
+deference paid by Henry to the opinion of Holland's Advocate and the
+confidence reposed by him in the resources and the courage of the
+Republic.
+
+All the world was claiming the heritage of the duchies.
+
+It was only strange that an event which could not be long deferred and
+the consequences of which were soon to be so grave, the death of the Duke
+of Cleve, should at last burst like a bomb-shell on the council tables of
+the sovereigns and statesmen of Europe. That mischievous madman John
+William died childless in the spring of 1609. His sister Sibylla, an
+ancient and malignant spinster, had governed him and his possessions
+except in his lucid intervals. The mass of the population over which he
+ruled being Protestant, while the reigning family and the chief nobles
+were of the ancient faith, it was natural that the Catholic party under,
+the lead of Maximilian of Bavaria should deem it all-important that there
+should be direct issue to that family. Otherwise the inheritance on his
+death would probably pass to Protestant princes.
+
+The first wife provided for him was a beautiful princess; Jacobea of
+Baden. The Pope blessed the nuptials, and sent the bride a golden rose,
+but the union was sterile and unhappy. The Duke, who was in the habit of
+careering through his palace in full armour, slashing at and wounding
+anyone that came in his way, was at last locked up. The hapless Jacobea,
+accused by Sibylla of witchcraft and other crimes possible and
+impossible, was thrown into prison. Two years long the devilish malignity
+of the sister-in-law was exercised upon her victim, who, as it is
+related, was not allowed natural sleep during all that period, being at
+every hour awakened by command of Sibylla. At last the Duchess was
+strangled in prison. A new wife was at once provided for the lunatic,
+Antonia of Lorraine. The two remained childless, and Sibylla at the age
+of forty-nine took to herself a husband, the Margrave of Burgau, of the
+House of Austria, the humble birth of whose mother, however, did not
+allow him the rank of Archduke. Her efforts thus to provide Catholic
+heirs to the rich domains of Clove proved as fruitless as her previous
+attempts.
+
+And now Duke John William had died, and the representatives of his three
+dead sisters, and the living Sibylla were left to fight for the duchies.
+
+It would be both cruel and superfluous to inflict on the reader a
+historical statement of the manner in which these six small provinces
+were to be united into a single state. It would be an equally sterile
+task to retrace the legal arguments by which the various parties prepared
+themselves to vindicate their claims, each pretender more triumphantly
+than the other. The naked facts alone retain vital interest, and of these
+facts the prominent one was the assertion of the Emperor that the
+duchies, constituting a fief masculine, could descend to none of the
+pretenders, but were at his disposal as sovereign of Germany.
+
+On the other hand nearly all the important princes of that country sent
+their agents into the duchies to look after the interests real or
+imaginary which they claimed.
+
+There were but four candidates who in reality could be considered serious
+ones.
+
+Mary Eleanor, eldest sister of the Duke, had been married in the lifetime
+of their father to Albert Frederic of Brandenburg, Duke of Prussia. To
+the children of this marriage was reserved the succession of the whole
+property in case of the masculine line becoming extinct. Two years
+afterwards the second sister, Anne, was married to Duke Philip Lewis,
+Count-Palatine of Neuburg; the children of which marriage stood next in
+succession to those of the eldest sister, should that become
+extinguished. Four years later the third sister, Magdalen, espoused the
+Duke John, Count-Palatine of Deux-Ponts; who, like Neuburg, made
+resignation of rights of succession in favour of the descendants of the
+Brandenburg marriage. The marriage of the youngest sister, Sibylla, with
+the Margrave of Burgau has been already mentioned. It does not appear
+that her brother, whose lunatic condition hardly permitted him to assure
+her the dowry which had been the price of renunciation in the case of her
+three elder sisters, had obtained that renunciation from her.
+
+The claims of the childless Sibylla as well as those of the Deux-Ponts
+branch were not destined to be taken into serious consideration.
+
+The real competitors were the Emperor on the one side and the Elector of
+Brandenburg and the Count-Palatine of Neuburg on the other.
+
+It is not necessary to my purpose to say a single word as to the legal
+and historical rights of the controversy. Volumes upon volumes of
+forgotten lore might be consulted, and they would afford exactly as much
+refreshing nutriment as would the heaps of erudition hardly ten years
+old, and yet as antiquated as the title-deeds of the Pharaohs, concerning
+the claims to the Duchies of Schleswig-Holstein. The fortunate house of
+Brandenburg may have been right or wrong in both disputes. It is certain
+that it did not lack a more potent factor in settling the political
+problems of the world in the one case any more than in the other.
+
+But on the occasion with which we are occupied it was not on the might of
+his own right hand that the Elector of Brandenburg relied. Moreover, he
+was dilatory in appealing to the two great powers on whose friendship he
+must depend for the establishment of his claims: the United Republic and
+the King of France. James of England was on the whole inclined to believe
+in the rights of Brandenburg. His ambassador, however, with more
+prophetic vision than perhaps the King ever dreamt--of, expressed a fear
+lest Brandenburg should grow too great and one day come to the Imperial
+crown.
+
+The States openly favoured the Elector. Henry as at first disposed
+towards Neuburg, but at his request Barneveld furnished a paper on the
+subject, by which the King seems to have been entirely converted to the
+pretensions of Brandenburg.
+
+But the solution of the question had but little to do with the legal
+claim of any man. It was instinctively felt throughout Christendom that
+the great duel between the ancient church and the spirit of the
+Reformation was now to be renewed upon that narrow, debateable spot.
+
+The Emperor at once proclaimed his right to arbitrate on the succession
+and to hold the territory until decision should be made; that is to say,
+till the Greek Kalends. His familiar and most tricksy spirit,
+Bishop-Archduke Leopold, played at once on his fears and his resentments,
+against the ever encroaching, ever menacing, Protestantism of Germany,
+with which he had just sealed a compact so bitterly detested.
+
+That bold and bustling prelate, brother of the Queen of Spain and of
+Ferdinand of Styria, took post from Prague in the middle of July.
+Accompanied by a certain canon of the Church and disguised as his
+servant, he arrived after a rapid journey before the gates of Julich,
+chief city and fortress of the duchies. The governor of the place,
+Nestelraed, inclined like most of the functionaries throughout the
+duchies to the Catholic cause, was delighted to recognize under the
+livery of the lackey the cousin and representative of the Emperor.
+Leopold, who had brought but five men with him, had conquered his capital
+at a blow. For while thus comfortably established as temporary governor
+of the duchies he designed through the fears or folly of Rudolph to
+become their sovereign lord. Strengthened by such an acquisition and
+reckoning on continued assistance in men and money from Spain and the
+Catholic League, he meant to sweep back to the rescue of the perishing
+Rudolph, smite the Protestants of Bohemia, and achieve his appointment to
+the crown of that kingdom.
+
+The Spanish ambassador at Prague had furnished him with a handsome sum of
+money for the expenses of his journey and preliminary enterprise. It
+should go hard but funds should be forthcoming to support him throughout
+this audacious scheme. The champion of the Church, the sovereign prince
+of important provinces, the possession of which ensured conclusive
+triumph to the House of Austria and to Rome--who should oppose him in his
+path to Empire? Certainly not the moody Rudolph, the slippery and
+unstable Matthias, the fanatic and Jesuit-ridden Ferdinand.
+
+"Leopold in Julich," said Henry's agent in Germany, "is a ferret in a
+rabbit warren."
+
+But early in the spring and before the arrival of Leopold, the two
+pretenders, John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg, and Philip Lewis,
+Palatine of Neuburg, had made an arrangement. By the earnest advice of
+Barneveld in the name of the States-General and as the result of a
+general council of many Protestant princes of Germany, it had been
+settled that those two should together provisionally hold and administer
+the duchies until the principal affair could be amicably settled.
+
+The possessory princes were accordingly established in Dusseldorf with
+the consent of the provincial estates, in which place those bodies were
+wont to assemble.
+
+Here then was Spain in the person of Leopold quietly perched in the chief
+citadel of the country, while Protestantism in the shape of the
+possessory princes stood menacingly in the capital.
+
+Hardly was the ink dry on the treaty which had suspended for twelve years
+the great religious war of forty years, not yet had the ratifications
+been exchanged, but the trumpet was again sounding, and the hostile
+forces were once more face to face.
+
+Leopold, knowing where his great danger lay, sent a friendly message to
+the States-General, expressing the hope that they would submit to his
+arrangements until the Imperial decision should be made.
+
+The States, through the pen and brain of Barneveld, replied that they had
+already recognized the rights of the possessory princes, and were
+surprised that the Bishop-Archduke should oppose them. They expressed the
+hope that, when better informed, he would see the validity of the Treaty
+of Dortmund. "My Lords the States-General," said the Advocate, "will
+protect the princes against violence and actual disturbances, and are
+assured that the neighbouring kings and princes will do the same. They
+trust that his Imperial Highness will not allow matters, to proceed to
+extremities."
+
+This was language not to be mistaken. It was plain that the Republic did
+not intend the Emperor to decide a question of life and death to herself,
+nor to permit Spain, exhausted by warfare, to achieve this annihilating
+triumph by a petty intrigue.
+
+While in reality the clue to what seemed to the outside world a
+labyrinthine maze of tangled interests and passions was firmly held in
+the hand of Barneveld, it was not to him nor to My Lords the
+States-General that the various parties to the impending conflict applied
+in the first resort.
+
+Mankind were not yet sufficiently used to this young republic, intruding
+herself among the family of kings, to defer at once to an authority which
+they could not but feel.
+
+Moreover, Henry of France was universally looked to both by friends and
+foes as the probable arbiter or chief champion in the great debate. He
+had originally been inclined to favour Neuberg, chiefly, so Aerssens
+thought, on account of his political weakness. The States-General on the
+other hand were firmly disposed for Brandenburg from the first, not only
+as a strenuous supporter of the Reformation and an ancient ally of their
+own always interested in their safety, but because the establishment of
+the Elector on the Rhine would roll back the Empire beyond that river. As
+Aerssens expressed it, they would have the Empire for a frontier, and
+have no longer reason to fear the Rhine.
+
+The King, after the representations of the States, saw good ground to
+change his opinion and; becoming convinced that the Palatine had long
+been coquetting with the Austrian party, soon made no secret of his
+preference for Brandenburg. Subsequently Neuburg and Brandenburg fell
+into a violent quarrel notwithstanding an arrangement that the Palatine
+should marry the daughter of the Elector. In the heat of discussion
+Brandenburg on one occasion is said to have given his intended son-in-law
+a box on the ear! an argument 'ad hominem' which seems to have had the
+effect of sending the Palatine into the bosom of the ancient church and
+causing him to rely thenceforth upon the assistance of the League.
+Meantime, however, the Condominium settled by the Treaty of Dortmund
+continued in force; the third brother of Brandenburg and the eldest son
+of Neuburg sharing possession and authority at Dusseldorf until a final
+decision could be made.
+
+A flock of diplomatists, professional or volunteers, openly accredited or
+secret, were now flying busily about through the troubled atmosphere,
+indicating the coming storm in which they revelled. The keen-sighted,
+subtle, but dangerously intriguing ambassador of the Republic, Francis
+Aerssens, had his hundred eyes at all the keyholes in Paris, that centre
+of ceaseless combination and conspiracy, and was besides in almost daily
+confidential intercourse with the King. Most patiently and minutely he
+kept the Advocate informed, almost from hour to hour, of every web that
+was spun, every conversation public or whispered in which important
+affairs were treated anywhere and by anybody. He was all-sufficient as a
+spy and intelligencer, although not entirely trustworthy as a counsellor.
+Still no man on the whole could scan the present or forecast the future
+more accurately than he was able to do from his advantageous position and
+his long experience of affairs.
+
+There was much general jealousy between the States and the despotic king,
+who loved to be called the father of the Republic and to treat the
+Hollanders as his deeply obliged and very ungrateful and miserly little
+children. The India trade was a sore subject, Henry having throughout the
+negotiations sought to force or wheedle the States into renouncing that
+commerce at the command of Spain, because he wished to help himself to it
+afterwards, and being now in the habit of secretly receiving Isaac Le
+Maire and other Dutch leaders in that lucrative monopoly, who lay
+disguised in Paris and in the house of Zamet--but not concealed from
+Aerssens, who pledged himself to break, the neck of their enterprise--and
+were planning with the King a French East India Company in opposition to
+that of the Netherlands.
+
+On the whole, however, despite these commercial intrigues which Barneveld
+through the aid of Aerssens was enabled to baffle, there was much
+cordiality and honest friendship between the two countries. Henry, far
+from concealing his political affection for the Republic, was desirous of
+receiving a special embassy of congratulation and gratitude from the
+States on conclusion of the truce; not being satisfied with the warm
+expressions of respect and attachment conveyed through the ordinary
+diplomatic channel.
+
+"He wishes," wrote Aerssens to the Advocate, "a public demonstration--in
+order to show on a theatre to all Christendom the regard and deference of
+My Lords the States for his Majesty." The Ambassador suggested that
+Cornelis van der Myle, son-in-law of Barneveld, soon to be named first
+envoy for Holland to the Venetian republic, might be selected as chief of
+such special embassy.
+
+"Without the instructions you gave me," wrote Aerssens, "Neuburg might
+have gained his cause in this court. Brandenburg is doing himself much
+injury by not soliciting the King."
+
+"Much deference will be paid to your judgment," added the envoy, "if you
+see fit to send it to his Majesty."
+
+Meantime, although the agent of Neuburg was busily dinning in Henry's
+ears the claims of the Palatine, and even urging old promises which, as
+he pretended, had been made, thanks to Barneveld, he took little by his
+importunity, notwithstanding that in the opinion both of Barneveld and
+Villeroy his claim 'stricti-juris' was the best. But it was policy and
+religious interests, not the strict letter of the law, that were likely
+to prevail. Henry, while loudly asserting that he would oppose any
+usurpation on the part of the Emperor or any one else against the
+Condominium, privately renewed to the States assurances of his intention
+to support ultimately the claims of Brandenburg, and notified them to
+hold the two regiments of French infantry, which by convention they still
+kept at his expense in their service, to be ready at a moment's warning
+for the great enterprise which he was already planning. "You would do
+well perhaps," wrote Aerssens to Barneveld, "to set forth the various
+interests in regard to this succession, and of the different relations of
+the claimants towards our commonwealth; but in such sort nevertheless and
+so dexterously that the King may be able to understand your desires, and
+on the other hand may see the respect you bear him in appearing to defer
+to his choice."
+
+Neuburg, having always neglected the States and made advances to Archduke
+Albert, and being openly preferred over Brandenburg by the Austrians, who
+had however no intention of eventually tolerating either, could make but
+small headway at court, notwithstanding Henry's indignation that
+Brandenburg had not yet made the slightest demand upon him for
+assistance.
+
+The Elector had keenly solicited the aid of the states, who were bound to
+him by ancient contract on this subject, but had manifested wonderful
+indifference or suspicion in regard to France. "These nonchalant
+Germans," said Henry on more than one occasion, "do nothing but sleep or
+drink."
+
+It was supposed that the memory of Metz might haunt the imagination of
+the Elector. That priceless citadel, fraudulently extorted by Henry II.
+as a forfeit for assistance to the Elector of Saxony three quarters of a
+century before, gave solemn warning to Brandenburg of what might be
+exacted by a greater Henry, should success be due to his protection. It
+was also thought that he had too many dangers about him at home, the
+Poles especially, much stirred up by emissaries from Rome, making many
+troublesome demonstrations against the Duchy of Prussia.
+
+It was nearly midsummer before a certain Baron Donals arrived as emissary
+of the Elector. He brought with him, many documents in support of the
+Brandenburg claims, and was charged with excuses for the dilatoriness of
+his master. Much stress was laid of course on the renunciation made by
+Neuburg at the tithe of his marriage, and Henry was urged to grant his
+protection to the Elector in his good rights. But thus far there were few
+signs of any vigorous resolution for active measures in an affair which
+could scarcely fail to lead to war.
+
+"I believe," said Henry to the States ambassador, "that the right of
+Brandenburg is indubitable, and it is better for you and for me that he
+should be the man rather than Neuburg, who has always sought assistance
+from the House of Austria. But he is too lazy in demanding possession. It
+is the fault of the doctors by whom he is guided. This delay works in
+favour of the Emperor, whose course however is less governed by any
+determination of his own than by the irresolution of the princes."
+
+Then changing the conversation, Henry asked the Ambassador whether the
+daughter of de Maldere, a leading statesman of Zealand, was married or of
+age to be married, and if she was rich; adding that they must make a
+match between her and Barneveld's second son, then a young gentleman in
+the King's service, and very much liked by him.
+
+Two months later a regularly accredited envoy, Belin by name, arrived
+from the Elector. His instructions were general. He was to thank the King
+for his declarations in favour of the possessory princes, and against all
+usurpation on the part of the Spanish party. Should the religious cord be
+touched, he was to give assurances that no change would be made in this
+regard. He was charged with loads of fine presents in yellow amber, such
+as ewers, basins, tables, cups, chessboards, for the King and Queen, the
+Dauphin, the Chancellor, Villeroy, Sully, Bouillon, and other eminent
+personages. Beyond the distribution of these works of art and the
+exchange of a few diplomatic commonplaces, nothing serious in the way of
+warlike business was transacted, and Henry was a few weeks later much
+amused by receiving a letter from the possessory princes coolly thrown
+into the post-office, and addressed like an ordinary letter to a private
+person, in which he was requested to advance them a loan of 400,000
+crowns. There was a great laugh at court at a demand made like a bill of
+exchange at sight upon his Majesty as if he had been a banker, especially
+as there happened to be no funds of the drawers in his hands. It was
+thought that a proper regard for the King's quality and the amount of the
+sum demanded required that the letter should be brought at least by an
+express messenger, and Henry was both diverted and indignant at these
+proceedings, at the months long delay before the princes had thought
+proper to make application for his protection, and then for this cool
+demand for alms on a large scale as a proper beginning of their
+enterprise.
+
+Such was the languid and extremely nonchalant manner in which the early
+preparations for a conflict which seemed likely to set Europe in a blaze,
+and of which possibly few living men might witness the termination, were
+set on foot by those most interested in the immediate question.
+
+Chessboards in yellow amber and a post-office order for 400,000 crowns
+could not go far in settling the question of the duchies in which the
+great problem dividing Christendom as by an abyss was involved.
+
+Meantime, while such were the diplomatic beginnings of the possessory
+princes, the League was leaving no stone unturned to awaken Henry to a
+sense of his true duty to the Church of which he was Eldest Son.
+
+Don Pedro de Toledo's mission in regard to the Spanish marriages had
+failed because Henry had spurned the condition which was unequivocally
+attached to them on the part of Spain, the king's renunciation of his
+alliance with the Dutch Republic, which then seemed an equivalent to its
+ruin. But the treaty of truce and half-independence had been signed at
+last by the States and their ancient master, and the English and French
+negotiators had taken their departure, each receiving as a present for
+concluding the convention 20,000 livres from the Archdukes, and 30,000
+from the States-General. Henry, returning one summer's morning from the
+chase and holding the Count of Soissons by one hand and Ambassador
+Aerssens by the other, told them he had just received letters from Spain
+by which he learned that people were marvellously rejoiced at the
+conclusion of the truce. Many had regretted that its conditions were so
+disadvantageous and so little honourable to the grandeur and dignity of
+Spain, but to these it was replied that there were strong reasons why
+Spain should consent to peace on these terms rather than not have it at
+all. During the twelve years to come the King could repair his disasters
+and accumulate mountains of money in order to finish the war by the
+subjugation of the Provinces by force of gold.
+
+Soissons here interrupted the King by saying that the States on their
+part would finish it by force of iron.
+
+Aerssens, like an accomplished courtier, replied they would finish it by
+means of his Majesty's friendship.
+
+The King continued by observing that the clear-sighted in Spain laughed
+at these rodomontades, knowing well that it was pure exhaustion that had
+compelled the King to such extremities. "I leave you to judge," said
+Henry, "whether he is likely to have any courage at forty-five years of
+age, having none now at thirty-two. Princes show what they have in them
+of generosity and valour at the age of twenty-five or never." He said
+that orders had been sent from Spain to disband all troops in the
+obedient Netherlands except Spaniards and Italians, telling the Archdukes
+that they must raise the money out of the country to content them. They
+must pay for a war made for their benefit, said Philip. As for him he
+would not furnish one maravedi.
+
+Aerssens asked if the Archdukes would disband their troops so long as the
+affair of Cleve remained unsettled. "You are very lucky," replied the
+King, "that Europe is governed by such princes as you wot of. The King of
+Spain thinks of nothing but tranquillity. The Archdukes will never move
+except on compulsion. The Emperor, whom every one is so much afraid of in
+this matter, is in such plight that one of these days, and before long,
+he will be stripped of all his possessions. I have news that the
+Bohemians are ready to expel him."
+
+It was true enough that Rudolph hardly seemed a formidable personage. The
+Utraquists and Bohemian Brothers, making up nearly the whole population
+of the country, were just extorting religious liberty from their unlucky
+master in his very palace and at the point of the knife. The envoy of
+Matthias was in Paris demanding recognition of his master as King of
+Hungary, and Henry did not suspect the wonderful schemes of Leopold, the
+ferret in the rabbit warren of the duchies, to come to the succour of his
+cousin and to get himself appointed his successor and guardian.
+
+Nevertheless, the Emperor's name had been used to protest solemnly
+against the entrance into Dusseldorf of the Margrave Ernest of
+Brandenburg and Palatine Wolfgang William of Neuburg, representatives
+respectively of their brother and father.
+
+The induction was nevertheless solemnly made by the Elector-Palatine and
+the Landgrave of Hesse, and joint possession solemnly taken by
+Brandenburg and Neuburg in the teeth of the protest, and expressly in
+order to cut short the dilatory schemes and the artifices of the Imperial
+court.
+
+Henry at once sent a corps of observation consisting of 1500 cavalry to
+the Luxemburg frontier by way of Toul, Mezieres, Verdun, and Metz, to
+guard against movements by the disbanded troops of the Archdukes, and
+against any active demonstration against the possessory princes on the
+part of the Emperor.
+
+The 'Condominium' was formally established, and Henry stood before the
+world as its protector threatening any power that should attempt
+usurpation. He sent his agent Vidomacq to the Landgrave of Hesse with
+instructions to do his utmost to confirm the princes of the Union in
+organized resistance to the schemes of Spain, and to prevent any
+interference with the Condominium.
+
+He wrote letters to the Archdukes and to the Elector of Cologne, sternly
+notifying them that he would permit no assault upon the princes, and
+meant to protect them in their rights. He sent one of his most
+experienced diplomatists, de Boississe, formerly ambassador in England,
+to reside for a year or more in the duchies as special representative of
+France, and directed him on his way thither to consult especially with
+Barneveld and the States-General as to the proper means of carrying out
+their joint policy either by diplomacy or, if need should be, by their
+united arms.
+
+Troops began at once to move towards the frontier to counteract the plans
+of the Emperor's council and the secret levies made by Duchess Sibylla's
+husband, the Margrave of Burgau. The King himself was perpetually at
+Monceaux watching the movements of his cavalry towards the Luxemburg
+frontier, and determined to protect the princes in their possession until
+some definite decision as to the sovereignty of the duchies should be
+made.
+
+Meantime great pressure was put upon him by the opposite party. The Pope
+did his best through the Nuncius at Paris directly, and through agents at
+Prague, Brussels, and Madrid indirectly, to awaken the King to a sense of
+the enormity of his conduct.
+
+Being a Catholic prince, it was urged, he had no right to assist
+heretics. It was an action entirely contrary to his duty as a Christian
+and of his reputation as Eldest Son of the Church. Even if the right were
+on the side of the princes, his Majesty would do better to strip them of
+it and to clothe himself with it than to suffer the Catholic faith and
+religion to receive such notable detriment in an affair likely to have
+such important consequences.
+
+Such was some of the advice given by the Pontiff. The suggestions were
+subtle, for they were directed to Henry's self-interest both as champion
+of the ancient church and as a possible sovereign of the very territories
+in dispute. They were also likely, and were artfully so intended, to
+excite suspicion of Henry's designs in the breasts of the Protestants
+generally and of the possessory princes especially. Allusions indeed to
+the rectification of the French border in Henry II.'s time at the expense
+of Lorraine were very frequent. They probably accounted for much of the
+apparent supineness and want of respect for the King of which he
+complained every day and with so much bitterness.
+
+The Pope's insinuations, however, failed to alarm him, for he had made up
+his mind as to the great business of what might remain to him of life; to
+humble the House of Austria and in doing so to uphold the Dutch Republic
+on which he relied for his most efficient support. The situation was a
+false one viewed from the traditional maxims which governed Europe. How
+could the Eldest Son of the Church and the chief of an unlimited monarchy
+make common cause with heretics and republicans against Spain and Rome?
+That the position was as dangerous as it was illogical, there could be
+but little doubt. But there was a similarity of opinion between the King
+and the political chief of the Republic on the great principle which was
+to illume the distant future but which had hardly then dawned upon the
+present; the principle of religious equality. As he protected Protestants
+in France so he meant to protect Catholics in the duchies. Apostate as he
+was from the Reformed Church as he had already been from the Catholic, he
+had at least risen above the paltry and insolent maxim of the princely
+Protestantism of Germany: "Cujus regio ejus religio."
+
+While refusing to tremble before the wrath of Rome or to incline his ear
+to its honeyed suggestions, he sent Cardinal Joyeuse with a special
+mission to explain to the Pope that while the interests of France would
+not permit him to allow the Spaniard's obtaining possession of provinces
+so near to her, he should take care that the Church received no detriment
+and that he should insist as a price of the succour he intended for the
+possessory princes that they should give ample guarantees for the liberty
+of Catholic worship.
+
+There was no doubt in the mind either of Henry or of Barneveld that the
+secret blows attempted by Spain at the princes were in reality aimed at
+the Republic and at himself as her ally.
+
+While the Nuncius was making these exhortations in Paris, his colleague
+from Spain was authorized to propound a scheme of settlement which did
+not seem deficient in humour. At any rate Henry was much diverted with
+the suggestion, which was nothing less than that the decision as to the
+succession to the duchies should be left to a board of arbitration
+consisting of the King of Spain, the Emperor, and the King of France. As
+Henry would thus be painfully placed by himself in a hopeless minority,
+the only result of the scheme would be to compel him to sanction a
+decision sure to be directly the reverse of his own resolve. He was
+hardly such a schoolboy in politics as to listen to the proposal except
+to laugh at it.
+
+Meantime arrived from Julich, without much parade, a quiet but somewhat
+pompous gentleman named Teynagel. He had formerly belonged to the
+Reformed religion, but finding it more to his taste or advantage to
+become privy councillor of the Emperor, he had returned to the ancient
+church. He was one of the five who had accompanied the Archduke Leopold
+to Julich.
+
+That prompt undertaking having thus far succeeded so well, the warlike
+bishop had now despatched Teynagel on a roving diplomatic mission.
+Ostensibly he came to persuade Henry that, by the usages and laws of the
+Empire, fiefs left vacant for want of heirs male were at the disposal of
+the Emperor. He expressed the hope therefore of obtaining the King's
+approval of Leopold's position in Julich as temporary vicegerent of his
+sovereign and cousin. The real motive of his mission, however, was
+privately to ascertain whether Henry was really ready to go to war for
+the protection of the possessory princes, and then, to proceed to Spain.
+It required an astute politician, however, to sound all the shoals,
+quicksands, and miseries through which the French government was then
+steering, and to comprehend with accuracy the somewhat varying humours of
+the monarch and the secret schemes of the ministers who immediately
+surrounded him.
+
+People at court laughed at Teynagel and his mission, and Henry treated
+him as a crackbrained adventurer. He announced himself as envoy of the
+Emperor, although he had instructions from Leopold only. He had
+interviews with the Chancellor and with Villeroy, and told them that
+Rudolf claimed the right of judge between the various pretenders to the
+duchies. The King would not be pleased, he observed, if the King of Great
+Britain should constitute himself arbiter among claimants that might make
+their appearance for the crown of France; but Henry had set himself up as
+umpire without being asked by any one to act in that capacity among the
+princes of Germany. The Emperor, on the contrary, had been appealed to by
+the Duke of Nevers, the Elector of Saxony, the Margrave of Burgau, and
+other liege subjects of the Imperial crown as a matter of course and of
+right. This policy of the King, if persisted in, said Teynagel, must lead
+to war. Henry might begin such a war, but he would be obliged to bequeath
+it to the Dauphin. He should remember that France had always been unlucky
+when waging war with the Empire and with the house of Austria.'
+
+The Chancellor and Villeroy, although in their hearts not much in love
+with Henry's course, answered the emissary with arrogance equal to his
+own that their king could finish the war as well as begin it, that he
+confided in his strength and the justice of his cause, and that he knew
+very well and esteemed very little the combined forces of Spain and the
+Empire. They added that France was bound by the treaty of Vervins to
+protect the princes, but they offered no proof of that rather startling
+proposition.
+
+Meantime Teynagel was busy in demonstrating that the princes of Germany
+were in reality much more afraid of Henry than of the Emperor. His
+military movements and deep designs excited more suspicion throughout
+that country and all Europe than the quiet journey of Leopold and five
+friends by post to Julich.
+
+He had come provided with copies of the King's private letters to the
+princes, and seemed fully instructed as to his most secret thoughts. For
+this convenient information he was supposed to be indebted to the
+revelations of Father Cotton, who was then in disgrace; having been
+detected in transmitting to the General of Jesuits Henry's most sacred
+confidences and confessions as to his political designs.
+
+Fortified with this private intelligence, and having been advised by
+Father Cotton to carry matters with a high hand in order to inspire the
+French court with a wholesome awe, he talked boldly about the legitimate
+functions of the Emperor. To interfere with them, he assured the
+ministers, would lead to a long and bloody war, as neither the King nor
+the Archduke Albert would permit the Emperor to be trampled upon.
+
+Peter Pecquius, the crafty and experienced agent of the Archduke at
+Paris, gave the bouncing envoy more judicious advice, however, than that
+of the Jesuit, assuring him that he would spoil his whole case should he
+attempt to hold such language to the King.
+
+He was admitted to an audience of Henry at Monceaux, but found him
+prepared to show his teeth as Aerssens had predicted. He treated Teynagel
+as a mere madcap and, adventurer who had no right to be received as a
+public minister at all, and cut short his rodomontades by assuring him
+that his mind was fully made up to protect the possessory princes.
+Jeannin was present at the interview, although, as Aerssens well
+observed, the King required no pedagogue on such an occasion? Teynagel
+soon afterwards departed malcontent to Spain, having taken little by his
+abnormal legation to Henry, and being destined to find at the court of
+Philip as urgent demands on that monarch for assistance to the League as
+he was to make for Leopold and the House of Austria.
+
+For the League, hardly yet thoroughly organized under the leadership of
+Maximilian of Bavaria, was rather a Catholic corrival than cordial ally
+of the Imperial house. It was universally suspected that Henry meant to
+destroy and discrown the Habsburgs, and it lay not in the schemes of
+Maximilian to suffer the whole Catholic policy to be bound to the
+fortunes of that one family.
+
+Whether or not Henry meant to commit the anachronism and blunder of
+reproducing the part of Charlemagne might be doubtful. The supposed
+design of Maximilian to renew the glories of the House of Wittelsbach was
+equally vague. It is certain, however, that a belief in such ambitious
+schemes on the part of both had been insinuated into the ears of Rudolf,
+and had sunk deeply into his unsettled mind.
+
+Scarcely had Teynagel departed than the ancient President Richardot
+appeared upon the scene. "The mischievous old monkey," as he had
+irreverently been characterized during the Truce negotiations, "who
+showed his tail the higher he climbed," was now trembling at the thought
+that all the good work he had been so laboriously accomplishing during
+the past two years should be annihilated. The Archdukes, his masters,
+being sincerely bent on peace, had deputed him to Henry, who, as they
+believed, was determined to rekindle war. As frequently happens in such
+cases, they were prepared to smooth over the rough and almost impassable
+path to a cordial understanding by comfortable and cheap commonplaces
+concerning the blessings of peace, and to offer friendly compromises by
+which they might secure the prizes of war without the troubles and
+dangers of making it.
+
+They had been solemnly notified by Henry that he would go to war rather
+than permit the House of Austria to acquire the succession to the
+duchies. They now sent Richardot to say that neither the Archdukes nor
+the King of Spain would interfere in the matter, and that they hoped the
+King of France would not prevent the Emperor from exercising his rightful
+functions of judge.
+
+Henry, who knew that Don Baltasar de Cuniga, Spanish ambassador at the
+Imperial court, had furnished Leopold, the Emperor's cousin, with 50,000
+crowns to defray his first expenses in the Julich expedition, considered
+that the veteran politician had come to perform a school boy's task. He
+was more than ever convinced by this mission of Richardot that the
+Spaniards had organized the whole scheme, and he was likely only to smile
+at any propositions the President might make.
+
+At the beginning of his interview, in which the King was quite alone,
+Richardot asked if he would agree to maintain neutrality like the King of
+Spain and the Archdukes, and allow the princes to settle their business
+with the Emperor.
+
+"No," said the King.
+
+He then asked if Henry would assist them in their wrong.
+
+"No," said the King.
+
+He then asked if the King thought that the princes had justice on their
+side, and whether, if the contrary were shown, he would change his
+policy?
+
+Henry replied that the Emperor could not be both judge and party in the
+suit and that the King of Spain was plotting to usurp the provinces
+through the instrumentality of his brother-in-law Leopold and under the
+name of the Emperor. He would not suffer it, he said.
+
+"Then there will be a general war," replied Richardot, "since you are
+determined to assist these princes."
+
+"Be it so," said the King.
+
+"You are right," said the President, "for you are a great and puissant
+monarch, having all the advantages that could be desired, and in case of
+rupture I fear that all this immense power will be poured out over us who
+are but little princes."
+
+"Cause Leopold to retire then and leave the princes in their right," was
+the reply. "You will then have nothing to fear. Are you not very unhappy
+to live under those poor weak archdukes? Don't you foresee that as soon
+as they die you will lose all the little you have acquired in the
+obedient Netherlands during the last fifty years?"
+
+The President had nothing to reply to this save that he had never
+approved of Leopold's expedition, and that when Spaniards make mistakes
+they always had recourse to their servants to repair their faults. He had
+accepted this mission inconsiderately, he said, inspired by a hope to
+conjure the rising storms mingled with fears as to the result which were
+now justified. He regretted having come, he said.
+
+The King shrugged his shoulders.
+
+Richardot then suggested that Leopold might be recognized in Julich, and
+the princes at Dusseldorf, or that all parties might retire until the
+Emperor should give his decision.
+
+All these combinations were flatly refused by the King, who swore that no
+one of the House of Austria should ever perch in any part of those
+provinces. If Leopold did not withdraw at once, war was inevitable.
+
+He declared that he would break up everything and dare everything,
+whether the possessory princes formally applied to him or not. He would
+not see his friends oppressed nor allow the Spaniard by this usurpation
+to put his foot on the throat of the States-General, for it was against
+them that this whole scheme was directed.
+
+To the President's complaints that the States-General had been moving
+troops in Gelderland, Henry replied at once that it was done by his
+command, and that they were his troops.
+
+With this answer Richardot was fain to retire crestfallen, mortified, and
+unhappy. He expressed repentance and astonishment at the result, and
+protested that those peoples were happy whose princes understood affairs.
+His princes were good, he said, but did not give themselves the trouble
+to learn their business.
+
+Richardot then took his departure from Paris, and very soon afterwards
+from the world. He died at Arras early in September, as many thought of
+chagrin at the ill success of his mission, while others ascribed it to a
+surfeit of melons and peaches.
+
+"Senectus edam maorbus est," said Aerssens with Seneca.
+
+Henry said he could not sufficiently wonder at these last proceedings at
+his court, of a man he had deemed capable and sagacious, but who had been
+committing an irreparable blunder. He had never known two such
+impertinent ambassadors as Don Pedro de Toledo and Richardot on this
+occasion. The one had been entirely ignorant of the object of his
+mission; the other had shown a vain presumption in thinking he could
+drive him from his fixed purpose by a flood of words. He had accordingly
+answered him on the spot without consulting his council, at which poor
+Richardot had been much amazed.
+
+And now another envoy appeared upon the scene, an ambassador coming
+directly from the Emperor. Count Hohenzollern, a young man, wild, fierce,
+and arrogant, scarcely twenty-three years of age, arrived in Paris on the
+7th of September, with a train of forty horsemen.
+
+De Colly, agent of the Elector-Palatine, had received an outline of his
+instructions, which the Prince of Anhalt had obtained at Prague. He
+informed Henry that Hohenzollern would address him thus: "You are a king.
+You would not like that the Emperor should aid your subjects in
+rebellion. He did not do this in the time of the League, although often
+solicited to do so. You should not now sustain the princes in disobeying
+the Imperial decree. Kings should unite in maintaining the authority and
+majesty of each other." He would then in the Emperor's name urge the
+claims of the House of Saxony to the duchies.
+
+Henry was much pleased with this opportune communication by de Colly of
+the private instructions to the Emperor's envoy, by which he was enabled
+to meet the wild and fierce young man with an arrogance at least equal to
+his own.
+
+The interview was a stormy one. The King was alone in the gallery of the
+Louvre, not choosing that his words and gestures should be observed. The
+Envoy spoke much in the sense which de Colly had indicated; making a long
+argument in favour of the Emperor's exclusive right of arbitration, and
+assuring the King that the Emperor was resolved on war if interference
+between himself and his subjects was persisted in. He loudly pronounced
+the proceedings of the possessory princes to be utterly illegal, and
+contrary to all precedent. The Emperor would maintain his authority at
+all hazards, and one spark of war would set everything in a blaze within
+the Empire and without.
+
+Henry replied sternly but in general terms, and referred him for a final
+answer to his council.
+
+"What will you do," asked the Envoy, categorically, at a subsequent
+interview about a month later, "to protect the princes in case the
+Emperor constrains them to leave the provinces which they have unjustly
+occupied?"
+
+"There is none but God to compel me to say more than I choose to say,"
+replied the King. "It is enough for you to know that I will never abandon
+my friends in a just cause. The Emperor can do much for the general
+peace. He is not to lend his name to cover this usurpation."
+
+And so the concluding interview terminated in an exchange of threats
+rather than with any hope of accommodation.
+
+Hohenzollern used as high language to the ministers as to the monarch,
+and received payment in the same coin. He rebuked their course not very
+adroitly as being contrary to the interests of Catholicism. They were
+placing the provinces in the hands of Protestants, he urged. It required
+no envoy from Prague to communicate this startling fact. Friends and
+foes, Villeroy and Jeannin, as well as Sully and Duplessis, knew well
+enough that Henry was not taking up arms for Rome. "Sir! do you look at
+the matter in that way?" cried Sully, indignantly. "The Huguenots are as
+good as the Catholics. They fight like the devil!"
+
+"The Emperor will never permit the princes to remain nor Leopold to
+withdraw," said the Envoy to Jeannin.
+
+Jeannin replied that the King was always ready to listen to reason, but
+there was no use in holding language of authority to him. It was money he
+would not accept.
+
+"Fiat justitia pereat mundus," said the haggard Hohenzollern.
+
+"Your world may perish," replied Jeannin, "but not ours. It is much
+better put together."
+
+A formal letter was then written by the King to the Emperor, in which
+Henry expressed his desire to maintain peace and fraternal relations, but
+notified him that if, under any pretext whatever, he should trouble the
+princes in their possession, he would sustain them with all his power,
+being bound thereto by treaties and by reasons of state.
+
+This letter was committed to the care of Hohenzollern, who forthwith
+departed, having received a present of 4000 crowns. His fierce, haggard
+face thus vanishes for the present from our history.
+
+The King had taken his ground, from which there was no receding. Envoys
+or agents of Emperor, Pope, King of Spain, Archduke at Brussels, and
+Archduke at Julich, had failed to shake his settled purpose. Yet the road
+was far from smooth. He had thus far no ally but the States-General. He
+could not trust James of Great Britain. Boderie came back late in the
+summer from his mission to that monarch, reporting him as being
+favourably inclined to Brandenburg, but hoping for an amicable settlement
+in the duchies. No suggestion being made even by the sagacious James as
+to the manner in which the ferret and rabbits were to come to a
+compromise, Henry inferred, if it came to fighting, that the English
+government would refuse assistance. James had asked Boderie in fact
+whether his sovereign and the States, being the parties chiefly
+interested, would be willing to fight it out without allies. He had also
+sent Sir Ralph Winwood on a special mission to the Hague, to Dusseldorf,
+and with letters to the Emperor, in which he expressed confidence that
+Rudolph would approve the proceedings of the possessory princes. As he
+could scarcely do that while loudly claiming through his official envoy
+in Paris that the princes should instantly withdraw on pain of instant
+war, the value of the English suggestion of an amicable compromise might
+easily be deduced.
+
+Great was the jealousy in France of this mission from England. That the
+princes should ask the interference of James while neglecting, despising,
+or fearing Henry, excited Henry's wrath. He was ready, and avowed his
+readiness, to put on armour at once in behalf of the princes, and to
+arbitrate on the destiny of Germany, but no one seemed ready to follow
+his standard. No one asked him to arbitrate. The Spanish faction wheedled
+and threatened by turns, in order to divert him from his purpose, while
+the Protestant party held aloof, and babbled of Charlemagne and of Henry
+II.
+
+He said he did not mean to assist the princes by halves, but as became a
+King of France, and the princes expressed suspicion of him, talked of the
+example of Metz, and called the Emperor their very clement lord.
+
+It was not strange that Henry was indignant and jealous. He was holding
+the wolf by the ears, as he himself observed more than once. The war
+could not long be delayed; yet they in whose behalf it was to be waged
+treated him with a disrespect and flippancy almost amounting to scorn.
+
+They tried to borrow money of him through the post, and neglected to send
+him an ambassador. This was most decidedly putting the cart before the
+oxen, so Henry said, and so thought all his friends. When they had
+blockaded the road to Julich, in order to cut off Leopold's supplies,
+they sent to request that the two French regiments in the States' service
+might be ordered to their assistance, Archduke Albert having threatened
+to open the passage by force of arms. "This is a fine stratagem," said
+Aerssens, "to fling the States-General headlong into the war, and, as it
+were, without knowing it."
+
+But the States-General, under the guidance of Barneveld, were not likely
+to be driven headlong by Brandenburg and Neuburg. They managed with
+caution, but with perfect courage, to move side by side with Henry, and
+to leave the initiative to him, while showing an unfaltering front to the
+enemy. That the princes were lost, Spain and the Emperor triumphant,
+unless Henry and the States should protect them with all their strength,
+was as plain as a mathematical demonstration.
+
+Yet firm as were the attitude and the language of Henry, he was thought
+to be hoping to accomplish much by bluster. It was certain that the bold
+and unexpected stroke of Leopold had produced much effect upon his mind,
+and for a time those admitted to his intimacy saw, or thought they saw, a
+decided change in his demeanour. To the world at large his language and
+his demonstrations were even more vehement than they had been at the
+outset of the controversy; but it was believed that there was now a
+disposition to substitute threats for action. The military movements set
+on foot were thought to be like the ringing of bells and firing of cannon
+to dissipate a thunderstorm. Yet it was treason at court to doubt the
+certainty of war. The King ordered new suits of armour, bought splendid
+chargers, and gave himself all the airs of a champion rushing to a
+tournament as gaily as in the earliest days of his king-errantry. He
+spoke of his eager desire to break a lance with Spinola, and give a
+lesson to the young volunteer who had sprung into so splendid a military
+reputation, while he had been rusting, as he thought, in pacific
+indolence, and envying the laurels of the comparatively youthful Maurice.
+Yet those most likely to be well informed believed that nothing would
+come of all this fire and fury.
+
+The critics were wrong. There was really no doubt of Henry's sincerity,
+but his isolation was terrible. There was none true to him at home but
+Sully. Abroad, the States-General alone were really friendly, so far as
+positive agreements existed. Above all, the intolerable tergiversations
+and suspicions of those most interested, the princes in possession, and
+their bickerings among themselves, hampered his movements.
+
+Treason and malice in his cabinet and household, jealousy and fear
+abroad, were working upon and undermining him like a slow fever. His
+position was most pathetic, but his purpose was fixed.
+
+James of England, who admired, envied, and hated Henry, was wont to
+moralize on his character and his general unpopularity, while engaged in
+negotiations with him. He complained that in the whole affair of the
+truce he had sought only his particular advantage. "This is not to be
+wondered at in one of his nature," said the King, "who only careth to
+provide for the felicities of his present life, without any respect for
+his life to come. Indeed, the consideration of his own age and the youth
+of his children, the doubt of their legitimation, the strength of
+competitioners, and the universal hatred borne unto him, makes him seek
+all means of security for preventing of all dangers."
+
+There were changes from day to day; hot and cold fits necessarily
+resulting from the situation. As a rule, no eminent general who has had
+much experience wishes to go into a new war inconsiderately and for the
+mere love of war. The impatience is often on the part of the
+non-combatants. Henry was no exception to the rule. He felt that the
+complications then existing, the religious, political, and dynastic
+elements arrayed against each other, were almost certain to be brought to
+a crisis and explosion by the incident of the duchies. He felt that the
+impending struggle was probably to be a desperate and a general one, but
+there was no inconsistency in hoping that the show of a vigorous and
+menacing attitude might suspend, defer, or entirely dissipate the
+impending storm.
+
+The appearance of vacillation on his part from day to day was hardly
+deserving of the grave censure which it received, and was certainly in
+the interests of humanity.
+
+His conferences with Sully were almost daily and marked by intense
+anxiety. He longed for Barneveld, and repeatedly urged that the Advocate,
+laying aside all other business, would come to Paris, that they might
+advise together thoroughly and face to face. It was most important that
+the combination of alliances should be correctly arranged before
+hostilities began, and herein lay the precise difficulty. The princes
+applied formally and freely to the States-General for assistance. They
+applied to the King of Great Britain. The agents of the opposite party
+besieged Henry with entreaties, and, failing in those, with threats;
+going off afterwards to Spain, to the Archdukes, and to other Catholic
+powers in search of assistance.
+
+The States-General professed their readiness to put an army of 15,000
+foot and 3000 horse in the field for the spring campaign, so soon as they
+were assured of Henry's determination for a rupture.
+
+"I am fresh enough still," said he to their ambassador, "to lead an army
+into Cleve. I shall have a cheap bargain enough of the provinces. But
+these Germans do nothing but eat and sleep. They will get the profit and
+assign to me the trouble. No matter, I will never suffer the
+aggrandizement of the House of Austria. The States-General must disband
+no troops, but hold themselves in readiness."
+
+Secretary of State Villeroy held the same language, but it was easy to
+trace beneath his plausible exterior a secret determination to traverse
+the plans of his sovereign. "The Cleve affair must lead to war," he said.
+"The Spaniard, considering how necessary it is for him to have a prince
+there at his devotion, can never quietly suffer Brandenburg and Neuburg
+to establish themselves in those territories. The support thus gained by
+the States-General would cause the loss of the Spanish Netherlands."
+
+This was the view of Henry, too, but the Secretary of State, secretly
+devoted to the cause of Spain, looked upon the impending war with much
+aversion.
+
+"All that can come to his Majesty from war," he said, "is the glory of
+having protected the right. Counterbalance this with the fatigue, the
+expense, and the peril of a great conflict, after our long repose, and
+you will find this to be buying glory too dearly."
+
+When a Frenchman talked of buying glory too dearly, it seemed probable
+that the particular kind of glory was not to his taste.
+
+Henry had already ordered the officers, then in France, of the 4000
+French infantry kept in the States' service at his expense to depart at
+once to Holland, and he privately announced his intention of moving to
+the frontier at the head of 30,000 men.
+
+'Yet not only Villeroy, but the Chancellor and the Constable, while
+professing opposition to the designs of Austria and friendliness to those
+of Brandenburg and Neuburg, deprecated this precipitate plunge into war.
+"Those most interested," they said, "refuse to move; fearing Austria,
+distrusting France. They leave us the burden and danger, and hope for the
+spoils themselves. We cannot play cat to their monkey. The King must hold
+himself in readiness to join in the game when the real players have
+shuffled and dealt the cards. It is no matter to us whether the Spaniard
+or Brandenburg or anyone else gets the duchies. The States-General
+require a friendly sovereign there, and ought to say how much they will
+do for that result."
+
+The Constable laughed at the whole business. Coming straight from the
+Louvre, he said "there would be no serious military movement, and that
+all those fine freaks would evaporate in air."
+
+But Sully never laughed. He was quietly preparing the ways and means for
+the war, and he did not intend, so far as he had influence, that France
+should content herself with freaks and let Spain win the game. Alone in
+the council he maintained that "France had gone too far to recede without
+sacrifice of reputation."--"The King's word is engaged both within and
+without," he said. "Not to follow it with deeds would be dangerous to the
+kingdom. The Spaniard will think France afraid of war. We must strike a
+sudden blow, either to drive the enemy away or to crush him at once.
+There is no time for delay. The Netherlands must prevent the
+aggrandizement of Austria or consent to their own ruin."
+
+Thus stood the game therefore. The brother of Brandenburg and son of
+Neuburg had taken possession of Dusseldorf.
+
+The Emperor, informed of this, ordered them forthwith to decamp. He
+further summoned all pretenders to the duchies to appear before him, in
+person or by proxy, to make good their claims. They refused and appealed
+for advice and assistance to the States-General. Barneveld, aware of the
+intrigues of Spain, who disguised herself in the drapery of the Emperor,
+recommended that the Estates of Cleve, Julich, Berg, Mark, Ravensberg,
+and Ravenstein, should be summoned in Dusseldorf. This was done and a
+resolution taken to resist any usurpation.
+
+The King of France wrote to the Elector of Cologne, who, by directions of
+Rome and by means of the Jesuits, had been active in the intrigue, that
+he would not permit the princes to be disturbed.
+
+The Archduke Leopold suddenly jumped into the chief citadel of the
+country and published an edict of the Emperor. All the proceedings were
+thereby nullified as illegal and against the dignity of the realm and the
+princes proclaimed under ban.
+
+A herald brought the edict and ban to the princes in full assembly. The
+princes tore it to pieces on the spot. Nevertheless they were much
+frightened, and many members of the Estates took themselves off; others
+showing an inclination to follow.
+
+The princes sent forth with a deputation to the Hague to consult My Lords
+the States-General. The States-General sent an express messenger to
+Paris. Their ambassador there sent him back a week later, with notice of
+the King's determination to risk everything against everything to
+preserve the rights of the princes. It was added that Henry required to
+be solicited by them, in order not by volunteer succour to give cause for
+distrust as to his intentions. The States-General were further apprised
+by the King that his interests and theirs were so considerable in the
+matter that they would probably be obliged to go into a brisk and open
+war, in order to prevent the Spaniard from establishing himself in the
+duchies. He advised them to notify the Archdukes in Brussels that they
+would regard the truce as broken if, under pretext of maintaining the
+Emperor's rights, they should molest the princes. He desired them further
+to send their forces at once to the frontier of Gelderland under Prince
+Maurice, without committing any overt act of hostility, but in order to
+show that both the King and the States were thoroughly in earnest.
+
+The King then sent to Archduke Albert, as well as to the Elector of
+Cologne, and despatched a special envoy to the King of Great Britain.
+
+Immediately afterwards came communications from Barneveld to Henry, with
+complete adhesion to the King's plans. The States would move in exact
+harmony with him, neither before him nor after him, which was precisely
+what he wished. He complained bitterly to Aerssens, when he communicated
+the Advocate's despatches, of the slothful and timid course of the
+princes. He ascribed it to the arts of Leopold, who had written and
+inspired many letters against him insinuating that he was secretly in
+league and correspondence with the Emperor; that he was going to the
+duchies simply in the interest of the Catholics; that he was like Henry
+II. only seeking to extend the French frontier; and Leopold, by these
+intrigues and falsehoods, had succeeded in filling the princes with
+distrust, and they had taken umbrage at the advance of his cavalry.
+
+Henry professed himself incapable of self-seeking or ambition. He meant
+to prevent the aggrandizement of Austria, and was impatient at the
+dilatoriness and distrust of the princes.
+
+"All their enemies are rushing to the King of Spain. Let them address
+themselves to the King of France," he said, "for it is we two that must
+play this game."
+
+And when at last they did send an embassy, they prefaced it by a post
+letter demanding an instant loan, and with an intimation that they would
+rather have his money than his presence!
+
+Was it surprising that the King's course should seem occasionally
+wavering when he found it so difficult to stir up such stagnant waters
+into honourable action? Was it strange that the rude and stern Sully
+should sometimes lose his patience, knowing so much and suspecting more
+of the foul designs by which his master was encompassed, of the web of
+conspiracy against his throne, his life, and his honour, which was daily
+and hourly spinning?
+
+"We do nothing and you do nothing," he said one day to Aerssens. "You are
+too soft, and we are too cowardly. I believe that we shall spoil
+everything, after all. I always suspect these sudden determinations of
+ours. They are of bad augury. We usually founder at last when we set off
+so fiercely at first. There are words enough an every side, but there
+will be few deeds. There is nothing to be got out of the King of Great
+Britain, and the King of Spain will end by securing these provinces for
+himself by a treaty." Sully knew better than this, but he did not care to
+let even the Dutch envoy know, as yet, the immense preparations he had
+been making for the coming campaign.
+
+The envoys of the possessory princes, the Counts Solms, Colonel Pallandt,
+and Dr. Steyntgen, took their departure, after it had been arranged that
+final measures should be concerted at the general congress of the German
+Protestants to be held early in the ensuing year at Hall, in Suabia.
+
+At that convention de Boississe would make himself heard on the part of
+France, and the representatives of the States-General, of Venice, and
+Savoy, would also be present.
+
+Meantime the secret conferences between Henry and his superintendent of
+finances and virtual prime minister were held almost every day. Scarcely
+an afternoon passed that the King did not make his appearance at the
+Arsenal, Sully's residence, and walk up and down the garden with him for
+hours, discussing the great project of which his brain was full. This
+great project was to crush for ever the power of the Austrian house; to
+drive Spain back into her own limits, putting an end to her projects for
+universal monarchy; and taking the Imperial crown from the House of
+Habsburg. By thus breaking up the mighty cousinship which, with the aid
+of Rome, overshadowed Germany and the two peninsulas, besides governing
+the greater part of both the Indies, he meant to bring France into the
+preponderant position over Christendom which he believed to be her due.
+
+It was necessary, he thought, for the continued existence of the Dutch
+commonwealth that the opportunity should be taken once for all, now that
+a glorious captain commanded its armies and a statesman unrivalled for
+experience, insight, and patriotism controlled its politics and its
+diplomacy, to drive the Spaniard out of the Netherlands.
+
+The Cleve question, properly and vigorously handled, presented exactly
+the long desired opportunity for carrying out these vast designs.
+
+The plan of assault upon Spanish power was to be threefold. The King
+himself at the head of 35,000 men, supported by Prince Maurice and the
+States' forces amounting to at least 14,000, would move to the Rhine and
+seize the duchies. The Duke de la Force would command the army of the
+Pyrenees and act in concert with the Moors of Spain, who roused to frenzy
+by their expulsion from the kingdom could be relied on for a revolt or at
+least a most vigorous diversion. Thirdly, a treaty with the Duke of Savoy
+by which Henry accorded his daughter to the Duke's eldest son, the Prince
+of Piedmont, a gift of 100,000 crowns, and a monthly pension during the
+war of 50,000 crowns a month, was secretly concluded.
+
+Early in the spring the Duke was to take the field with at least 10,000
+foot and 1200 horse, supported by a French army of 12,000 to 15,000 men
+under the experienced Marshal de Lesdiguieres. These forces were to
+operate against the Duchy of Milan with the intention of driving the
+Spaniards out of that rich possession, which the Duke of Savoy claimed
+for himself, and of assuring to Henry the dictatorship of Italy. With the
+cordial alliance of Venice, and by playing off the mutual jealousies of
+the petty Italian princes, like Florence, Mantua, Montserrat, and others,
+against each other and against the Pope, it did not seem doubtful to
+Sully that the result would be easily accomplished. He distinctly urged
+the wish that the King should content himself with political influence,
+with the splendid position of holding all Italy dependent upon his will
+and guidance, but without annexing a particle of territory to his own
+crown.
+
+It was Henry's intention, however, to help himself to the Duchy of Savoy,
+and to the magnificent city and port of Genoa as a reward to himself for
+the assistance, matrimonial alliance, and aggrandizement which he was
+about to bestow upon Charles Emmanuel. Sully strenuously opposed these
+self-seeking views on the part of his sovereign, however, constantly
+placing before him the far nobler aim of controlling the destinies of
+Christendom, of curbing what tended to become omnipotent, of raising up
+and protecting that which had been abased, of holding the balance of
+empire with just and steady hand in preference to the more vulgar and
+commonplace ambition of annexing a province or two to the realms of
+France.
+
+It is true that these virtuous homilies, so often preached by him against
+territorial aggrandizement in one direction, did not prevent him from
+indulging in very extensive visions of it in another. But the dreams
+pointed to the east rather than to the south. It was Sully's policy to
+swallow a portion not of Italy but of Germany. He persuaded his master
+that the possessory princes, if placed by the help of France in the
+heritage which they claimed, would hardly be able to maintain themselves
+against the dangers which surrounded them except by a direct dependence
+upon France. In the end the position would become an impossible one, and
+it would be easy after the war was over to indemnify Brandenburg with
+money and with private property in the heart of France for example, and
+obtain the cession of those most coveted provinces between the Meuse and
+the Weser to the King. "What an advantage for France," whispered Sully,
+"to unite to its power so important a part of Germany. For it cannot be
+denied that by accepting the succour given by the King now those princes
+oblige themselves to ask for help in the future in order to preserve
+their new acquisition. Thus your Majesty will make them pay for it very
+dearly."
+
+Thus the very virtuous self-denial in regard to the Duke of Savoy did not
+prevent a secret but well developed ambition at the expense of the
+Elector of Brandenburg. For after all it was well enough known that the
+Elector was the really important and serious candidate. Henry knew full
+well that Neuburg was depending on the Austrians and the Catholics, and
+that the claims of Saxony were only put forward by the Emperor in order
+to confuse the princes and excite mutual distrust.
+
+The King's conferences with the great financier were most confidential,
+and Sully was as secret as the grave. But Henry never could keep a secret
+even when it concerned his most important interests, and nothing would
+serve him but he must often babble of his great projects even to their
+minutest details in presence of courtiers and counsellors whom in his
+heart he knew to be devoted to Spain and in receipt of pensions from her
+king. He would boast to them of the blows by which he meant to demolish
+Spain and the whole house of Austria, so that there should be no longer
+danger to be feared from that source to the tranquillity and happiness of
+Europe, and he would do this so openly and in presence of those who, as
+he knew, were perpetually setting traps for him and endeavouring to
+discover his deepest secrets as to make Sully's hair stand on end. The
+faithful minister would pluck his master by the cloak at times, and the
+King, with the adroitness which never forsook him when he chose to employ
+it, would contrive to extricate himself from a dilemma and pause at the
+brink of tremendous disclosures.--[Memoires de Sully, t. vii. p.
+324.]--But Sully could not be always at his side, nor were the Nuncius or
+Don Inigo de Cardenas or their confidential agents and spies always
+absent. Enough was known of the general plan, while as to the probability
+of its coming into immediate execution, perhaps the enemies of the King
+were often not more puzzled than his friends.
+
+But what the Spanish ambassador did not know, nor the Nuncius, nor even
+the friendly Aerssens, was the vast amount of supplies which had been
+prepared for the coming conflict by the finance minister. Henry did not
+know it himself. "The war will turn on France as on a pivot," said Sully;
+"it remains to be seen if we have supplies and money enough. I will
+engage if the war is not to last more than three years and you require no
+more than 40,000 men at a time that I will show you munitions and
+ammunition and artillery and the like to such an extent that you will
+say, 'It is enough.'
+
+"As to money--"
+
+"How much money have I got?" asked the King; "a dozen millions?"
+
+"A little more than that," answered the Minister.
+
+"Fourteen millions?"
+
+"More still."
+
+"Sixteen?" continued the King.
+
+"More yet," said Sully.
+
+And so the King went on adding two millions at each question until thirty
+millions were reached, and when the question as to this sum was likewise
+answered in the affirmative, he jumped from his chair, hugged his
+minister around the neck, and kissed him on both cheeks.
+
+"I want no more than that," he cried.
+
+Sully answered by assuring him that he had prepared a report showing a
+reserve of forty millions on which he might draw for his war expenses,
+without in the least degree infringing on the regular budget for ordinary
+expenses.
+
+The King was in a transport of delight, and would have been capable of
+telling the story on the spot to the Nuncius had he met him that
+afternoon, which fortunately did not occur.
+
+But of all men in Europe after the faithful Sully, Henry most desired to
+see and confer daily and secretly with Barneveld. He insisted vehemently
+that, neglecting all other business, he should come forthwith to Paris at
+the head of the special embassy which it had been agreed that the States
+should send. No living statesman, he said, could compare to Holland's
+Advocate in sagacity, insight, breadth of view, knowledge of mankind and
+of great affairs, and none he knew was more sincerely attached to his
+person or felt more keenly the value of the French alliance.
+
+With him he indeed communicated almost daily through the medium of
+Aerssens, who was in constant receipt of most elaborate instructions from
+Barneveld, but he wished to confer with him face to face, so that there
+would be no necessity of delay in sending back for instructions,
+limitations, and explanation. No man knew better than the King did that
+so far as foreign affairs were concerned the States-General were simply
+Barneveld.
+
+On the 22nd January the States' ambassador had a long and secret
+interview with the King.' He informed him that the Prince of Anhalt had
+been assured by Barneveld that the possessory princes would be fully
+supported in their position by the States, and that the special deputies
+of Archduke Albert, whose presence at the Hague made Henry uneasy, as he
+regarded them as perpetual spies, had been dismissed. Henry expressed his
+gratification. They are there, he said, entirely in the interest of
+Leopold, who has just received 500,000 crowns from the King of Spain, and
+is to have that sum annually, and they are only sent to watch all your
+proceedings in regard to Cleve.
+
+The King then fervently pressed the Ambassador to urge Barneveld's coming
+to Paris with the least possible delay. He signified his delight with
+Barneveld's answer to Anhalt, who thus fortified would be able to do good
+service at the assembly at Hall. He had expected nothing else from
+Barneveld's sagacity, from his appreciation of the needs of Christendom,
+and from his affection for himself. He told the Ambassador that he was
+anxiously waiting for the Advocate in order to consult with him as to all
+the details of the war. The affair of Cleve, he said, was too special a
+cause. A more universal one was wanted. The King preferred to begin with
+Luxemburg, attacking Charlemont or Namur, while the States ought at the
+same time to besiege Venlo, with the intention afterwards of uniting with
+the King in laying siege to Maestricht.
+
+He was strong enough, he said, against all the world, but he still
+preferred to invite all princes interested to join him in putting down
+the ambitious and growing power of Spain. Cleve was a plausible pretext,
+but the true cause, he said, should be found in the general safety of
+Christendom.
+
+Boississe had been sent to the German princes to ascertain whether and to
+what extent they would assist the King. He supposed that once they found
+him engaged in actual warfare in Luxemburg, they would get rid of their
+jealousy and panic fears of him and his designs. He expected them to
+furnish at least as large a force as he would supply as a contingent.
+
+For it was understood that Anhalt as generalissimo of the German forces
+would command a certain contingent of French troops, while the main army
+of the King would be led by himself in person.
+
+Henry expressed the conviction that the King of Spain would be taken by
+surprise finding himself attacked in three places and by three armies at
+once, he believing that the King of France was entirely devoted to his
+pleasures and altogether too old for warlike pursuits, while the States,
+just emerging from the misery of their long and cruel conflict, would be
+surely unwilling to plunge headlong into a great and bloody war.
+
+Henry inferred this, he said, from observing the rude and brutal manner
+in which the soldiers in the Spanish Netherlands were now treated. It
+seemed, he said, as if the Archdukes thought they had no further need of
+them, or as if a stamp of the foot could raise new armies out of the
+earth. "My design," continued the King, "is the more likely to succeed as
+the King of Spain, being a mere gosling and a valet of the Duke of Lerma,
+will find himself stripped of all his resources and at his wits' end;
+unexpectedly embarrassed as he will be on the Italian side, where we
+shall be threatening to cut the jugular vein of his pretended universal
+monarchy."
+
+He intimated that there was no great cause for anxiety in regard to the
+Catholic League just formed at Wurzburg. He doubted whether the King of
+Spain would join it, and he had learned that the Elector of Cologne was
+making very little progress in obtaining the Emperor's adhesion. As to
+this point the King had probably not yet thoroughly understood that the
+Bavarian League was intended to keep clear of the House of Habsburg,
+Maximilian not being willing to identify the success of German
+Catholicism with the fortunes of that family.
+
+Henry expressed the opinion that the King of Spain, that is to say, his
+counsellors, meant to make use of the Emperor's name while securing all
+the profit, and that Rudolph quite understood their game, while Matthias
+was sure to make use of this opportunity, supported by the Protestants of
+Bohemia, Austria, and Moravia, to strip the Emperor of the last shred of
+Empire.
+
+The King was anxious that the States should send a special embassy at
+once to the King of Great Britain. His ambassador, de la Boderie, gave
+little encouragement of assistance from that quarter, but it was at least
+desirable to secure his neutrality. "'Tis a prince too much devoted to
+repose," said Henry, "to be likely to help in this war, but at least he
+must not be allowed to traverse our great designs. He will probably
+refuse the league offensive and defensive which I have proposed to him,
+but he must be got, if possible, to pledge himself to the defensive. I
+mean to assemble my army on the frontier, as if to move upon Julich, and
+then suddenly sweep down on the Meuse, where, sustained by the States'
+army and that of the princes, I will strike my blows and finish my
+enterprise before our adversary has got wind of what is coming. We must
+embark James in the enterprise if we can, but at any rate we must take
+measures to prevent his spoiling it."
+
+Henry assured the Envoy that no one would know anything of the great
+undertaking but by its effect; that no one could possibly talk about it
+with any knowledge except himself, Sully, Villeroy, Barneveld, and
+Aerssens. With them alone he conferred confidentially, and he doubted not
+that the States would embrace this opportunity to have done for ever with
+the Spaniards. He should take the field in person, he said, and with
+several powerful armies would sweep the enemy away from the Meuse, and
+after obtaining control of that river would quietly take possession of
+the sea-coast of Flanders, shut up Archduke Albert between the States and
+the French, who would thus join hands and unite their frontiers.
+
+Again the King expressed his anxiety for Barneveld's coming, and directed
+the Ambassador to urge it, and to communicate to him the conversation
+which had just taken place. He much preferred, he said, a general war. He
+expressed doubts as to the Prince of Anhalt's capacity as chief in the
+Cleve expedition, and confessed that being jealous of his own reputation
+he did not like to commit his contingent of troops to the care of a
+stranger and one so new to his trade. The shame would fall on himself,
+not on Anhalt in case of any disaster. Therefore, to avoid all petty
+jealousies and inconveniences of that nature by which the enterprise
+might be ruined, it was best to make out of this small affair a great
+one, and the King signified his hope that the Advocate would take this
+view of the case and give him his support. He had plenty of grounds of
+war himself, and the States had as good cause of hostilities in the
+rupture of the truce by the usurpation attempted by Leopold with the
+assistance of Spain and in the name of the Emperor. He hoped, he said,
+that the States would receive no more deputations from Archduke Albert,
+but decide to settle everything at the point of the sword. The moment was
+propitious, and, if neglected, might never return. Marquis Spinola was
+about to make a journey to Spain on various matters of business. On his
+return, Henry said, he meant to make him prisoner as a hostage for the
+Prince of Conde, whom the Archdukes were harbouring and detaining. This
+would be the pretext, he said, but the object would be to deprive the
+Archdukes of any military chief, and thus to throw them into utter
+confusion. Count van den Berg would never submit to the authority of Don
+Luis de Velasco, nor Velasco to his, and not a man could come from Spain
+or Italy, for the passages would all be controlled by France.
+
+Fortunately for the King's reputation, Spinola's journey was deferred, so
+that this notable plan for disposing of the great captain fell to the
+ground.
+
+Henry agreed to leave the two French regiments and the two companies of
+cavalry in the States' service as usual, but stipulated in certain
+contingencies for their use.
+
+Passing to another matter concerning which there had been so much
+jealousy on the part of the States, the formation of the French East
+India Company--to organize which undertaking Le Roy and Isaac Le Maire of
+Amsterdam had been living disguised in the house of Henry's famous
+companion, the financier Zamet at Paris--the King said that Barneveld
+ought not to envy him a participation in the great profits of this
+business.
+
+Nothing would be done without consulting him after his arrival in Paris.
+He would discuss the matter privately with him, he said, knowing that
+Barneveld was a great personage, but however obstinate he might be, he
+felt sure that he would always yield to reason. On the other hand the
+King expressed his willingness to submit to the Advocate's opinions if
+they should seem the more just.
+
+On leaving the King the Ambassador had an interview with Sully, who again
+expressed his great anxiety for the arrival of Barneveld, and his hopes
+that he might come with unlimited powers, so that the great secret might
+not leak out through constant referring of matters back to the Provinces.
+
+After rendering to the Advocate a detailed account of this remarkable
+conversation, Aerssens concluded with an intimation that perhaps his own
+opinion might be desired as to the meaning of all those movements
+developing themselves so suddenly and on so many sides.
+
+"I will say," he observed, "exactly what the poet sings of the army of
+ants--
+
+     'Hi motus animorum atque haec certamina tanta
+     Pulveris exigui jactu contacts quiescunt.'
+
+If the Prince of Conde comes back, we shall be more plausible than ever.
+If he does not come back, perhaps the consideration of the future will
+sweep us onwards. All have their special views, and M. de Villeroy more
+warmly than all the rest."
+
+     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+     Abstinence from inquisition into consciences and private parlour
+     Allowed the demon of religious hatred to enter into its body
+     Behead, torture, burn alive, and bury alive all heretics
+     Christian sympathy and a small assistance not being sufficient
+     Contained within itself the germs of a larger liberty
+     Could not be both judge and party in the suit
+     Covered now with the satirical dust of centuries
+     Deadly hatred of Puritans in England and Holland
+     Doctrine of predestination in its sternest and strictest sense
+     Emperor of Japan addressed him as his brother monarch
+     Estimating his character and judging his judges
+     Everybody should mind his own business
+     He was a sincere bigot
+     Impatience is often on the part of the non-combatants
+     Intense bigotry of conviction
+     International friendship, the self-interest of each
+     It was the true religion, and there was none other
+     James of England, who admired, envied, and hated Henry
+     Jealousy, that potent principle
+     Language which is ever living because it is dead
+     More fiercely opposed to each other than to Papists
+     None but God to compel me to say more than I choose to say
+     Power the poison of which it is so difficult to resist
+     Presents of considerable sums of money to the negotiators made
+     Princes show what they have in them at twenty-five or never
+     Putting the cart before the oxen
+     Religious toleration, which is a phrase of insult
+     Secure the prizes of war without the troubles and dangers
+     Senectus edam maorbus est
+     So much in advance of his time as to favor religious equality
+     The Catholic League and the Protestant Union
+     The truth in shortest about matters of importance
+     The vehicle is often prized more than the freight
+     There was but one king in Europe, Henry the Bearnese
+     There was no use in holding language of authority to him
+     Thirty Years' War tread on the heels of the forty years
+     Unimaginable outrage as the most legitimate industry
+     Wish to appear learned in matters of which they are ignorant
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND
+
+WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR
+
+By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, v2, 1609-10
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+   Passion of Henry IV. for Margaret de Montmorency--Her Marriage with
+   the Prince of Conde--Their Departure for the Country-Their Flight to
+   the Netherlands-Rage of the King--Intrigues of Spain--Reception of
+   the Prince and Princess of Conde by the Archdukes at Brussels--
+   Splendid Entertainments by Spinola--Attempts of the King to bring
+   the Fugitives back--Mission of De Coeuvres to Brussels--Difficult
+   Position of the Republic--Vast but secret Preparations for War.
+
+"If the Prince of Conde comes back." What had the Prince of Conde, his
+comings and his goings, to do with this vast enterprise?
+
+It is time to point to the golden thread of most fantastic passion which
+runs throughout this dark and eventful history.
+
+One evening in the beginning of the year which had just come to its close
+there was to be a splendid fancy ball at the Louvre in the course of
+which several young ladies of highest rank were to perform a dance in
+mythological costume.
+
+The King, on ill terms with the Queen, who harassed him with scenes of
+affected jealousy, while engaged in permanent plots with her paramour and
+master, the Italian Concini, against his policy and his life; on still
+worse terms with his latest mistress in chief, the Marquise de Verneuil,
+who hated him and revenged herself for enduring his caresses by making
+him the butt of her venomous wit, had taken the festivities of a court in
+dudgeon where he possessed hosts of enemies and flatterers but scarcely a
+single friend.
+
+He refused to attend any of the rehearsals of the ballet, but one day a
+group of Diana and her nymphs passed him in the great gallery of the
+palace. One of the nymphs as she went by turned and aimed her gilded
+javelin at his heart. Henry looked and saw the most beautiful young
+creature, so he thought, that mortal eye had ever gazed upon, and
+according to his wont fell instantly over head and ears in love. He said
+afterwards that he felt himself pierced to the heart and was ready to
+faint away.
+
+The lady was just fifteen years of age. The King was turned of
+fifty-five. The disparity of age seemed to make the royal passion
+ridiculous. To Henry the situation seemed poetical and pathetic. After
+this first interview he never missed a single rehearsal. In the intervals
+he called perpetually for the services of the court poet Malherbe, who
+certainly contrived to perpetrate in his behalf some of the most
+detestable verses that even he had ever composed.
+
+The nymph was Marguerite de Montmorency, daughter of the Constable of
+France, and destined one day to become the mother of the great Conde,
+hero of Rocroy. There can be no doubt that she was exquisitely beautiful.
+Fair-haired, with a complexion of dazzling purity, large expressive eyes,
+delicate but commanding features, she had a singular fascination of look
+and gesture, and a winning, almost childlike, simplicity of manner.
+Without feminine artifice or commonplace coquetry, she seemed to bewitch
+and subdue at a glance men of all ranks, ages, and pursuits; kings and
+cardinals, great generals, ambassadors and statesmen, as well as humbler
+mortals whether Spanish, Italian, French, or Flemish. The Constable, an
+ignorant man who, as the King averred, could neither write nor read,
+understood as well as more learned sages the manners and humours of the
+court. He had destined his daughter for the young and brilliant
+Bassompierre, the most dazzling of all the cavaliers of the day. The two
+were betrothed.
+
+But the love-stricken Henry, then confined to his bed with the gout, sent
+for the chosen husband of the beautiful Margaret.
+
+"Bassompierre, my friend," said the aged king, as the youthful lover
+knelt before him at the bedside, "I have become not in love, but mad, out
+of my senses, furious for Mademoiselle de Montmorency. If she should love
+you, I should hate you. If she should love me, you would hate me. 'Tis
+better that this should not be the cause of breaking up our good
+intelligence, for I love you with affection and inclination. I am
+resolved to marry her to my nephew the Prince of Conde, and to keep her
+near my family. She will be the consolation and support of my old age
+into which I am now about to enter. I shall give my nephew, who loves the
+chase a thousand times better than he does ladies, 100,000 livres a year,
+and I wish no other favour from her than her affection without making
+further pretensions."
+
+It was eight o'clock of a black winter's morning, and the tears as he
+spoke ran down the cheeks of the hero of Ivry and bedewed the face of the
+kneeling Bassompierre.
+
+The courtly lover sighed and--obeyed. He renounced the hand of the
+beautiful Margaret, and came daily to play at dice with the King at his
+bedside with one or two other companions.
+
+And every day the Duchess of Angouleme, sister of the Constable, brought
+her fair niece to visit and converse with the royal invalid. But for the
+dark and tragic clouds which were gradually closing around that eventful
+and heroic existence there would be something almost comic in the
+spectacle of the sufferer making the palace and all France ring with the
+howlings of his grotesque passion for a child of fifteen as he lay
+helpless and crippled with the gout.
+
+One day as the Duchess of Angouleme led her niece away from their morning
+visit to the King, Margaret as she passed by Bassompierre shrugged her
+shoulders with a scornful glance. Stung by this expression of contempt,
+the lover who had renounced her sprang from the dice table, buried his
+face in his hat, pretending that his nose was bleeding, and rushed
+frantically from the palace.
+
+Two days long he spent in solitude, unable to eat, drink, or sleep,
+abandoned to despair and bewailing his wretched fate, and it was long
+before he could recover sufficient equanimity to face his lost Margaret
+and resume his place at the King's dicing table. When he made his
+appearance, he was according to his own account so pale, changed, and
+emaciated that his friends could not recognise him.
+
+The marriage with Conde, first prince of the blood, took place early in
+the spring. The bride received magnificent presents, and the husband a
+pension of 100,000 livres a year. The attentions of the King became soon
+outrageous and the reigning scandal of the hour. Henry, discarding the
+grey jacket and simple costume on which he was wont to pride himself,
+paraded himself about in perfumed ruffs and glittering doublet, an
+ancient fop, very little heroic, and much ridiculed. The Princess made
+merry with the antics of her royal adorer, while her vanity at least, if
+not her affection, was really touched, and there was one great round of
+court festivities in her honour, at which the King and herself were ever
+the central figures. But Conde was not at all amused. Not liking the part
+assigned to him in the comedy thus skilfully arranged by his cousin king,
+never much enamoured of his bride, while highly appreciating the 100,000
+livres of pension, he remonstrated violently with his wife, bitterly
+reproached the King, and made himself generally offensive. "The Prince is
+here," wrote Henry to Sully, "and is playing the very devil. You would be
+in a rage and be ashamed of the things he says of me. But at last I am
+losing patience, and am resolved to give him a bit of my mind." He wrote
+in the same terms to Montmorency. The Constable, whose conduct throughout
+the affair was odious and pitiable, promised to do his best to induce the
+Prince, instead of playing the devil, to listen to reason, as he and the
+Duchess of Angouleme understood reason.
+
+Henry had even the ineffable folly to appeal to the Queen to use her
+influence with the refractory Conde. Mary de' Medici replied that there
+were already thirty go-betweens at work, and she had no idea of being the
+thirty-first--[Henrard, 30].
+
+Conde, surrounded by a conspiracy against his honour and happiness,
+suddenly carried off his wife to the country, much to the amazement and
+rage of Henry.
+
+In the autumn he entertained a hunting party at a seat of his, the Abbey
+of Verneuille, on the borders of Picardy. De Traigny, governor of Amiens,
+invited the Prince, Princess, and the Dowager-Princess to a banquet at
+his chateau not far from the Abbey. On their road thither they passed a
+group of huntsmen and grooms in the royal livery. Among them was an aged
+lackey with a plaister over one eye, holding a couple of hounds in leash.
+The Princess recognized at a glance under that ridiculous disguise the
+King.
+
+"What a madman!" she murmured as she passed him, "I will never forgive
+you;" but as she confessed many years afterwards, this act of gallantly
+did not displease her.'
+
+In truth, even in mythological fable, Trove has scarcely ever reduced
+demi-god or hero to more fantastic plight than was this travesty of the
+great Henry. After dinner Madame de Traigny led her fair guest about the
+castle to show her the various points of view. At one window she paused,
+saying that it commanded a particularly fine prospect.
+
+The Princess looked from it across a courtyard, and saw at an opposite
+window an old gentleman holding his left hand tightly upon his heart to
+show that it was wounded, and blowing kisses to her with the other: "My
+God! it is the King himself," she cried to her hostess. The princess with
+this exclamation rushed from the window, feeling or affecting much
+indignation, ordered horses to her carriage instantly, and overwhelmed
+Madame de Traigny with reproaches. The King himself, hastening to the
+scene, was received with passionate invectives, and in vain attempted to
+assuage the Princess's wrath and induce her to remain.
+
+They left the chateau at once, both Prince and Princess.
+
+One night, not many weeks afterwards, the Due de Sully, in the Arsenal at
+Paris, had just got into bed at past eleven o'clock when he received a
+visit from Captain de Praslin, who walked straight into his bed-chamber,
+informing him that the King instantly required his presence.
+
+Sully remonstrated. He was obliged to rise at three the next morning, he
+said, enumerating pressing and most important work which Henry required
+to be completed with all possible haste. "The King said you would be very
+angry," replied Praslin; "but there is no help for it. Come you must, for
+the man you know of has gone out of the country, as you said he would,
+and has carried away the lady on the crupper behind him."
+
+"Ho, ho," said the Duke, "I am wanted for that affair, am I?" And the two
+proceeded straightway to the Louvre, and were ushered, of all apartments
+in the world, into the Queen's bedchamber. Mary de' Medici had given
+birth only four days before to an infant, Henrietta Maria, future queen
+of Charles I. of England. The room was crowded with ministers and
+courtiers; Villeroy, the Chancellor, Bassompierre, and others, being
+stuck against the wall at small intervals like statues, dumb, motionless,
+scarcely daring to breathe. The King, with his hands behind him and his
+grey beard sunk on his breast, was pacing up and down the room in a
+paroxysm of rage and despair.
+
+"Well," said he, turning to Sully as he entered, "our man has gone off
+and carried everything with him. What do you say to that?"
+
+The Duke beyond the boding "I told you so" phrase of consolation which he
+was entitled to use, having repeatedly warned his sovereign that
+precisely this catastrophe was impending, declined that night to offer
+advice. He insisted on sleeping on it. The manner in which the
+proceedings of the King at this juncture would be regarded by the
+Archdukes Albert and Isabella--for there could be no doubt that Conde had
+escaped to their territory--and by the King of Spain, in complicity with
+whom the step had unquestionably been taken--was of gravest political
+importance.
+
+Henry had heard the intelligence but an hour before. He was at cards in
+his cabinet with Bassompierre and others when d'Elbene entered and made a
+private communication to him. "Bassompierre, my friend," whispered the
+King immediately in that courtier's ear, "I am lost. This man has carried
+his wife off into a wood. I don't know if it is to kill her or to take
+her out of France. Take care of my money and keep up the game."
+
+Bassompierre followed the king shortly afterwards and brought him his
+money. He said that he had never seen a man so desperate, so transported.
+
+The matter was indeed one of deepest and universal import. The reader has
+seen by the preceding narrative how absurd is the legend often believed
+in even to our own days that war was made by France upon the Archdukes
+and upon Spain to recover the Princess of Conde from captivity in
+Brussels.
+
+From contemporary sources both printed and unpublished; from most
+confidential conversations and revelations, we have seen how broad,
+deliberate, and deeply considered were the warlike and political
+combinations in the King's ever restless brain. But although the
+abduction of the new Helen by her own Menelaus was not the cause of the
+impending, Iliad, there is no doubt whatever that the incident had much
+to do with the crisis, was the turning point in a great tragedy, and that
+but for the vehement passion of the King for this youthful princess
+events might have developed themselves on a far different scale from that
+which they were destined to assume. For this reason a court intrigue,
+which history under other conditions might justly disdain, assumes vast
+proportions and is taken quite away from the scandalous chronicle which
+rarely busies itself with grave affairs of state.
+
+"The flight of Conde," wrote Aerssens, "is the catastrophe to the comedy
+which has been long enacting. 'Tis to be hoped that the sequel may not
+prove tragical."
+
+"The Prince," for simply by that title he was usually called to
+distinguish him from all other princes in France, was next of blood. Had
+Henry no sons, he would have succeeded him on the throne. It was a
+favourite scheme of the Spanish party to invalidate Henry's divorce from
+Margaret of Valois, and thus to cast doubts on the legitimacy of the
+Dauphin and the other children of Mary de' Medici.
+
+The Prince in the hands of the Spanish government might prove a docile
+and most dangerous instrument to the internal repose of France not only
+after Henry's death but in his life-time. Conde's character was
+frivolous, unstable, excitable, weak, easy to be played upon by designing
+politicians, and he had now the deepest cause for anger and for indulging
+in ambitious dreams.
+
+He had been wont during this unhappy first year of his marriage to loudly
+accuse Henry of tyranny, and was now likely by public declaration to
+assign that as the motive of his flight. Henry had protested in reply
+that he had never been guilty of tyranny but once in his life, and that
+was when he allowed this youth to take the name and title of Conde?
+
+For the Princess-Dowager his mother had lain for years in prison, under
+the terrible accusation of having murdered her husband, in complicity
+with her paramour, a Gascon page, named Belcastel. The present prince had
+been born several months after his reputed father's death. Henry, out of
+good nature, or perhaps for less creditable reasons, had come to the
+rescue of the accused princess, and had caused the process to be stopped,
+further enquiry to be quashed, and the son to be recognized as legitimate
+Prince of Conde. The Dowager had subsequently done her best to further
+the King's suit to her son's wife, for which the Prince bitterly
+reproached her to her face, heaping on her epithets which she well
+deserved.
+
+Henry at once began to threaten a revival of the criminal suit, with a
+view of bastardizing him again, although the Dowager had acted on all
+occasions with great docility in Henry's interests.
+
+The flight of the Prince and Princess was thus not only an incident of
+great importance to the internal politics of trance, but had a direct and
+important bearing on the impending hostilities. Its intimate connection
+with the affairs of the Netherland commonwealth was obvious. It was
+probable that the fugitives would make their way towards the Archdukes'
+territory, and that afterwards their first point of destination would be
+Breda, of which Philip William of Orange, eldest brother of Prince
+Maurice, was the titular proprietor. Since the truce recently concluded
+the brothers, divided so entirely by politics and religion, could meet on
+fraternal and friendly terms, and Breda, although a city of the
+Commonwealth, received its feudal lord. The Princess of Orange was the
+sister of Conde. The morning after the flight the King, before daybreak,
+sent for the Dutch ambassador. He directed him to despatch a courier
+forthwith to Barneveld, notifying him that the Prince had left the
+kingdom without the permission or knowledge of his sovereign, and stating
+the King's belief that he had fled to the territory of the Archdukes. If
+he should come to Breda or to any other place within the jurisdiction of
+the States, they were requested to make sure of his person at once, and
+not to permit him to retire until further instructions should be received
+from the King. De Praslin, captain of the body-guards and lieutenant of
+Champagne, it was further mentioned, was to be sent immediately on secret
+mission concerning this affair to the States and to the Archdukes.
+
+The King suspected Conde of crime, so the Advocate was to be informed. He
+believed him to be implicated in the conspiracy of Poitou; the six who
+had been taken prisoners having confessed that they had thrice conferred
+with a prince at Paris, and that the motive of the plot was to free
+themselves and France from the tyranny of Henry IV. The King insisted
+peremptorily, despite of any objections from Aerssens, that the thing
+must be done and his instructions carried out to the letter. So much he
+expected of the States, and they should care no more for ulterior
+consequences, he said, than he had done for the wrath of Spain when he
+frankly undertook their cause. Conde was important only because his
+relative, and he declared that if the Prince should escape, having once
+entered the territory of the Republic, he should lay the blame on its
+government.
+
+"If you proceed languidly in the affair," wrote Aerssens to Barneveld,
+"our affairs will suffer for ever."
+
+Nobody at court believed in the Poitou conspiracy, or that Conde had any
+knowledge of it. The reason of his flight was a mystery to none, but as
+it was immediately followed by an intrigue with Spain, it seemed
+ingenious to Henry to make, use of a transparent pretext to conceal the
+ugliness of the whole affair.
+
+He hoped that the Prince would be arrested at Breda and sent back by the
+States. Villeroy said that if it was not done, they would be guilty of
+black ingratitude. It would be an awkward undertaking, however, and the
+States devoutly prayed that they might not be put to the test. The crafty
+Aerssens suggested to Barneveld that if Conde was not within their
+territory it would be well to assure the King that, had he been there, he
+would have been delivered up at once. "By this means," said the
+Ambassador, "you will give no cause of offence to the Prince, and will at
+the same time satisfy the King. It is important that he should think that
+you depend immediately upon him. If you see that after his arrest they
+take severe measures against him, you will have a thousand ways of
+parrying the blame which posterity might throw upon you. History teaches
+you plenty of them."
+
+He added that neither Sully nor anyone else thought much of the Poitou
+conspiracy. Those implicated asserted that they had intended to raise
+troops there to assist the King in the Cleve expedition. Some people said
+that Henry had invented this plot against his throne and life. The
+Ambassador, in a spirit of prophecy, quoted the saying of Domitian:
+"Misera conditio imperantium quibus de conspiratione non creditor nisi
+occisis."
+
+Meantime the fugitives continued their journey. The Prince was
+accompanied by one of his dependants, a rude officer, de Rochefort, who
+carried the Princess on a pillion behind him. She had with her a
+lady-in-waiting named du Certeau and a lady's maid named Philippote. She
+had no clothes but those on her back, not even a change of linen. Thus
+the young and delicate lady made the wintry journey through the forests.
+They crossed the frontier at Landrecies, then in the Spanish Netherlands,
+intending to traverse the Archduke's territory in order to reach Breda,
+where Conde meant to leave his wife in charge of his sister, the Princess
+of Orange, and then to proceed to Brussels.
+
+He wrote from the little inn at Landrecies to notify the Archduke of his
+project. He was subsequently informed that Albert would not prevent his
+passing through his territories, but should object to his making a fixed
+residence within them. The Prince also wrote subsequently to the King of
+Spain and to the King of France.
+
+To Henry he expressed his great regret at being obliged to leave the
+kingdom in order to save his honour and his life, but that he had no
+intention of being anything else than his very humble and faithful
+cousin, subject, and servant. He would do nothing against his service, he
+said, unless forced thereto, and he begged the King not to take it amiss
+if he refused to receive letters from any one whomsoever at court, saving
+only such letters as his Majesty himself might honour him by writing.
+
+The result of this communication to the King was of course to enrage that
+monarch to the utmost, and his first impulse on finding that the Prince
+was out of his reach was to march to Brussels at once and take possession
+of him and the Princess by main force. More moderate counsels prevailed
+for the moment however, and negotiations were attempted.
+
+Praslin did not contrive to intercept the fugitives, but the
+States-General, under the advice of Barneveld, absolutely forbade their
+coming to Breda or entering any part of their jurisdiction. The result of
+Conde's application to the King of Spain was an ultimate offer of
+assistance and asylum, through a special emissary, one Anover; for the
+politicians of Madrid were astute enough to see what a card the Prince
+might prove in their hands.
+
+Henry instructed his ambassador in Spain to use strong and threatening
+language in regard to the harbouring a rebel and a conspirator against
+the throne of France; while on the other hand he expressed his
+satisfaction with the States for having prohibited the Prince from
+entering their territory. He would have preferred, he said, if they had
+allowed him entrance and forbidden his departure, but on the whole he was
+content. It was thought in Paris that the Netherland government had acted
+with much adroitness in thus abstaining both from a violation of the law
+of nations and from giving offence to the King.
+
+A valet of Conde was taken with some papers of the Prince about him,
+which proved a determination on his part never to return to France during
+the lifetime of Henry. They made no statement of the cause of his flight,
+except to intimate that it might be left to the judgment of every one, as
+it was unfortunately but too well known to all.
+
+Refused entrance into the Dutch territory, the Prince was obliged to
+renounce his project in regard to Breda, and brought his wife to
+Brussels. He gave Bentivoglio, the Papal nuncio, two letters to forward
+to Italy, one to the Pope, the other to his nephew, Cardinal Borghese.
+Encouraged by the advices which he had received from Spain, he justified
+his flight from France both by the danger to his honour and to his life,
+recommending both to the protection of his Holiness and his Eminence.
+Bentivoglio sent the letters, but while admitting the invincible reasons
+for his departure growing out of the King's pursuit of the Princess, he
+refused all credence to the pretended violence against Conde himself.
+Conde informed de Praslin that he would not consent to return to France.
+Subsequently he imposed as conditions of return that the King should
+assign to him certain cities and strongholds in Guienne, of which
+province he was governor, far from Paris and very near the Spanish
+frontier; a measure dictated by Spain and which inflamed Henry's wrath
+almost to madness. The King insisted on his instant return, placing
+himself and of course the Princess entirely in his hands and receiving a
+full pardon for this effort to save his honour. The Prince and Princess
+of Orange came from Breda to Brussels to visit their brother and his
+wife. Here they established them in the Palace of Nassau, once the
+residence in his brilliant youth of William the Silent; a magnificent
+mansion, surrounded by park and garden, built on the brow of the almost
+precipitous hill, beneath which is spread out so picturesquely the
+antique and beautiful capital of Brabant.
+
+The Archdukes received them with stately courtesy at their own palace. On
+their first ceremonious visit to the sovereigns of the land, the formal
+Archduke, coldest and chastest of mankind, scarcely lifted his eyes to
+gaze on the wondrous beauty of the Princess, yet assured her after he had
+led her through a portrait gallery of fair women that formerly these had
+been accounted beauties, but that henceforth it was impossible to speak
+of any beauty but her own.
+
+The great Spinola fell in love with her at once, sent for the illustrious
+Rubens from Antwerp to paint her portrait, and offered Mademoiselle de
+Chateau Vert 10,000 crowns in gold if she would do her best to further
+his suit with her mistress. The Genoese banker-soldier made love, war,
+and finance on a grand scale. He gave a magnificent banquet and ball in
+her honour on Twelfth Night, and the festival was the wonder of the town.
+Nothing like it had been seen in Brussels for years. At six in the
+evening Spinola in splendid costume, accompanied by Don Luis Velasco,
+Count Ottavio Visconti, Count Bucquoy, with other nobles of lesser note,
+drove to the Nassau Palace to bring the Prince and Princess and their
+suite to the Marquis's mansion. Here a guard of honour of thirty
+musketeers was standing before the door, and they were conducted from
+their coaches by Spinola preceded by twenty-four torch-bearers up the
+grand staircase to a hall, where they were received by the Princesses of
+Mansfeld, Velasco, and other distinguished dames. Thence they were led
+through several apartments rich with tapestry and blazing with crystal
+and silver plate to a splendid saloon where was a silken canopy, under
+which the Princess of Conde and the Princess of Orange seated themselves,
+the Nuncius Bentivoglio to his delight being placed next the beautiful
+Margaret. After reposing for a little while they were led to the
+ball-room, brilliantly lighted with innumerable torches of perfumed wax
+and hung with tapestry of gold and silk, representing in fourteen
+embroidered designs the chief military exploits of Spinola. Here the
+banquet, a cold collation, was already spread on a table decked and
+lighted with regal splendour. As soon as the guests were seated, an
+admirable concert of instrumental music began. Spinola walked up and down
+providing for the comforts of his company, the Duke of Aumale stood
+behind the two princesses to entertain them with conversation, Don Luis
+Velasco served the Princess of Conde with plates, handed her the dishes,
+the wine, the napkins, while Bucquoy and Visconti in like manner waited
+upon the Princess of Orange; other nobles attending to the other ladies.
+Forty-eight pages in white, yellow, and red scarves brought and removed
+the dishes. The dinner, of courses innumerable, lasted two hours and a
+half, and the ladies, being thus fortified for the more serious business
+of the evening, were led to the tiring-rooms while the hall was made
+ready for dancing. The ball was opened by the Princess of Conde and
+Spinola, and lasted until two in the morning. As the apartment grew warm,
+two of the pages went about with long staves and broke all the windows
+until not a single pane of glass remained. The festival was estimated by
+the thrifty chronicler of Antwerp to have cost from 3000 to 4000 crowns.
+It was, he says, "an earthly paradise of which soon not a vapour
+remained." He added that he gave a detailed account of it "not because he
+took pleasure in such voluptuous pomp and extravagance, but that one
+might thus learn the vanity of the world." These courtesies and
+assiduities on the part of the great "shopkeeper," as the Constable
+called him, had so much effect, if not on the Princess, at least on Conde
+himself, that he threatened to throw his wife out of window if she
+refused to caress Spinola. These and similar accusations were made by the
+father and aunt when attempting to bring about a divorce of the Princess
+from her husband. The Nuncius Bentivoglio, too, fell in love with her,
+devoting himself to her service, and his facile and eloquent pen to
+chronicling her story. Even poor little Philip of Spain in the depths of
+the Escurial heard of her charms, and tried to imagine himself in love
+with her by proxy.
+
+Thenceforth there was a succession of brilliant festivals in honour of
+the Princess. The Spanish party was radiant with triumph, the French
+maddened with rage. Henry in Paris was chafing like a lion at bay. A
+petty sovereign whom he could crush at one vigorous bound was protecting
+the lady for whose love he was dying. He had secured Conde's exclusion
+from Holland, but here were the fugitives splendidly established in
+Brussels; the Princess surrounded by most formidable suitors, the Prince
+encouraged in his rebellious and dangerous schemes by the power which the
+King most hated on earth, and whose eternal downfall he had long since
+sworn to accomplish.
+
+For the weak and frivolous Conde began to prattle publicly of his deep
+projects of revenge. Aided by Spanish money and Spanish troops he would
+show one day who was the real heir to the throne of France--the
+illegitimately born Dauphin or himself.
+
+The King sent for the first president of Parliament, Harlay, and
+consulted with him as to the proper means of reviving the suppressed
+process against the Dowager and of publicly degrading Conde from his
+position of first prince of the blood which he had been permitted to
+usurp. He likewise procured a decree accusing him of high-treason and
+ordering him to be punished at his Majesty's pleasure, to be prepared by
+the Parliament of Paris; going down to the court himself in his
+impatience and seating himself in everyday costume on the bench of judges
+to see that it was immediately proclaimed.
+
+Instead of at once attacking the Archdukes in force as he intended
+in the first ebullition of his wrath, he resolved to send
+de Boutteville-Montmorency, a relative of the Constable, on special and
+urgent mission to Brussels. He was to propose that Conde and his wife
+should return with the Prince and Princess of Orange to Breda, the King
+pledging himself that for three or four months nothing should be
+undertaken against him. Here was a sudden change of determination fit to
+surprise the States-General, but the King's resolution veered and whirled
+about hourly in the tempests of his wrath and love.
+
+That excellent old couple, the Constable and the Duchess of Angouleme,
+did their best to assist their sovereign in his fierce attempts to get
+their daughter and niece into his power.
+
+The Constable procured a piteous letter to be written to Archduke Albert,
+signed "Montmorency his mark," imploring him not to "suffer that his
+daughter, since the Prince refused to return to France, should leave
+Brussels to be a wanderer about the world following a young prince who
+had no fixed purpose in his mind."
+
+Archduke Albert, through his ambassador in Paris, Peter Pecquius,
+suggested the possibility of a reconciliation between Henry and his
+kinsman, and offered himself as intermediary. He enquired whether the
+King would find it agreeable that he should ask for pardon in name of the
+Prince. Henry replied that he was willing that the Archduke should accord
+to Conde secure residence for the time within his dominions on three
+inexorable conditions:--firstly, that the Prince should ask for pardon
+without any stipulations, the King refusing to listen to any treaty or to
+assign him towns or places of security as had been vaguely suggested, and
+holding it utterly unreasonable that a man sueing for pardon should,
+instead of deserved punishment, talk of terms and acquisitions; secondly,
+that, if Conde should reject the proposition, Albert should immediately
+turn him out of his country, showing himself justly irritated at finding
+his advice disregarded; thirdly, that, sending away the Prince, the
+Archduke should forthwith restore the Princess to her father the
+Constable and her aunt Angouleme, who had already made their petitions to
+Albert and Isabella for that end, to which the King now added his own
+most particular prayers.
+
+If the Archduke should refuse consent to these three conditions, Henry
+begged that he would abstain from any farther attempt to effect a
+reconciliation and not suffer Conde to remain any longer within his
+territories.
+
+Pecquius replied that he thought his master might agree to the two first
+propositions while demurring to the third, as it would probably not seem
+honourable to him to separate man and wife, and as it was doubtful
+whether the Princess would return of her own accord.
+
+The King, in reporting the substance of this conversation to Aerssens,
+intimated his conviction that they were only wishing in Brussels to gain
+time; that they were waiting for letters from Spain, which they were
+expecting ever since the return of Conde's secretary from Milan, whither
+he had been sent to confer with the Governor, Count Fuentes. He said
+farther that he doubted whether the Princess would go to Breda, which he
+should now like, but which Conde would not now permit. This he imputed in
+part to the Princess of Orange, who had written a letter full of
+invectives against himself to the Dowager--Princess of Conde which she
+had at once sent to him. Henry expressed at the same time his great
+satisfaction with the States-General and with Barneveld in this affair,
+repeating his assurances that they were the truest and best friends he
+had.
+
+The news of Conde's ceremonious visit to Leopold in Julich could not fail
+to exasperate the King almost as much as the pompous manner in which he
+was subsequently received at Brussels; Spinola and the Spanish Ambassador
+going forth to meet him. At the same moment the secretary of Vaucelles,
+Henry's ambassador in Madrid, arrived in Paris, confirming the King's
+suspicions that Conde's flight had been concerted with Don Inigo de
+Cardenas, and was part of a general plot of Spain against the peace of
+the kingdom. The Duc d'Epernon, one of the most dangerous plotters at the
+court, and deep in the intimacy of the Queen and of all the secret
+adherents of the Spanish policy, had been sojourning a long time at Metz,
+under pretence of attending to his health, had sent his children to
+Spain, as hostages according to Henry's belief, had made himself master
+of the citadel, and was turning a deaf ear to all the commands of the
+King.
+
+The supporters of Conde in France were openly changing their note and
+proclaiming by the Prince's command that he had left the kingdom in order
+to preserve his quality of first prince of the blood, and that he meant
+to make good his right of primogeniture against the Dauphin and all
+competitors.
+
+Such bold language and such open reliance on the support of Spain in
+disputing the primogeniture of the Dauphin were fast driving the most
+pacifically inclined in France into enthusiasm for the war.
+
+The States, too, saw their opportunity more vividly every day. "What
+could we desire more," wrote Aerssens to Barneveld, "than open war
+between France and Spain? Posterity will for ever blame us if we reject
+this great occasion."
+
+Peter Pecquius, smoothest and sliest of diplomatists, did his best to
+make things comfortable, for there could be little doubt that his masters
+most sincerely deprecated war. On their heads would come the first blows,
+to their provinces would return the great desolation out of which they
+had hardly emerged. Still the Archduke, while racking his brains for the
+means of accommodation, refused, to his honour, to wink at any violation
+of the law of nations, gave a secret promise, in which the Infanta
+joined, that the Princess should not be allowed to leave Brussels without
+her husband's permission, and resolutely declined separating the pair
+except with the full consent of both. In order to protect himself from
+the King's threats, he suggested sending Conde to some neutral place for
+six or eight months, to Prague, to Breda, or anywhere else; but Henry
+knew that Conde would never allow this unless he had the means by Spanish
+gold of bribing the garrison there, and so of holding the place in
+pretended neutrality, but in reality at the devotion of the King of
+Spain.
+
+Meantime Henry had despatched the Marquis de Coeuvres, brother of the
+beautiful Gabrielle, Duchess de Beaufort, and one of the most audacious
+and unscrupulous of courtiers, on a special mission to Brussels. De
+Coeuvres saw Conde before presenting his credentials to the Archduke, and
+found him quite impracticable. Acting under the advice of the Prince of
+Orange, he expressed his willingness to retire to some neutral city of
+Germany or Italy, drawing meanwhile from Henry a pension of 40,000 crowns
+a year. But de Coeuvres firmly replied that the King would make no terms
+with his vassal nor allow Conde to prescribe conditions to him. To leave
+him in Germany or Italy, he said, was to leave him in the dependence of
+Spain. The King would not have this constant apprehension of her
+intrigues while, living, nor leave such matter in dying for turbulence in
+his kingdom. If it appeared that the Spaniards wished to make use of the
+Prince for such purposes, he would be beforehand with them, and show them
+how much more injury he could inflict on Spain than they on France.
+Obviously committed to Spain, Conde replied to the entreaties of the
+emissary that if the King would give him half his kingdom he would not
+accept the offer nor return to France; at least before the 8th of
+February, by which date he expected advices from Spain. He had given his
+word, he said, to lend his ear to no overtures before that time. He made
+use of many threats, and swore that he would throw himself entirely into
+the arms of the Spanish king if Henry would not accord him the terms
+which he had proposed.
+
+To do this was an impossibility. To grant him places of security would,
+as the King said, be to plant a standard for all the malcontents of
+France to rally around. Conde had evidently renounced all hopes of a
+reconciliation, however painfully his host the Archduke might intercede
+for it. He meant to go to Spain. Spinola was urging this daily and
+hourly, said Henry, for he had fallen in love with the Princess, who
+complained of all these persecutions in her letters to her father, and
+said that she would rather die than go to Spain.
+
+The King's advices from de Coeuvres were however to the effect that the
+step would probably be taken, that the arrangements were making, and that
+Spinola had been shut up with Conde six hours long with nobody present
+but Rochefort and a certain counsellor of the Prince of Orange named
+Keeremans.
+
+Henry was taking measures to intercept them on their flight by land, but
+there was some thought of their proceeding to Spain by sea. He therefore
+requested the States to send two ships of war, swift sailors, well
+equipped, one to watch in the roads of St. Jean and the other on the
+English coast. These ships were to receive their instructions from
+Admiral de Vicq, who would be well informed of all the movements of the
+Prince and give warning to the captains of the Dutch vessels by a
+preconcerted signal. The King begged that Barneveld would do him this
+favour, if he loved him, and that none might have knowledge of it but the
+Advocate and Prince Maurice. The ships would be required for two or three
+months only, but should be equipped and sent forth as soon as possible.
+
+The States had no objection to performing this service, although it
+subsequently proved to be unnecessary, and they were quite ready at that
+moment to go openly into the war to settle the affairs of Clove, and once
+for all to drive the Spaniards out of the Netherlands and beyond seas and
+mountains. Yet strange to say, those most conversant with the state of
+affairs could not yet quite persuade themselves that matters were
+serious, and that the King's mind was fixed. Should Conde return,
+renounce his Spanish stratagems, and bring back the Princess to court, it
+was felt by the King's best and most confidential friends that all might
+grow languid again, the Spanish faction get the upper hand in the King's
+councils, and the States find themselves in a terrible embarrassment.
+
+On the other hand, the most prying and adroit of politicians were puzzled
+to read the signs of the times. Despite Henry's garrulity, or perhaps in
+consequence of it, the envoys of Spain, the Empire, and of Archduke
+Albert were ignorant whether peace were likely to be broken or not, in
+spite of rumours which filled the air. So well had the secrets been kept
+which the reader has seen discussed in confidential conversations--the
+record of which has always remained unpublished--between the King and
+those admitted to his intimacy that very late in the winter Pecquius,
+while sadly admitting to his masters that the King was likely to take
+part against the Emperor in the affair of the duchies, expressed the
+decided opinion that it would be limited to the secret sending of succour
+to Brandenburg and Neuburg as formerly to the United Provinces, but that
+he would never send troops into Cleve, or march thither himself.
+
+It is important, therefore, to follow closely the development of these
+political and amorous intrigues, for they furnish one of the most curious
+and instructive lessons of history; there being not the slightest doubt
+that upon their issue chiefly depended the question of a great and
+general war.
+
+Pecquius, not yet despairing that his master would effect a
+reconciliation between the King and Conde, proposed again that the Prince
+should be permitted to reside for a time in some place not within the
+jurisdiction of Spain or of the Archdukes, being allowed meantime to draw
+his annual pension of 100,000 livres. Henry ridiculed the idea of Conde's
+drawing money from him while occupying his time abroad with intrigues
+against his throne and his children's succession. He scoffed at the
+Envoy's pretences that Conde was not in receipt of money from Spain, as
+if a man so needy and in so embarrassing a position could live without
+money from some source; and as if he were not aware, from his
+correspondents in Spain, that funds were both promised and furnished to
+the Prince.
+
+He repeated his determination not to accord him pardon unless he returned
+to France, which he had no cause to leave, and, turning suddenly on
+Pecquius, demanded why, the subject of reconciliation having failed, the
+Archduke did not immediately fulfil his promise of turning Conde out of
+his dominions.
+
+Upon this Albert's minister drew back with the air of one amazed, asking
+how and when the Archduke had ever made such a promise.
+
+"To the Marquis de Coeuvres," replied Henry.
+
+Pecquius asked if his ears had not deceived him, and if the King had
+really said that de Coeuvres had made such a statement.
+
+Henry repeated and confirmed the story.
+
+Upon the Minister's reply that he had himself received no such
+intelligence from the Archduke, the King suddenly changed his tone, and
+said,
+
+"No, I was mistaken--I was confused--the Marquis never wrote me this; but
+did you not say yourself that I might be assured that there would be no
+difficulty about it if the Prince remained obstinate."
+
+Pecquius replied that he had made such a proposition to his masters by
+his Majesty's request; but there had been no answer received, nor time
+for one, as the hope of reconciliation had not yet been renounced. He
+begged Henry to consider whether, without instructions from his master,
+he could have thus engaged his word.
+
+"Well," said the King, "since you disavow it, I see very well that the
+Archduke has no wish to give me pleasure, and that these are nothing but
+tricks that you have been amusing me with all this time. Very good; each
+of us will know what we have to do."
+
+Pecquius considered that the King had tried to get him into a net, and to
+entrap him into the avowal of a promise which he had never made. Henry
+remained obstinate in his assertions, notwithstanding all the envoy's
+protestations.
+
+"A fine trick, indeed, and unworthy of a king, 'Si dicere fas est,'" he
+wrote to Secretary of State Praets. "But the force of truth is such that
+he who spreads the snare always tumbles into the ditch himself."
+
+Henry concluded the subject of Conde at this interview by saying that he
+could have his pardon on the conditions already named, and not otherwise.
+
+He also made some complaints about Archduke Leopold, who, he said,
+notwithstanding his demonstrations of wishing a treaty of compromise, was
+taking towns by surprise which he could not hold, and was getting his
+troops massacred on credit.
+
+Pecquius expressed the opinion that it would be better to leave the
+Germans to make their own arrangements among themselves, adding that
+neither his masters nor the King of Spain meant to mix themselves up in
+the matter.
+
+"Let them mix themselves in it or keep out of it, as they like," said
+Henry, "I shall not fail to mix myself up in it."
+
+The King was marvellously out of humour.
+
+Before finishing the interview, he asked Pecquius whether Marquis Spinola
+was going to Spain very soon, as he had permission from his Majesty to do
+so, and as he had information that he would be on the road early in Lent.
+The Minister replied that this would depend on the will of the Archduke,
+and upon various circumstances. The answer seemed to displease the King,
+and Pecquius was puzzled to know why. He was not aware, of course, of
+Henry's project to kidnap the Marquis on the road, and keep him as a
+surety for Conde.
+
+The Envoy saw Villeroy after the audience, who told him not to mind the
+King's ill-temper, but to bear it as patiently as he could. His Majesty
+could not digest, he said, his infinite displeasure at the obstinacy of
+the Prince; but they must nevertheless strive for a reconciliation. The
+King was quick in words, but slow in deeds, as the Ambassador might have
+observed before, and they must all try to maintain peace, to which he
+would himself lend his best efforts.
+
+As the Secretary of State was thoroughly aware that the King was making
+vast preparations for war, and had given in his own adhesion to the
+project, it is refreshing to observe the candour with which he assured
+the representative of the adverse party of his determination that
+friendliest relations should be preserved.
+
+It is still more refreshing to find Villeroy, the same afternoon, warmly
+uniting with Sully, Lesdiguieres, and the Chancellor, in the decision
+that war should begin forthwith.
+
+For the King held a council at the Arsenal immediately after this
+interview with Pecquius, in which he had become convinced that Conde
+would never return. He took the Queen with him, and there was not a
+dissentient voice as to the necessity of beginning hostilities at once.
+
+Sully, however, was alone in urging that the main force of the attack
+should be in the north, upon the Rhine and Meuse. Villeroy and those who
+were secretly in the Spanish interest were for beginning it with the
+southern combination and against Milan. Sully believed the Duke of Savoy
+to be variable and attached in his heart to Spain, and he thought it
+contrary to the interests of France to permit an Italian prince to grow
+so great on her frontier. He therefore thoroughly disapproved the plan,
+and explained to the Dutch ambassador that all this urgency to carry on
+the war in the south came from hatred to the United Provinces, jealousy
+of their aggrandizement, detestation of the Reformed religion, and hope
+to engage Henry in a campaign which he could not carry on successfully.
+But he assured Aerssens that he had the means of counteracting these
+designs and of bringing on an invasion for obtaining possession of the
+Meuse. If the possessory princes found Henry making war in the Milanese
+only, they would feel themselves ruined, and might throw up the game. He
+begged that Barneveld would come on to Paris at once, as now or never was
+the moment to assure the Republic for all time.
+
+The King had acted with malicious adroitness in turning the tables upon
+the Prince and treating him as a rebel and a traitor because, to save his
+own and his wife's honour, he had fled from a kingdom where he had but
+too good reason to suppose that neither was safe. The Prince, with
+infinite want of tact, had played into the King's hands. He had bragged
+of his connection with Spain and of his deep designs, and had shown to
+all the world that he was thenceforth but an instrument in the hands of
+the Spanish cabinet, while all the world knew the single reason for which
+he had fled.
+
+The King, hopeless now of compelling the return of Conde, had become most
+anxious to separate him from his wife. Already the subject of divorce
+between the two had been broached, and it being obvious that the Prince
+would immediately betake himself into the Spanish dominions, the King was
+determined that the Princess should not follow him thither.
+
+He had the incredible effrontery and folly to request the Queen to
+address a letter to her at Brussels, urging her to return to France. But
+Mary de' Medici assured her husband that she had no intention of becoming
+his assistant, using, to express her thought, the plainest and most
+vigorous word that the Italian language could supply. Henry had then
+recourse once more to the father and aunt.
+
+That venerable couple being about to wait upon the Archduke's envoy, in
+compliance with the royal request, Pecquius, out of respect to their
+advanced age, went to the Constable's residence. Here both the Duchess
+and Constable, with tears in their eyes, besought that diplomatist to do
+his utmost to prevent the Princess from the sad fate of any longer
+sharing her husband's fortunes.
+
+The father protested that he would never have consented to her marriage,
+preferring infinitely that she should have espoused any honest gentleman
+with 2000 crowns a year than this first prince of the blood, with a
+character such as it had proved to be; but that he had not dared to
+disobey the King.
+
+He spoke of the indignities and cruelties to which she was subjected,
+said that Rochefort, whom Conde had employed to assist him in their
+flight from France, and on the crupper of whose horse the Princess had
+performed the journey, was constantly guilty of acts of rudeness and
+incivility towards her; that but a few days past he had fired off pistols
+in her apartment where she was sitting alone with the Princess of Orange,
+exclaiming that this was the way he would treat anyone who interfered
+with the commands of his master, Conde; that the Prince was incessantly
+railing at her for refusing to caress the Marquis of Spinola; and that,
+in short, he would rather she were safe in the palace of the Archduchess
+Isabella, even in the humblest position among her gentlewomen, than to
+know her vagabondizing miserably about the world with her husband.
+
+This, he said, was the greatest fear he had, and he would rather see her
+dead than condemned to such a fate.
+
+He trusted that the Archdukes were incapable of believing the stories
+that he and the Duchess of Angouleme were influenced in the appeals they
+made for the separation of the Prince and Princess by a desire to serve
+the purposes of the King. Those were fables put about by Conde. All that
+the Constable and his sister desired was that the Archduchess would
+receive the Princess kindly when she should throw herself at her feet,
+and not allow her to be torn away against her will. The Constable spoke
+with great gravity and simplicity, and with all the signs of genuine
+emotion, and Peter Pecquius was much moved. He assured the aged pair that
+he would do his best to comply with their wishes, and should immediately
+apprise the Archdukes of the interview which had just taken place. Most
+certainly they were entirely disposed to gratify the Constable and the
+Duchess as well as the Princess herself, whose virtues, qualities, and
+graces had inspired them with affection, but it must be remembered that
+the law both human and divine required wives to submit themselves to the
+commands of their husbands and to be the companions of their good and
+evil fortunes. Nevertheless, he hoped that the Lord would so conduct the
+affairs of the Prince of Conde that the Most Christian King and the
+Archdukes would all be satisfied.
+
+These pious and consolatory commonplaces on the part of Peter Pecquius
+deeply affected the Constable. He fell upon the Envoy's neck, embraced
+him repeatedly, and again wept plentifully.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+   Strange Scene at the Archduke's Palace--Henry's Plot frustrated--
+   His Triumph changed to Despair--Conversation of the Dutch Ambassador
+   with the King--The War determined upon.
+
+It was in the latter part of the Carnival, the Saturday night preceding
+Shrove Tuesday, 1610. The winter had been a rigorous one in Brussels, and
+the snow lay in drifts three feet deep in the streets. Within and about
+the splendid palace of Nassau there was much commotion. Lights and
+flambeaux were glancing, loud voices, martial music, discharge of pistols
+and even of artillery were heard together with the trampling of many
+feet, but there was nothing much resembling the wild revelry or cheerful
+mummery of that holiday season. A throng of the great nobles of Belgium
+with drawn swords and menacing aspect were assembled in the chief
+apartments, a detachment of the Archduke's mounted body-guard was
+stationed in the courtyard, and five hundred halberdiers of the burgher
+guilds kept watch and ward about the palace.
+
+The Prince of Conde, a square-built, athletic young man of middle
+stature, with regular features, but a sulky expression, deepened at this
+moment into ferocity, was seen chasing the secretary of the French
+resident minister out of the courtyard, thwacking him lustily about the
+shoulders with his drawn sword, and threatening to kill him or any other
+Frenchman on the spot, should he show himself in that palace. He was
+heard shouting rather than speaking, in furious language against the
+King, against Coeuvres, against Berny, and bitterly bewailing his
+misfortunes, as if his wife were already in Paris instead of Brussels.
+
+Upstairs in her own apartment which she had kept for some days on pretext
+of illness sat the Princess Margaret, in company' of Madame de Berny,
+wife of the French minister, and of the Marquis de Coeuvres, Henry's
+special envoy, and a few other Frenchmen. She was passionately fond of
+dancing. The adoring cardinal described her as marvellously graceful and
+perfect in that accomplishment. She had begged her other adorer, the
+Marquis Spinola, "with sweetest words," that she might remain a few days
+longer in the Nassau Palace before removing to the Archduke's residence,
+and that the great general, according to the custom in France and
+Flanders, would be the one to present her with the violins. But Spinola,
+knowing the artifice concealed beneath these "sweetest words," had
+summoned up valour enough to resist her blandishments, and had refused a
+second entertainment.
+
+It was not, therefore, the disappointment at losing her ball that now
+made the Princess sad. She and her companions saw that there had been a
+catastrophe; a plot discovered. There was bitter disappointment and deep
+dismay upon their faces. The plot had been an excellent one. De Coeuvres
+had arranged it all, especially instigated thereto by the father of the
+Princess acting in concurrence with the King. That night when all was
+expected to be in accustomed quiet, the Princess, wrapped in her
+mantilla, was to have stolen down into the garden, accompanied only by
+her maid the adventurous and faithful Philipotte, to have gone through a
+breach which led through a garden wall to the city ramparts, thence
+across the foss to the counterscarp, where a number of horsemen under
+trustworthy commanders were waiting. Mounting on the crupper behind one
+of the officers of the escort, she was then to fly to the frontier,
+relays of horses having been provided at every stage until she should
+reach Rocroy, the first pausing place within French territory; a perilous
+adventure for the young and delicate Princess in a winter of almost
+unexampled severity.
+
+On the very morning of the day assigned for the adventure, despatches
+brought by special couriers from the Nuncius and the Spanish ambassador
+at Paris gave notice of the plot to the Archdukes and to Conde, although
+up to that moment none knew of it in Brussels. Albert, having been
+apprised that many Frenchmen had been arriving during the past few days,
+and swarming about the hostelries of the city and suburbs, was at once
+disposed to believe in the story. When Conde came to him, therefore, with
+confirmation from his own letters, and demanding a detachment of the
+body-guard in addition to the burgher militiamen already granted by the
+magistrates, he made no difficulty granting the request. It was as if
+there had been a threatened assault of the city, rather than the
+attempted elopement of a young lady escorted by a handful of cavaliers.
+
+The courtyard of the Nassau Palace was filled with cavalry sent by the
+Archduke, while five hundred burgher guards sent by the magistrates were
+drawn up around the gate. The noise and uproar, gaining at every moment
+more mysterious meaning by the darkness of night, soon spread through the
+city. The whole population was awake, and swarming through the streets.
+Such a tumult had not for years been witnessed in Brussels, and the
+rumour flew about and was generally believed that the King of France at
+the head of an army was at the gates of the city determined to carry off
+the Princess by force. But although the superfluous and very scandalous
+explosion might have been prevented, there could be no doubt that the
+stratagem had been defeated.
+
+Nevertheless, the effrontery and ingenuity of de Coeuvres became now
+sublime. Accompanied by his colleague, the resident minister, de Berny,
+who was sure not to betray the secret because he had never known it--his
+wife alone having been in the confidence of the Princess--he proceeded
+straightway to the Archduke's palace, and, late in the night as it was,
+insisted on an audience.
+
+Here putting on his boldest face when admitted to the presence, he
+complained loudly of the plot, of which he had just become aware,
+contrived by the Prince of Conde to carry off his wife to Spain against
+her will, by main force, and by assistance of Flemish nobles, archiducal
+body-guard, and burgher militia.
+
+It was all a plot of Conde, he said, to palliate still more his flight
+from France. Every one knew that the Princess could not fly back to Paris
+through the air. To take her out of a house filled with people, to pierce
+or scale the walls of the city, to arrange her journey by ordinary means,
+and to protect the whole route by stations of cavalry, reaching from
+Brussels to the frontier, and to do all this in profound secrecy, was
+equally impossible. Such a scheme had never been arranged nor even
+imagined, he said. The true plotter was Conde, aided by ministers in
+Flanders hostile to France, and as the honour of the King and the
+reputation of the Princess had been injured by this scandal, the
+Ambassador loudly demanded a thorough investigation of the affair in
+order that vengeance might fall where it was due.
+
+The prudent Albert was equal to the occasion. Not wishing to state the
+full knowledge which he possessed of de Coeuvres' agency and the King's
+complicity in the scheme of abduction to France, he reasoned calmly with
+the excited marquis, while his colleague looked and listened in dumb
+amazement, having previously been more vociferous and infinitely more
+sincere than his colleague in expressions of indignation.
+
+The Archduke said that he had not thought the plot imputed to the King
+and his ambassador very probable. Nevertheless, the assertions of the
+Prince had been so positive as to make it impossible to refuse the guards
+requested by him. He trusted, however, that the truth would soon be
+known, and that it would leave no stain on the Princess, nor give any
+offence to the King.
+
+Surprised and indignant at the turn given to the adventure by the French
+envoys, he nevertheless took care to conceal these sentiments, to abstain
+from accusation, and calmly to inform them that the Princess next morning
+would be established under his own roof; and enjoy the protection of the
+Archduchess.
+
+For it had been arranged several days before that Margaret should leave
+the palace of Nassau for that of Albert and Isabella on the 14th, and the
+abduction had been fixed for the night of the 13th precisely because the
+conspirators wished to profit by the confusion incident on a change of
+domicile.
+
+The irrepressible de Coeuvres, even then hardly willing to give up the
+whole stratagem as lost, was at least determined to discover how and by
+whom the plot had been revealed. In a cemetery piled three feet deep with
+snow on the evening following that mid-winter's night which had been
+fixed for the Princess's flight, the unfortunate ambassador waited until
+a certain Vallobre, a gentleman of Spinola's, who was the go-between of
+the enamoured Genoese and the Princess, but whom de Coeuvres had gained
+over, came at last to meet him by appointment. When he arrived, it was
+only to inform him of the manner in which he had been baffled, to
+convince him that the game was up, and that nothing was left him but to
+retreat utterly foiled in his attempt, and to be stigmatized as a
+blockhead by his enraged sovereign.
+
+Next day the Princess removed her residence to the palace of the
+Archdukes, where she was treated with distinguished honour by Isabella,
+and installed ceremoniously in the most stately, the most virtuous, and
+the most dismal of courts. Her father and aunt professed themselves as
+highly pleased with the result, and Pecquius wrote that "they were glad
+to know her safe from the importunities of the old fop who seemed as mad
+as if he had been stung by a tarantula."
+
+And how had the plot been revealed? Simply through the incorrigible
+garrulity of the King himself. Apprised of the arrangement in all its
+details by the Constable, who had first received the special couriers of
+de Coeuvres, he could not keep the secret to himself for a moment, and
+the person of all others in the world to whom he thought good to confide
+it was the Queen herself. She received the information with a smile, but
+straightway sent for the Nuncius Ubaldini, who at her desire instantly
+despatched a special courier to Spinola with full particulars of the time
+and mode of the proposed abduction.
+
+Nevertheless the ingenuous Henry, confiding in the capacity of his deeply
+offended queen to keep the secret which he had himself divulged, could
+scarcely contain himself for joy.
+
+Off he went to Saint-Germain with a train of coaches, impatient to get
+the first news from de Coeuvres after the scheme should have been carried
+into effect, and intending to travel post towards Flanders to meet and
+welcome the Princess.
+
+"Pleasant farce for Shrove Tuesday," wrote the secretary of Pecquius, "is
+that which the Frenchmen have been arranging down there! He in whose
+favour the abduction is to be made was seen going out the same day
+spangled and smart, contrary to his usual fashion, making a gambado
+towards Saint-Germain-en-Laye with four carriages and four to meet the
+nymph."
+
+Great was the King's wrath and mortification at this ridiculous exposure
+of his detestable scheme. Vociferous were Villeroy's expressions of
+Henry's indignation at being supposed to have had any knowledge of or
+complicity in the affair. "His Majesty cannot approve of the means one
+has taken to guard against a pretended plot for carrying off the
+Princess," said the Secretary of State; "a fear which was simulated by
+the Prince in order to defame the King." He added that there was no
+reason to suspect the King, as he had never attempted anything of the
+sort in his life, and that the Archduke might have removed the Princess
+to his palace without sending an army to the hotel of the Prince of
+Orange, and causing such an alarm in the city, firing artillery on the
+rampart as if the town had been full of Frenchmen in arms, whereas one
+was ashamed next morning to find that there had been but fifteen in all.
+"But it was all Marquis Spinola's fault," he said, "who wished to show
+himself off as a warrior."
+
+The King, having thus through the mouth of his secretary of state warmly
+protested against his supposed implication in the attempted abduction,
+began as furiously to rail at de Coeuvres for its failure; telling the
+Duc de Vendome that his uncle was an idiot, and writing that unlucky
+envoy most abusive letters for blundering in the scheme which had been so
+well concerted between them. Then he sent for Malherbe, who straightway
+perpetrated more poems to express the King's despair, in which Henry was
+made to liken himself to a skeleton with a dried skin, and likewise to a
+violet turned up by the ploughshare and left to wither.
+
+He kept up through Madame de Berny a correspondence with "his beautiful
+angel," as he called the Princess, whom he chose to consider a prisoner
+and a victim; while she, wearied to death with the frigid monotony and
+sepulchral gaieties of the archiducal court, which she openly called her
+"dungeon" diverted herself with the freaks and fantasies of her royal
+adorer, called him in very ill-spelled letters "her chevalier, her heart,
+her all the world," and frequently wrote to beg him, at the suggestion of
+the intriguing Chateau Vert, to devise some means of rescuing her from
+prison.
+
+The Constable and Duchess meanwhile affected to be sufficiently satisfied
+with the state of things. Conde, however, received a letter from the
+King, formally summoning him to return to France, and, in case of
+refusal, declaring him guilty of high-treason for leaving the kingdom
+without the leave and against the express commands of the King. To this
+letter, brought to him by de Coeuvres, the Prince replied by a paper,
+drawn up and served by a notary of Brussels, to the effect that he had
+left France to save his life and honour; that he was ready to return when
+guarantees were given him for the security of both. He would live and
+die, he said, faithful to the King. But when the King, departing from the
+paths of justice, proceeded through those of violence against him, he
+maintained that every such act against his person was null and invalid.
+Henry had even the incredible meanness and folly to request the Queen to
+write to the Archdukes, begging that the Princess might be restored to
+assist at her coronation. Mary de' Medici vigorously replied once more
+that, although obliged to wink at the King's amours, she declined to be
+his procuress. Conde then went off to Milan very soon after the scene at
+the Nassau Palace and the removal of the Princess to the care of the
+Archdukes. He was very angry with his wife, from whom he expressed a
+determination to be divorced, and furious with the King, the validity of
+whose second marriage and the legitimacy of whose children he proposed
+with Spanish help to dispute.
+
+The Constable was in favour of the divorce, or pretended to be so, and
+caused importunate letters to be written, which he signed, to both Albert
+and Isabella, begging that his daughter might be restored to him to be
+the staff of his old age, and likewise to be present at the Queen's
+coronation. The Archdukes, however, resolutely refused to permit her to
+leave their protection without Conde's consent, or until after a divorce
+had been effected, notwithstanding that the father and aunt demanded it.
+The Constable and Duchess however, acquiesced in the decision, and
+expressed immense gratitude to Isabella.
+
+"The father and aunt have been talking to Pecquius," said Henry very
+dismally; "but they give me much pain. They are even colder than the
+season, but my fire thaws them as soon as I approach."
+
+"P. S.--I am so pining away in my anguish that I am nothing but skin and
+bones. Nothing gives me pleasure. I fly from company, and if in order to
+comply with the law of nations I go into some assembly or other, instead
+of enlivening, it nearly kills me."--[Lettres missives de Henri vii.
+834].
+
+And the King took to his bed. Whether from gout, fever, or the pangs of
+disappointed love, he became seriously ill. Furious with every one, with
+Conde, the Constable, de Coeuvres, the Queen, Spinola, with the Prince of
+Orange, whose councillor Keeremans had been encouraging Conde in his
+rebellion and in going to Spain with Spinola, he was now resolved that
+the war should go on. Aerssens, cautious of saying too much on paper of
+this very delicate affair, always intimated to Barneveld that, if the
+Princess could be restored, peace was still possible, and that by moving
+an inch ahead of the King in the Cleve matter the States at the last
+moment might be left in the lurch. He distinctly told the Advocate, on
+his expressing a hope that Henry might consent to the Prince's residence
+in some neutral place until a reconciliation could be effected, that the
+pinch of the matter was not there, and that van der Myle, who knew all
+about it, could easily explain it.
+
+Alluding to the project of reviving the process against the Dowager, and
+of divorcing the Prince and Princess, he said these steps would do much
+harm, as they would too much justify the true cause of the retreat of the
+Prince, who was not believed when he merely talked of his right of
+primogeniture: "The matter weighs upon us very heavily," he said, "but
+the trouble is that we don't search for the true remedies. The matter is
+so delicate that I don't dare to discuss it to the very bottom."
+
+The Ambassador had a long interview with the King as he lay in his bed
+feverish and excited. He was more impatient than ever for the arrival of
+the States' special embassy, reluctantly acquiesced in the reasons
+assigned for the delay, but trusted that it would arrive soon with
+Barneveld at the head, and with Count Lewis William as a member for "the
+sword part of it."
+
+He railed at the Prince of Orange, not believing that Keeremans would
+have dared to do what he had done but with the orders of his master. He
+said that the King of Spain would supply Conde with money and with
+everything he wanted, knowing that he could make use of him to trouble
+his kingdom. It was strange, he thought, that Philip should venture to
+these extremities with his affairs in such condition, and when he had so
+much need of repose. He recalled all his ancient grievances against
+Spain, his rights to the Kingdom of Navarre and the County of St. Pol
+violated; the conspiracy of Biron, the intrigues of Bouillon, the plots
+of the Count of Auvergne and the Marchioness of Verneuil, the treason of
+Meragne, the corruption of L'Hoste, and an infinity of other plots of the
+King and his ministers; of deep injuries to him and to the public repose,
+not to be tolerated by a mighty king like himself, with a grey beard. He
+would be revenged, he said, for this last blow, and so for all the rest.
+He would not leave a troublesome war on the hands of his young son. The
+occasion was favourable. It was just to defend the oppressed princes with
+the promptly accorded assistance of the States-General. The King of Great
+Britain was favourable. The Duke of Savoy was pledged. It was better to
+begin the war in his green old age than to wait the pleasure and
+opportunity of the King of Spain.
+
+All this he said while racked with fever, and dismissed the Envoy at
+last, after a long interview, with these words: "Mr. Ambassador--I have
+always spoken roundly and frankly to you, and you will one day be my
+witness that I have done all that I could to draw the Prince out of the
+plight into which he has put himself. But he is struggling for the
+succession to this crown under instructions from the Spaniards, to whom
+he has entirely pledged himself. He has already received 6000 crowns for
+his equipment. I know that you and my other friends will work for the
+conservation of this monarchy, and will never abandon me in my designs to
+weaken the power of Spain. Pray God for my health."
+
+The King kept his bed a few days afterwards, but soon recovered. Villeroy
+sent word to Barneveld in answer to his suggestions of reconciliation
+that it was too late, that Conde was entirely desperate and Spanish. The
+crown of France was at stake, he said, and the Prince was promising
+himself miracles and mountains with the aid of Spain, loudly declaring
+the marriage of Mary de' Medici illegal, and himself heir to the throne.
+The Secretary of State professed himself as impatient as his master for
+the arrival of the embassy; the States being the best friends France ever
+had and the only allies to make the war succeed.
+
+Jeannin, who was now never called to the council, said that the war was
+not for Germany but for Conde, and that Henry could carry it on for eight
+years. He too was most anxious for Barneveld's arrival, and was of his
+opinion that it would have been better for Conde to be persuaded to
+remain at Breda and be supported by his brother-in-law, the Prince of
+Orange. The impetuosity of the King had however swept everything before
+it, and Conde had been driven to declare himself Spanish and a pretender
+to the crown. There was no issue now but war.
+
+Boderie, the King's envoy in Great Britain, wrote that James would be
+willing to make a defensive league for the affairs of Cleve and Julich
+only, which was the slenderest amount of assistance; but Henry always
+suspected Master Jacques of intentions to baulk him if possible and
+traverse his designs. But the die was cast. Spinola had carried off Conde
+in triumph; the Princess was pining in her gilt cage in Brussels, and
+demanding a divorce for desertion and cruel treatment; the King
+considered himself as having done as much as honour allowed him to effect
+a reconciliation, and it was obvious that, as the States' ambassador
+said, he could no longer retire from the war without shame, which would
+be the greatest danger of all.
+
+"The tragedy is ready to begin," said Aerssens. "They are only waiting
+now for the arrival of our ambassadors."
+
+On the 9th March the King before going to Fontainebleau for a few days
+summoned that envoy to the Louvre. Impatient at a slight delay in his
+arrival, Henry came down into the courtyard as he was arriving and asked
+eagerly if Barneveld was coming to Paris. Aerssens replied, that the
+Advocate had been hastening as much as possible the departure of the
+special embassy, but that the condition of affairs at home was such as
+not to permit him to leave the country at that moment. Van der Myle, who
+would be one of the ambassadors, would more fully explain this by word of
+mouth.
+
+The King manifested infinite annoyance and disappointment that Barneveld
+was not to make part of the embassy. "He says that he reposes such
+singular confidence in your authority in the state, experience in
+affairs, and affection for himself," wrote Aerssens, "that he might treat
+with you in detail and with open heart of all his designs. He fears now
+that the ambassadors will be limited in their powers and instructions,
+and unable to reply at once on the articles which at different times have
+been proposed to me for our enterprise. Thus much valuable time will be
+wasted in sending backwards and forwards."
+
+The King also expressed great anxiety to consult with Count Lewis William
+in regard to military details, but his chief sorrow was in regard to the
+Advocate. "He acquiesced only with deep displeasure and regret in your
+reasons," said the Ambassador, "and says that he can hope for nothing
+firm now that you refuse to come."
+
+Villeroy intimated that Barneveld did not come for fear of exciting the
+jealousy of the English.
+
+     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+     He who spreads the snare always tumbles into the ditch himself
+     Most detestable verses that even he had ever composed
+     She declined to be his procuress
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND
+
+WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR
+
+By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, v3, 1610
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+   Difficult Position of Barneveld--Insurrection at Utrecht subdued by
+   the States' Army--Special Embassies to England and France--Anger of
+   the King with Spain and the Archdukes--Arrangements of Henry for the
+   coming War--Position of Spain--Anxiety of the King for the Presence
+   of Barneveld in Paris--Arrival of the Dutch Commissioners in France
+   and their brilliant Reception--Their Interview with the King and his
+   Ministers--Negotiations--Delicate Position of the Dutch Government--
+   India Trade--Simon Danzer, the Corsair--Conversations of Henry with
+   the Dutch Commissioners--Letter of the King to Archduke Albert--
+   Preparations for the Queen's Coronation, and of Henry to open the
+   Campaign in person--Perplexities of Henry--Forebodings and Warnings
+   --The Murder accomplished--Terrible Change in France--Triumph of
+   Concini and of Spain--Downfall of Sully--Disputes of the Grandees
+   among themselves--Special Mission of Condelence from the Republic--
+   Conference on the great Enterprise--Departure of van der Myle from
+   Paris.
+
+There were reasons enough why the Advocate could not go to Paris at this
+juncture. It was absurd in Henry to suppose it possible. Everything
+rested on Barneveld's shoulders. During the year which had just passed he
+had drawn almost every paper, every instruction in regard to the peace
+negotiations, with his own hand, had assisted at every conference, guided
+and mastered the whole course of a most difficult and intricate
+negotiation, in which he had not only been obliged to make allowance for
+the humbled pride and baffled ambition of the ancient foe of the
+Netherlands, but to steer clear of the innumerable jealousies,
+susceptibilities, cavillings, and insolences of their patronizing
+friends.
+
+It was his brain that worked, his tongue that spoke, his restless pen
+that never paused. His was not one of those easy posts, not unknown in
+the modern administration of great affairs, where the subordinate
+furnishes the intellect, the industry, the experience, while the bland
+superior, gratifying the world with his sign-manual, appropriates the
+applause. So long as he lived and worked, the States-General and the
+States of Holland were like a cunningly contrived machine, which seemed
+to be alive because one invisible but mighty mind vitalized the whole.
+
+And there had been enough to do. It was not until midsummer of 1609 that
+the ratifications of the Treaty of Truce, one of the great triumphs in
+the history of diplomacy, had been exchanged, and scarcely had this
+period been put to the eternal clang of arms when the death of a lunatic
+threw the world once more into confusion. It was obvious to Barneveld
+that the issue of the Cleve-Julich affair, and of the tremendous
+religious fermentation in Bohemia, Moravia, and Austria, must sooner or
+later lead to an immense war. It was inevitable that it would devolve
+upon the States to sustain their great though vacillating, their generous
+though encroaching, their sincere though most irritating, ally. And yet,
+thoroughly as Barneveld had mastered all the complications and
+perplexities of the religious and political question, carefully as he had
+calculated the value of the opposing forces which were shaking
+Christendom, deeply as he had studied the characters of Matthias and
+Rudolph, of Charles of Denmark and Ferdinand of Graz, of Anhalt and
+Maximilian, of Brandenburg and Neuburg, of James and Philip, of Paul V.
+and Charles Emmanuel, of Sully and Yilleroy, of Salisbury and Bacon, of
+Lerma and Infantado; adroitly as he could measure, weigh, and analyse all
+these elements in the great problem which was forcing itself on the
+attention of Europe--there was one factor with which it was difficult for
+this austere republican, this cold, unsusceptible statesman, to deal: the
+intense and imperious passion of a greybeard for a woman of sixteen.
+
+For out of the cauldron where the miscellaneous elements of universal war
+were bubbling rose perpetually the fantastic image of Margaret
+Montmorency: the fatal beauty at whose caprice the heroic sword of Ivry
+and Cahors was now uplifted and now sheathed.
+
+Aerssens was baffled, and reported the humours of the court where he
+resided as changing from hour to hour. To the last he reported that all
+the mighty preparations then nearly completed "might evaporate in smoke"
+if the Princess of Conde should come back. Every ambassador in Paris was
+baffled. Peter Pecquius was as much in the dark as Don Inigo de Cardenas,
+as Ubaldini or Edmonds. No one save Sully, Aerssens, Barneveld, and the
+King knew the extensive arrangements and profound combinations which had
+been made for the war. Yet not Sully, Aerssens, Barneveld, or the King,
+knew whether or not the war would really be made.
+
+Barneveld had to deal with this perplexing question day by day. His
+correspondence with his ambassador at Henry's court was enormous, and we
+have seen that the Ambassador was with the King almost daily; sleeping or
+waking; at dinner or the chase; in the cabinet or the courtyard.
+
+But the Advocate was also obliged to carry in his arms, as it were, the
+brood of snarling, bickering, cross-grained German princes, to supply
+them with money, with arms, with counsel, with brains; to keep them awake
+when they went to sleep, to steady them in their track, to teach them to
+go alone. He had the congress at Hall in Suabia to supervise and direct;
+he had to see that the ambassadors of the new republic, upon which they
+in reality were already half dependent and chafing at their dependence,
+were treated with the consideration due to the proud position which the
+Commonwealth had gained. Questions of etiquette were at that moment
+questions of vitality. He instructed his ambassadors to leave the
+congress on the spot if they were ranked after the envoys of princes who
+were only feudatories of the Emperor. The Dutch ambassadors, "recognising
+and relying upon no superiors but God and their sword," placed themselves
+according to seniority with the representatives of proudest kings.
+
+He had to extemporize a system of free international communication with
+all the powers of the earth--with the Turk at Constantinople, with the
+Czar of Muscovy; with the potentates of the Baltic, with both the Indies.
+The routine of a long established and well organized foreign office in a
+time-honoured state running in grooves; with well-balanced springs and
+well oiled wheels, may be a luxury of civilization; but it was a more
+arduous task to transact the greatest affairs of a state springing
+suddenly into recognized existence and mainly dependent for its primary
+construction and practical working on the hand of one man.
+
+Worse than all, he had to deal on the most dangerous and delicate topics
+of state with a prince who trembled at danger and was incapable of
+delicacy; to show respect for a character that was despicable, to lean on
+a royal word falser than water, to inhale almost daily the effluvia from
+a court compared to which the harem of Henry was a temple of vestals. The
+spectacle of the slobbering James among his Kars and Hays and Villiers's
+and other minions is one at which history covers her eyes and is dumb;
+but the republican envoys, with instructions from a Barneveld, were
+obliged to face him daily, concealing their disgust, and bowing
+reverentially before him as one of the arbiters of their destinies and
+the Solomon of his epoch.
+
+A special embassy was sent early in the year to England to convey the
+solemn thanks of the Republic to the King for his assistance in the truce
+negotiations, and to treat of the important matters then pressing on the
+attention of both powers. Contemporaneously was to be despatched the
+embassy for which Henry was waiting so impatiently at Paris.
+
+Certainly the Advocate had enough with this and other, important business
+already mentioned to detain him at his post. Moreover the first year of
+peace had opened disastrously in the Netherlands. Tremendous tempests
+such as had rarely been recorded even in that land of storms had raged
+all the winter. The waters everywhere had burst their dykes and
+inundations, which threatened to engulph the whole country, and which had
+caused enormous loss of property and even of life, were alarming the most
+courageous. It was difficult in many district to collect the taxes for
+the every-day expenses of the community, and yet the Advocate knew that
+the Republic would soon be forced to renew the war on a prodigious scale.
+
+Still more to embarrass the action of the government and perplex its
+statesmen, an alarming and dangerous insurrection broke out in Utrecht.
+
+In that ancient seat of the hard-fighting, imperious, and opulent
+sovereign archbishops of the ancient church an important portion of the
+population had remained Catholic. Another portion complained of the
+abolition of various privileges which they had formerly enjoyed; among
+others that of a monopoly of beer-brewing for the province. All the
+population, as is the case with all populations in all countries and all
+epochs, complained of excessive taxation.
+
+A clever politician, Dirk Kanter by name, a gentleman by birth, a scholar
+and philosopher by pursuit and education, and a demagogue by profession,
+saw an opportunity of taking an advantage of this state of things. More
+than twenty years before he had been burgomaster of the city, and had
+much enjoyed himself in that position. He was tired of the learned
+leisure to which the ingratitude of his fellow-citizens had condemned
+him. He seems to have been of easy virtue in the matter of religion, a
+Catholic, an Arminian, an ultra orthodox Contra-Remonstrant by turns. He
+now persuaded a number of determined partisans that the time had come for
+securing a church for the public worship of the ancient faith, and at the
+same time for restoring the beer brewery, reducing the taxes, recovering
+lost privileges, and many other good things. Beneath the whole scheme lay
+a deep design to effect the secession of the city and with it of the
+opulent and important province of Utrecht from the Union. Kanter had been
+heard openly to avow that after all the Netherlands had flourished under
+the benign sway of the House of Burgundy, and that the time would soon
+come for returning to that enviable condition.
+
+By a concerted assault the city hall was taken possession of by main
+force, the magistracy was overpowered, and a new board of senators and
+common council-men appointed, Kanter and a devoted friend of his,
+Heldingen by name, being elected burgomasters.
+
+The States-Provincial of Utrecht, alarmed at these proceedings in the
+city, appealed for protection against violence to the States-General
+under the 3rd Article of the Union, the fundamental pact which bore the
+name of Utrecht itself. Prince Maurice proceeded to the city at the head
+of a detachment of troops to quell the tumults. Kanter and his friends
+were plausible enough to persuade him of the legality and propriety of
+the revolution which they had effected, and to procure his formal
+confirmation of the new magistracy. Intending to turn his military genius
+and the splendour of his name to account, they contrived to keep him for
+a time at least in an amiable enthralment, and induced him to contemplate
+in their interest the possibility of renouncing the oath which subjected
+him to the authority of the States of Utrecht. But the far-seeing eye of
+Barneveld could not be blind to the danger which at this crisis beset the
+Stadholder and the whole republic. The Prince was induced to return to
+the Hague, but the city continued by armed revolt to maintain the new
+magistracy. They proceeded to reduce the taxes, and in other respects to
+carry out the measures on the promise of which they had come into power.
+Especially the Catholic party sustained Kanter and his friends, and
+promised themselves from him and from his influence over Prince Maurice
+to obtain a power of which they had long been deprived.
+
+The States-General now held an assembly at Woerden, and summoned the
+malcontents of Utrecht to bring before that body a statement of their
+grievances. This was done, but there was no satisfactory arrangement
+possible, and the deputation returned to Utrecht, the States-General to
+the Hague. The States-Provincial of Utrecht urged more strongly than ever
+upon the assembly of the Union to save the city from the hands of a
+reckless and revolutionary government. The States-General resolved
+accordingly to interfere by force. A considerable body of troops was
+ordered to march at once upon Utrecht and besiege the city. Maurice, in
+his capacity of captain-general and stadholder of the province, was
+summoned to take charge of the army. He was indisposed to do so, and
+pleaded sickness. The States, determined that the name of Nassau should
+not be used as an encouragement to disobedience, and rebellion, then
+directed the brother of Maurice, Frederic Henry, youngest son of William
+the Silent, to assume the command. Maurice insisted that his brother was
+too young, and that it was unjust to allow so grave a responsibility to
+fall upon his shoulders. The States, not particularly pleased with the
+Prince's attitude at this alarming juncture, and made anxious by the
+glamour which seemed to possess him since his conferences with the
+revolutionary party at Utrecht, determined not to yield.
+
+The army marched forth and laid siege to the city, Prince Frederic Henry
+at its head. He was sternly instructed by the States-General, under whose
+orders he acted, to take possession of the city at all hazards. He was to
+insist on placing there a garrison of 2000 foot and 300 horse, and to
+permit not another armed man within the walls. The members of the council
+of state and of the States of Utrecht accompanied the army. For a moment
+the party in power was disposed to resist the forces of the Union. Dick
+Kanter and his friends were resolute enough; the Catholic priests turned
+out among the rest with their spades and worked on the entrenchments. The
+impossibility of holding the city against the overwhelming power of the
+States was soon obvious, and the next day the gates were opened, and easy
+terms were granted. The new magistracy was set aside, the old board that
+had been deposed by the rebels reinstated. The revolution and the
+counterrevolution were alike bloodless, and it was determined that the
+various grievances of which the discontented party had complained should
+be referred to the States-General, to Prince Maurice, to the council of
+state, and to the ambassadors of France and England. Amnesty was likewise
+decreed on submission.
+
+The restored government was Arminian in its inclinations, the
+revolutionary one was singularly compounded both of Catholic and of
+ultra-orthodox elements. Quiet was on the whole restored, but the
+resources of the city were crippled. The event occurring exactly at the
+crisis of the Clove and Julich expedition angered the King of France.
+
+"The trouble of Utrecht," wrote Aerssens to Barneveld, "has been turned
+to account here marvellously, the Archdukes and Spaniards boasting that
+many more revolts like this may be at once expected. I have explained to
+his Majesty, who has been very much alarmed about it, both its source and
+the hopes that it will be appeased by the prudence of his Excellency
+Prince Maurice and the deputies of the States. The King desires that
+everything should be pacified as soon as possible, so that there may be
+no embarrassment to the course of public affairs. But he fears, he tells
+me, that this may create some new jealousy between Prince Maurice and
+yourself. I don't comprehend what he means, although he held this
+language to me very expressly and without reserve. I could only answer
+that you were living on the best of terms together in perfect amity and
+intelligence. If you know if this talk of his has any other root, please
+to enlighten me, that I may put a stop to false reports, for I know
+nothing of affairs except what you tell me."
+
+King James, on the other hand, thoroughly approved the promptness of the
+States-General in suppressing the tumult.
+
+Nothing very serious of alike nature occurred in Utrecht until the end of
+the year, when a determined and secret conspiracy was discovered, having
+for its object to overpower the garrison and get bodily possession of
+Colonel John Ogle, the military commander of the town. At the bottom of
+the movement were the indefatigable Dirk Kanter and his friend Heldingen.
+The attempt was easily suppressed, and the two were banished from the
+town. Kanter died subsequently in North Holland, in the odour of
+ultra-orthodoxy. Four of the conspirators--a post-master, two shoemakers,
+and a sexton, who had bound themselves by oath to take the lives of two
+eminent Arminian preachers, besides other desperate deeds--were condemned
+to death, but pardoned on the scaffold. Thus ended the first revolution
+at Utrecht.
+
+Its effect did not cease, however, with the tumults which were its
+original manifestations. This earliest insurrection in organized shape
+against the central authority of the States-General; this violent though
+abortive effort to dissolve the Union and to nullify its laws; this
+painful necessity for the first time imposed upon the federal government
+to take up arms against misguided citizens of the Republic, in order to
+save itself from disintegration and national death, were destined to be
+followed by far graver convulsions on the self-same spot. Religious
+differences and religious hatreds were to mingle their poison with
+antagonistic political theories and personal ambitions, and to develop on
+a wide scale the danger ever lurking in a constitution whose fundamental
+law was unstable, ill defined, and liable to contradictory
+interpretations. For the present it need only be noticed that the
+States-General, guided by Barneveld, most vigorously suppressed the local
+revolt and the incipient secession, while Prince Maurice, the right arm
+of the executive, the stadholder of the province, and the representative
+of the military power of the Commonwealth, was languid in the exertion of
+that power, inclined to listen to the specious arguments of the Utrecht
+rebels, and accused at least of tampering with the fell spirit which the
+Advocate was resolute to destroy. Yet there was no suspicion of treason,
+no taint of rebellion, no accusation of unpatriotic motives uttered
+against the Stadholder.
+
+There was a doubt as to the true maxims by which the Confederacy was to
+be governed, and at this moment, certainly, the Prince and the Advocate
+represented opposite ideas. There was a possibility, at a future day,
+when the religious and political parties might develop themselves on a
+wider scale and the struggles grow fiercer, that the two great champions
+in the conflict might exchange swords and inflict mutual and poisoned
+wounds. At present the party of the Union had triumphed, with Barneveld
+at its head. At a later but not far distant day, similar scenes might be
+enacted in the ancient city of Utrecht, but with a strange difference and
+change in the cast of parts and with far more tragical results.
+
+For the moment the moderate party in the Church, those more inclined to
+Arminianism and the supremacy of the civil authority in religious
+matters, had asserted their ascendency in the States-General, and had
+prevented the threatened rupture.
+
+Meantime it was doubly necessary to hasten the special embassies to
+France and to England, in both which countries much anxiety as to the
+political health and strength of the new republic had been excited by
+these troubles in Utrecht. It was important for the States-General to
+show that they were not crippled, and would not shrink from the coming
+conflict, but would justify the reliance placed on them by their allies.
+
+Thus there were reasons enough why Barneveld could not himself leave the
+country in the eventful spring of 1610. It must be admitted, however,
+that he was not backward in placing his nearest relatives in places of
+honour, trust, and profit.
+
+His eldest son Reinier, Seignior of Groeneveld, had been knighted by
+Henry IV.; his youngest, William, afterwards called Seignior of
+Stoutenburg, but at this moment bearing the not very mellifluous title of
+Craimgepolder, was a gentleman-in-waiting at that king's court, with a
+salary of 3000 crowns a year. He was rather a favourite with the
+easy-going monarch, but he gave infinite trouble to the Dutch ambassador
+Aerssens, who, feeling himself under immense obligations to the Advocate
+and professing for him boundless gratitude, did his best to keep the
+idle, turbulent, extravagant, and pleasure-loving youth up to the strict
+line of his duties.
+
+"Your son is in debt again," wrote Aerssens, on one occasion, "and
+troubled for money. He is in danger of going to the usurers. He says he
+cannot keep himself for less than 200 crowns a month. This is a large
+allowance, but he has spent much more than that. His life is not
+irregular nor his dress remarkably extravagant. His difficulty is that he
+will not dine regularly with me nor at court. He will keep his own table
+and have company to dinner. That is what is ruining him. He comes
+sometimes to me, not for the dinner nor the company, but for tennis,
+which he finds better in my faubourg than in town. His trouble comes from
+the table, and I tell you frankly that you must regulate his expenses or
+they will become very onerous to you. I am ashamed of them and have told
+him so a hundred times, more than if he had been my own brother. It is
+all for love of you . . . . I have been all to him that could be expected
+of a man who is under such vast obligations to you; and I so much esteem
+the honour of your friendship that I should always neglect my private
+affairs in order to do everything for your service and meet your desires
+. . . . . If M. de Craimgepolder comes back from his visit home, you must
+restrict him in two things, the table and tennis, and you can do this if
+you require him to follow the King assiduously as his service requires."
+
+Something at a future day was to be heard of William of Barneveld, as
+well as of his elder brother Reinier, and it is good, therefore, to have
+these occasional glimpses of him while in the service of the King and
+under the supervision of one who was then his father's devoted friend,
+Francis Aerssens. There were to be extraordinary and tragical changes in
+the relations of parties and of individuals ere many years should go by.
+
+Besides the sons of the Advocate, his two sons-in-law, Brederode,
+Seignior of Veenhuizep, and Cornelis van der Myle, were constantly
+employed? in important embassies. Van der Myle had been the first
+ambassador to the great Venetian republic, and was now placed at the head
+of the embassy to France, an office which it was impossible at that
+moment for the Advocate to discharge. At the same critical moment
+Barneveld's brother Elias, Pensionary of Rotterdam, was appointed one of
+the special high commissioners to the King of Great Britain.
+
+It is necessary to give an account of this embassy.
+
+They were provided with luminous and minute instructions from the hand of
+the Advocate.
+
+They were, in the first place, and ostensibly, to thank the King for his
+services in bringing about the truce, which, truly, had been of the
+slightest, as was very well known. They were to explain, on the part of
+the States, their delay in sending this solemn commission, caused by the
+tardiness of the King of Spain in sending his ratification to the treaty,
+and by the many disputations caused by the irresolutions of the Archdukes
+and the obstinacy of their commissioners in regard to their many
+contraventions of the treaty. After those commissioners had gone, further
+hindrances had been found in the "extraordinary tempests, high floods,
+rising of the waters, both of the ocean and the rivers, and the very
+disastrous inundations throughout nearly all the United Provinces, with
+the immense and exorbitant damage thus inflicted, both on the public and
+on many individuals; in addition to all which were to be mentioned the
+troubles in the city of Utrecht."
+
+They were, in almost hyperbolical language, directed to express the
+eternal gratitude of the States for the constant favours received by them
+from the crown of England, and their readiness to stand forth at any
+moment with sincere affection and to the utmost of their power, at all
+times and seasons, in resistance of any attempts against his Majesty's
+person or crown, or against the Prince of Wales or the royal family. They
+were to thank him for his "prudent, heroic, and courageous resolve to
+suffer nothing to be done under colour of justice, authority, or any
+other pretext, to the hindrance of the Elector of Brandenburg and
+Palatine of Neuburg, in the maintenance of their lawful rights and
+possession of the principalities of Julich, Cleve, and Berg, and other
+provinces."
+
+By this course his Majesty, so the commissioners were to state, would put
+an end to the imaginations of those who thought they could give the law
+to everybody according to their pleasure.
+
+They were to assure the King that the States-General would exert
+themselves to the utmost to second his heroic resolution, notwithstanding
+the enormous burthens of their everlasting war, the very exorbitant
+damage caused by the inundations, and the sensible diminution in the
+contributions and other embarrassments then existing in the country.
+
+They were to offer 2000 foot and 500 horse for the general purpose under
+Prince Henry of Nassau, besides the succours furnished by the King of
+France and the electors and princes of Germany. Further assistance in
+men, artillery, and supplies were promised under certain contingencies,
+and the plan of the campaign on the Meuse in conjunction with the King of
+France was duly mapped.
+
+They were to request a corresponding promise of men and money from the
+King of Great Britain, and they were to propose for his approval a closer
+convention for mutual assistance between his Majesty, the United
+Netherlands, the King of France, the electors and princes and other
+powers of Germany; as such close union would be very beneficial to all
+Christendom. It would put a stop to all unjust occupations, attempts, and
+intrigues, and if the King was thereto inclined, he was requested to
+indicate time and place for making such a convention.
+
+The commissioners were further to point out the various contraventions on
+the part of the Archdukes of the Treaty of Truce, and were to give an
+exposition of the manner in which the States-General had quelled the
+tumults at Utrecht, and reasons why such a course had of necessity been
+adopted.
+
+They were instructed to state that, "over and above the great expenses of
+the late war and the necessary maintenance of military forces to protect
+their frontiers against their suspected new friends or old enemies, the
+Provinces were burthened with the cost of the succour to the Elector of
+Brandenburg and Palatine of Neuburg, and would be therefore incapable of
+furnishing the payments coming due to his Majesty. They were accordingly
+to sound his Majesty as to whether a good part of the debt might not be
+remitted or at least an arrangement made by which the terms should begin
+to run only after a certain number of years."
+
+They were also directed to open the subject of the fisheries on the
+coasts of Great Britain, and to remonstrate against the order lately
+published by the King forbidding all foreigners from fishing on those
+coasts. This was to be set forth as an infringement both of natural law
+and of ancient treaties, and as a source of infinite danger to the
+inhabitants of the United Provinces.
+
+The Seignior of Warmond, chief of the commission, died on the 15th April.
+His colleagues met at Brielle on the 16th, ready to take passage to
+England in the ship of war, the Hound. They were, however, detained there
+six days by head winds and great storms, and it was not until the 22nd
+that they were able to put to sea. The following evening their ship cast
+anchor in Gravesend. Half an hour before, the Duke of Wurtemberg had
+arrived from Flushing in a ship of war brought from France by the Prince
+of Anhalt.
+
+Sir Lewis Lewkener, master of ceremonies, had been waiting for the
+ambassadors at Gravesend, and informed them that the royal barges were to
+come next morning from London to take them to town. They remained that
+night on board the Hound, and next morning, the wind blowing up the
+river, they proceeded in their ship as far as Blackwall, where they were
+formally received and bade welcome in the name of the King by Sir Thomas
+Cornwallis and Sir George Carew, late ambassador in France. Escorted by
+them and Sir Lewis, they were brought in the court barges to Tower Wharf.
+Here the royal coaches were waiting, in which they were taken to lodgings
+provided for them in the city at the house of a Dutch merchant. Noel de
+Caron, Seignior of Schonewal, resident ambassador of the States in
+London, was likewise there to greet them. This was Saturday night: On the
+following Tuesday they went by appointment to the Palace of Whitehall in
+royal carriages for their first audience. Manifestations of as entire
+respect and courtesy had thus been made to the Republican envoys as could
+be shown to the ambassadors of the greatest sovereigns. They found the
+King seated on his throne in the audience chamber, accompanied by the
+Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, the Lord High Treasurer and Lord High
+Admiral, the Duke of Lenox, the Earls of Arundel and Northampton, and
+many other great nobles and dignitaries. James rose from his seat, took
+off his hat, and advanced several paces to meet the ambassadors, and bade
+them courteously and respectfully welcome. He then expressed his regret
+at the death of the Seignior of Warmond, and after the exchange of a few
+commonplaces listened, still with uncovered head, to the opening address.
+
+The spokesman, after thanking the King for his condolences on the death
+of the chief commissioner, whom, as was stated with whimsical simplicity,
+"the good God had called to Himself after all his luggage had been put on
+board ship," proceeded in the French language to give a somewhat
+abbreviated paraphrase of Barneveld's instructions.
+
+When this was done and intimation made that they would confer more fully
+with his Majesty's council on the subjects committed to their charge, the
+ambassadors were conducted home with the same ceremonies as had
+accompanied their arrival. They received the same day the first visit
+from the ambassadors of France and Venice, Boderie and Carrero, and had a
+long conference a few days afterwards with the High Treasurer, Lord
+Salisbury.
+
+On the 3rd May they were invited to attend the pompous celebration of the
+festival of St. George in the palace at Westminster, where they were
+placed together with the French ambassador in the King's oratorium; the
+Dukes of Wurtemberg and Brunswick being in that of the Queen.
+
+These details are especially to be noted, and were at the moment of
+considerable importance, for this was the first solemn and extraordinary
+embassy sent by the rebel Netherlanders, since their independent national
+existence had been formally vindicated, to Great Britain, a power which a
+quarter of a century before had refused the proffered sovereignty over
+them. Placed now on exactly the same level with the representatives of
+emperors and kings, the Republican envoys found themselves looked upon by
+the world with different eyes from those which had regarded their
+predecessors askance, and almost with derision, only seven years before.
+At that epoch the States' commissioners, Barneveld himself at the head of
+them, had gone solemnly to congratulate King James on his accession, had
+scarcely been admitted to audience by king or minister, and had found
+themselves on great festivals unsprinkled with the holy water of the
+court, and of no more account than the crowd of citizens and spectators
+who thronged the streets, gazing with awe at the distant radiance of the
+throne.
+
+But although the ambassadors were treated with every external
+consideration befitting their official rank, they were not likely to find
+themselves in the most genial atmosphere when they should come to
+business details. If there was one thing in the world that James did not
+intend to do, it was to get himself entangled in war with Spain, the
+power of all others which he most revered and loved. His "heroic and
+courageous resolve" to defend the princes, on which the commissioners by
+instructions of the Advocate had so highly complimented him, was not
+strong enough to carry him much beyond a vigorous phraseology. He had not
+awoke from the delusive dream of the Spanish marriage which had
+dexterously been made to flit before him, and he was not inclined, for
+the sake of the Republic which he hated the more because obliged to be
+one of its sponsors, to risk the animosity of a great power which
+entertained the most profound contempt for him. He was destined to find
+himself involved more closely than he liked, and through family ties,
+with the great Protestant movement in Germany, and the unfortunate
+"Winter King" might one day find his father-in-law as unstable a reed to
+lean upon as the States had found their godfather, or the Brandenburgs
+and Neuburgs at the present juncture their great ally. Meantime, as the
+Bohemian troubles had not yet reached the period of actual explosion, and
+as Henry's wide-reaching plan against the House of Austria had been
+strangely enough kept an inviolable secret by the few statesmen, like
+Sully and Barneveld, to whom they had been confided, it was necessary for
+the King and his ministers to deal cautiously and plausibly with the
+Dutch ambassadors. Their conferences were mere dancing among eggs, and if
+no actual mischief were done, it was the best result that could be
+expected.
+
+On the 8th of May, the commissioners met in the council chamber at
+Westminster, and discussed all the matters contained in their
+instructions with the members of the council; the Lord Treasurer
+Salisbury, Earl of Northampton, Privy Seal and Warden of the Cinque
+Ports, Lord Nottingham, Lord High Admiral, the Lord Chamberlain, Earl of
+Suffolk, Earls of Shrewsbury, Worcester, and several others being
+present.
+
+The result was not entirely satisfactory. In regard to the succour
+demanded for the possessory princes, the commissioners were told that
+they seemed to come with a long narrative of their great burthens during
+the war, damage from inundations, and the like, to excuse themselves from
+doing their share in the succour, and thus the more to overload his
+Majesty, who was not much interested in the matter, and was likewise
+greatly encumbered by various expenses. The King had already frankly
+declared his intention to assist the princes with the payment of 4000
+men, and to send proportionate artillery and powder from England. As the
+States had supplies in their magazines enough to move 12,000 men, he
+proposed to draw upon those, reimbursing the States for what was thus
+consumed by his contingent.
+
+With regard to the treaty of close alliance between France, Great
+Britain, the princes, and the Republic, which the ambassadors had
+proposed, the--Lord Treasurer and his colleagues gave a reply far from
+gratifying. His Majesty had not yet decided on this point, they said. The
+King of France had already proposed to treat for such an alliance, but it
+did not at present seem worth while for all to negotiate together.
+
+This was a not over-courteous hint that the Republic was after all not
+expected to place herself at the council-board of kings on even terms of
+intimacy and fraternal alliance.
+
+What followed was even less flattering. If his Majesty, it was intimated,
+should decide to treat with the King of France, he would not shut the
+door on their High Mightinesses; but his Majesty was not yet exactly
+informed whether his Majesty had not certain rights over the provinces
+'in petitorio.'
+
+This was a scarcely veiled insinuation against the sovereignty of the
+States, a sufficiently broad hint that they were to be considered in a
+certain degree as British provinces. To a soldier like Maurice, to a
+statesman like Barneveld, whose sympathies already were on the side of
+France, such rebuffs and taunts were likely to prove unpalatable. The
+restiveness of the States at the continual possession by Great Britain of
+those important sea-ports the cautionary towns, a fact which gave colour
+to these innuendoes, was sure to be increased by arrogant language on the
+part of the English ministers. The determination to be rid of their debt
+to so overbearing an ally, and to shake off the shackles imposed by the
+costly mortgages, grew in strength from that hour.
+
+In regard to the fisheries, the Lord Treasurer and his colleagues
+expressed amazement that the ambassadors should consider the subjects of
+their High Mightinesses to be so much beloved by his Majesty. Why should
+they of all other people be made an exception of, and be exempt from, the
+action of a general edict? The reasons for these orders in council ought
+to be closely examined. It would be very difficult to bring the opinions
+of the English jurists into harmony with those of the States. Meantime it
+would be well to look up such treaties as might be in existence, and have
+a special joint commission to confer together on the subject. It was very
+plain, from the course of the conversation, that the Netherland fishermen
+were not to be allowed, without paying roundly for a license, to catch
+herrings on the British coasts as they had heretofore done.
+
+Not much more of importance was transacted at this first interview
+between the ambassadors and the Ding's ministers. Certainly they had not
+yet succeeded in attaining their great object, the formation of an
+alliance offensive and defensive between Great Britain and the Republic
+in accordance with the plan concerted between Henry and Barneveld. They
+could find but slender encouragement for the warlike plans to which
+France and the States were secretly committed; nor could they obtain
+satisfactory adjustment of affairs more pacific and commercial in their
+tendencies. The English ministers rather petulantly remarked that, while
+last year everybody was talking of a general peace, and in the present
+conjuncture all seemed to think, or at least to speak, of nothing but a
+general war, they thought best to defer consideration of the various
+subjects connected with duties on the manufactures and products of the
+respective countries, the navigation laws, the "entrecours," and other
+matters of ancient agreement and controversy, until a more convenient
+season.
+
+After the termination of the verbal conference, the ambassadors delivered
+to the King's government, in writing, to be pondered by the council and
+recorded in the archives, a summary of the statements which had been thus
+orally treated. The document was in French, and in the main a paraphrase
+of the Advocate's instructions, the substance of which has been already
+indicated. In regard, however, to the far-reaching designs of Spain, and
+the corresponding attitude which it would seem fitting for Great Britain
+to assume, and especially the necessity of that alliance the proposal for
+which had in the conference been received so haughtily, their language
+was far plainer, bolder, and more vehement than that of the instructions.
+
+"Considering that the effects show," they said, "that those who claim the
+monarchy of Christendom, and indeed of the whole world, let slip no
+opportunity which could in any way serve their designs, it is suitable to
+the grandeur of his Majesty the King, and to the station in which by the
+grace of the good God he is placed, to oppose himself thereto for the
+sake of the common liberty of Christendom, to which end, and in order the
+better to prevent all unjust usurpations, there could be no better means
+devised than a closer alliance between his Majesty and the Most Christian
+King, My Lords the States-General, and the electors, princes, and states
+of Germany. Their High Mightinesses would therefore be most glad to learn
+that his Majesty was inclined to such a course, and would be glad to
+discuss the subject when and wherever his Majesty should appoint, or
+would readily enter into such an alliance on reasonable conditions."
+
+This language and the position taken up by the ambassadors were highly
+approved by their government, but it was fated that no very great result
+was to be achieved by this embassy. Very elaborate documents, exhaustive
+in legal lore, on the subject of the herring fisheries, and of the right
+to fish in the ocean and on foreign coasts, fortified by copious
+citations from the 'Pandects' and 'Institutes' of Justinian, were
+presented for the consideration of the British government, and were
+answered as learnedly, exhaustively, and ponderously. The English
+ministers were also reminded that the curing of herrings had been
+invented in the fifteenth century by a citizen of Biervliet, the
+inscription on whose tombstone recording that faces might still be read
+in the church of that town.
+
+All this did not prevent, however, the Dutch herring fishermen from being
+excluded from the British waters unless they chose to pay for licenses.
+
+The conferences were however for a season interrupted, and a new aspect
+was given to affairs by an unforeseen and terrible event.
+
+Meanwhile it is necessary to glance for a moment at the doings of the
+special embassy to France, the instructions for which were prepared by
+Barneveld almost at the same moment at which he furnished those for the
+commission to England.
+
+The ambassadors were Walraven, Seignior of Brederode, Cornelis van der
+Myle, son-in-law of the Advocate, and Jacob van Maldere. Remembering how
+impatient the King of France had long been for their coming, and that all
+the preparations and decisions for a great war were kept in suspense
+until the final secret conferences could be held with the representatives
+of the States-General, it seems strange enough to us to observe the
+extreme deliberation with which great affairs of state were then
+conducted and the vast amount of time consumed in movements and
+communications which modern science has either annihilated or abridged
+from days to hours. While Henry was chafing with anxiety in Paris, the
+ambassadors, having received Barneveld's instructions dated 31st March,
+set forth on the 8th April from the Hague, reached Rotterdam at noon, and
+slept at Dordrecht. Newt day they went to Breda, where the Prince of
+Orange insisted upon their passing a couple of days with him in his
+castle, Easter-day being 11th April. He then provided them with a couple
+of coaches and pair in which they set forth on their journey, going by
+way of Antwerp, Ghent, Courtray, Ryssel, to Arras, making easy stages,
+stopping in the middle of the day to bait, and sleeping at each of the
+cities thus mentioned, where they duly received the congratulatory visit
+and hospitalities of their respective magistracies.
+
+While all this time had been leisurely employed in the Netherlands in
+preparing, instructing, and despatching the commissioners, affairs were
+reaching a feverish crisis in France.
+
+The States' ambassador resident thought that it would have been better
+not to take such public offence at the retreat of the Prince of Conde.
+The King had enough of life and vigour in him; he could afford to leave
+the Dauphin to grow up, and when he should one day be established on the
+throne, he would be able to maintain his heritage. "But," said Aerssens,
+"I fear that our trouble is not where we say it is, and we don't dare to
+say where it is." Writing to Carew, former English ambassador in Paris,
+whom we have just seen in attendance on the States' commissioners in
+London, he said: "People think that the Princess is wearying herself much
+under the protection of the Infanta, and very impatient at not obtaining
+the dissolution of her marriage, which the Duchess of Angouleme is to go
+to Brussels to facilitate. This is not our business, but I mention it
+only as the continuation of the Tragedy which you saw begin. Nevertheless
+I don't know if the greater part of our deliberations is not founded on
+this matter."
+
+It had been decided to cause the Queen to be solemnly crowned after
+Easter. She had set her heart with singular persistency upon the
+ceremony, and it was thought that so public a sacrament would annihilate
+all the wild projects attributed to Spain through the instrumentality of
+Conde to cast doubts on the validity of her marriage and the legitimacy
+of the Dauphin. The King from the first felt and expressed a singular
+repugnance, a boding apprehension in regard to the coronation, but had
+almost yielded to the Queen's importunity. He told her he would give his
+consent provided she sent Concini to Brussels to invite in her own name
+the Princess of Conde to be present on the occasion. Otherwise he
+declared that at least the festival should be postponed till September.
+
+The Marquis de Coeuvres remained in disgrace after the failure of his
+mission, Henry believing that like all the world he had fallen in love
+with the Princess, and had only sought to recommend himself, not to
+further the suit of his sovereign.
+
+Meanwhile Henry had instructed his ambassador in Spain, M. de Vaucelas,
+to tell the King that his reception of Conde within his dominions would
+be considered an infraction of the treaty of Vervins and a direct act of
+hostility. The Duke of Lerma answered with a sneer that the Most
+Christian King had too greatly obliged his Most Catholic Majesty by
+sustaining his subjects in their rebellion and by aiding them to make
+their truce to hope now that Conde would be sent back. France had ever
+been the receptacle of Spanish traitors and rebels from Antonio Perez
+down, and the King of Spain would always protect wronged and oppressed
+princes like Conde. France had just been breaking up the friendly
+relations between Savoy and Spain and goading the Duke into hostilities.
+
+On the other hand the King had more than one stormy interview with Don
+Inigo de Cardenas in Paris. That ambassador declared that his master
+would never abandon his only sister the most serene Infanta, such was the
+affection he born her, whose dominions were obviously threatened by these
+French armies about to move to the frontiers. Henry replied that the
+friends for whom he was arming had great need of his assistance; that his
+Catholic Majesty was quite right to love his sister, whom he also loved;
+but that he did not choose that his own relatives should be so much
+beloved in Spain as they were. "What relatives?" asked Don Inigo. "The
+Prince of Conde," replied the King, in a rage, "who has been debauched by
+the Spaniards just as Marshal Biron was, and the Marchioness Verneuil,
+and so many others. There are none left for them to debauch now but the
+Dauphin and his brothers." The Ambassador replied that, if the King had
+consulted him about the affair of Conde, he could have devised a happy
+issue from it. Henry rejoined that he had sent messages on the subject to
+his Catholic Majesty, who had not deigned a response, but that the Duke
+of Lerma had given a very indiscreet one to his ambassador. Don Inigo
+professed ignorance of any such reply. The King said it was a mockery to
+affect ignorance of such matters. Thereupon both grew excited and very
+violent in their discourses; the more so as Henry knowing but little
+Spanish and the Envoy less French they could only understand from tone
+and gesture that each was using exceedingly unpleasant language. At last
+Don Inigo asked what he should write to his sovereign. "Whatever you
+like," replied the King, and so the audience terminated, each remaining
+in a towering passion.
+
+Subsequently Villeroy assured the Archduke's ambassador that the King
+considered the reception given to the Prince in the Spanish dominions as
+one of the greatest insults and injuries that could be done to him.
+Nothing could excuse it, said the Secretary of State, and for this reason
+it was very difficult for the two kings to remain at peace with each
+other, and that it would be wiser to prevent at once the evil designs of
+his Catholic Majesty than to leave leisure for the plans to be put into
+execution, and the claims of the Dauphin to his father's crown to be
+disputed at a convenient season.
+
+He added that war would not be made for the Princess, but for the Prince,
+and that even the war in Germany, although Spain took the Emperor's side
+and France that of the possessory princes, would not necessarily produce
+a rupture between the two kings if it were not for this affair of the
+Prince--true cause of the disaster now hanging over Christianity.
+Pecquius replied by smooth commonplaces in favour of peace with which
+Villeroy warmly concurred; both sadly expressing the conviction however
+that the wrath divine had descended on them all on account of their sins.
+
+A few days later, however, the Secretary changed his tone.
+
+"I will speak to you frankly and clearly," he said to Pecquius, "and tell
+you as from myself that there is passion, and if one is willing to
+arrange the affair of the Princess, everything else can be accommodated
+and appeased. Put if the Princess remain where she is, we are on the eve
+of a rupture which may set fire to the four corners of Christendom."
+Pecquius said he liked to talk roundly, and was glad to find that he had
+not been mistaken in his opinion, that all these commotions were only
+made for the Princess, and if all the world was going to war, she would
+be the principal subject of it. He could not marvel sufficiently, he
+said, at this vehement passion which brought in its train so great and
+horrible a conflagration; adding many arguments to show that it was no
+fault of the Archdukes, but that he who was the cause of all might one
+day have reason to repent.
+
+Villeroy replied that "the King believed the Princess to be suffering and
+miserable for love of him, and that therefore he felt obliged to have her
+sent back to her father." Pecquius asked whether in his conscience the
+Secretary of State believed it right or reasonable to make war for such a
+cause. Villeroy replied by asking "whether even admitting the negative,
+the Ambassador thought it were wisely done for such a trifle, for a
+formality, to plunge into extremities and to turn all Christendom upside
+down." Pecquius, not considering honour a trifle or a formality, said
+that "for nothing in the world would his Highness the Archduke descend to
+a cowardly action or to anything that would sully his honour." Villeroy
+said that the Prince had compelled his wife, pistol in hand, to follow
+him to the Netherlands, and that she was no longer bound to obey a
+husband who forsook country and king. Her father demanded her, and she
+said "she would rather be strangled than ever to return to the company of
+her husband." The Archdukes were not justified in keeping her against her
+will in perpetual banishment. He implored the Ambassador in most pathetic
+terms to devise some means of sending back the Princess, saying that he
+who should find such expedient would do the greatest good that was ever
+done to Christianity, and that otherwise there was no guarantee against a
+universal war. The first design of the King had been merely to send a
+moderate succour to the Princes of Brandenburg and Neuburg, which could
+have given no umbrage to the Archdukes, but now the bitterness growing
+out of the affairs of the Prince and Princess had caused him to set on
+foot a powerful army to do worse. He again implored Pecquius to invent
+some means of sending back the Princess, and the Ambassador besought him
+ardently to divert the King from his designs. Of this the Secretary of
+State left little hope and they parted, both very low and dismal in
+mind. Subsequent conversations with the leading councillors of state
+convinced Pecquius that these violent menaces were only used to shake the
+constancy of the Archduke, but that they almost all highly disapproved
+the policy of the King. "If this war goes on, we are all ruined," said
+the Duke d'Epernon to the Nuncius.
+
+Thus there had almost ceased to be any grimacing between the two kings,
+although it was still a profound mystery where or when hostilities would
+begin, and whether they would break out at all. Henry frequently remarked
+that the common opinion all over Europe was working in his favour. Few
+people in or out of France believed that he meant a rupture, or that his
+preparations were serious. Thus should he take his enemies unawares and
+unprepared. Even Aerssens, who saw him almost daily, was sometimes
+mystified, in spite of Henry's vehement assertions that he was resolved
+to make war at all hazards and on all sides, provided My Lords the States
+would second him as they ought, their own existence being at stake.
+
+"For God's sake," cried the King, "let us take the bit into our mouths.
+Tell your masters that I am quite resolved, and that I am shrieking
+loudly at their delays." He asked if he could depend on the States, if
+Barneveld especially would consent to a league with him. The Ambassador
+replied that for the affair of Cleve and Julich he had instructions to
+promise entire concurrence, that Barneveld was most resolute in the
+matter, and had always urged the enterprise and wished information as to
+the levies making in France and other military preparations.
+
+"Tell him," said Henry, "that they are going on exactly as often before
+stated, but that we are holding everything in suspense until I have
+talked with your ambassadors, from whom I wish counsel, safety, and
+encouragement for doing much more than the Julich business. That alone
+does not require so great a league and such excessive and unnecessary
+expense."
+
+The King observed however that the question of the duchies would serve as
+just cause and excellent pretext to remove those troublesome fellows for
+ever from his borders and those of the States. Thus the princes would be
+established safely in their possession and the Republic as well as
+himself freed from the perpetual suspicions which the Spaniards excited
+by their vile intrigues, and it was on this general subject that he
+wished to confer with the special commissioners. It would not be possible
+for him to throw succour into Julich without passing through Luxemburg in
+arms. The Archdukes would resist this, and thus a cause of war would
+arise. His campaign on the Meuse would help the princes more than if he
+should only aid them by the contingent he had promised. Nor could the
+jealousy of King James be excited since the war would spring out of the
+Archdukes' opposition to his passage towards the duchies, as he obviously
+could not cut himself off from his supplies, leaving a hostile province
+between himself and his kingdom. Nevertheless he could not stir, he said,
+without the consent and active support of the States, on whom he relied
+as his principal buttress and foundation.
+
+The levies for the Milanese expedition were waiting until Marshal de
+Lesdiguieres could confer personally with the Duke of Savoy. The reports
+as to the fidelity of that potentate were not to be believed. He was
+trifling with the Spanish ambassadors, so Henry was convinced, who were
+offering him 300,000 crowns a year besides Piombino, Monaco, and two
+places in the Milanese, if he would break his treaty with France. But he
+was thought to be only waiting until they should be gone before making
+his arrangements with Lesdiguieres. "He knows that he can put no trust in
+Spain, and that he can confide in me," said the King. "I have made a
+great stroke by thus entangling the King of Spain by the use of a few
+troops in Italy. But I assure you that there is none but me and My Lords
+the States that can do anything solid. Whether the Duke breaks or holds
+fast will make no difference in our first and great designs. For the
+honour of God I beg them to lose no more time, but to trust in me. I will
+never deceive them, never abandon them."
+
+At last 25,000 infantry and 5000 cavalry were already in marching order,
+and indeed had begun to move towards the Luxemburg frontier, ready to
+co-operate with the States' army and that of the possessory princes for
+the campaign of the Meuse and Rhine.
+
+Twelve thousand more French troops under Lesdiguieres were to act with
+the Duke of Savoy, and an army as large was to assemble in the Pyrenees
+and to operate on the Spanish frontier, in hope of exciting and fomenting
+an insurrection caused by the expulsion of the Moors. That gigantic act
+of madness by which Spain thought good at this juncture to tear herself
+to pieces, driving hundreds of thousands of the most industrious, most
+intelligent, and most opulent of her population into hopeless exile, had
+now been accomplished, and was to stand prominent for ever on the records
+of human fatuity.
+
+Twenty-five thousand Moorish families had arrived at Bayonne, and the
+Viceroy of Canada had been consulted as to the possibility and expediency
+of establishing them in that province, although emigration thither seemed
+less tempting to them than to Virginia. Certainly it was not unreasonable
+for Henry to suppose that a kingdom thus torn by internal convulsions
+might be more open to a well organized attack, than capable of carrying
+out at that moment fresh projects of universal dominion.
+
+As before observed, Sully was by no means in favour of this combined
+series of movements, although at a later day, when dictating his famous
+memoirs to his secretaries, he seems to describe himself as
+enthusiastically applauding and almost originating them. But there is no
+doubt at all that throughout this eventful spring he did his best to
+concentrate the whole attack on Luxemburg and the Meuse districts, and
+wished that the movements in the Milanese and in Provence should be
+considered merely a slight accessory, as not much more than a diversion
+to the chief design, while Villeroy and his friends chose to consider the
+Duke of Savoy as the chief element in the war. Sully thoroughly
+distrusted the Duke, whom he deemed to be always put up at auction
+between Spain and France and incapable of a sincere or generous policy.
+He was entirely convinced that Villeroy and Epernon and Jeannin and other
+earnest Papists in France were secretly inclined to the cause of Spain,
+that the whole faction of the Queen, in short, were urging this
+scattering of the very considerable forces now at Henry's command in the
+hope of bringing him into a false position, in which defeat or an
+ignominious peace would be the alternative. To concentrate an immense
+attack upon the Archdukes in the Spanish Netherlands and the debateable
+duchies would have for its immediate effect the expulsion of the
+Spaniards out of all those provinces and the establishment of the Dutch
+commonwealth on an impregnable basis. That this would be to strengthen
+infinitely the Huguenots in France and the cause of Protestantism in
+Bohemia, Moravia and Austria, was unquestionable. It was natural,
+therefore, that the stern and ardent Huguenot should suspect the plans of
+the Catholics with whom he was in daily council. One day he asked the
+King plumply in the presence of Villeroy if his Majesty meant anything
+serious by all these warlike preparations. Henry was wroth, and
+complained bitterly that one who knew him to the bottom of his soul
+should doubt him. But Sully could not persuade himself that a great and
+serious war would be carried on both in the Netherlands and in Italy.
+
+As much as his sovereign he longed for the personal presence of
+Barneveld, and was constantly urging the States' ambassador to induce his
+coming to Paris. "You know," said Aerssens, writing to the French
+ambassador at the Hague, de Russy, "that it is the Advocate alone that
+has the universal knowledge of the outside and the inside of our
+commonwealth."
+
+Sully knew his master as well as any man knew him, but it was difficult
+to fix the chameleon hues of Henry at this momentous epoch. To the
+Ambassador expressing doubts as to the King's sincerity the Duke asserted
+that Henry was now seriously piqued with the Spaniard on account of the
+Conde business. Otherwise Anhalt and the possessory princes and the
+affair of Cleve might have had as little effect in driving him into war
+as did the interests of the Netherlands in times past. But the bold
+demonstration projected would make the "whole Spanish party bleed at the
+nose; a good result for the public peace."
+
+Therefore Sully sent word to Barneveld, although he wished his name
+concealed, that he ought to come himself, with full powers to do
+everything, without referring to any superiors or allowing any secrets to
+be divulged. The King was too far committed to withdraw, unless coldness
+on part of the States should give him cause. The Advocate must come
+prepared to answer all questions; to say how much in men and money the
+States would contribute, and whether they would go into the war with the
+King as their only ally. He must come with the bridle on his neck. All
+that Henry feared was being left in the lurch by the States; otherwise he
+was not afraid of Rome. Sully was urgent that the Provinces should now go
+vigorously into the war without stumbling at any consideration. Thus they
+would confirm their national power for all time, but if the opportunity
+were now lost, it would be their ruin, and posterity would most justly
+blame them. The King of Spain was so stripped of troops and resources, so
+embarrassed by the Moors, that in ten months he would not be able to send
+one man to the Netherlands.
+
+Meantime the Nuncius in Paris was moving heaven and earth; storming,
+intriguing, and denouncing the course of the King in protecting heresy,
+when it would have been so easy to extirpate it, encouraging rebellion
+and disorder throughout Christendom, and embarking in an action against
+the Church and against his conscience. A new legate was expected daily
+with the Pope's signature to the new league, and a demand upon the King
+to sign it likewise, and to pause in a career of which something was
+suspected, but very little accurately known. The preachers in Paris and
+throughout the kingdom delivered most vehement sermons against the King,
+the government, and the Protestants, and seemed to the King to be such
+"trumpeters of sedition" that he ordered the seneschals and other
+officers to put a stop to these turbulent discourses, censure their
+authors, and compel them to stick to their texts.
+
+But the preparations were now so far advanced and going on so warmly that
+nothing more was wanting than, in the words of Aerssens, "to uncouple the
+dogs and let them run." Recruits were pouring steadily to their places of
+rendezvous; their pay having begun to run from the 25th March at the rate
+of eight sous a day for the private foot soldier and ten sous for a
+corporal. They were moved in small parties of ten, lodged in the wayside
+inns, and ordered, on pain of death, to pay for everything they consumed.
+
+It was growing difficult to wait much longer for the arrival of the
+special ambassadors, when at last they were known to be on their way.
+Aerssens obtained for their use the Hotel Gondy, formerly the residence
+of Don Pedro de Toledo, the most splendid private palace in Paris, and
+recently purchased by the Queen. It was considered expedient that the
+embassy should make as stately an appearance as that of royal or imperial
+envoys. He engaged an upholsterer by the King's command to furnish, at
+his Majesty's expense, the apartments, as the Baron de Gondy, he said,
+had long since sold and eaten up all the furniture. He likewise laid in
+six pieces of wine and as many of beer, "tavern drinks" being in the
+opinion of the thrifty ambassador "both dear and bad."
+
+He bought a carriage lined with velvet for the commissioners, and another
+lined with broadcloth for the principal persons of their suite, and with
+his own coach as a third he proposed to go to Amiens to meet them. They
+could not get on with fewer than these, he said, and the new carriages
+would serve their purpose in Paris. He had paid 500 crowns for the two,
+and they could be sold, when done with, at a slight loss. He bought
+likewise four dapple-grey horses, which would be enough, as nobody had
+more than two horses to a carriage in town, and for which he paid 312
+crowns--a very low price, he thought, at a season when every one was
+purchasing. He engaged good and experienced coachmen at two crowns a
+month, and; in short, made all necessary arrangements for their comfort
+and the honour of the state.
+
+The King had been growing more and more displeased at the tardiness of
+the commission, petulantly ascribing it to a design on the part of the
+States to "excuse themselves from sharing in his bold conceptions," but
+said that "he could resolve on nothing without My Lords the States, who
+were the only power with which he could contract confidently, as mighty
+enough and experienced enough to execute the designs to be proposed to
+them; so that his army was lying useless on his hands until the
+commissioners arrived," and lamented more loudly than ever that Barneveld
+was not coming with them. He was now rejoiced, however, to hear that they
+would soon arrive, and went in person to the Hotel Gondy to see that
+everything was prepared in a manner befitting their dignity and comfort.
+
+His anxiety had moreover been increased, as already stated, by the
+alarming reports from Utrecht and by his other private accounts from the
+Netherlands.
+
+De Russy expressed in his despatches grave doubts whether the States
+would join the king in a war against the King of Spain, because they
+feared the disapprobation of the King of Great Britain, "who had already
+manifested but too much jealousy of the power and grandeur of the
+Republic." Pecquius asserted that the Archdukes had received assurances
+from the States that they would do nothing to violate the truce. The
+Prince of Anhalt, who, as chief of the army of the confederated princes,
+was warm in his demonstrations for a general war by taking advantage of
+the Cleve expedition, was entirely at cross purposes with the States'
+ambassador in Paris, Aerssens maintaining that the forty-three years'
+experience in their war justified the States in placing no dependence on
+German princes except with express conventions. They had no such
+conventions now, and if they should be attacked by Spain in consequence
+of their assistance in the Cleve business, what guarantee of aid had they
+from those whom Anhalt represented? Anhalt was loud in expressions of
+sympathy with Henry's designs against Spain, but said that he and the
+States meant a war of thirty or forty years, while the princes would
+finish what they meant to do in one.
+
+A more erroneous expression of opinion, when viewed in the light of
+subsequent events, could hardly have been hazarded. Villeroy made as good
+use as he could of these conversations to excite jealousy between the
+princes and the States for the furtherance of his own ends, while
+affecting warm interest in the success of the King's projects.
+
+Meantime Archduke Albert had replied manfully and distinctly to the
+menaces of the King and to the pathetic suggestions made by Villeroy to
+Pecquius as to a device for sending back the Princess. Her stay at
+Brussels being the chief cause of the impending war, it would be better,
+he said, to procure a divorce or to induce the Constable to obtain the
+consent of the Prince to the return of his wife to her father's house. To
+further either of these expedients, the Archduke would do his best. "But
+if one expects by bravados and threats," he added, "to force us to do a
+thing against our promise, and therefore against reason, our reputation,
+and honour, resolutely we will do nothing of the kind. And if the said
+Lord King decided on account of this misunderstanding for a rupture and
+to make war upon us, we will do our best to wage war on him. In such
+case, however, we shall be obliged to keep the Princess closer in our own
+house, and probably to send her to such parts as may be most convenient
+in order to remove from us an instrument of the infinite evils which this
+war will produce."
+
+Meantime the special commissioners whom we left at Arras had now entered
+the French kingdom.
+
+On the 17th April, Aerssens with his three coaches met them on their
+entrance into Amiens, having been waiting there for them eight days. As
+they passed through the gate, they found a guard of soldiers drawn up to
+receive them with military honours, and an official functionary to
+apologize for the necessary absence of the governor, who had gone with
+most of the troops stationed in the town to the rendezvous in Champagne.
+He expressed regret, therefore, that the King's orders for their solemn
+reception could not be literally carried out. The whole board of
+magistrates, however, in their costumes of ceremony, with sergeants
+bearing silver maces marching before them, came forth to bid the
+ambassadors welcome. An advocate made a speech in the name of the city
+authorities, saying that they were expressly charged by the King to
+receive them as coming from his very best friends, and to do them all
+honour. He extolled the sage government of their High Mightinesses and
+the valour of the Republic, which had become known to the whole world by
+the successful conduct of their long and mighty war.
+
+The commissioners replied in words of compliment, and the magistrates
+then offered them, according to ancient usage, several bottles of
+hippocras.
+
+Next day, sending back the carriages of the Prince of Orange, in which
+they had thus far performed the journey, they set forth towards Paris,
+reaching Saint-Denis at noon of the third day. Here they were met by de
+Bonoeil, introducer of ambassadors, sent thither by the King to give them
+welcome, and to say that they would be received on the road by the Duke
+of Vendome, eldest of the legitimatized children of the King. Accordingly
+before reaching the Saint-Denis gate of Paris, a splendid cavalcade of
+nearly five hundred noblemen met them, the Duke at their head,
+accompanied by two marshals of France, de Brissac and Boisdaulphin. The
+three instantly dismounted, and the ambassadors alighted from their
+coach. The Duke then gave them solemn and cordial welcome, saying that he
+had been sent by his father the King to receive them as befitted envoys
+of the best and most faithful friends he possessed in the world.
+
+The ambassadors expressed their thanks for the great and extraordinary
+honour thus conferred on them, and they were then requested to get into a
+royal carriage which had been sent out for that purpose. After much
+ceremonious refusal they at last consented and, together with the Duke of
+Vendome, drove through Paris in that vehicle into the Faubourg Saint
+Germain. Arriving at the Hotel Gondy, they were, notwithstanding all
+their protestations, escorted up the staircase into the apartments by the
+Duke.
+
+"This honour is notable," said the commissioners in their report to the
+States, "and never shown to anyone before, so that our ill-wishers are
+filled with spite."
+
+And Peter Pecquius was of the same opinion. "Everyone is grumbling here,"
+about the reception of the States' ambassadors, "because such honours
+were never paid to any ambassador whatever, whether from Spain, England,
+or any other country."
+
+And there were many men living and employed in great affairs of State,
+both in France and in the Republic--the King and Villeroy, Barneveld and
+Maurice--who could remember how twenty-six years before a solemn embassy
+from the States had proceeded from the Hague to France to offer the
+sovereignty of their country to Henry's predecessor, had been kept
+ignominiously and almost like prisoners four weeks long in Rouen, and had
+been thrust back into the Netherlands without being admitted even to one
+audience by the monarch. Truly time, in the course of less than one
+generation of mankind, had worked marvellous changes in the fortunes of
+the Dutch Republic.
+
+President Jeannin came to visit them next day, with friendly proffers of
+service, and likewise the ambassador of Venice and the charge d'affaires
+of Great Britain.
+
+On the 22nd the royal carriages came by appointment to the Hotel Gondy,
+and took them for their first audience to the Louvre. They were received
+at the gate by a guard of honour, drums beating and arms presented, and
+conducted with the greatest ceremony to an apartment in the palace. Soon
+afterwards they were ushered into a gallery where the King stood,
+surrounded by a number of princes and distinguished officers of the
+crown. These withdrew on the approach of the Netherlanders, leaving the
+King standing alone. They made their reverence, and Henry saluted them
+all with respectful cordiality. Begging them to put on their hats again,
+he listened attentively to their address.
+
+The language of the discourse now pronounced was similar in tenour to
+that almost contemporaneously held by the States' special envoys in
+London. Both documents, when offered afterwards in writing, bore the
+unmistakable imprint of the one hand that guided the whole political
+machine. In various passages the phraseology was identical, and, indeed,
+the Advocate had prepared and signed the instructions for both embassies
+on the same day.
+
+The commissioners acknowledged in the strongest possible terms the great
+and constant affection, quite without example, that Henry had manifested
+to the Netherlands during the whole course of their war. They were at a
+loss to find language adequately to express their gratitude for that
+friendship, and the assistance subsequently afforded them in the
+negotiations for truce. They apologized for the tardiness of the States
+in sending this solemn embassy of thanksgiving, partly on the ground of
+the delay in receiving the ratifications from Spain, partly by the
+protracted contraventions by the Archdukes of certain articles in the
+treaty, but principally by the terrible disasters occasioned throughout
+their country by the great inundations, and by the commotions in the city
+of Utrecht, which had now been "so prudently and happily pacified."
+
+They stated that the chief cause of their embassy was to express their
+respectful gratitude, and to say that never had prince or state treasured
+more deeply in memory benefits received than did their republic the
+favours of his Majesty, or could be more disposed to do their utmost to
+defend his Majesty's person, crown, or royal family against all attack.
+They expressed their joy that the King had with prudence, and heroic
+courage undertaken the defence of the just rights of Brandenburg and
+Neuburg to the duchies of Cleve, Julich, and the other dependent
+provinces. Thus had he put an end to the presumption of those who thought
+they could give the law to all the world. They promised the co-operation
+of the States in this most important enterprise of their ally,
+notwithstanding their great losses in the war just concluded, and the
+diminution of revenue occasioned by the inundations by which they had
+been afflicted; for they were willing neither to tolerate so unjust an
+usurpation as that attempted by the Emperor nor to fail to second his
+Majesty in his generous designs. They observed also that they had been
+instructed to enquire whether his Majesty would not approve the
+contracting of a strict league of mutual assistance between France,
+England, the United Provinces, and the princes of Germany.
+
+The King, having listened with close attention, thanked the envoys in
+words of earnest and vigorous cordiality for their expressions of
+affection to himself. He begged them to remember that he had always been
+their good friend, and that he never would forsake them; that he had
+always hated the Spaniards, and should ever hate them; and that the
+affairs of Julich must be arranged not only for the present but for the
+future. He requested them to deliver their propositions in writing to
+him, and to be ready to put themselves into communication with the
+members of his council, in order that they might treat with each other
+roundly and without reserve. He should always deal with the Netherlanders
+as with his own people, keeping no back-door open, but pouring out
+everything as into the lap of his best and most trusty friends.
+
+After this interview conferences followed daily between the ambassadors
+and Villeroy, Sully, Jeannin, the Chancellor, and Puysieug.
+
+The King's counsellors, after having read the written paraphrase of
+Barneveld's instructions, the communication of which followed their oral
+statements, and which, among other specifications, contained a respectful
+remonstrance against the projected French East India Company, as likely
+to benefit the Spaniards only, while seriously injuring the States,
+complained that "the representations were too general, and that the paper
+seemed to contain nothing but compliments."
+
+The ambassadors, dilating on the various points and articles, maintained
+warmly that there was much more than compliments in their instructions.
+The ministers wished to know what the States practically were prepared to
+do in the affair of Cleve, which they so warmly and encouragingly
+recommended to the King. They asked whether the States' army would march
+at once to Dusseldorf to protect the princes at the moment when the King
+moved from Mezieres, and they made many enquiries as to what amount of
+supplies and munitions they could depend upon from the States' magazines.
+
+The envoys said that they had no specific instructions on these points,
+and could give therefore no conclusive replies. More than ever did Henry
+regret the absence of the great Advocate at this juncture. If he could
+have come, with the bridle on his neck, as Henry had so repeatedly urged
+upon the resident ambassador, affairs might have marched more rapidly.
+The despotic king could never remember that Barneveld was not the
+unlimited sovereign of the United States, but only the seal-keeper of one
+of the seven provinces and the deputy of Holland to the General Assembly.
+His indirect power, however vast, was only great because it was so
+carefully veiled.
+
+It was then proposed by Villeroy and Sully, and agreed to by the
+commissioners, that M. de Bethune, a relative of the great financier,
+should be sent forthwith to the Hague, to confer privately with Prince
+Maurice and Barneveld especially, as to military details of the coming
+campaign.
+
+It was also arranged that the envoys should delay their departure until
+de Bethune's return. Meantime Henry and the Nuncius had been exchanging
+plain and passionate language. Ubaldini reproached the King with
+disregarding all the admonitions of his Holiness, and being about to
+plunge Christendom into misery and war for the love of the Princess of
+Conde. He held up to him the enormity of thus converting the King of
+Spain and the Archdukes into his deadly enemies, and warned him that he
+would by such desperate measures make even the States-General and the
+King of Britain his foes, who certainly would never favour such schemes.
+The King replied that "he trusted to his own forces, not to those of his
+neighbours, and even if the Hollanders should not declare for him still
+he would execute his designs. On the 15th of May most certainly he would
+put himself at the head of his army, even if he was obliged to put off
+the Queen's coronation till October, and he could not consider the King
+of Spain nor the Archdukes his friends unless they at once made him some
+demonstration of friendship. Being asked by the Nuncius what
+demonstration he wished, he answered flatly that he wished the Princess
+to be sent back to the Constable her father, in which case the affair of
+Julich could be arranged amicably, and, at all events, if the war
+continued there, he need not send more than 4000 men."
+
+Thus, in spite of his mighty preparations, vehement demands for
+Barneveld, and profound combinations revealed to that statesman, to
+Aerssens, and to the Duke of Sully only, this wonderful monarch was ready
+to drop his sword on the spot, to leave his friends in the lurch, to
+embrace his enemies, the Archduke first of all, instead of bombarding
+Brussels the very next week, as he had been threatening to do, provided
+the beautiful Margaret could be restored to his arms through those of her
+venerable father.
+
+He suggested to the Nuncius his hope that the Archduke would yet be
+willing to wink at her escape, which he was now trying to arrange through
+de Preaux at Brussels, while Ubaldini, knowing the Archduke incapable of
+anything so dishonourable, felt that the war was inevitable.
+
+At the very same time too, Father Cotton, who was only too ready to
+betray the secrets of the confessional when there was an object to gain,
+had a long conversation with the Archduke's ambassador, in which the holy
+man said that the King had confessed to him that he made the war
+expressly to cause the Princess to be sent back to France, so that as
+there could be no more doubt on the subject the father-confessor begged
+Pecquius, in order to prevent so great an evil, to devise "some prompt
+and sudden means to induce his Highness the Archduke to order the
+Princess to retire secretly to her own country." The Jesuit had different
+notions of honour, reputation, and duty from those which influenced the
+Archduke. He added that "at Easter the King had been so well disposed to
+seek his salvation that he could easily have forgotten his affection for
+the Princess, had she not rekindled the fire by her letters, in which she
+caressed him with amorous epithets, calling him 'my heart,' 'my
+chevalier,' and similar terms of endearment." Father Cotton also drew up
+a paper, which he secretly conveyed to Pecquius, "to prove that the
+Archduke, in terms of conscience and honour, might decide to permit this
+escape, but he most urgently implored the Ambassador that for the love of
+God and the public good he would influence his Serene Highness to prevent
+this from ever coming to the knowledge of the world, but to keep the
+secret inviolably."
+
+Thus, while Henry was holding high council with his own most trusted
+advisers, and with the most profound statesmen of Europe, as to the
+opening campaign within a fortnight of a vast and general war, he was
+secretly plotting with his father-confessor to effect what he avowed to
+be the only purpose of that war, by Jesuitical bird-lime to be applied to
+the chief of his antagonists. Certainly Barneveld and his colleagues were
+justified in their distrust. To move one step in advance of their potent
+but slippery ally might be a step off a precipice.
+
+On the 1st of May, Sully made a long visit to the commissioners. He
+earnestly urged upon them the necessity of making the most of the present
+opportunity. There were people in plenty, he said, who would gladly see
+the King take another course, for many influential persons about him were
+altogether Spanish in their inclinations.
+
+The King had been scandalized to hear from the Prince of Anhalt, without
+going into details, that on his recent passage through the Netherlands he
+had noticed some change of feeling, some coolness in their High
+Mightinesses. The Duke advised that they should be very heedful, that
+they should remember how much more closely these matters regarded them
+than anyone else, that they should not deceive themselves, but be firmly
+convinced that unless they were willing to go head foremost into the
+business the French would likewise not commit themselves. Sully spoke
+with much earnestness and feeling, for it was obvious that both he and
+his master had been disappointed at the cautious and limited nature of
+the instructions given to the ambassadors.
+
+An opinion had indeed prevailed, and, as we have seen, was to a certain
+extent shared in by Aerssens, and even by Sully himself, that the King's
+military preparations were after all but a feint, and that if the Prince
+of Conde, and with him the Princess, could be restored to France, the
+whole war cloud would evaporate in smoke.
+
+It was even asserted that Henry had made a secret treaty with the enemy,
+according to which, while apparently ready to burst upon the House of
+Austria with overwhelming force, he was in reality about to shake hands
+cordially with that power, on condition of being allowed to incorporate
+into his own kingdom the very duchies in dispute, and of receiving the
+Prince of Conde and his wife from Spain. He was thus suspected of being
+about to betray his friends and allies in the most ignoble manner and for
+the vilest of motives. The circulation of these infamous reports no doubt
+paralysed for a time the energy of the enemy who had made no requisite
+preparations against the threatened invasion, but it sickened his friends
+with vague apprehensions, while it cut the King himself to the heart and
+infuriated him to madness.
+
+He asked the Nuncius one day what people thought in Rome and Italy of the
+war about to be undertaken. Ubaldini replied that those best informed
+considered the Princess of Conde as the principal subject of hostilities;
+they thought that he meant to have her back. "I do mean to have her
+back," cried Henry, with a mighty oath, and foaming with rage, "and I
+shall have her back. No one shall prevent it, not even the Lieutenant of
+God on earth."
+
+But the imputation of this terrible treason weighed upon his mind and
+embittered every hour.
+
+The commissioners assured Sully that they had no knowledge of any
+coolness or change such as Anhalt had reported on the part of their
+principals, and the Duke took his leave.
+
+It will be remembered that Villeroy had, it was thought, been making
+mischief between Anhalt and the States by reporting and misreporting
+private conversations between that Prince and the Dutch ambassador.
+
+As soon as Sully had gone, van der Myle waited upon Villeroy to ask, in
+name of himself and colleagues, for audience of leave-taking, the object
+of their mission having been accomplished. The Secretary of State, too,
+like Sully, urged the importance of making the most of the occasion. The
+affair of Cleve, he said, did not very much concern the King, but his
+Majesty had taken it to heart chiefly on account of the States and for
+their security. They were bound, therefore, to exert themselves to the
+utmost, but more would not be required of them than it would be possible
+to fulfil.
+
+Van der Myle replied that nothing would be left undone by their High
+Mightinesses to support the King faithfully and according to their
+promise.
+
+On the 5th, Villeroy came to the ambassadors, bringing with him a letter
+from the King for the States-General, and likewise a written reply to the
+declarations made orally and in writing by the ambassadors to his
+Majesty.
+
+The letter of Henry to "his very dear and good friends, allies, and
+confederates," was chiefly a complimentary acknowledgment of the
+expressions of gratitude made to him on part of the States-General, and
+warm approbation of their sage resolve to support the cause of
+Brandenburg and Neuburg. He referred them for particulars to the
+confidential conferences held between the commissioners and himself. They
+would state how important he thought it that this matter should be
+settled now so thoroughly as to require no second effort at any future
+time when circumstances might not be so propitious; and that he intended
+to risk his person, at the head of his army, to accomplish this result.
+
+To the ambassadors he expressed his high satisfaction at their assurances
+of affection, devotion, and gratitude on the part of the States. He
+approved and commended their resolution to assist the Elector and the
+Palatine in the affair of the duchies. He considered this a proof of
+their prudence and good judgment, as showing their conviction that they
+were more interested and bound to render this assistance than any other
+potentates or states, as much from the convenience and security to be
+derived from the neighbourhood of princes who were their friends as from
+dangers to be apprehended from other princes who were seeking to
+appropriate those provinces. The King therefore begged the States to move
+forward as soon as possible the forces which they offered for this
+enterprise according to his Majesty's suggestion sent through de Bethune.
+The King on his part would do the same with extreme care and diligence,
+from the anxiety he felt to prevent My Lords the States from receiving
+detriment in places so vital to their preservation.
+
+He begged the States likewise to consider that it was meet not only to
+make a first effort to put the princes into entire possession of the
+duchies, but to provide also for the durable success of the enterprise;
+to guard against any invasions that might be made in the future to eject
+those princes. Otherwise all their present efforts would be useless; and
+his Majesty therefore consented on this occasion to enter into the new
+league proposed by the States with all the princes and states mentioned
+in the memoir of the ambassadors for mutual assistance against all unjust
+occupations, attempts, and baneful intrigues.
+
+Having no special information as to the infractions by the Archdukes of
+the recent treaty of truce, the King declined to discuss that subject for
+the moment, although holding himself bound to all required of him as one
+of the guarantees of that treaty.
+
+In regard to the remonstrance made by the ambassadors concerning the
+trade of the East Indies, his Majesty disclaimed any intention of doing
+injury to the States in permitting his subjects to establish a company in
+his kingdom for that commerce. He had deferred hitherto taking action in
+the matter only out of respect to the States, but he could no longer
+refuse the just claims of his subjects if they should persist in them as
+urgently as they had thus far been doing. The right and liberty which
+they demanded was common to all, said the King, and he was certainly
+bound to have as great care for the interests of his subjects as for
+those of his friends and allies.
+
+Here, certainly, was an immense difference in tone and in terms towards
+the Republic adopted respectively by their great and good friends and
+allies the Kings of France and Great Britain. It was natural enough that
+Henry, having secretly expressed his most earnest hope that the States
+would move at his side in his broad and general assault upon the House of
+Austria, should impress upon them his conviction, which was a just one,
+that no power in the world was more interested in keeping a Spanish and
+Catholic prince out of the duchies than they were themselves. But while
+thus taking a bond of them as it were for the entire fulfilment of the
+primary enterprise, he accepted with cordiality, and almost with
+gratitude, their proposition of a close alliance of the Republic with
+himself and with the Protestant powers which James had so superciliously
+rejected.
+
+It would have been difficult to inflict a more petty and, more studied
+insult upon the Republic than did the King of Great Britain at that
+supreme moment by his preposterous claim of sovereign rights over the
+Netherlands. He would make no treaty with them, he said, but should he
+find it worth while to treat with his royal brother of France, he should
+probably not shut the door in their faces.
+
+Certainly Henry's reply to the remonstrances of the ambassadors in regard
+to the India trade was as moderate as that of James had been haughty and
+peremptory in regard to the herring fishery. It is however sufficiently
+amusing to see those excellent Hollanders nobly claiming that "the sea
+was as free as air" when the right to take Scotch pilchards was in
+question, while at the very same moment they were earnest for excluding
+their best allies and all the world besides from their East India
+monopoly. But Isaac Le Maire and Jacques Le Roy had not lain so long
+disguised in Zamet's house in Paris for nothing, nor had Aerssens so
+completely "broke the neck of the French East India Company" as he
+supposed. A certain Dutch freebooter, however, Simon Danzer by name, a
+native of Dordrecht, who had been alternately in the service of Spain,
+France, and the States, but a general marauder upon all powers, was
+exercising at that moment perhaps more influence on the East India trade
+than any potentate or commonwealth.
+
+He kept the seas just then with four swift-sailing and well-armed
+vessels, that potent skimmer of the ocean, and levied tribute upon
+Protestant and Catholic, Turk or Christian, with great impartiality. The
+King of Spain had sent him letters of amnesty and safe-conduct, with
+large pecuniary offers, if he would enter his service. The King of France
+had outbid his royal brother and enemy, and implored him to sweep the
+seas under the white flag.
+
+The States' ambassador begged his masters to reflect whether this
+"puissant and experienced corsair" should be permitted to serve Spaniard
+or Frenchman, and whether they could devise no expedient for turning him
+into another track. "He is now with his fine ships at Marseilles," said
+Aerssens. "He is sought for in all quarters by the Spaniard and by the
+directors of the new French East India Company, private persons who equip
+vessels of war. If he is not satisfied with this king's offers, he is
+likely to close with the King of Spain, who offers him 1000 crowns a
+month. Avarice tickles him, but he is neither Spaniard nor Papist, and I
+fear will be induced to serve with his ships the East India Company, and
+so will return to his piracy, the evil of which will always fall on our
+heads. If My Lords the States will send me letters of abolition for him,
+in imitation of the French king, on condition of his returning to his
+home in Zealand and quitting the sea altogether, something might be done.
+Otherwise he will be off to Marseilles again, and do more harm to us than
+ever. Isaac Le Maire is doing as much evil as he can, and one holds daily
+council with him here."
+
+Thus the slippery Simon skimmed the seas from Marseilles to the Moluccas,
+from Java to Mexico, never to be held firmly by Philip, or Henry, or
+Barneveld. A dissolute but very daring ship's captain, born in Zealand,
+and formerly in the service of the States, out of which he had been
+expelled for many evil deeds, Simon Danzer had now become a professional
+pirate, having his head-quarters chiefly at Algiers. His English
+colleague Warde stationed himself mainly at Tunis, and both acted
+together in connivance with the pachas of the Turkish government. They
+with their considerable fleet, one vessel of which mounted sixty guns,
+were the terror of the Mediterranean, extorted tribute from the commerce
+of all nations indifferently, and sold licenses to the greatest
+governments of Europe. After growing rich with his accumulated booty,
+Simon was inclined to become respectable, a recourse which was always
+open to him--France, England, Spain, the United Provinces, vieing with
+each other to secure him by high rank and pay as an honoured member of
+their national marine. He appears however to have failed in his plan of
+retiring upon his laurels, having been stabbed in Paris by a man whom he
+had formerly robbed and ruined.
+
+Villeroy, having delivered the letters with his own hands to the
+ambassadors, was asked by them when and where it would be convenient for
+the King to arrange the convention of close alliance. The Secretary of
+State--in his secret heart anything but kindly disposed for this loving
+union with a republic he detested and with heretics whom he would have
+burned--answered briefly that his Majesty was ready at any time, and that
+it might take place then if they were provided with the necessary powers.
+He said in parting that the States should "have an eye to everything, for
+occasions like the present were irrecoverable." He then departed, saying
+that the King would receive them in final audience on the following day.
+
+Next morning accordingly Marshal de Boisdaulphin and de Bonoeil came with
+royal coaches to the Hotel Gondy and escorted the ambassadors to the
+Louvre. On the way they met de Bethune, who had returned solo from the
+Hague bringing despatches for the King and for themselves. While in the
+antechamber, they had opportunity to read their letters from the
+States-General, his Majesty sending word that he was expecting them with
+impatience, but preferred that they should read the despatches before the
+audience.
+
+They found the King somewhat out of humour. He expressed himself as
+tolerably well satisfied with the general tenour of the despatches
+brought by de Bethune, but complained loudly of the request now made by
+the States, that the maintenance and other expenses of 4000 French in the
+States' service should be paid in the coming campaign out of the royal
+exchequer. He declared that this proposition was "a small manifestation
+of ingratitude," that my Lords the States were "little misers," and that
+such proceedings were "little avaricious tricks" such as he had not
+expected of them.
+
+So far as England was concerned, he said there was a great difference.
+The English took away what he was giving. He did cheerfully a great deal
+for his friends, he said, and was always ready doubly to repay what they
+did for him. If, however, the States persisted in this course, he should
+call his troops home again.
+
+The King, as he went on, became more and more excited, and showed decided
+dissatisfaction in his language and manner. It was not to be wondered at,
+for we have seen how persistently he had been urging that the Advocate
+should come in person with "the bridle on his neck," and now he had sent
+his son-in-law and two colleagues tightly tied up by stringent
+instructions. And over an above all this, while he was contemplating a
+general war with intention to draw upon the States for unlimited
+supplies, behold, they were haggling for the support of a couple of
+regiments which were virtually their own troops.
+
+There were reasons, however, for this cautiousness besides those
+unfounded, although not entirely chimerical, suspicions as to the King's
+good faith, to which we have alluded. It should not be forgotten that,
+although Henry had conversed secretly with the States' ambassador at full
+length on his far-reaching plans, with instructions that he should
+confidentially inform the Advocate and demand his co-operation, not a
+word of it had been officially propounded to the States-General, nor to
+the special embassy with whom he was now negotiating. No treaty of
+alliance offensive or defensive existed between the Kingdom and the
+Republic or between the Republic and any power whatever. It would have
+been culpable carelessness therefore at this moment for the prime
+minister of the States to have committed his government in writing to a
+full participation in a general assault upon the House of Austria; the
+first step in which would have been a breach of the treaty just concluded
+and instant hostilities with the Archdukes Albert and Isabella.
+
+That these things were in the immediate future was as plain as that night
+would follow day, but the hour had not yet struck for the States to throw
+down the gauntlet.
+
+Hardly two months before, the King, in his treaty with the princes at
+Hall, had excluded both the King of Great Britain and the States-General
+from participation in those arrangements, and it was grave matter for
+consideration, therefore, for the States whether they should allow such
+succour as they might choose to grant the princes to be included in the
+French contingent. The opportunity for treating as a sovereign power with
+the princes and making friends with them was tempting, but it did not
+seem reasonable to the States that France should make use of them in this
+war without a treaty, and should derive great advantage from the
+alliance, but leave the expense to them.
+
+Henry, on the other hand, forgetting, when it was convenient to him, all
+about the Princess of Conde, his hatred of Spain, and his resolution to
+crush the House of Austria, chose to consider the war as made simply for
+the love of the States-General and to secure them for ever from danger.
+
+The ambassadors replied to the King's invectives with great respect, and
+endeavoured to appease his anger. They had sent a special despatch to
+their government, they said, in regard to all those matters, setting
+forth all the difficulties that had been raised, but had not wished to
+trouble his Majesty with premature discussions of them. They did not
+doubt, however, that their High Mightinesses would so conduct this great
+affair as to leave the King no ground of complaint.
+
+Henry then began to talk of the intelligence brought by de Bethune from
+the Hague, especially in regard to the sending of States' troops to
+Dusseldorf and the supply of food for the French army. He did not
+believe, he said, that the Archdukes would refuse him the passage with
+his forces through their territory, inasmuch as the States' army would be
+on the way to meet him. In case of any resistance, however, he declared
+his resolution to strike his blow and to cause people to talk of him. He
+had sent his quartermaster-general to examine the passes, who had
+reported that it would be impossible to prevent his Majesty's advance. He
+was also distinctly informed that Marquis Spinola, keeping his places
+garrisoned, could not bring more than 8000 men into the field. The Duke
+of Bouillon, however, was sending advices that his communications were
+liable to be cut off, and that for this purpose Spinola could set on foot
+about 16,000 infantry and 4000 horse.
+
+If the passage should be allowed by the Archdukes, the King stated his
+intention of establishing magazines for his troops along the whole line
+of march through the Spanish Netherlands and neighbouring districts, and
+to establish and fortify himself everywhere in order to protect his
+supplies and cover his possible retreat. He was still in doubt, he said,
+whether to demand the passage at once or to wait until he had began to
+move his army. He was rather inclined to make the request instantly in
+order to gain time, being persuaded that he should receive no answer
+either of consent or refusal.
+
+Leaving all these details, the King then frankly observed that the affair
+of Cleve had a much wider outlook than people thought. Therefore the
+States must consider well what was to be done to secure the whole work as
+soon as the Cleve business had been successfully accomplished. Upon this
+subject it was indispensable that he should consult especially with his
+Excellency (Prince Maurice) and some members of the General Assembly,
+whom he wished that My Lords the States-General should depute to the
+army.
+
+"For how much good will it do," said the King, "if we drive off Archduke
+Leopold without establishing the princes in security for the future?
+Nothing is easier than to put the princes in possession. Every one will
+yield or run away before our forces, but two months after we have
+withdrawn the enemy will return and drive the princes out again. I cannot
+always be ready to spring out of my kingdom, nor to assemble such great
+armies. I am getting old, and my army moreover costs me 400,000 crowns a
+month, which is enough to exhaust all the treasures of France, Spain,
+Venice, and the States-General together."
+
+He added that, if the present occasion were neglected, the States would
+afterwards bitterly lament and never recover it. The Pope was very much
+excited, and was sending out his ambassadors everywhere. Only the
+previous Saturday the new nuncius destined for France had left Rome. If
+My Lords the States would send deputies to the camp with full powers, he
+stood there firm and unchangeable, but if they remained cool in the
+business, he warned them that they would enrage him.
+
+The States must seize the occasion, he repeated. It was bald behind, and
+must be grasped by the forelock. It was not enough to have begun well.
+One must end well. "Finis coronat opus." It was very easy to speak of a
+league, but a league was not to be made in order to sit with arms tied,
+but to do good work. The States ought not to suffer that the Germans
+should prove themselves more energetic, more courageous, than themselves.
+
+And again the King vehemently urged the necessity of his Excellency and
+some deputies of the States coming to him "with absolute power" to treat.
+He could not doubt in that event of something solid being accomplished.
+
+"There are three things," he continued, "which cause me to speak freely.
+I am talking with my friends whom I hold dear--yes, dearer, perhaps, than
+they hold themselves. I am a great king, and say what I choose to say. I
+am old, and know by experience the ways of this world's affairs. I tell
+you, then, that it is most important that you should come to me resolved
+and firm on all points."
+
+He then requested the ambassadors to make full report of all that he had
+said to their masters, to make the journey as rapidly as possible, in
+order to encourage the States to the great enterprise and to meet his
+wishes. He required from them, he said, not only activity of the body,
+but labour of the intellect.
+
+He was silent for a few moments, and then spoke again. "I shall not
+always be here," he said, "nor will you always have Prince Maurice, and a
+few others whose knowledge of your commonwealth is perfect. My Lords the
+States must be up and doing while they still possess them. Nest Tuesday I
+shall cause the Queen to be crowned at Saint-Denis; the following
+Thursday she will make her entry into Paris. Next day, Friday, I shall
+take my departure. At the end of this month I shall cross the Meuse at
+Mezieres or in that neighbourhood."
+
+He added that he should write immediately to Holland, to urge upon his
+Excellency and the States to be ready to make the junction of their army
+with his forces without delay. He charged the ambassadors to assure their
+High Mightinesses that he was and should remain their truest friend,
+their dearest neighbour. He then said a few gracious and cordial words to
+each of them, warmly embraced each, and bade them all farewell.
+
+The next day was passed by the ambassadors in paying and receiving
+farewell visits, and on Saturday, the 8th, they departed from Paris,
+being escorted out of the gate by the Marshal de Boisdaulphin, with a
+cavalcade of noblemen. They slept that night at Saint Denis, and then
+returned to Holland by the way of Calais and Rotterdam, reaching the
+Hague on the 16th of May.
+
+I make no apology for the minute details thus given of the proceedings of
+this embassy, and especially of the conversations of Henry.
+
+The very words of those conversations were taken down on the spot by the
+commissioners who heard them, and were carefully embodied in their report
+made to the States-General on their return, from which I have transcribed
+them.
+
+It was a memorable occasion. The great king--for great he was, despite
+his numerous vices and follies--stood there upon the threshold of a vast
+undertaking, at which the world, still half incredulous, stood gazing,
+half sick with anxiety. He relied on his own genius and valour chiefly,
+and after these on the brain of Barneveld and the sword of Maurice. Nor
+was his confidence misplaced.
+
+But let the reader observe the date of the day when those striking
+utterances were made, and which have never before been made public. It
+was Thursday, the 6th May. "I shall not always be here," said the King,
+. . . "I cannot be ready at any moment to spring out of my kingdom."
+. . . "Friday of next week I take my departure."
+
+How much of heroic pathos in Henry's attitude at this supreme moment! How
+mournfully ring those closing words of his address to the ambassadors!
+
+The die was cast. A letter drawn up by the Duc de Sully was sent to
+Archduke Albert by the King.
+
+"My brother," he said; "Not being able to refuse my best allies and
+confederates the help which they have asked of me against those who wish
+to trouble them in the succession to the duchies and counties of Cleve,
+Julich, Mark, Berg, Ravensberg, and Ravenstein, I am advancing towards
+them with my army. As my road leads me through your country, I desire to
+notify you thereof, and to know whether or not I am to enter as a friend
+or enemy."
+
+Such was the draft as delivered to the Secretary of State; "and as such
+it was sent," said Sully, "unless Villeroy changed it, as he had a great
+desire to do."
+
+Henry was mistaken in supposing that the Archduke would leave the letter
+without an answer. A reply was sent in due time, and the permission
+demanded was not refused. For although France was now full of military
+movement, and the regiments everywhere were hurrying hourly to the places
+of rendezvous, though the great storm at last was ready to burst, the
+Archdukes made no preparations for resistance, and lapped themselves in
+fatal security that nothing was intended but an empty demonstration.
+
+Six thousand Swiss newly levied, with 20,000 French infantry and 6000
+horse, were waiting for Henry to place himself at their head at Mezieres.
+Twelve thousand foot and 2000 cavalry, including the French and English
+contingents--a splendid army, led by Prince Maurice--were ready to march
+from Holland to Dusseldorf. The army of the princes under Prince
+Christian of Anhalt numbered 10,000 men. The last scruples of the usually
+unscrupulous Charles Emmanuel had been overcome, and the Duke was quite
+ready to act, 25,000 strong, with Marshal de Lesdiguieres, in the
+Milanese; while Marshal de la Force was already at the head of his forces
+in the Pyrenees, amounting to 12,000 foot and 2000 horse.
+
+Sully had already despatched his splendid trains of artillery to the
+frontier. "Never was seen in France, and perhaps never will be seen there
+again, artillery more complete and better furnished," said the Duke,
+thinking probably that artillery had reached the climax of perfect
+destructiveness in the first decade of the seventeenth century.
+
+His son, the Marquis de Rosny, had received the post of grand master of
+artillery, and placed himself at its head. His father was to follow as
+its chief, carrying with him as superintendent of finance a cash-box of
+eight millions.
+
+The King had appointed his wife, Mary de' Medici, regent, with an eminent
+council.
+
+The new nuncius had been requested to present himself with his letters of
+credence in the camp. Henry was unwilling that he should enter Paris,
+being convinced that he came to do his best, by declamation, persuasion,
+and intrigue, to paralyse the enterprise. Sully's promises to Ubaldini,
+the former nuncius, that his Holiness should be made king, however
+flattering to Paul V., had not prevented his representatives from
+vigorously denouncing Henry's monstrous scheme to foment heresy and
+encourage rebellion.
+
+The King's chagrin at the cautious limitations imposed upon the States'
+special embassy was, so he hoped, to be removed by full conferences in
+the camp. Certainly he had shown in the most striking manner the respect
+he felt for the States, and the confidence he reposed in them.
+
+"In the reception of your embassy," wrote Aerssens to the Advocate,
+"certainly the King has so loosened the strap of his affection that he
+has reserved nothing by which he could put the greatest king in the world
+above your level."
+
+He warned the States, however, that Henry had not found as much in their
+propositions as the common interest had caused him to promise himself.
+"Nevertheless he informs me in confidence," said Aerssens, "that he will
+engage himself in nothing without you; nay, more, he has expressly told
+me that he could hardly accomplish his task without your assistance, and
+it was for our sakes alone that he has put himself into this position and
+incurred this great expense."
+
+Some days later he informed Barneveld that he would leave to van der Myle
+and his colleagues the task of describing the great dissatisfaction of
+the King at the letters brought by de Bethune. He told him in confidence
+that the States must equip the French regiments and put them in marching
+order if they wished to preserve Henry's friendship. He added that since
+the departure of the special embassy the King had been vehemently and
+seriously urging that Prince Maurice, Count Lewis William, Barneveld, and
+three or four of the most qualified deputies of the States-General,
+entirely authorized to treat for the common safety, should meet with him
+in the territory of Julich on a fixed day.
+
+The crisis was reached. The King stood fully armed, thoroughly prepared,
+with trustworthy allies at his side, disposing of overwhelming forces
+ready to sweep down with irresistible strength upon the House of Austria,
+which, as he said and the States said, aspired to give the law to the
+whole world. Nothing was left to do save, as the Ambassador said, to
+"uncouple the dogs of war and let them run."
+
+What preparations had Spain and the Empire, the Pope and the League, set
+on foot to beat back even for a moment the overwhelming onset? None
+whatever. Spinola in the Netherlands, Fuentes in Milan, Bucquoy and
+Lobkowitz and Lichtenstein in Prague, had hardly the forces of a moderate
+peace establishment at their disposal, and all the powers save France and
+the States were on the verge of bankruptcy.
+
+Even James of Great Britain--shuddering at the vast thundercloud which
+had stretched itself over Christendom growing blacker and blacker,
+precisely at this moment, in which he had proved to his own satisfaction
+that the peace just made would perpetually endure--even James did not
+dare to traverse the designs of the king whom he feared, and the republic
+which he hated, in favour of his dearly loved Spain. Sweden, Denmark, the
+Hanse Towns, were in harmony with France, Holland, Savoy, and the whole
+Protestant force of Germany--a majority both in population and resources
+of the whole empire. What army, what combination, what device, what
+talisman, could save the House of Austria, the cause of Papacy, from the
+impending ruin?
+
+A sudden, rapid, conclusive victory for the allies seemed as predestined
+a result as anything could be in the future of human affairs.
+
+On the 14th or 15th day of May, as he had just been informing the States'
+ambassadors, Henry meant to place himself at the head of his army. That
+was the moment fixed by himself for "taking his departure."
+
+And now the ides of May had come--but not gone.
+
+In the midst of all the military preparations with which Paris had been
+resounding, the arrangements for the Queen's coronation had been
+simultaneously going forward. Partly to give check in advance to the
+intrigues which would probably at a later date be made by Conde,
+supported by the power of Spain, to invalidate the legitimacy of the
+Dauphin, but more especially perhaps to further and to conceal what the
+faithful Sully called the "damnable artifices" of the Queen's intimate
+councillors--sinister designs too dark to be even whispered at that
+epoch, and of which history, during the lapse of more than two centuries
+and a half, has scarcely dared to speak above its breath--it was deemed
+all important that the coronation should take place.
+
+A certain astrologer, Thomassin by name, was said to have bidden the King
+to beware the middle of the next month of May. Henry had tweaked the
+soothsayer by the beard and made him dance twice or thrice about the
+room. To the Duc de Vendome expressing great anxiety in regard to
+Thomassin, Henry replied, "The astrologer is an old fool, and you are a
+young fool." A certain prophetess called Pasithea had informed the Queen
+that the King could not survive his fifty-seventh year. She was much in
+the confidence of Mary de' Medici, who had insisted this year on her
+returning to Paris. Henry, who was ever chafing and struggling to escape
+the invisible and dangerous net which he felt closing about him, and who
+connected the sorceress with all whom he most loathed among the intimate
+associates of the Queen, swore a mighty oath that she should not show her
+face again at court. "My heart presages that some signal disaster will
+befall me on this coronation. Concini and his wife are urging the Queen
+obstinately to send for this fanatic. If she should come, there is no
+doubt that my wife and I shall squabble well about her. If I discover
+more about these private plots of hers with Spain, I shall be in a mighty
+passion." And the King then assured the faithful minister of his
+conviction that all the jealousy affected by the Queen in regard to the
+Princess of Conde was but a veil to cover dark designs. It was necessary
+in the opinion of those who governed her, the vile Concini and his wife,
+that there should be some apparent and flagrant cause of quarrel. The
+public were to receive payment in these pretexts for want of better coin.
+Henry complained that even Sully and all the world besides attributed to
+jealousy that which was really the effect of a most refined malice.
+
+And the minister sometimes pauses in the midst of these revelations made
+in his old age, and with self-imposed and shuddering silence intimates
+that there are things he could tell which are too odious and dreadful to
+be breathed.
+
+Henry had an invincible repugnance to that coronation on which the Queen
+had set her heart. Nothing could be more pathetic than the isolated
+position in which he found himself, standing thus as he did on the
+threshold of a mighty undertaking in which he was the central figure, an
+object for the world to gaze upon with palpitating interest. At his
+hearth in the Louvre were no household gods. Danger lurked behind every
+tapestry in that magnificent old palace. A nameless dread dogged his
+footsteps through those resounding corridors.
+
+And by an exquisite refinement in torture the possible father of several
+of his children not only dictated to the Queen perpetual outbreaks of
+frantic jealousy against her husband, but moved her to refuse with
+suspicion any food and drink offered her by his hands. The Concini's
+would even with unparalleled and ingenious effrontery induce her to make
+use of the kitchen arrangements in their apartments for the preparation
+of her daily meals?
+
+Driven from house and home, Henry almost lived at the Arsenal. There he
+would walk for hours in the long alleys of the garden, discussing with
+the great financier and soldier his vast, dreamy, impracticable plans.
+Strange combination of the hero, the warrior, the voluptuary, the sage,
+and the schoolboy--it would be difficult to find in the whole range of
+history a more human, a more attractive, a more provoking, a less
+venerable character.
+
+Haunted by omens, dire presentiments, dark suspicions with and without
+cause, he was especially averse from the coronation to which in a moment
+of weakness he had given his consent.
+
+Sitting in Sully's cabinet, in a low chair which the Duke had expressly
+provided for his use, tapping and drumming on his spectacle case, or
+starting up and smiting himself on the thigh, he would pour out his soul
+hours long to his one confidential minister. "Ah, my friend, how this
+sacrament displeases me," he said; "I know not why it is, but my heart
+tells me that some misfortune is to befall me. By God I shall die in this
+city, I shall never go out of it; I see very well that they are finding
+their last resource in my death. Ah, accursed coronation! thou wilt be
+the cause of my death."
+
+So many times did he give utterance to these sinister forebodings that
+Sully implored him at last for leave to countermand the whole ceremony
+notwithstanding the great preparations which had been made for the
+splendid festival. "Yes, yes," replied the King, "break up this
+coronation at once. Let me hear no more of it. Then I shall have my mind
+cured of all these impressions. I shall leave the town and fear nothing."
+
+He then informed his friend that he had received intimations that he
+should lose his life at the first magnificent festival he should give,
+and that he should die in a carriage. Sully admitted that he had often,
+when in a carriage with him, been amazed at his starting and crying out
+at the slightest shock, having so often seen him intrepid among guns and
+cannon, pikes and naked swords.
+
+The Duke went to the Queen three days in succession, and with passionate
+solicitations and arguments and almost upon his knees implored her to
+yield to the King's earnest desire, and renounce for the time at least
+the coronation. In vain. Mary de' Medici was obdurate as marble to his
+prayers.
+
+The coronation was fixed for Thursday, the 13th May, two days later than
+the time originally appointed when the King conversed with the States'
+ambassadors. On the following Sunday was to be the splendid and solemn
+entrance of the crowned Queen. On the Monday, Henry, postponing likewise
+for two days his original plan of departure, would leave for the army.
+
+Meantime there were petty annoyances connected with the details of the
+coronation. Henry had set his heart on having his legitimatized children,
+the offspring of the fair Gabrielle, take their part in the ceremony on
+an equal footing with the princes of the blood. They were not entitled to
+wear the lilies of France upon their garments, and the King was
+solicitous that "the Count"--as Soissons, brother of Prince Conti and
+uncle of Conde, was always called--should dispense with those ensigns for
+his wife upon this solemn occasion, and that the other princesses of the
+blood should do the same. Thus there would be no appearance of
+inferiority on the part of the Duchess of Vendome.
+
+The Count protested that he would have his eyes torn out of his head
+rather than submit to an arrangement which would do him so much shame. He
+went to the Queen and urged upon her that to do this would likewise be an
+injury to her children, the Dukes of Orleans and of Anjou. He refused
+flatly to appear or allow his wife to appear except in the costume
+befitting their station. The King on his part was determined not to
+abandon his purpose. He tried to gain over the Count by the most splendid
+proposals, offering him the command of the advance-guard of the army, or
+the lieutenancy-general of France in the absence of the King, 30,000
+crowns for his equipment and an increase of his pension if he would cause
+his wife to give up the fleurs-de-lys on this occasion. The alternative
+was to be that, if she insisted upon wearing them, his Majesty would
+never look upon him again with favourable eyes.
+
+The Count never hesitated, but left Paris, refusing to appear at the
+ceremony. The King was in a towering passion, for to lose the presence of
+this great prince of the blood at a solemnity expressly intended as a
+demonstration against the designs hatching by the first of all the
+princes of the blood under patronage of Spain was a severe blow to his
+pride and a check to his policy.'
+
+Yet it was inconceivable that he could at such a moment commit so
+superfluous and unmeaning a blunder. He had forced Conde into exile,
+intrigue with the enemy, and rebellion, by open and audacious efforts to
+destroy his domestic peace, and now he was willing to alienate one of his
+most powerful subjects in order to place his bastards on a level with
+royalty. While it is sufficiently amusing to contemplate this proposed
+barter of a chief command in a great army or the lieutenancy-general of a
+mighty kingdom at the outbreak of a general European war against a bit of
+embroidery on the court dress of a lady, yet it is impossible not to
+recognize something ideal and chivalrous from his own point of view in
+the refusal of Soissons to renounce those emblems of pure and high
+descent, those haughty lilies of St. Louis, against any bribes of place
+and pelf however dazzling.
+
+The coronation took place on Thursday, 13th May, with the pomp and
+glitter becoming great court festivals; the more pompous and glittering
+the more the monarch's heart was wrapped in gloom. The representatives of
+the great powers were conspicuous in the procession; Aerssens, the Dutch
+ambassador, holding a foremost place. The ambassadors of Spain and Venice
+as usual squabbled about precedence and many other things, and actually
+came to fisticuffs, the fight lasting a long time and ending somewhat to
+the advantage of the Venetian. But the sacrament was over, and Mary de'
+Medici was crowned Queen of France and Regent of the Kingdom during the
+absence of the sovereign with his army.
+
+Meantime there had been mysterious warnings darker and more distinct than
+the babble of the soothsayer Thomassin or the ravings of the lunatic
+Pasithea. Count Schomberg, dining at the Arsenal with Sully, had been
+called out to converse with Mademoiselle de Gournay, who implored that a
+certain Madame d'Escomans might be admitted to audience of the King. That
+person, once in direct relations with the Marchioness of Verneuil, the
+one of Henry's mistresses who most hated him, affirmed that a man from
+the Duke of Epernon's country was in Paris, agent of a conspiracy seeking
+the King's life.
+
+The woman not enjoying a very reputable character found it impossible to
+obtain a hearing, although almost frantic with her desire to save her
+sovereign's life. The Queen observed that it was a wicked woman, who was
+accusing all the world, and perhaps would accuse her too.
+
+The fatal Friday came. Henry drove out, in his carriage to see the
+preparations making for the triumphal entrance of the Queen into Paris on
+the following Sunday. What need to repeat the tragic, familiar tale? The
+coach was stopped by apparent accident in the narrow street de la
+Feronniere, and Francis Ravaillac, standing on the wheel, drove his knife
+through the monarch's heart. The Duke of Epernon, sitting at his side,
+threw his cloak over the body and ordered the carriage back to the
+Louvre.
+
+"They have killed him, 'e ammazato,'" cried Concini (so says tradition),
+thrusting his head into the Queen's bedchamber.
+
+   [Michelet, 197. It is not probable that the documents concerning
+   the trial, having been so carefully suppressed from the beginning,
+   especially the confession dictated to Voisin--who wrote it kneeling
+   on the ground, and was perhaps so appalled at its purport that he
+   was afraid to write it legibly--will ever see the light. I add in
+   the Appendix some contemporary letters of persons, as likely as any
+   one to know what could be known, which show how dreadful were the
+   suspicions which men entertained, and which they hardly ventured to
+   whisper to each other].
+
+That blow had accomplished more than a great army could have done, and
+Spain now reigned in Paris. The House of Austria, without making any
+military preparations, had conquered, and the great war of religion and
+politics was postponed for half a dozen years.
+
+This history has no immediate concern with solving the mysteries of that
+stupendous crime. The woman who had sought to save the King's life now
+denounced Epernon as the chief murderer, and was arrested, examined,
+accused of lunacy, proved to be perfectly sane, and, persisting in her
+statements with perfect coherency, was imprisoned for life for her pains;
+the Duke furiously demanding her instant execution.
+
+The documents connected with the process were carefully suppressed. The
+assassin, tortured and torn by four horses, was supposed to have revealed
+nothing and to have denied the existence of accomplices.
+
+The great accused were too omnipotent to be dealt with by humble accusers
+or by convinced but powerless tribunals. The trial was all mystery,
+hugger-mugger, horror. Yet the murderer is known to have dictated to the
+Greflier Voisin, just before expiring on the Greve, a declaration which
+that functionary took down in a handwriting perhaps purposely illegible.
+
+Two centuries and a half have passed away, yet the illegible original
+record is said to exist, to have been plainly read, and to contain the
+names of the Queen and the Duke of Epernon.
+
+Twenty-six years before, the pistol of Balthasar Gerard had destroyed the
+foremost man in Europe and the chief of a commonwealth just struggling
+into existence. Yet Spain and Rome, the instigators and perpetrators of
+the crime, had not reaped the victory which they had the right to expect.
+The young republic, guided by Barneveld and loyal to the son of the
+murdered stadholder, was equal to the burthen suddenly descending upon
+its shoulders. Instead of despair there had been constancy. Instead of
+distracted counsels there had been heroic union of heart and hand. Rather
+than bend to Rome and grovel to Philip, it had taken its sovereignty in
+its hands, offered it successively, without a thought of
+self-aggrandizement on the part of its children, to the crowns of France
+and Great Britain, and, having been repulsed by both, had learned after
+fiery trials and incredible exertions to assert its own high and foremost
+place among the independent powers of the world.
+
+And now the knife of another priest-led fanatic, the wretched but
+unflinching instrument of a great conspiracy, had at a blow decapitated
+France. No political revolution could be much more thorough than that
+which had been accomplished in a moment of time by Francis Ravaillac.
+
+On the 14th of May, France, while in spiritual matters obedient to the
+Pope, stood at the head of the forces of Protestantism throughout Europe,
+banded together to effect the downfall of the proud house of Austria,
+whose fortunes and fate were synonymous with Catholicism. The Baltic
+powers, the majority of the Teutonic races, the Kingdom of Britain, the
+great Republic of the Netherlands, the northernmost and most warlike
+governments of Italy, all stood at the disposition of the warrior-king.
+Venice, who had hitherto, in the words of a veteran diplomatist, "shunned
+to look a league or a confederation in the face, if there was any
+Protestant element in it, as if it had been the head of Medusa," had
+formally forbidden the passage of troops northwards to the relief of the
+assailed power. Savoy, after direful hesitations, had committed herself
+body and soul to the great enterprise. Even the Pope, who feared the
+overshadowing personality of Henry, and was beginning to believe his
+house's private interests more likely to flourish under the protection of
+the French than the Spanish king, was wavering in his fidelity to Spain
+and tempted by French promises: If he should prove himself incapable of
+effecting a pause in the great crusade, it was doubtful on which side he
+would ultimately range himself; for it was at least certain that the new
+Catholic League, under the chieftainship of Maximilian of Bavaria, was
+resolved not to entangle its fortunes inextricably with those of the
+Austrian house.
+
+The great enterprise, first unfolding itself with the episode of Cleve
+and Berg and whimsically surrounding itself with the fantastic idyl of
+the Princess of Conde, had attained vast and misty proportions in the
+brain of its originator. Few political visions are better known in
+history than the "grand design" of Henry for rearranging the map of the
+world at the moment when, in the middle of May, he was about to draw his
+sword. Spain reduced to the Mediterranean and the Pyrenees, but presented
+with both the Indies, with all America and the whole Orient in fee; the
+Empire taken from Austria and given to Bavaria; a constellation of States
+in Italy, with the Pope for president-king; throughout the rest of
+Christendom a certain number of republics, of kingdoms, of religions--a
+great confederation of the world, in short--with the most Christian king
+for its dictator and protector, and a great Amphictyonic council to
+regulate all disputes by solemn arbitration, and to make war in the
+future impossible, such in little was his great design.
+
+Nothing could be more humane, more majestic, more elaborate, more utterly
+preposterous. And all this gigantic fabric had passed away in an
+instant--at one stroke of a broken table knife sharpened on a carriage
+wheel.
+
+Most pitiful was the condition of France on the day after, and for years
+after, the murder of the King. Not only was the kingdom for the time
+being effaced from the roll of nations, so far as external relations were
+concerned, but it almost ceased to be a kingdom. The ancient monarchy of
+Hugh Capet, of Saint-Louis, of Henry of France and Navarre, was
+transformed into a turbulent, self-seeking, quarrelsome, pillaging,
+pilfering democracy of grandees. The Queen-Regent was tossed hither and
+thither at the sport of the winds and waves which shifted every hour in
+that tempestuous court.
+
+No man pretended to think of the State. Every man thought only of
+himself. The royal exchequer was plundered with a celerity and cynical
+recklessness such as have been rarely seen in any age or country. The
+millions so carefully hoarded by Sully, and exhibited so dramatically by
+that great minister to the enraptured eyes of his sovereign; that
+treasure in the Bastille on which Henry relied for payment of the armies
+with which he was to transform the world, all disappeared in a few weeks
+to feed the voracious maw of courtiers, paramours, and partisans!
+
+The Queen showered gold like water upon her beloved Concini that he might
+purchase his Marquisate of Ancre, and the charge of first gentleman of
+the court from Bouillon; that he might fit himself for the government of
+Picardy; that he might elevate his marquisate into a dukedom. Conde,
+having no further reason to remain in exile, received as a gift from the
+trembling Mary de' Medici the magnificent Hotel Gondy, where the Dutch
+ambassadors had so recently been lodged, for which she paid 65,000
+crowns, together with 25,000 crowns to furnish it, 50,000 crowns to pay
+his debts, 50,000 more as yearly pension.
+
+He claimed double, and was soon at sword's point with the Queen in spite
+of her lavish bounty.
+
+Epernon, the true murderer of Henry, trampled on courts of justice and
+councils of ministers, frightened the court by threatening to convert his
+possession of Metz into an independent sovereignty, as Balagny had
+formerly seized upon Cambray, smothered for ever the process of
+Ravaillac, caused those to be put to death or immured for life in
+dungeons who dared to testify to his complicity in the great crime, and
+strode triumphantly over friends and enemies throughout France, although
+so crippled by the gout that he could scarcely walk up stairs.
+
+There was an end to the triumvirate. Sully's influence was gone for ever.
+The other two dropped the mask. The Chancellor and Villeroy revealed
+themselves to be what they secretly had always been--humble servants and
+stipendiaries of Spain. The formal meetings of the council were of little
+importance, and were solemn, tearful, and stately; draped in woe for the
+great national loss. In the private cabinet meetings in the entresol of
+the Louvre, where the Nuncius and the Spanish ambassador held counsel
+with Epernon and Villeroy and Jeannin and Sillery, the tone was merry and
+loud; the double Spanish marriage and confusion to the Dutch being the
+chief topics of consultation.
+
+But the anarchy grew day by day into almost hopeless chaos. There was no
+satisfying the princes of the blood nor the other grandees. Conde, whose
+reconciliation with the Princess followed not long after the death of
+Henry and his own return to France, was insatiable in his demands for
+money, power, and citadels of security. Soissons, who might formerly have
+received the lieutenancy-general of the kingdom by sacrificing the lilies
+on his wife's gown, now disputed for that office with his elder brother
+Conti, the Prince claiming it by right of seniority, the Count denouncing
+Conti as deaf, dumb, and imbecile, till they drew poniards on each other
+in the very presence of the Queen; while Conde on one occasion, having
+been refused the citadels which he claimed, Blaye and Chateau Trompette,
+threw his cloak over his nose and put on his hat while the Queen was
+speaking, and left the council in a fury, declaring that Villeroy and the
+chancellor were traitors, and that he would have them both soundly
+cudgelled. Guise, Lorraine, Epernon, Bouillon, and other great lords
+always appeared in the streets of Paris at the head of three, four, or
+five hundred mounted and armed retainers; while the Queen in her
+distraction gave orders to arm the Paris mob to the number of fifty
+thousand, and to throw chains across the streets to protect herself and
+her son against the turbulent nobles.
+
+Sully, hardly knowing to what saint to burn his candle, being forced to
+resign his great posts, was found for a time in strange political
+combination with the most ancient foes of his party and himself. The
+kaleidoscope whirling with exasperating quickness showed ancient Leaguers
+and Lorrainers banded with and protecting Huguenots against the Crown,
+while princes of the blood, hereditary patrons and chiefs of the
+Huguenots, became partisans and stipendiaries of Spain.
+
+It is easy to see that circumstances like these rendered the position of
+the Dutch commonwealth delicate and perilous.
+
+Sully informed Aerssens and van der Myle, who had been sent back to Paris
+on special mission very soon after the death of the King, that it took a
+hundred hours now to accomplish a single affair, whereas under Henry a
+hundred affairs were transacted in a single hour. But Sully's sun had
+set, and he had few business conferences now with the ambassadors.
+
+Villeroy and the Chancellor had fed fat their ancient grudge to the once
+omnipotent minister, and had sworn his political ruin. The old secretary
+of state had held now complete control of the foreign alliances and
+combinations of France, and the Dutch ambassadors could be under no
+delusion as to the completeness of the revolution.
+
+"You will find a passion among the advisers of the Queen," said Villeroy
+to Aerssens and van der Myle, "to move in diametrical opposition to the
+plans of the late king." And well might the ancient Leaguer and present
+pensionary of Spain reveal this foremost fact in a policy of which he was
+in secret the soul. He wept profusely when he first received Francis
+Aerssens, but after these "useless tears," as the Envoy called them, he
+soon made it manifest that there was no more to be expected of France, in
+the great project which its government had so elaborately set on foot.
+
+Villeroy was now sixty-six years of age, and had been secretary of state
+during forty-two years and under four kings. A man of delicate health,
+frail body, methodical habits, capacity for routine, experience in
+political intrigue, he was not personally as greedy of money as many of
+his contemporaries, and was not without generosity; but he loved power,
+the Pope, and the House of Austria. He was singularly reserved in public,
+practised successfully the talent of silence, and had at last arrived at
+the position he most coveted, the virtual presidency of the council, and
+saw the men he most hated beneath his feet.
+
+At the first interview of Aerssens with the Queen-Regent she was drowned
+in tears, and could scarcely articulate an intelligible sentence. So far
+as could be understood she expressed her intention of carrying out the
+King's plans, of maintaining the old alliances, of protecting both
+religions. Nothing, however, could be more preposterous than such
+phrases. Villeroy, who now entirely directed the foreign affairs of the
+kingdom, assured the Ambassador that France was much more likely to apply
+to the States for assistance than render them aid in any enterprise
+whatever. "There is no doubt," said Aerssens, "that the Queen is entirely
+in the hands of Spain and the priests." Villeroy, whom Henry was wont to
+call the pedagogue of the council, went about sighing dismally, wishing
+himself dead, and perpetually ejaculating, "Ho! poor France, how much
+hast thou still to suffer!" In public he spoke of nothing but of union,
+and of the necessity of carrying out the designs of the King, instructing
+the docile Queen to hold the same language. In private he was quite
+determined to crush those designs for ever, and calmly advised the Dutch
+government to make an amicable agreement with the Emperor in regard to
+the Cleve affair as soon as possible; a treaty which would have been
+shameful for France and the possessory princes, and dangerous, if not
+disastrous, for the States-General. "Nothing but feverish and sick
+counsels," he said, "could be expected from France, which had now lost
+its vigour and could do nothing but groan."
+
+Not only did the French council distinctly repudiate the idea of doing
+anything more for the princes than had been stipulated by the treaty of
+Hall--that is to say, a contingent of 8000 foot and 2000 horse--but many
+of them vehemently maintained that the treaty, being a personal one of
+the late king, was dead with him? The duty of France was now in their
+opinion to withdraw from these mad schemes as soon as possible, to make
+peace with the House of Austria without delay, and to cement the
+friendship by the double marriages.
+
+Bouillon, who at that moment hated Sully as much as the most vehement
+Catholic could do, assured the Dutch envoy that the government was, under
+specious appearances, attempting to deceive the States; a proposition
+which it needed not the evidence of that most intriguing duke to make
+manifest to so astute a politician; particularly as there was none more
+bent on playing the most deceptive game than Bouillon. There would be no
+troops to send, he said, and even if there were, there would be no
+possibility of agreeing on a chief. The question of religion would at
+once arise. As for himself, the Duke protested that he would not accept
+the command if offered him. He would not agree to serve under the Prince
+of Anhalt, nor would he for any consideration in the world leave the
+court at that moment. At the same time Aerssens was well aware that
+Bouillon, in his quality of first marshal of France, a Protestant and a
+prince having great possessions on the frontier, and the brother-in-law
+of Prince Maurice, considered himself entitled to the command of the
+troops should they really be sent, and was very indignant at the idea of
+its being offered to any one else.
+
+   [Aerssens worked assiduously, two hours long on one occasion, to
+   effect a reconciliation between the two great Protestant chiefs, but
+   found Bouillon's demands "so shameful and unreasonable" that he
+   felt obliged to renounce all further attempts. In losing Sully from
+   the royal councils, the States' envoy acknowledged that the Republic
+   had lost everything that could be depended on at the French court.
+   "All the others are time-serving friends," he said, "or saints
+   without miracles."--Aerssens to Barneveld, 11 June, 1610. ]
+
+He advised earnestly therefore that the States should make a firm demand
+for money instead of men, specifying the amount that might be considered
+the equivalent of the number of troops originally stipulated.
+
+It is one of the most singular spectacles in history; France sinking into
+the background of total obscurity in an instant of time, at one blow of a
+knife, while the Republic, which she had been patronizing, protecting,
+but keeping always in a subordinate position while relying implicitly
+upon its potent aid, now came to the front, and held up on its strong
+shoulders an almost desperate cause. Henry had been wont to call the
+States-General "his courage and his right arm," but he had always
+strictly forbidden them to move an inch in advance of him, but ever to
+follow his lead, and to take their directions from himself. They were a
+part, and an essential one, in his vast designs; but France, or he who
+embodied France, was the great providence, the destiny, the
+all-directing, all-absorbing spirit, that was to remodel and control the
+whole world. He was dead, and France and her policy were already in a
+state of rapid decomposition.
+
+Barneveld wrote to encourage and sustain the sinking state. "Our courage
+is rising in spite and in consequence of the great misfortune," he said.
+He exhorted the Queen to keep her kingdom united, and assured her that My
+Lords the States would maintain themselves against all who dared to
+assail them. He offered in their name the whole force of the Republic to
+take vengeance on those who had procured the assassination, and to defend
+the young king and the Queen-Mother against all who might make any
+attempt against their authority. He further declared, in language not to
+be mistaken, that the States would never abandon the princes and their
+cause.
+
+This was the earliest indication on the part of the Advocate of the
+intention of the Republic--so long as it should be directed by his
+counsels--to support the cause of the young king, helpless and incapable
+as he was, and directed for the time being by a weak and wicked mother,
+against the reckless and depraved grandees, who were doing their best to
+destroy the unity and the independence of France, Cornelis van der Myle
+was sent back to Paris on special mission of condolence and comfort from
+the States-General to the sorely afflicted kingdom.
+
+On the 7th of June, accompanied by Aerssens, he had a long interview with
+Villeroy. That minister, as usual, wept profusely, and said that in
+regard to Cleve it was impossible for France to carry out the designs of
+the late king. He then listened to what the ambassadors had to urge, and
+continued to express his melancholy by weeping. Drying his tears for a
+time, he sought by a long discourse to prove that France during this
+tender minority of the King would be incapable of pursuing the policy of
+his father. It would be even too burthensome to fulfil the Treaty of
+Hall. The friends of the crown, he said, had no occasion to further it,
+and it would be much better to listen to propositions for a treaty.
+Archduke Albert was content not to interfere in the quarrel if the Queen
+would likewise abstain; Leopold's forces were altogether too weak to make
+head against the army of the princes, backed by the power of My Lords the
+States, and Julich was neither strong nor well garrisoned. He concluded
+by calmly proposing that the States should take the matter in hand by
+themselves alone, in order to lighten the burthen of France, whose vigour
+had been cut in two by that accursed knife.
+
+A more sneaking and shameful policy was never announced by the minister
+of a great kingdom. Surely it might seem that Ravaillac had cut in twain
+not the vigour only but the honour and the conscience of France. But the
+envoys, knowing in their hearts that they were talking not with a French
+but a Spanish secretary of state, were not disposed to be the dupes of
+his tears or his blandishments.
+
+They reminded him that the Queen-Regent and her ministers since the
+murder of the King had assured the States-General and the princes of
+their firm intention to carry out the Treaty of Hall, and they observed
+that they had no authority to talk of any negotiation. The affair of the
+duchies was not especially the business of the States, and the Secretary
+was well aware that they had promised their succour on the express
+condition that his Majesty and his army should lead the way, and that
+they should follow. This was very far from the plan now suggested, that
+they should do it all, which would be quite out of the question. France
+had a strong army, they said, and it would be better to use it than to
+efface herself so pitiably. The proposition of abstention on the part of
+the Archduke was a delusion intended only to keep France out of the
+field.
+
+Villeroy replied by referring to English affairs. King James, he said,
+was treating them perfidiously. His first letters after the murder had
+been good, but by the following ones England seemed to wish to put her
+foot on France's throat, in order to compel her to sue for an alliance.
+The British ministers had declared their resolve not to carry out that
+convention of alliance, although it had been nearly concluded in the
+lifetime of the late king, unless the Queen would bind herself to make
+good to the King of Great Britain that third part of the subsidies
+advanced by France to the States which had been furnished on English
+account!
+
+This was the first announcement of a grievance devised by the politicians
+now governing France to make trouble for the States with that kingdom and
+with Great Britain likewise. According to a treaty made at Hampton Court
+by Sully during his mission to England at the accession of James, it had
+been agreed that one-third of the moneys advanced by France in aid of the
+United Provinces should be credited to the account of Great Britain, in
+diminution of the debt for similar assistance rendered by Elizabeth to
+Henry. In regard to this treaty the States had not been at all consulted,
+nor did they acknowledge the slightest obligation in regard to it. The
+subsidies in men and in money provided for them both by France and by
+England in their struggle for national existence had always been most
+gratefully acknowledged by the Republic, but it had always been perfectly
+understood that these expenses had been incurred by each kingdom out of
+an intelligent and thrifty regard for its own interest. Nothing could be
+more ridiculous than to suppose France and England actuated by
+disinterested sympathy and benevolence when assisting the Netherland
+people in its life-and-death struggle against the dire and deadly enemy
+of both crowns. Henry protested that, while adhering to Rome in spiritual
+matters, his true alliances and strength had been found in the United
+Provinces, in Germany, and in Great Britain. As for the States, he had
+spent sixteen millions of livres, he said, in acquiring a perfect
+benevolence on the part of the States to his person. It was the best
+bargain he had ever made, and he should take care to preserve it at any
+cost whatever, for he considered himself able, when closely united with
+them, to bid defiance to all the kings in Europe together.
+
+Yet it was now the settled policy of the Queen-Regent's council, so far
+as the knot of politicians guided by the Nuncius and the Spanish
+ambassador in the entresols of the Louvre could be called a council, to
+force the States to refund that third, estimated at something between
+three and four million livres, which France had advanced them on account
+of Great Britain.
+
+Villeroy told the two ambassadors at this interview that, if Great
+Britain continued to treat the Queen-Regent in such fashion, she would be
+obliged to look about for other allies. There could hardly be doubt as to
+the quarter in which Mary de' Medici was likely to look. Meantime, the
+Secretary of State urged the envoys "to intervene at once to-mediate the
+difference." There could be as little doubt that to mediate the
+difference was simply to settle an account which they did not owe.
+
+The whole object of the Minister at this first interview was to induce
+the States to take the whole Cleve enterprise upon their own shoulders,
+and to let France off altogether. The Queen-Regent as then advised meant
+to wash her hands of the possessory princes once and for ever. The envoys
+cut the matter short by assuring Villeroy that they would do nothing of
+the kind. He begged them piteously not to leave the princes in the lurch,
+and at the same time not to add to the burthens of France at so
+disastrous a moment.
+
+So they parted. Next day, however, they visited the Secretary again, and
+found him more dismal and flaccid than ever.
+
+He spoke feebly and drearily about the succour for the great enterprise,
+recounted all the difficulties in the way, and, having thrown down
+everything that the day before had been left standing, he tried to excuse
+an entire change of policy by the one miserable crime.
+
+He painted a forlorn picture of the council and of France. "I can myself
+do nothing as I wish," added the undisputed controller of that
+government's policy, and then with a few more tears he concluded by
+requesting the envoys to address their demands to the Queen in writing.
+
+This was done with the customary formalities and fine speeches on both
+sides; a dull comedy by which no one was amused.
+
+Then Bouillon came again, and assured them that there had been a chance
+that the engagements of Henry, followed up by the promise of the
+Queen-Regent, would be carried out, but now the fact was not to be
+concealed that the continued battery of the Nuncius, of the ambassadors
+of Spain and of the Archdukes, had been so effective that nothing sure or
+solid was thenceforth to be expected; the council being resolved to
+accept the overtures of the Archduke for mutual engagement to abstain
+from the Julich enterprise.
+
+Nothing in truth could be more pitiable than the helpless drifting of the
+once mighty kingdom, whenever the men who governed it withdrew their
+attention for an instant from their private schemes of advancement and
+plunder to cast a glance at affairs of State. In their secret heart they
+could not doubt that France was rushing on its ruin, and that in the
+alliance of the Dutch commonwealth, Britain, and the German Protestants,
+was its only safety. But they trembled before the Pope, grown bold and
+formidable since the death of the dreaded Henry. To offend his Holiness,
+the King of Spain, the Emperor, and the great Catholics of France, was to
+make a crusade against the Church. Garnier, the Jesuit, preached from his
+pulpit that "to strike a blow in the Cleve enterprise was no less a sin
+than to inflict a stab in the body of our Lord." The Parliament of Paris
+having ordered the famous treatise of the Jesuit Mariana--justifying the
+killing of excommunicated kings by their subjects--to be publicly burned
+before Notre Dame, the Bishop opposed the execution of the decree. The
+Parliament of Paris, although crushed by Epernon in its attempts to fix
+the murder of the King upon himself as the true culprit, was at least
+strong enough to carry out this sentence upon a printed, volume
+recommending the deed, and the Queen's council could only do its best to
+mitigate the awakened wrath of the Jesuits at this exercise of legal
+authority.--At the same time, it found on the whole so many more
+difficulties in a cynical and shameless withdrawal from the Treaty of
+Hall than in a nominal and tardy fulfilment of its conditions that it
+resolved at last to furnish the 8000 foot and 2000 horse promised to the
+possessory princes. The next best thing to abandoning entirely even this
+little shred, this pitiful remnant, of the splendid designs of Henry was
+to so arrange matters that the contingent should be feebly commanded, and
+set on foot in so dilatory a manner that the petty enterprise should on
+the part of France be purely perfunctory. The grandees of the kingdom had
+something more important to do than to go crusading in Germany, with the
+help of a heretic republic, to set up the possessory princes. They were
+fighting over the prostrate dying form of their common mother for their
+share of the spoils, stripping France before she was dead, and casting
+lots for her vesture.
+
+Soissons was on the whole in favour of the Cleve expedition. Epernon was
+desperately opposed to it, and maltreated Villeroy in full council when
+he affected to say a word, insincere as the Duke knew it to be, in favour
+of executing agreements signed by the monarch, and sealed with the great
+seal of France. The Duke of Guise, finding himself abandoned by the
+Queen, and bitterly opposed and hated by Soissons, took sides with his
+deaf and dumb and imbecile brother, and for a brief interval the Duke of
+Sully joined this strange combination of the House of Lorraine and chiefs
+of ancient Leaguers, who welcomed him with transport, and promised him
+security.
+
+Then Bouillon, potent by his rank, his possessions, and his authority
+among the Protestants, publicly swore that he would ruin Sully and change
+the whole order of the government. What more lamentable spectacle, what
+more desolate future for the cause of religious equality, which for a
+moment had been achieved in France, than this furious alienation of the
+trusted leaders of the Huguenots, while their adversaries were carrying
+everything before them? At the council board Bouillon quarrelled
+ostentatiously with Sully, shook his fist in his face, and but for the
+Queen's presence would have struck him. Next day he found that the Queen
+was intriguing against himself as well as against Sully, was making a
+cat's-paw of him, and was holding secret councils daily from which he as
+well as Sully was excluded. At once he made overtures of friendship to
+Sully, and went about proclaiming to the world that all Huguenots were to
+be removed from participation in affairs of state. His vows of vengeance
+were for a moment hushed by the unanimous resolution of the council that,
+as first marshal of France, having his principality on the frontier, and
+being of the Reformed religion, he was the fittest of all to command the
+expedition. Surely it might be said that the winds and tides were not
+more changeful than the politics of the Queen's government. The Dutch
+ambassador was secretly requested by Villeroy to negotiate with Bouillon
+and offer him the command of the Julich expedition. The Duke affected to
+make difficulties, although burning to obtain the post, but at last
+consented. All was settled. Aerssens communicated at once with Villeroy,
+and notice of Bouillon's acceptance was given to the Queen, when, behold,
+the very next day Marshal de la Chatre was appointed to the command
+expressly because he was a Catholic. Of course the Duke of Bouillon,
+furious with Soissons and Epernon and the rest of the government, was
+more enraged than ever against the Queen. His only hope was now in Conde,
+but Conde at the outset, on arriving at the Louvre, offered his heart to
+the Queen as a sheet of white paper. Epernon and Soissons received him
+with delight, and exchanged vows of an eternal friendship of several
+weeks' duration. And thus all the princes of the blood, all the cousins
+of Henry of Navarre, except the imbecile Conti, were ranged on the side
+of Spain, Rome, Mary de' Medici, and Concino Concini, while the son of
+the Balafre, the Duke of Mayenne, and all their adherents were making
+common cause with the Huguenots. What better example had been seen
+before, even in that country of pantomimic changes, of the effrontery
+with which Religion was made the strumpet of Political Ambition?
+
+All that day and the next Paris was rife with rumours that there was to
+be a general massacre of the Huguenots to seal the new-born friendship of
+a Conde with a Medici. France was to renounce all her old alliances and
+publicly to enter into treaties offensive and defensive with Spain. A
+league like that of Bayonne made by the former Medicean Queen-Regent of
+France was now, at Villeroy's instigation, to be signed by Mary de'
+Medici. Meantime, Marshal de la Chatre, an honest soldier and fervent
+Papist, seventy-three years of age, ignorant of the language, the
+geography, the politics of the country to which he was sent, and knowing
+the road thither about as well, according to Aerssens, who was requested
+to give him a little preliminary instruction, as he did the road to
+India, was to co-operate with Barneveld and Maurice of Nassau in the
+enterprise against the duchies.
+
+These were the cheerful circumstances amid which the first step in the
+dead Henry's grand design against the House of Austria and in support of
+Protestantism in half Europe and of religious equality throughout
+Christendom, was now to be ventured.
+
+Cornelis van der Myle took leave of the Queen on terminating his brief
+special embassy, and was fain to content himself with languid assurances
+from that corpulent Tuscan dame of her cordial friendship for the United
+Provinces. Villeroy repeated that the contingent to be sent was furnished
+out of pure love to the Netherlands, the present government being in no
+wise bound by the late king's promises. He evaded the proposition of the
+States for renewing the treaty of close alliance by saying that he was
+then negotiating with the British government on the subject, who insisted
+as a preliminary step on the repayment of the third part of the sums
+advanced to the States by the late king.
+
+He exchanged affectionate farewell greetings and good wishes with Jeannin
+and with the dropsical Duke of Mayenne, who was brought in his chair to
+his old fellow Leaguer's apartments at the moment of the Ambassador's
+parting interview.
+
+There was abundant supply of smooth words, in the plentiful lack of any
+substantial nutriment, from the representatives of each busy faction into
+which the Medicean court was divided. Even Epernon tried to say a
+gracious word to the retiring envoy, assuring him that he would do as
+much for the cause as a good Frenchman and lover of his fatherland could
+do. He added, in rather a surly way, that he knew very well how foully he
+had been described to the States, but that the devil was not as black as
+he was painted. It was necessary, he said, to take care of one's own
+house first of all, and he knew very well that the States and all prudent
+persons would do the same thing.
+
+     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+     And now the knife of another priest-led fanatic
+     As with his own people, keeping no back-door open
+     At a blow decapitated France
+     Conclusive victory for the allies seemed as predestined
+     Epernon, the true murderer of Henry
+     Father Cotton, who was only too ready to betray the secrets
+     Great war of religion and politics was postponed
+     Jesuit Mariana--justifying the killing of excommunicated kings
+     No man pretended to think of the State
+     Practised successfully the talent of silence
+     Queen is entirely in the hands of Spain and the priests
+     Religion was made the strumpet of Political Ambition
+     Smooth words, in the plentiful lack of any substantial
+     Stroke of a broken table knife sharpened on a carriage wheel
+     The assassin, tortured and torn by four horses
+     They have killed him, 'e ammazato,' cried Concini
+     Things he could tell which are too odious and dreadful
+     Uncouple the dogs and let them run
+     Vows of an eternal friendship of several weeks' duration
+     What could save the House of Austria, the cause of Papacy
+     Wrath of the Jesuits at this exercise of legal authority
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND
+
+WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR
+
+By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+Life and Death of John of Barneveld, v4, 1610-12
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+   Interviews between the Dutch Commissioners and King James--Prince
+   Maurice takes command of the Troops--Surrender of Julich--Matthias
+   crowned King of Bohemia--Death of Rudolph--James's Dream of a
+   Spanish Marriage--Appointment of Vorstius in place of Arminius at
+   Leyden--Interview between Maurice and Winwood--Increased Bitterness
+   between Barneveld and Maurice--Projects of Spanish Marriages in
+   France.
+
+It is refreshing to escape from the atmosphere of self-seeking faction,
+feverish intrigue, and murderous stratagem in which unhappy France was
+stifling into the colder and calmer regions of Netherland policy.
+
+No sooner had the tidings of Henry's murder reached the States than they
+felt that an immense responsibility had fallen on their shoulders. It is
+to the eternal honour of the Republic, of Barneveld, who directed her
+councils, and of Prince Maurice, who wielded her sword, that she was
+equal to the task imposed upon her.
+
+There were open bets on the Exchange in Antwerp, after the death of
+Henry, that Maurice would likewise be killed within the month. Nothing
+seemed more probable, and the States implored the Stadholder to take
+special heed to himself. But this was a kind of caution which the Prince
+was not wont to regard. Nor was there faltering, distraction, cowardice,
+or parsimony in Republican councils.
+
+We have heard the strong words of encouragement and sympathy addressed by
+the Advocate's instructions to the Queen-Regent and the leading statesmen
+of France. We have seen their effects in that lingering sentiment of
+shame which prevented the Spanish stipendiaries who governed the kingdom
+from throwing down the mask as cynically as they were at first inclined
+to do.
+
+Not less manful and statesmanlike was the language held to the King of
+Great Britain and his ministers by the Advocate's directions. The news of
+the assassination reached the special ambassadors in London at three
+o'clock of Monday, the 17th May. James returned to Whitehall from a
+hunting expedition on the 21st, and immediately signified his intention
+of celebrating the occasion by inviting the high commissioners of the
+States to a banquet and festival at the palace.
+
+Meantime they were instructed by Barneveld to communicate the results of
+the special embassy of the States to the late king according to the
+report just delivered to the Assembly. Thus James was to be informed of
+the common resolution and engagement then taken to support the cause of
+the princes. He was now seriously and explicitly to be summoned to assist
+the princes not only with the stipulated 4000 men, but with a much
+greater force, proportionate to the demands for the security and welfare
+of Christendom, endangered by this extraordinary event. He was assured
+that the States would exert themselves to the full measure of their
+ability to fortify and maintain the high interests of France, of the
+possessory princes, and of Christendom, so that the hopes of the
+perpetrators of the foul deed would be confounded.
+
+"They hold this to be the occasion," said the envoys, "to show to all the
+world that it is within your power to rescue the affairs of France,
+Germany, and of the United Provinces from the claws of those who imagine
+for themselves universal monarchy."
+
+They concluded by requesting the King to come to "a resolution on this
+affair royally, liberally, and promptly, in order to take advantage of
+the time, and not to allow the adversary to fortify himself in his
+position"; and they pledged the States-General to stand by and second him
+with all their power.
+
+The commissioners, having read this letter to Lord Salisbury before
+communicating it to the King, did not find the Lord Treasurer very prompt
+or sympathetic in his reply. There had evidently been much jealousy at
+the English court of the confidential and intimate relations recently
+established with Henry, to which allusions were made in the documents
+read at the present conference. Cecil, while expressing satisfaction in
+formal terms at the friendly language of the States, and confidence in
+the sincerity of their friendship for his sovereign, intimated very
+plainly that more had passed between the late king and the authorities of
+the Republic than had been revealed by either party to the King of Great
+Britain, or than could be understood from the letters and papers now
+communicated. He desired further information from the commissioners,
+especially in regard to those articles of their instructions which
+referred to a general rupture. They professed inability to give more
+explanations than were contained in the documents themselves. If
+suspicion was felt, they said, that the French King had been proposing
+anything in regard to a general rupture, either on account of the retreat
+of Conde, the affair of Savoy, or anything else, they would reply that
+the ambassadors in France had been instructed to decline committing the
+States until after full communication and advice and ripe deliberation
+with his British Majesty and council, as well as the Assembly of the
+States-General; and it had been the intention of the late king to have
+conferred once more and very confidentially with Prince Maurice and Count
+Lewis William before coming to a decisive resolution.
+
+It was very obvious however to the commissioners that their statement
+gave no thorough satisfaction, and that grave suspicions remained of
+something important kept back by them. Cecil's manner was constrained and
+cold, and certainly there were no evidences of profound sorrow at the
+English court for the death of Henry.
+
+"The King of France," said the High Treasurer, "meant to make a
+master-stroke--a coup de maistre--but he who would have all may easily
+lose all. Such projects as these should not have been formed or taken in
+hand without previous communication with his Majesty of Great Britain."
+
+All arguments on the part of the ambassadors to induce the Lord Treasurer
+or other members of the government to enlarge the succour intended for
+the Cleve affair were fruitless. The English troops regularly employed in
+the States' service might be made use of with the forces sent by the
+Republic itself. More assistance than this it was idle to expect, unless
+after a satisfactory arrangement with the present regency of France. The
+proposition, too, of the States for a close and general alliance was
+coldly repulsed. "No resolution can be taken as to that," said Cecil;
+"the death of the French king has very much altered such matters."
+
+At a little later hour on the same day the commissioners, according to
+previous invitation, dined with the King.
+
+No one sat at the table but his Majesty and themselves, and they all kept
+their hats on their heads. The King was hospitable, gracious, discursive,
+loquacious, very theological.
+
+He expressed regret for the death of the King of France, and said that
+the pernicious doctrine out of which such vile crimes grew must be
+uprooted. He asked many questions in regard to the United Netherlands,
+enquiring especially as to the late commotions at Utrecht, and the
+conduct of Prince Maurice on that occasion. He praised the resolute
+conduct of the States-General in suppressing those tumults with force,
+adding, however, that they should have proceeded with greater rigour
+against the ringleaders of the riot. He warmly recommended the Union of
+the Provinces.
+
+He then led the conversation to the religious controversies in the
+Netherlands, and in reply to his enquiries was informed that the points
+in dispute related to predestination and its consequences.
+
+"I have studied that subject," said James, "as well as anybody, and have
+come to the conclusion that nothing certain can be laid down in regard to
+it. I have myself not always been of one mind about it, but I will bet
+that my opinion is the best of any, although I would not hang my
+salvation upon it. My Lords the States would do well to order their
+doctors and teachers to be silent on this topic. I have hardly ventured,
+moreover, to touch upon the matter of justification in my own writings,
+because that also seemed to hang upon predestination."
+
+Thus having spoken with the air of a man who had left nothing further to
+be said on predestination or justification, the King rose, took off his
+hat, and drank a bumper to the health of the States-General and his
+Excellency Prince Maurice, and success to the affair of Cleve.
+
+After dinner there was a parting interview in the gallery. The King,
+attended by many privy councillors and high functionaries of state, bade
+the commissioners a cordial farewell, and, in order to show his
+consideration for their government, performed the ceremony of knighthood
+upon them, as was his custom in regard to the ambassadors of Venice. The
+sword being presented to him by the Lord Chamberlain, James touched each
+of the envoys on the shoulder as he dismissed him. "Out of respect to My
+Lords the States," said they in their report, "we felt compelled to allow
+ourselves to be burthened with this honour."
+
+Thus it became obvious to the States-General that there was but little to
+hope for from Great Britain or France. France, governed by Concini and by
+Spain, was sure to do her best to traverse the designs of the Republic,
+and, while perfunctorily and grudgingly complying with the letter of the
+Hall treaty, was secretly neutralizing by intrigue the slender military
+aid which de la Chatre was to bring to Prince Maurice. The close alliance
+of France and Protestantism had melted into air. On the other hand the
+new Catholic League sprang into full luxuriance out of the grave of
+Henry, and both Spain and the Pope gave their hearty adhesion to the
+combinations of Maximilian of Bavaria, now that the mighty designs of the
+French king were buried with him. The Duke of Savoy, caught in the trap
+of his own devising, was fain to send his son to sue to Spain for pardon
+for the family upon his knees, and expiated by draining a deep cup of
+humiliation his ambitious designs upon the Milanese and the matrimonial
+alliance with France. Venice recoiled in horror from the position she
+found herself in as soon as the glamour of Henry's seductive policy was
+dispelled, while James of Great Britain, rubbing his hands with great
+delight at the disappearance from the world of the man he so admired,
+bewailed, and hated, had no comfort to impart to the States-General thus
+left in virtual isolation. The barren burthen of knighthood and a sermon
+on predestination were all he could bestow upon the high commissioners in
+place of the alliance which he eluded, and the military assistance which
+he point-blank refused. The possessory princes, in whose cause the sword
+was drawn, were too quarrelsome and too fainthearted to serve for much
+else than an incumbrance either in the cabinet or the field.
+
+And the States-General were equal to the immense responsibility.
+Steadily, promptly, and sagaciously they confronted the wrath, the
+policy, and the power of the Empire, of Spain, and of the Pope. Had the
+Republic not existed, nothing could have prevented that debateable and
+most important territory from becoming provinces of Spain, whose power
+thus dilated to gigantic proportions in the very face of England would
+have been more menacing than in the days of the Armada. Had the Republic
+faltered, she would have soon ceased to exist. But the Republic did not
+falter.
+
+On the 13th July, Prince Maurice took command of the States' forces,
+13,000 foot and 3000 horse, with thirty pieces of cannon, assembled at
+Schenkenschans. The July English and French regiments in the regular
+service of the United Provinces were included in these armies, but there
+were no additions to them: "The States did seven times as much,"
+Barneveld justly averred, "as they had stipulated to do." Maurice, moving
+with the precision and promptness which always marked his military
+operations, marched straight upon Julich, and laid siege to that
+important fortress. The Archdukes at Brussels, determined to keep out of
+the fray as long as possible, offered no opposition to the passage of his
+supplies up the Rhine, which might have been seriously impeded by them at
+Rheinberg. The details of the siege, as of all the Prince's sieges,
+possess no more interest to the general reader than the working out of a
+geometrical problem. He was incapable of a flaw in his calculations, but
+it was impossible for him quite to complete the demonstration before the
+arrival of de la Chatre. Maurice received with courtesy the Marshal, who
+arrived on the 18th August, at the head of his contingent of 8000 foot
+and a few squadrons of cavalry, and there was great show of harmony
+between them. For any practical purposes, de la Chatre might as well have
+remained in France. For political ends his absence would have been
+preferable to his presence.
+
+Maurice would have rejoiced, had the Marshal blundered longer along the
+road to the debateable land than he had done. He had almost brought
+Julich to reduction. A fortnight later the place surrendered. The terms
+granted by the conqueror were equitable. No change was to be made in the
+liberty of Roman Catholic worship, nor in the city magistracy. The
+citadel and its contents were to be handed over to the Princes of
+Brandenburg and Neuburg. Archduke Leopold and his adherents departed to
+Prague, to carry out as he best could his farther designs upon the crown
+of Bohemia, this first portion of them having so lamentably failed, and
+Sergeant-Major Frederick Pithan, of the regiment of Count Ernest Casimir
+of Nassau, was appointed governor of Julich in the interest of the
+possessory princes.
+
+Thus without the loss of a single life, the Republic, guided by her
+consummate statesman and unrivalled general, had gained an immense
+victory, had installed the Protestant princes in the full possession of
+those splendid and important provinces, and had dictated her decrees on
+German soil to the Emperor of Germany, and had towed, as it were, Great
+Britain and France along in her wake, instead of humbly following those
+powers, and had accomplished all that she had ever proposed to do, even
+in alliance with them both.
+
+The King of England considered that quite enough had been done, and was
+in great haste to patch up a reconciliation. He thought his ambassador
+would soon "have as good occasion to employ his tongue and his pen as
+General Cecil and his soldiers have done their swords and their
+mattocks."
+
+He had no sympathy with the cause of Protestantism, and steadily refused
+to comprehend the meaning of the great movements in the duchies. "I only
+wish that I may handsomely wind myself out of this quarrel, where the
+principal parties do so little for themselves," he said.
+
+De la Chatre returned with his troops to France within a fortnight after
+his arrival on the scene. A mild proposition made by the French
+government through the Marshal, that the provinces should be held in
+seguestration by France until a decision as to the true sovereignty could
+be reached, was promptly declined. Maurice of Nassau had hardly gained so
+signal a triumph for the Republic and for the Protestant cause only to
+hand it over to Concini and Villeroy for the benefit of Spain. Julich was
+thought safer in the keeping of Sergeant Pithan.
+
+By the end of September the States' troops had returned to their own
+country.
+
+Thus the Republic, with eminent success, had accomplished a brief and
+brilliant campaign, but no statesman could suppose that the result was
+more than a temporary one. These coveted provinces, most valuable in
+themselves and from their important position, would probably not be
+suffered peacefully to remain very long under the protection of the
+heretic States-General and in the 'Condominium' of two Protestant
+princes. There was fear among the Imperialists, Catholics, and Spaniards,
+lest the baleful constellation of the Seven Provinces might be increased
+by an eighth star. And this was a project not to be tolerated. It was
+much already that the upstart confederacy had defied Pope, Emperor, and
+King, as it were, on their own domains, had dictated arrangements in
+Germany directly in the teeth of its emperor, using France as her
+subordinate, and compelling the British king to acquiesce in what he most
+hated.
+
+But it was not merely to surprise Julich, and to get a foothold in the
+duchies, that Leopold had gone forth on his adventure. His campaign, as
+already intimated, was part of a wide scheme in which he had persuaded
+his emperor-cousin to acquiesce. Poor Rudolph had been at last goaded
+into a feeble attempt at revolt against his three brothers and his cousin
+Ferdinand. Peace-loving, inert, fond of his dinner, fonder of his
+magnificent collections of gems and intagli, liking to look out of window
+at his splendid collection of horses, he was willing to pass a quiet
+life, afar from the din of battles and the turmoil of affairs. As he
+happened to be emperor of half Europe, these harmless tastes could not
+well be indulged. Moon-faced and fat, silent and slow, he was not
+imperial of aspect on canvas or coin, even when his brows were decorated
+with the conventional laurel wreath. He had been stripped of his
+authority and all but discrowned by his more bustling brothers Matthias
+and Max, while the sombre figure of Styrian Ferdinand, pupil of the
+Jesuits, and passionate admirer of Philip II., stood ever in the
+background, casting a prophetic shadow over the throne and over Germany.
+
+The brothers were endeavouring to persuade Rudolph that he would find
+more comfort in Innsbruck than in Prague; that he required repose after
+the strenuous labours of government. They told him, too, that it would be
+wise to confer the royal crown of Bohemia upon Matthias, lest, being
+elective and also an electorate, the crown and vote of that country might
+pass out of the family, and so both Bohemia and the Empire be lost to the
+Habsburgs. The kingdom being thus secured to Matthias and his heirs, the
+next step, of course, was to proclaim him King of the Romans. Otherwise
+there would be great danger and detriment to Hungary, and other
+hereditary states of that conglomerate and anonymous monarchy which owned
+the sway of the great Habsburg family.
+
+The unhappy emperor was much piqued. He had been deprived by his brother
+of Hungary, Moravia, and Austria, while Matthias was now at Prague with
+an army, ostensibly to obtain ratification of the peace with Turkey, but
+in reality to force the solemn transfer of those realms and extort the
+promise of Bohemia. Could there be a better illustration of the
+absurdities of such a system of Imperialism?
+
+And now poor Rudolph was to be turned out of the Hradschin, and sent
+packing with or without his collections to the Tyrol.
+
+The bellicose bishop of Strassburg and Passau, brother of Ferdinand, had
+little difficulty in persuading the downtrodden man to rise to vengeance.
+It had been secretly agreed between the two that Leopold, at the head of
+a considerable army of mercenaries which he had contrived to levy, should
+dart into Julich as the Emperor's representative, seize the debateable
+duchies, and hold them in sequestration until the Emperor should decide
+to whom they belonged, and, then, rushing back to Bohemia, should
+annihilate Matthias, seize Prague, and deliver Rudolph from bondage. It
+was further agreed that Leopold, in requital of these services, should
+receive the crown of Bohemia, be elected King of the Romans, and declared
+heir to the Emperor, so far as Rudolph could make him his heir.
+
+The first point in the program he had only in part accomplished. He had
+taken Julich, proclaimed the intentions of the Emperor, and then been
+driven out of his strong position by the wise policy of the States under
+the guidance of Barneveld and by the consummate strategy of Maurice. It
+will be seen therefore that the Republic was playing a world's game at
+this moment, and doing it with skill and courage. On the issue of the
+conflict which had been begun and was to be long protracted in the
+duchies, and to spread over nearly all Christendom besides, would depend
+the existence of the United Netherlands and the fate of Protestantism.
+
+The discomfited Leopold swept back at the head of his mercenaries, 9000
+foot and 3000 horse, through Alsace and along the Danube to Linz and so
+to Prague, marauding, harrying, and black-mailing the country as he went.
+He entered the city on the 15th of February 1611, fighting his way
+through crowds of exasperated burghers. Sitting in full harness on
+horseback in the great square before the cathedral, the warlike bishop
+compelled the population to make oath to him as the Emperor's commissary.
+The street fighting went on however day by day, poor Rudolph meantime
+cowering in the Hradschin. On the third day, Leopold, driven out of the
+town, took up a position on the heights, from which he commanded it with
+his artillery. Then came a feeble voice from the Hradschin, telling all
+men that these Passau marauders and their episcopal chief were there by
+the Emperor's orders. The triune city--the old, the new, and the Jew--was
+bidden to send deputies to the palace and accept the Imperial decrees. No
+deputies came at the bidding. The Bohemians, especially the Praguers,
+being in great majority Protestants knew very well that Leopold was
+fighting the cause of the Papacy and Spain in Bohemia as well as in the
+duchies.
+
+And now Matthias appeared upon the scene. The Estates had already been in
+communication with him, better hopes, for the time at least, being
+entertained from him than from the flaccid Rudolph. Moreover a kind of
+compromise had been made in the autumn between Matthias and the Emperor
+after the defeat of Leopold in the duchies. The real king had fallen at
+the feet of the nominal one by proxy of his brother Maximilian. Seven
+thousand men of the army of Matthias now came before Prague under command
+of Colonitz. The Passauers, receiving three months pay from the Emperor,
+marched quietly off. Leopold disappeared for the time. His chancellor and
+counsellor in the duchies, Francis Teynagel, a Geldrian noble, taken
+prisoner and put to the torture, revealed the little plot of the Emperor
+in favour of the Bishop, and it was believed that the Pope, the King of
+Spain, and Maximilian of Bavaria were friendly to the scheme. This was
+probable, for Leopold at last made no mystery of his resolve to fight
+Protestantism to the death, and to hold the duchies, if he could, for the
+cause of Rome and Austria.
+
+Both Rudolph and Matthias had committed themselves to the toleration of
+the Reformed religion. The famous "Majesty-Letter," freshly granted by
+the Emperor (1609), and the Compromise between the Catholic and
+Protestant Estates had become the law of the land. Those of the Bohemian
+confession, a creed commingled of Hussism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism,
+had obtained toleration. In a country where nine-tenths of the population
+were Protestants it was permitted to Protestants to build churches and to
+worship God in them unmolested. But these privileges had been extorted by
+force, and there was a sullen, dogged determination which might be easily
+guessed at to revoke them should it ever become possible. The House of
+Austria, reigning in Spain, Italy, and Germany, was bound by the very law
+of their being to the Roman religion. Toleration of other worship
+signified in their eyes both a defeat and a crime.
+
+Thus the great conflict, to be afterwards known as the Thirty Years' War,
+had in reality begun already, and the Netherlands, in spite of the truce,
+were half unconsciously taking a leading part in it. The odds at that
+moment in Germany seemed desperately against the House of Austria, so
+deep and wide was the abyss between throne and subjects which religious
+difference had created. But the reserved power in Spain, Italy, and
+Southern Germany was sure enough to make itself felt sooner or later on
+the Catholic side.
+
+Meantime the Estates of Bohemia knew well enough that the Imperial house
+was bent on destroying the elective principle of the Empire, and on
+keeping the crown of Bohemia in perpetuity. They had also discovered that
+Bishop-Archduke Leopold had been selected by Rudolph as chief of the
+reactionary movement against Protestantism. They could not know at that
+moment whether his plans were likely to prove fantastic or dangerous.
+
+So Matthias came to Prague at the invitation of the Estates, entering the
+city with all the airs of a conqueror. Rudolph received his brother with
+enforced politeness, and invited him to reside in the Hradschin. This
+proposal was declined by Matthias, who sent a colonel however, with six
+pieces of artillery, to guard and occupy that palace. The Passau
+prisoners were pardoned and released, and there was a general
+reconciliation. A month later, Matthias went in pomp to the chapel of the
+holy Wenceslaus, that beautiful and barbarous piece of mediaeval,
+Sclavonic architecture, with its sombre arches, and its walls encrusted
+with huge precious stones. The Estates of Bohemia, arrayed in splendid
+Zchech costume, and kneeling on the pavement, were asked whether they
+accepted Matthias, King of Hungary, as their lawful king. Thrice they
+answered Aye. Cardinal Dietrichstein then put the historic crown of St.
+Wenceslaus on the King's head, and Matthias swore to maintain the laws
+and privileges of Bohemia, including the recent charters granting liberty
+of religion to Protestants. Thus there was temporary, if hollow, truce
+between the religious parties, and a sham reconciliation between the
+Emperor and his brethren. The forlorn Rudolph moped away the few months
+of life left to him in the Hradschin, and died 1612 soon after the new
+year. The House of Austria had not been divided, Matthias succeeded his
+brother, Leopold's visions melted into air, and it was for the future to
+reveal whether the Majesty-Letter and the Compromise had been written on
+very durable material.
+
+And while such was the condition of affairs in Germany immediately
+following the Cleve and Julich campaign, the relations of the Republic
+both to England and France were become rapidly more dangerous than they
+ever had been. It was a severe task for Barneveld, and enough to overtax
+the energies of any statesman, to maintain his hold on two such slippery
+governments as both had become since the death of their great monarchs.
+It had been an easier task for William the Silent to steer his course,
+notwithstanding all the perversities, short-comings, brow-beatings, and
+inconsistencies that he had been obliged to endure from Elizabeth and
+Henry. Genius, however capricious and erratic at times, has at least
+vision, and it needed no elaborate arguments to prove to both those
+sovereigns that the severance of their policy from that of the
+Netherlands was impossible without ruin to the Republic and incalculable
+danger themselves.
+
+But now France and England were both tending towards Spain through a
+stupidity on the part of their rulers such as the gods are said to
+contend against in vain. Barneveld was not a god nor a hero, but a
+courageous and wide-seeing statesman, and he did his best. Obliged by his
+position to affect admiration, or at least respect, where no emotion but
+contempt was possible, his daily bread was bitter enough. It was
+absolutely necessary to humour those whom knew to be traversing his
+policy and desiring his ruin, for there was no other way to serve his
+country and save it from impending danger. So long as he was faithfully
+served by his subordinates, and not betrayed by those to whom he gave his
+heart, he could confront external enemies and mould the policy of
+wavering allies.
+
+Few things in history are more pitiable than the position of James in
+regard to Spain. For seven long years he was as one entranced, the slave
+to one idea, a Spanish marriage for his son. It was in vain that his
+counsellors argued, Parliament protested, allies implored. Parliament was
+told that a royal family matter regarded himself alone, and that
+interference on their part was an impertinence. Parliament's duty was a
+simple one, to give him advice if he asked it, and money when he required
+it, without asking for reasons. It was already a great concession that he
+should ask for it in person. They had nothing to do with his affairs nor
+with general politics. The mystery of government was a science beyond
+their reach, and with which they were not to meddle. "Ne sutor ultra
+crepidam," said the pedant.
+
+Upon that one point his policy was made to turn. Spain held him in the
+hollow of her hand. The Infanta, with two million crowns in dowry, was
+promised, withheld, brought forward again like a puppet to please or
+irritate a froward child. Gondemar, the Spanish ambassador, held him
+spellbound. Did he falter in his opposition to the States--did he cease
+to goad them for their policy in the duchies--did he express sympathy
+with Bohemian Protestantism, or, as time went on, did he dare to lift a
+finger or touch his pocket in behalf of his daughter and the unlucky
+Elector-Palatine; did he, in short, move a step in the road which England
+had ever trod and was bound to tread--the road of determined resistance
+to Spanish ambition--instantaneously the Infanta withheld, and James was
+on his knees again. A few years later, when the great Raleigh returned
+from his trans-Alantic expedition, Gondemar fiercely denounced him to the
+King as the worst enemy of Spain. The usual threat was made, the wand was
+waved, and the noblest head in England fell upon the block, in pursuance
+of an obsolete sentence fourteen years old.
+
+It is necessary to hold fast this single clue to the crooked and amazing
+entanglements of the policy of James. The insolence, the meanness, and
+the prevarications of this royal toad-eater are only thus explained.
+
+Yet Philip III. declared on his death-bed that he had never had a serious
+intention of bestowing his daughter on the Prince.
+
+The vanity and the hatreds of theology furnished the chief additional
+material in the policy of James towards the Provinces. The diplomacy of
+his reign so far as the Republic was concerned is often a mere mass of
+controversial divinity, and gloomy enough of its kind. Exactly at this
+moment Conrad Vorstius had been called by the University of Leyden to the
+professorship vacant by the death of Arminius, and the wrath of Peter
+Plancius and the whole orthodox party knew no bounds. Born in Cologne,
+Vorstius had been a lecturer in Geneva, and beloved by Beza. He had
+written a book against the Jesuit Belarmino, which he had dedicated to
+the States-General. But he was now accused of Arminianism, Socianism,
+Pelagianism, Atheism--one knew not what. He defended himself in writing
+against these various charges, and declared himself a believer in the
+Trinity, in the Divinity of Christ, in the Atonement. But he had written
+a book on the Nature of God, and the wrath of Gomarus and Plancius and
+Bogerman was as nothing to the ire of James when that treatise was one
+day handed to him on returning from hunting. He had scarcely looked into
+it before he was horror-struck, and instantly wrote to Sir Ralph Winwood,
+his ambassador at the Hague, ordering him to insist that this blasphemous
+monster should at once be removed from the country. Who but James knew
+anything of the Nature of God, for had he not written a work in Latin
+explaining it all, so that humbler beings might read and be instructed.
+
+Sir Ralph accordingly delivered a long sermon to the States on the brief
+supplied by his Majesty, told them that to have Vorstius as successor to
+Arminius was to fall out of the frying-pan into the fire, and handed them
+a "catalogue" prepared by the King of the blasphemies, heresies, and
+atheisms of the Professor. "Notwithstanding that the man in full assembly
+of the States of Holland," said the Ambassador with headlong and confused
+rhetoric, "had found the means to palliate and plaster the dung of his
+heresies, and thus to dazzle the eyes of good people," yet it was
+necessary to protest most vigorously against such an appointment, and to
+advise that "his works should be publicly burned in the open places of
+all the cities."
+
+The Professor never was admitted to perform his functions of theology,
+but he remained at Leyden, so Winwood complained, "honoured, recognized
+as a singularity and ornament to the Academy in place of the late Joseph
+Scaliger."--"The friendship of the King and the heresy of Vorstius are
+quite incompatible," said the Envoy.
+
+Meantime the Advocate, much distressed at the animosity of England
+bursting forth so violently on occasion of the appointment of a divinity
+professor at Leyden, and at the very instant too when all the acuteness
+of his intellect was taxed to keep on good or even safe terms with
+France, did his best to stem these opposing currents. His private letters
+to his old and confidential friend, Noel de Carom, States' ambassador in
+London, reveal the perplexities of his soul and the upright patriotism by
+which he was guided in these gathering storms. And this correspondence,
+as well as that maintained by him at a little later period with the
+successor of Aerssens at Paris, will be seen subsequently to have had a
+direct and most important bearing upon the policy of the Republic and
+upon his own fate. It is necessary therefore that the reader, interested
+in these complicated affairs which were soon to bring on a sanguinary war
+on a scale even vaster than the one which had been temporarily suspended,
+should give close attention to papers never before exhumed from the musty
+sepulchre of national archives, although constantly alluded to in the
+records of important state trials. It is strange enough to observe the
+apparent triviality of the circumstances out of which gravest events seem
+to follow. But the circumstances were in reality threads of iron which
+led down to the very foundations of the earth.
+
+"I wish to know," wrote the Advocate to Caron, "from whom the Archbishop
+of Canterbury received the advices concerning Vorstius in order to find
+out what is meant by all this."
+
+It will be remembered that Whitgift was of opinion that James was
+directly inspired by the Holy Ghost, and that as he affected to deem him
+the anointed High-priest of England, it was natural that he should
+encourage the King in his claims to be 'Pontifex maximus' for the
+Netherlands likewise.
+
+"We are busy here," continued Barneveld, "in examining all things for the
+best interests of the country and the churches. I find the nobles and
+cities here well resolved in this regard, although there be some
+disagreements 'in modo.' Vorstius, having been for many years professor
+and minister of theology at Steinfurt, having manifested his learning in
+many books written against the Jesuits, and proved himself pure and
+moderate in doctrine, has been called to the vacant professorship at
+Leyden. This appointment is now countermined by various means. We are
+doing our best to arrange everything for the highest good of the
+Provinces and the churches. Believe this and believe nothing else. Pay
+heed to no other information. Remember what took place in Flanders,
+events so well known to you. It is not for me to pass judgment in these
+matters. Do you, too, suspend your judgment."
+
+The Advocate's allusion was to the memorable course of affairs in
+Flanders at an epoch when many of the most inflammatory preachers and
+politicians of the Reformed religion, men who refused to employ a footman
+or a housemaid not certified to be thoroughly orthodox, subsequently
+after much sedition and disturbance went over to Spain and the Catholic
+religion.
+
+A few weeks later Barneveld sent copies to Caron of the latest harangues
+of Winwood in the Assembly and the reply of My Lords on the Vorstian
+business; that is to say, the freshest dialogue on predestination between
+the King and the Advocate. For as James always dictated word for word the
+orations of his envoy, so had their Mightinesses at this period no head
+and no mouthpiece save Barneveld alone. Nothing could be drearier than
+these controversies, and the reader shall be spared as much, as possible
+the infliction of reading them. It will be necessary, however, for the
+proper understanding of subsequent events that he should be familiar with
+portions of the Advocate's confidential letters.
+
+"Sound well the gentleman you wot of," said Barneveld, "and other
+personages as to the conclusive opinions over there. The course of the
+propositions does not harmonize with what I have myself heard out of the
+King's mouth at other times, nor with the reports of former ambassadors.
+I cannot well understand that the King should, with such preciseness,
+condemn all other opinions save those of Calvin and Beza. It is important
+to the service of this country that one should know the final intention
+of his Majesty."
+
+And this was the misery of the position. For it was soon to appear that
+the King's definite and final intentions, varied from day to day. It was
+almost humorous to find him at that moment condemning all opinions but
+those of Calvin and Beza in Holland, while his course to the strictest
+confessors of that creed in England was so ferocious.
+
+But Vorstius was a rival author to his Majesty on subjects treated of by
+both, so that literary spite of the most venomous kind, stirred into
+theological hatred, was making a dangerous mixture. Had a man with the
+soul and sense of the Advocate sat on the throne which James was
+regarding at that moment as a professor's chair, the world's history
+would have been changed.
+
+"I fear," continued Barneveld, "that some of our own precisians have been
+spinning this coil for us over there, and if the civil authority can be
+thus countermined, things will go as in Flanders in your time. Pray
+continue to be observant, discreet, and moderate."
+
+The Advocate continued to use his best efforts to smooth the rising
+waves. He humoured and even flattered the King, although perpetually
+denounced by Winwood in his letters to his sovereign as tyrannical,
+over-bearing, malignant, and treacherous. He did his best to counsel
+moderation and mutual toleration, for he felt that these needless
+theological disputes about an abstract and insoluble problem of casuistry
+were digging an abyss in which the Republic might be swallowed up for
+ever. If ever man worked steadily with the best lights of experience and
+inborn sagacity for the good of his country and in defence of a
+constitutional government, horribly defective certainly, but the only
+legal one, and on the whole a more liberal polity than any then existing,
+it was Barneveld. Courageously, steadily, but most patiently, he stood
+upon that position so vital and daily so madly assailed; the defence of
+the civil authority against the priesthood. He felt instinctively and
+keenly that where any portion of the subjects or citizens of a country
+can escape from the control of government and obey other head than the
+lawful sovereignty, whether monarchical or republican, social disorder
+and anarchy must be ever impending.
+
+"We are still tortured by ecclesiastical disputes," he wrote a few weeks
+later to Caron. "Besides many libels which have appeared in print, the
+letters of his Majesty and the harangues of Winwood have been published;
+to what end you who know these things by experience can judge. The truth
+of the matter of Vorstius is that he was legally called in July 1610,
+that he was heard last May before My Lords the States with six preachers
+to oppose him, and in the same month duly accepted and placed in office.
+He has given no public lectures as yet. You will cause this to be known
+on fitting opportunity. Believe and cause to be believed that his
+Majesty's letters and Sir R. Winwood's propositions have been and shall
+be well considered, and that I am working with all my strength to that
+end. You know the constitution of our country, and can explain everything
+for the best. Many pious and intelligent people in this State hold
+themselves assured that his Majesty according to his royal exceeding
+great wisdom, foresight, and affection for the welfare of this land will
+not approve that his letters and Winwood's propositions should be
+scattered by the press among the common people. Believe and cause to be
+believed, to your best ability, that My Lords the States of Holland
+desire to maintain the true Christian, Reformed religion as well in the
+University of Leyden as in all their cities and villages. The only
+dispute is on the high points of predestination and its adjuncts,
+concerning which moderation and a more temperate teaching is furthered by
+some amongst us. Many think that such is the edifying practice in
+England. Pray have the kindness to send me the English Confession of the
+year 1572, with the corrections and alterations up to this year."
+
+But the fires were growing hotter, fanned especially by Flemish
+ministers, a brotherhood of whom Barneveld had an especial distrust, and
+who certainly felt great animosity to him. His moderate counsels were but
+oil to the flames. He was already depicted by zealots and calumniators as
+false to the Reformed creed.
+
+"Be assured and assure others," he wrote again to Caron, "that in the
+matter of religion I am, and by God's grace shall remain, what I ever
+have been. Make the same assurances as to my son-in-law and brother. We
+are not a little amazed that a few extraordinary Puritans, mostly
+Flemings and Frisians, who but a short time ago had neither property nor
+kindred in the country, and have now very little of either, and who have
+given but slender proofs of constancy or service to the fatherland, could
+through pretended zeal gain credit over there against men well proved in
+all respects. We wonder the more because they are endeavouring, in
+ecclesiastical matters at least, to usurp an extraordinary authority,
+against which his Majesty, with very weighty reasons, has so many times
+declared his opinion founded upon God's Word and upon all laws and
+principles of justice."
+
+It was Barneveld's practice on this as on subsequent occasions very
+courteously to confute the King out of his own writings and speeches, and
+by so doing to be unconsciously accumulating an undying hatred against
+himself in the royal breast. Certainly nothing could be easier than to
+show that James, while encouraging in so reckless a manner the
+emancipation of the ministers of an advanced sect in the Reformed Church
+from control of government, and their usurpation of supreme authority
+which had been destroyed in England, was outdoing himself in dogmatism
+and inconsistency. A king-highpriest, who dictated his supreme will to
+bishops and ministers as well as to courts and parliaments, was
+ludicrously employed in a foreign country in enforcing the superiority of
+the Church to the State.
+
+"You will give good assurances," said the Advocate, "upon my word, that
+the conservation of the true Reformed religion is as warmly cherished
+here, especially by me, as at any time during the war."
+
+He next alluded to the charges then considered very grave against certain
+writings of Vorstius, and with equal fairness to his accusers as he had
+been to the Professor gave a pledge that the subject should be examined.
+
+"If the man in question," he said, "be the author, as perhaps falsely
+imputed, of the work 'De Filiatione Christi' or things of that sort, you
+may be sure that he shall have no furtherance here." He complained,
+however, that before proof the cause was much prejudiced by the
+circulation through the press of letters on the subject from important
+personages in England. His own efforts to do justice in the matter were
+traversed by such machinations. If the Professor proved to be guilty of
+publications fairly to be deemed atheistical and blasphemous, he should
+be debarred from his functions, but the outcry from England was doing
+more harm than good.
+
+"The published extract from the letter of the Archbishop," he wrote, "to
+the effect that the King will declare My Lords the States to be his
+enemies if they are not willing to send the man away is doing much harm."
+
+Truly, if it had come to this--that a King of England was to go to war
+with a neighbouring and friendly republic because an obnoxious professor
+of theology was not instantly hurled from a university of which his
+Majesty was not one of the overseers--it was time to look a little
+closely into the functions of governments and the nature of public and
+international law. Not that the sword of James was in reality very likely
+to be unsheathed, but his shriekings and his scribblings, pacific as he
+was himself, were likely to arouse passions which torrents of blood alone
+could satiate.
+
+"The publishing and spreading among the community," continued Barneveld,
+"of M. Winwood's protestations and of many indecent libels are also doing
+much mischief, for the nature of this people does not tolerate such
+things. I hope, however, to obtain the removal according to his Majesty's
+desire. Keep me well informed, and send me word what is thought in
+England by the four divines of the book of Vorstius, 'De Deo,' and of his
+declarations on the points sent here by his Majesty. Let me know, too, if
+there has been any later confession published in England than that of the
+year 1562, and whether the nine points pressed in the year 1595 were
+accepted and published in 1603. If so, pray send them, as they maybe made
+use of in settling our differences here."
+
+Thus it will be seen that the spirit of conciliation, of a calm but
+earnest desire to obtain a firm grasp of the most reasonable relations
+between Church and State through patient study of the phenomena exhibited
+in other countries, were the leading motives of the man. Yet he was
+perpetually denounced in private as an unbeliever, an atheist, a tyrant,
+because he resisted dictation from the clergy within the Provinces and
+from kings outside them.
+
+"It was always held here to be one of the chief infractions of the laws
+and privileges of this country," he said, "that former princes had placed
+themselves in matter of religion in the tutelage of the Pope and the
+Spanish Inquisition, and that they therefore on complaint of their good
+subjects could take no orders on that subject. Therefore it cannot be
+considered strange that we are not willing here to fall into the same
+obloquy. That one should now choose to turn the magistrates, who were
+once so seriously summoned on their conscience and their office to adopt
+the Reformation and to take the matter of religion to heart, into
+ignorants, to deprive them of knowledge, and to cause them to see with
+other eyes than their own, cannot by many be considered right and
+reasonable. 'Intelligenti pauca.'"
+
+   [The interesting letter from which I have given these copious
+   extracts was ordered by its writer to be burned. "Lecta vulcano"
+   was noted at the end of it, as was not unfrequently the case with
+   the Advocate. It never was burned; but, innocent and reasonable as
+   it seems, was made use of by Barneveld's enemies with deadly effect.
+   J.L.M.]
+
+Meantime M. de Refuge, as before stated, was on his way to the Hague, to
+communicate the news of the double marriage. He had fallen sick at
+Rotterdam, and the nature of his instructions and of the message he
+brought remained unknown, save from the previous despatches of Aerssens.
+But reports were rife that he was about to propose new terms of alliance
+to the States, founded on large concessions to the Roman Catholic
+religion. Of course intense jealousy was excited at the English court,
+and calumny plumed her wings for a fresh attack upon the Advocate. Of
+course he was sold to Spain, the Reformed religion was to be trampled out
+in the Provinces, and the Papacy and Holy Inquisition established on its
+ruins. Nothing could be more diametrically the reverse of the fact than
+such hysterical suspicions as to the instructions of the ambassador
+extraordinary from France, and this has already appeared. The Vorstian
+affair too was still in the same phase, the Advocate professing a
+willingness that justice should be done in the matter, while courteously
+but firmly resisting the arrogant pretensions of James to take the matter
+out of the jurisdiction of the States.
+
+"I stand amazed," he said, "at the partisanship and the calumnious
+representations which you tell me of, and cannot imagine what is thought
+nor what is proposed. Should M. de Refuge make any such propositions as
+are feared, believe, and cause his Majesty and his counsellors to
+believe, that they would be of no effect. Make assurances upon my word,
+notwithstanding all advices to the contrary, that such things would be
+flatly refused. If anything is published or proven to the discredit of
+Vorstius, send it to me. Believe that we shall not defend heretics nor
+schismatics against the pure Evangelical doctrine, but one cannot
+conceive here that the knowledge and judicature of the matter belongs
+anywhere else than to My Lords the States of Holland, in whose service he
+has legally been during four months before his Majesty made the least
+difficulty about it. Called hither legally a year before, with the
+knowledge and by the order of his Excellency and the councillors of state
+of Holland, he has been countermined by five or six Flemings and
+Frisians, who, without recognizing the lawful authority of the
+magistrates, have sought assistance in foreign countries--in Germany and
+afterwards in England. Yes, they have been so presumptuous as to
+designate one of their own men for the place. If such a proceeding should
+be attempted in England, I leave it to those whose business it would be
+to deal with it to say what would be done. I hope therefore that one will
+leave the examination and judgment of this matter freely to us, without
+attempting to make us--against the principles of the Reformation and the
+liberties and laws of the land--executors of the decrees of others, as
+the man here wishes to obtrude it upon us."
+
+He alluded to the difficulty in raising the ways and means; saying that
+the quota of Holland, as usual, which was more than half the whole, was
+ready, while other provinces were in arrears. Yet they were protected,
+while Holland was attacked.
+
+"Methinks I am living in a strange world," he said, "when those who have
+received great honour from Holland, and who in their conscience know that
+they alone have conserved the Commonwealth, are now traduced with such
+great calumnies. But God the Lord Almighty is just, and will in His own
+time do chastisement."
+
+The affair of Vorstius dragged its slow length along, and few things are
+more astounding at this epoch than to see such a matter, interesting
+enough certainly to theologians, to the University, and to the rising
+generation of students, made the topic of unceasing and embittered
+diplomatic controversy between two great nations, who had most pressing
+and momentous business on their hands. But it was necessary to humour the
+King, while going to the verge of imprudence in protecting the Professor.
+In March he was heard, three or four hours long, before the Assembly of
+Holland, in answer to various charges made against him, being warned that
+"he stood before the Lord God and before the sovereign authority of the
+States." Although thought by many to have made a powerful defence, he was
+ordered to set it forth in writing, both in Latin and in the vernacular.
+Furthermore it was ordained that he should make a complete refutation of
+all the charges already made or that might be made during the ensuing
+three months against him in speech, book, or letter in England, Germany,
+the Netherlands, or anywhere else. He was allowed one year and a half to
+accomplish this work, and meantime was to reside not in Leyden, nor the
+Hague, but in some other town of Holland, not delivering lectures or
+practising his profession in any way. It might be supposed that
+sufficient work had been thus laid out for the unfortunate doctor of
+divinity without lecturing or preaching. The question of jurisdiction was
+saved. The independence of the civil authority over the extreme
+pretensions of the clergy had been vindicated by the firmness of the
+Advocate. James bad been treated with overflowing demonstrations of
+respect, but his claim to expel a Dutch professor from his chair and
+country by a royal fiat had been signally rebuked. Certainly if the
+Provinces were dependent upon the British king in regard to such a
+matter, it was the merest imbecility for them to affect independence.
+Barneveld had carried his point and served his country strenuously and
+well in this apparently small matter which human folly had dilated into a
+great one. But deep was the wrath treasured against him in consequence in
+clerical and royal minds.
+
+Returning from Wesel after the negotiations, Sir Ralph Winwood had an
+important interview at Arnheim with Prince Maurice, in which they
+confidentially exchanged their opinions in regard to the Advocate, and
+mutually confirmed their suspicions and their jealousies in regard to
+that statesman.
+
+The Ambassador earnestly thanked the Prince in the King's name for his
+"careful and industrious endeavours for the maintenance of the truth of
+religion, lively expressed in prosecuting the cause against Vorstius and
+his adherents."
+
+He then said:
+
+"I am expressly commanded that his Majesty conferring the present
+condition of affairs of this quarter of the world with those
+advertisements he daily receives from his ministers abroad, together with
+the nature and disposition of those men who have in their hands the
+managing of all business in these foreign parts, can make no other
+judgment than this.
+
+"There is a general ligue and confederation complotted far the subversion
+and ruin of religion upon the subsistence whereof his Majesty doth judge
+the main welfare of your realms and of these Provinces solely to consist.
+
+"Therefore his Majesty has given me charge out of the knowledge he has of
+your great worth and sufficiency," continued Winwood, "and the confidence
+he reposes in your faith and affection, freely to treat with you on these
+points, and withal to pray you to deliver your opinion what way would be
+the most compendious and the most assured to contrequarr these complots,
+and to frustrate the malice of these mischievous designs."
+
+The Prince replied by acknowledging the honour the King had vouchsafed to
+do him in holding so gracious an opinion of him, wherein his Majesty
+should never be deceived.
+
+"I concur in judgment with his Majesty," continued the Prince, "that the
+main scope at which these plots and practices do aim, for instance, the
+alliance between France and Spain, is this, to root out religion, and by
+consequence to bring under their yoke all those countries in which
+religion is professed.
+
+"The first attempt," continued the Prince, "is doubtless intended against
+these Provinces. The means to countermine and defeat these projected
+designs I take to be these: the continuance of his Majesty's constant
+resolution for the protection of religion, and then that the King would
+be pleased to procure a general confederation between the kings, princes,
+and commonwealths professing religion, namely, Denmark, Sweden, the
+German princes, the Protestant cantons of Switzerland, and our United
+Provinces.
+
+"Of this confederation, his Majesty must be not only the director, but
+the head and protector.
+
+"Lastly, the Protestants of France should be, if not supported, at least
+relieved from that oppression which the alliance of Spain doth threaten
+upon them. This, I insist," repeated Maurice with great fervour, "is the
+only coupegorge of all plots whatever between France and Spain."
+
+He enlarged at great length on these points, which he considered so
+vital.
+
+"And what appearance can there be," asked Winwood insidiously and
+maliciously, "of this general confederation now that these Provinces,
+which heretofore have been accounted a principal member of the Reformed
+Church, begin to falter in the truth of religion?
+
+"He who solely governs the metropolitan province of Holland," continued
+the Ambassador, with a direct stab in the back at Barneveld, "is reputed
+generally, as your Excellency best knows, to be the only patron of
+Vorstius, and the protector of the schisms of Arminius. And likewise,
+what possibility is there that the Protestants of France can expect
+favour from these Provinces when the same man is known to depend at the
+devotion of France?"
+
+The international, theological, and personal jealousy of the King against
+Holland's Advocate having been thus plainly developed, the Ambassador
+proceeded to pour into the Prince's ear the venom of suspicion, and to
+inflame his jealousy against his great rival. The secret conversation
+showed how deeply laid was the foundation of the political hatred, both
+of James and of Maurice, against the Advocate, and certainly nothing
+could be more preposterous than to imagine the King as the director and
+head of the great Protestant League. We have but lately seen him
+confidentially assuring his minister that his only aim was "to wind
+himself handsomely out of the whole business." Maurice must have found it
+difficult to preserve his gravity when assigning such a part to "Master
+Jacques."
+
+"Although Monsieur Barneveld has cast off all care of religion," said
+Maurice, "and although some towns in Holland, wherein his power doth
+reign, are infected with the like neglect, yet so long as so many good
+towns in Holland stand sound, and all the other provinces of this
+confederacy, the proposition would at the first motion be cheerfully
+accepted.
+
+"I confess I find difficulty in satisfying your second question,"
+continued the Prince, "for I acknowledge that Barneveld is wholly devoted
+to the service of France. During the truce negotiations, when some
+difference arose between him and myself, President Jeannin came to me,
+requiring me in the French king's name to treat Monsieur Barneveld well,
+whom the King had received into his protection. The letters which the
+States' ambassador in France wrote to Barneveld (and to him all
+ambassadors address their despatches of importance), the very autographs
+themselves, he sent back into the hands of Villeroy."
+
+Here the Prince did not scruple to accuse the Advocate of doing the base
+and treacherous trick against Aerssens which he had expressly denied
+doing, and which had been done during his illness, as he solemnly avowed,
+by a subordinate probably for the sake of making mischief.
+
+Maurice then discoursed largely and vehemently of the suspicious
+proceedings of Barneveld, and denounced him as dangerous to the State.
+"When one man who has the conduct of all affairs in his sole power," he
+said, "shall hold underhand intelligence with the ministers of Spain and
+the Archduke, and that without warrant, thereby he may have the means so
+to carry the course of affairs that, do what they will, these Provinces
+must fall or stand at the mercy and discretion of Spain. Therefore some
+good resolutions must be taken in time to hold up this State from a
+sudden downfall, but in this much moderation and discretion must be
+used."
+
+The Prince added that he had invited his cousin Lewis William to appear
+at the Hague at May day, in order to consult as to the proper means to
+preserve the Provinces from confusion under his Majesty's safeguard, and
+with the aid of the Englishmen in the States' service whom Maurice
+pronounced to be "the strength and flower of his army."
+
+Thus the Prince developed his ideas at great length, and accused the
+Advocate behind his back, and without the faintest shadow of proof, of
+base treachery to his friends and of high-treason. Surely Barneveld was
+in danger, and was walking among pitfalls. Most powerful and deadly
+enemies were silently banding themselves together against him. Could he
+long maintain his hold on the slippery heights of power, where he was so
+consciously serving his country, but where he became day by day a mere
+shining mark for calumny and hatred?
+
+The Ambassador then signified to the Prince that he had been instructed
+to carry to him the King's purpose to confer on him the Order of the
+Garter.
+
+"If his Majesty holds me worthy of so great honour," said the Prince, "I
+and my family shall ever remain bound to his service and that of his
+royal posterity.
+
+"That the States should be offended I see no cause, but holding the
+charge I do in their service, I could not accept the honour without first
+acquainting them and receiving their approbation."
+
+Winwood replied that, as the King knew the terms on which the Prince
+lived with the States, he doubted not his Majesty would first notify them
+and say that he honoured the mutual amity between his realms and these
+Provinces by honouring the virtues of their general, whose services, as
+they had been most faithful and affectionate, so had they been
+accompanied with the blessings of happiness and prosperous success.
+
+Thus said Winwood to the King: "Your Majesty may plaster two walls with
+one trowel ('una fidelia duos dealbare parietes'), reverse the designs of
+them who to facilitate their own practices do endeavour to alienate your
+affections from the good of these Provinces, and oblige to your service
+the well-affected people, who know that there is no surety for
+themselves, their wives and children, but under the protection of your
+Majesty's favour. Perhaps, however, the favourers of Vorstius and
+Arminius will buzz into the ears of their associates that your Majesty
+would make a party in these Provinces by maintaining the truth of
+religion and also by gaining unto you the affections of their chief
+commander. But your Majesty will be pleased to pass forth whose worthy
+ends will take their place, which is to honour virtue where you find it,
+and the suspicious surmises of malice and envy in one instant will vanish
+into smoke."
+
+Winwood made no scruple in directly stating to the English government
+that Barneveld's purpose was to "cause a divorce between the King's
+realms and the Provinces, the more easily to precipitate them into the
+arms of Spain." He added that the negotiation with Count Maurice then on
+foot was to be followed, but with much secrecy, on account of the place
+he held in the State.
+
+Soon after the Ambassador's secret conversation with Maurice he had an
+interview with Barneveld. He assured the Advocate that no contentment
+could be given to his Majesty but by the banishment of Vorstius. "If the
+town of Leyden should understand so much," replied Barneveld, "I fear the
+magistrates would retain him still in their town."
+
+"If the town of Leyden should retain Vorstius," answered Winwood, "to
+brave or despight his Majesty, the King has the means, if it pleases him
+to use them, and that without drawing sword, to range them to reason, and
+to make the magistrates on their knees demand his pardon, and I say as
+much of Rotterdam."
+
+Such insolence on the part of an ambassador to the first minister of a
+great republic was hard to bear. Barneveld was not the man to brook it.
+He replied with great indignation. "I was born in liberty," he said with
+rising choler, "I cannot digest this kind of language. The King of Spain
+himself never dared to speak in so high a style."
+
+"I well understand that logic," returned the Ambassador with continued
+insolence. "You hold your argument to be drawn 'a majori ad minus;' but I
+pray you to believe that the King of Great Britain is peer and companion
+to the King of Spain, and that his motto is, 'Nemo me impune lacessit.'"
+
+And so they parted in a mutual rage; Winwood adding on going out of the
+room, "Whatsoever I propose to you in his Majesty's name can find with
+you neither goust nor grace."
+
+He then informed Lord Rochester that "the man was extremely distempered
+and extremely distasted with his Majesty.
+
+"Some say," he added, "that on being in England when his Majesty first
+came to the throne he conceived some offence, which ever since hath
+rankled in his heart, and now doth burst forth with more violent malice."
+
+Nor was the matter so small as it superficially appeared. Dependence of
+one nation upon the dictation of another can never be considered
+otherwise than grave. The subjection of all citizens, clerical or lay, to
+the laws of the land, the supremacy of the State over the Church, were
+equally grave subjects. And the question of sovereignty now raised for
+the first time, not academically merely, but practically, was the gravest
+one of all. It was soon to be mooted vigorously and passionately whether
+the United Provinces were a confederacy or a union; a league of sovereign
+and independent states bound together by treaty for certain specified
+purposes or an incorporated whole. The Advocate and all the principal
+lawyers in the country had scarcely a doubt on the subject. Whether it
+were a reasonable system or an absurd one, a vigorous or an imbecile form
+of government, they were confident that the Union of Utrecht, made about
+a generation of mankind before, and the only tie by which the Provinces
+were bound together at all, was a compact between sovereigns.
+
+Barneveld styled himself always the servant and officer of the States of
+Holland. To them was his allegiance, for them he spoke, wrought, and
+thought, by them his meagre salary was paid. At the congress of the
+States-General, the scene of his most important functions, he was the
+ambassador of Holland, acting nominally according to their instructions,
+and exercising the powers of minister of foreign affairs and, as it were,
+prime minister for the other confederates by their common consent. The
+system would have been intolerable, the great affairs of war and peace
+could never have been carried on so triumphantly, had not the
+preponderance of the one province Holland, richer, more powerful, more
+important in every way than the other six provinces combined, given to
+the confederacy illegally, but virtually, many of the attributes of
+union. Rather by usucaption than usurpation Holland had in many regards
+come to consider herself and be considered as the Republic itself. And
+Barneveld, acting always in the name of Holland and with the most modest
+of titles and appointments, was for a long time in all civil matters the
+chief of the whole country. This had been convenient during the war,
+still more convenient during negotiations for peace, but it was
+inevitable that there should be murmurs now that the cessation from
+military operations on a large scale had given men time to look more
+deeply into the nature of a constitution partly inherited and partly
+improvised, and having many of the defects usually incident to both
+sources of government.
+
+The military interest, the ecclesiastical power, and the influence of
+foreign nations exerted through diplomatic intrigue, were rapidly
+arraying themselves in determined hostility to Barneveld and to what was
+deemed his tyrannous usurpation. A little later the national spirit, as
+opposed to provincial and municipal patriotism, was to be aroused against
+him, and was likely to prove the most formidable of all the elements of
+antagonism.
+
+It is not necessary to anticipate here what must be developed on a
+subsequent page. This much, however, it is well to indicate for the
+correct understanding of passing events. Barneveld did not consider
+himself the officer or servant of their High Mightinesses the
+States-General, while in reality often acting as their master, but the
+vassal and obedient functionary of their Great Mightinesses the States of
+Holland, whom he almost absolutely controlled.
+
+His present most pressing business was to resist the encroachments of the
+sacerdotal power and to defend the magistracy. The casuistical questions
+which were fast maddening the public mind seemed of importance to him
+only as enclosing within them a more vital and practical question of
+civil government.
+
+But the anger of his opponents, secret and open, was rapidly increasing.
+Envy, jealousy, political and clerical hate, above all, that deadliest
+and basest of malignant spirits which in partisan warfare is bred out of
+subserviency to rising and rival power, were swarming about him and
+stinging him at every step. No parasite of Maurice could more effectively
+pay his court and more confidently hope for promotion or reward than by
+vilipending Barneveld. It would be difficult to comprehend the infinite
+extent and power of slander without a study of the career of the Advocate
+of Holland.
+
+"I thank you for your advices," he wrote to Carom' "and I wish from my
+heart that his Majesty, according to his royal wisdom and clemency
+towards the condition of this country, would listen only to My Lords the
+States or their ministers, and not to his own or other passionate persons
+who, through misunderstanding or malice, furnish him with information and
+so frequently flatter him. I have tried these twenty years to deserve his
+Majesty's confidence, and have many letters from him reaching through
+twelve or fifteen years, in which he does me honour and promises his
+royal favour. I am the more chagrined that through false and passionate
+reports and information--because I am resolved to remain good and true to
+My Lords the States, to the fatherland, and to the true Christian
+religion--I and mine should now be so traduced. I hope that God Almighty
+will second my upright conscience, and cause his Majesty soon to see the
+injustice done to me and mine. To defend the resolutions of My Lords the
+States of Holland is my office, duty, and oath, and I assure you that
+those resolutions are taken with wider vision and scope than his Majesty
+can believe. Let this serve for My Lords' defence and my own against
+indecent calumny, for my duty allows me to pursue no other course."
+
+He again alluded to the dreary affair of Vorstius, and told the Envoy
+that the venation caused by it was incredible. "That men unjustly defame
+our cities and their regents is nothing new," he said; "but I assure you
+that it is far more damaging to the common weal than the defamers
+imagine."
+
+Some of the private admirers of Arminius who were deeply grieved at so
+often hearing him "publicly decried as the enemy of God" had been
+defending the great heretic to James, and by so doing had excited the
+royal wrath not only against the deceased doctor and themselves, but
+against the States of Holland who had given them no commission.
+
+On the other hand the advanced orthodox party, most bitter haters of
+Barneveld, and whom in his correspondence with England he uniformly and
+perhaps designedly called the Puritans, knowing that the very word was a
+scarlet rag to James, were growing louder and louder in their demands.
+"Some thirty of these Puritans," said he, "of whom at least twenty are
+Flemings or other foreigners equally violent, proclaim that they and the
+like of them mean alone to govern the Church. Let his Majesty compare
+this proposal with his Royal Present, with his salutary declaration at
+London in the year 1603 to Doctor Reynolds and his associates, and with
+his admonition delivered to the Emperor, kings, sovereigns, and
+republics, and he will best understand the mischievous principles of
+these people, who are now gaining credit with him to the detriment of the
+freedom and laws of these Provinces."
+
+A less enlightened statesman than Barneveld would have found it easy
+enough to demonstrate the inconsistency of the King in thus preaching
+subserviency of government to church and favouring the rule of Puritans
+over both. It needed but slender logic to reduce such a policy on his
+part to absurdity, but neither kings nor governments are apt to value
+themselves on their logic. So long as James could play the pedagogue to
+emperors, kings, and republics, it mattered little to him that the
+doctrines which he preached in one place he had pronounced flat blasphemy
+in another.
+
+That he would cheerfully hang in England the man whom he would elevate to
+power in Holland might be inconsistency in lesser mortals; but what was
+the use of his infallibility if he was expected to be consistent?
+
+But one thing was certain. The Advocate saw through him as if he had been
+made of glass, and James knew that he did. This fatal fact outweighed all
+the decorous and respectful phraseology under which Barneveld veiled his
+remorseless refutations. It was a dangerous thing to incur the wrath of
+this despot-theologian.
+
+Prince Maurice, who had originally joined in the invitation given by the
+overseers of Leyden to Vorstius, and had directed one of the deputies and
+his own "court trumpeter," Uytenbogaert, to press him earnestly to grant
+his services to the University, now finding the coldness of Barneveld to
+the fiery remonstrances of the King, withdrew his protection of the
+Professor.
+
+"The Count Maurice, who is a wise and understanding prince," said
+Winwood, "and withal most affectionate to his Majesty's service, doth
+foresee the miseries into which these countries are likely to fall, and
+with grief doth pine away."
+
+It is probable that the great stadholder had never been more robust, or
+indeed inclining to obesity, than precisely at this epoch; but Sir Ralph
+was of an imaginative turn. He had discovered, too, that the Advocate's
+design was "of no other nature than so to stem the course of the State
+that insensibly the Provinces shall fall by relapse into the hands of
+Spain."
+
+A more despicable idea never entered a human brain. Every action, word,
+and thought, of Barneveld's life was a refutation of it. But he was
+unwilling, at the bidding of a king, to treat a professor with contumely
+who had just been solemnly and unanimously invited by the great
+university, by the States of Holland, and by the Stadholder to an
+important chair; and that was enough for the diplomatist and courtier.
+"He, and only he," said Winwood passionately, "hath opposed his Majesty's
+purposes with might and main." Formerly the Ambassador had been full of
+complaints of "the craving humour of Count Maurice," and had censured him
+bitterly in his correspondence for having almost by his inordinate
+pretensions for money and other property brought the Treaty of Truce to a
+standstill. And in these charges he was as unjust and as reckless as he
+was now in regard to Barneveld.
+
+The course of James and his agents seemed cunningly devised to sow
+discord in the Provinces, to inflame the growing animosity of the
+Stadholder to the Advocate, and to paralyse the action of the Republic in
+the duchies. If the King had received direct instructions from the
+Spanish cabinet how to play the Spanish game, he could hardly have done
+it with more docility. But was not Gondemar ever at his elbow, and the
+Infanta always in the perspective?
+
+And it is strange enough that, at the same moment, Spanish marriages were
+in France as well as England the turning-point of policy.
+
+Henry had been willing enough that the Dauphin should espouse a Spanish
+infanta, and that one of the Spanish princes should be affianced to one
+of his daughters. But the proposition from Spain had been coupled with a
+condition that the friendship between France and the Netherlands should
+be at once broken off, and the rebellious heretics left to their fate.
+And this condition had been placed before him with such arrogance that he
+had rejected the whole scheme. Henry was not the man to do anything
+dishonourable at the dictation of another sovereign. He was also not the
+man to be ignorant that the friendship of the Provinces was necessary to
+him, that cordial friendship between France and Spain was impossible, and
+that to allow Spain to reoccupy that splendid possession between his own
+realms and Germany, from which she had been driven by the Hollanders in
+close alliance with himself, would be unworthy of the veriest schoolboy
+in politics. But Henry was dead, and a Medici reigned in his place, whose
+whole thought was to make herself agreeable to Spain.
+
+Aerssens, adroit, prying, experienced, unscrupulous, knew very well that
+these double Spanish marriages were resolved upon, and that the
+inevitable condition refused by the King would be imposed upon his widow.
+He so informed the States-General, and it was known to the French
+government that he had informed them. His position soon became almost
+untenable, not because he had given this information, but because the
+information and the inference made from it were correct.
+
+It will be observed that the policy of the Advocate was to preserve
+friendly relations between France and England, and between both and the
+United Provinces. It was for this reason that he submitted to the
+exhortations and denunciations of the English ambassadors. It was for
+this that he kept steadily in view the necessity of dealing with and
+supporting corporate France, the French government, when there were many
+reasons for feeling sympathy with the internal rebellion against that
+government. Maurice felt differently. He was connected by blood or
+alliance with more than one of the princes now perpetually in revolt.
+Bouillon was his brother-in-law, the sister of Conde was his brother's
+wife. Another cousin, the Elector-Palatine, was already encouraging
+distant and extravagant hopes of the Imperial crown. It was not unnatural
+that he should feel promptings of ambition and sympathy difficult to avow
+even to himself, and that he should feel resentment against the man by
+whom this secret policy was traversed in the well-considered interest of
+the Republican government.
+
+Aerssens, who, with the keen instinct of self-advancement was already
+attaching himself to Maurice as to the wheels of the chariot going
+steadily up the hill, was not indisposed to loosen his hold upon the man
+through whose friendship he had first risen, and whose power was now
+perhaps on the decline. Moreover, events had now caused him to hate the
+French government with much fervour. With Henry IV. he had been
+all-powerful. His position had been altogether exceptional, and he had
+wielded an influence at Paris more than that exerted by any foreign
+ambassador. The change naturally did not please him, although he well
+knew the reasons. It was impossible for the Dutch ambassador to be
+popular at a court where Spain ruled supreme. Had he been willing to eat
+humiliation as with a spoon, it would not have sufficed. They knew him,
+they feared him, and they could not doubt that his sympathies would ever
+be with the malcontent princes. At the same time he did not like to lose
+his hold upon the place, nor to have it known, as yet, to the world that
+his power was diminished.
+
+"The Queen commands me to tell you," said the French ambassador de Russy
+to the States-General, "that the language of the Sieur Aerssens has not
+only astonished her, but scandalized her to that degree that she could
+not refrain from demanding if it came from My Lords the States or from
+himself. He having, however, affirmed to her Majesty that he had express
+charge to justify it by reasons so remote from the hope and the belief
+that she had conceived of your gratitude to the Most Christian King and
+herself, she is constrained to complain of it, and with great frankness."
+
+Some months later than this Aerssens communicated to the States-General
+the project of the Spanish marriage, "which," said he, "they have
+declared to me with so many oaths to be false." He informed them that M.
+de Refuge was to go on special mission to the Hague, "having been
+designated to that duty before Aerssens' discovery of the marriage
+project." He was to persuade their Mightinesses that the marriages were
+by no means concluded, and that, even if they were, their Mightinesses
+were not interested therein, their Majesties intending to remain by the
+old maxims and alliances of the late king. Marriages, he would be
+instructed to say, were mere personal conventions, which remained of no
+consideration when the interests of the crown were touched.
+"Nevertheless, I know very well," said Aerssens, "that in England these
+negotiations are otherwise understood, and that the King has uttered
+great complaints about them, saying that such a negotiation as this ought
+not to have been concealed from him. He is pressing more than ever for
+reimbursement of the debt to him, and especially for the moneys pretended
+to have been furnished to your Mightinesses in his Majesty's name."
+
+Thus it will be seen how closely the Spanish marriages were connected
+with the immediate financial arrangements of France, England, and the
+States, without reference to the wider political consequences
+anticipated.
+
+"The princes and most gentlemen," here continued the Ambassador, "believe
+that these reciprocal and double marriages will bring about great changes
+in Christendom if they take the course which the authors of them intend,
+however much they may affect to believe that no novelties are impending.
+The marriages were proposed to the late king, and approved by him, during
+the negotiations for the truce, and had Don Pedro do Toledo been able to
+govern himself, as Jeannin has just been telling me, the United Provinces
+would have drawn from it their assured security. What he means by that, I
+certainly cannot conceive, for Don Pedro proposed the marriage of the
+Dauphin (now Louis XIII.) with the Infanta on the condition that Henry
+should renounce all friendship with your Mightinesses, and neither openly
+nor secretly give you any assistance. You were to be entirely abandoned,
+as an example for all who throw off the authority of their lawful prince.
+But his Majesty answered very generously that he would take no
+conditions; that he considered your Mightinesses as his best friends,
+whom he could not and would not forsake. Upon this Don Pedro broke off
+the negotiation. What should now induce the King of Spain to resume the
+marriage negotiations but to give up the conditions, I am sure I don't
+know, unless, through the truce, his designs and his ambition have grown
+flaccid. This I don't dare to hope, but fear, on the contrary, that he
+will so manage the irresolution, weakness, and faintheartedness of this
+kingdom as through the aid of his pensioned friends here to arrive at all
+his former aims."
+
+Certainly the Ambassador painted the condition of France in striking and
+veracious colours, and he was quite right in sending the information
+which he was first to discover, and which it was so important for the
+States to know. It was none the less certain in Barneveld's mind that the
+best, not the worst, must be made of the state of affairs, and that
+France should not be assisted in throwing herself irrecoverably into the
+arms of Spain.
+
+"Refuge will tell you," said Aerssens, a little later, "that these
+marriages will not interfere with the friendship of France for you nor
+with her subsidies, and that no advantage will be given to Spain in the
+treaty to your detriment or that of her other allies. But whatever fine
+declarations they may make, it is sure to be detrimental. And all the
+princes, gentlemen, and officers here have the same conviction. Those of
+the Reformed religion believe that the transaction is directed solely
+against the religion which your Mightinesses profess, and that the next
+step will be to effect a total separation between the two religions and
+the two countries."
+
+Refuge arrived soon afterwards, and made the communication to the
+States-General of the approaching nuptials between the King of France and
+the Infanta of Spain; and of the Prince of Spain with Madame, eldest
+daughter of France, exactly as Aerssens had predicted four months before.
+There was a great flourish of compliments, much friendly phrase-making,
+and their Mightinesses were informed that the communication of the
+marriages was made to them before any other power had been notified, in
+proof of the extraordinary affection entertained for them by France. "You
+are so much interested in the happiness of France," said Refuge, "that
+this treaty by which it is secured will be for your happiness also. He
+did not indicate, however, the precise nature of the bliss beyond the
+indulgence of a sentimental sympathy, not very refreshing in the
+circumstances, which was to result to the Confederacy from this close
+alliance between their firmest friend and their ancient and deadly enemy.
+He would have found it difficult to do so.
+
+"Don Rodrigo de Calderon, secretary of state, is daily expected from
+Spain," wrote, Aerssens once more. "He brings probably the articles of
+the marriages, which have hitherto been kept secret, so they say. 'Tis a
+shrewd negotiator; and in this alliance the King's chief design is to
+injure your Mightinesses, as M. de Villeroy now confesses, although he
+says that this will not be consented to on this side. It behoves your
+Mightinesses to use all your ears and eyes. It is certain these are much
+more than private conventions. Yes, there is nothing private about them,
+save the conjunction of the persons whom they concern. In short, all the
+conditions regard directly the state, and directly likewise, or by
+necessary consequence, the state of your Mightinesses' Provinces. I
+reserve explanations until it shall please your Mightinesses to hear me
+by word of mouth."
+
+For it was now taken into consideration by the States' government whether
+Aerssens was to remain at his post or to return. Whether it was his wish
+to be relieved of his embassy or not was a question. But there was no
+question that the States at this juncture, and in spite of the dangers
+impending from the Spanish marriages, must have an ambassador ready to do
+his best to keep France from prematurely sliding into positive hostility
+to them. Aerssens was enigmatical in his language, and Barneveld was
+somewhat puzzled.
+
+"I have according to your reiterated requests," wrote the Advocate to the
+Ambassador, "sounded the assembly of My Lords the States as to your
+recall; but I find among some gentlemen the opinion that if earnestly
+pressed to continue you would be willing to listen to the proposal. This
+I cannot make out from your letters. Please to advise me frankly as to
+your wishes, and assure yourself in everything of my friendship."
+
+Nothing could be more straightforward than this language, but the Envoy
+was less frank than Barneveld, as will subsequently appear. The subject
+was a most important one, not only in its relation to the great affairs
+of state, but to momentous events touching the fate of illustrious
+personages.
+
+Meantime a resolution was passed by the States of Holland "in regard to
+the question whether Ambassador Aerssens should retain his office, yes or
+no?" And it was decided by a majority of votes "to leave it to his candid
+opinion if in his free conscience he thinks he can serve the public cause
+there any longer. If yes, he may keep his office one year more. If no, he
+may take leave and come home. In no case is his salary to be increased."
+
+Surely the States, under the guidance of the Advocate, had thus acted
+with consummate courtesy towards a diplomatist whose position from no
+apparent fault of his own but by the force of circumstances--and rather
+to his credit than otherwise--was gravely compromised.
+
+     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+     Advanced orthodox party-Puritans
+     Atheist, a tyrant, because he resisted dictation from the clergy
+     Give him advice if he asked it, and money when he required
+     He was not imperial of aspect on canvas or coin
+     He who would have all may easily lose all
+     King's definite and final intentions, varied from day to day
+     Neither kings nor governments are apt to value logic
+     Outdoing himself in dogmatism and inconsistency
+     Small matter which human folly had dilated into a great one
+     The defence of the civil authority against the priesthood
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND
+
+WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR
+
+By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+The Life of John of Barneveld, v5, 1609-14
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+   Establishment of the Condominium in the Duchies--Dissensions between
+   the Neuburgers and Brandenburgers--Occupation of Julich by the
+   Brandenburgers assisted by the States-General--Indignation in Spain
+   and at the Court of the Archdukes--Subsidy despatched to Brussels
+   Spinola descends upon Aix-la-Chapelle and takes possession of Orsoy
+   and other places--Surrender of Wesel--Conference at Xanten--Treaty
+   permanently dividing the Territory between Brandenburg and Neuburg--
+   Prohibition from Spain--Delays and Disagreements.
+
+Thus the 'Condominium' had been peaceably established.
+
+Three or four years passed away in the course of which the evils of a
+joint and undivided sovereignty of two rival houses over the same
+territory could not fail to manifest themselves. Brandenburg, Calvinist
+in religion, and for other reasons more intimately connected with and
+more favoured by the States' government than his rival, gained ground in
+the duchies. The Palatine of Neuburg, originally of Lutheran faith like
+his father, soon manifested Catholic tendencies, which excited suspicion
+in the Netherlands. These suspicions grew into certainties at the moment
+when he espoused the sister of Maximilian of Bavaria and of the Elector
+of Cologne. That this close connection with the very heads of the
+Catholic League could bode no good to the cause of which the
+States-General were the great promoters was self-evident. Very soon
+afterwards the Palatine, a man of mature age and of considerable talents,
+openly announced his conversion to the ancient church. Obviously the
+sympathies of the States could not thenceforth fail to be on the side of
+Brandenburg. The Elector's brother died and was succeeded in the
+governorship of the Condeminium by the Elector's brother, a youth of
+eighteen. He took up his abode in Cleve, leaving Dusseldorf to be the
+sole residence of his co-stadholder.
+
+Rivalry growing warmer, on account of this difference of religion,
+between the respective partisans of Neuburg and Brandenburg, an attempt
+was made in Dusseldorf by a sudden entirely unsuspected rising of the
+Brandenburgers to drive their antagonist colleagues and their portion of
+the garrison out of the city. It failed, but excited great anger. A more
+successful effort was soon afterwards made in Julich; the Neuburgers were
+driven out, and the Brandenburgers remained in sole possession of the
+town and citadel, far the most important stronghold in the whole
+territory. This was partly avenged by the Neuburgers, who gained absolute
+control of Dusseldorf. Here were however no important fortifications, the
+place being merely an agreeable palatial residence and a thriving mart.
+The States-General, not concealing their predilection for Brandenburg,
+but under pretext of guarding the peace which they had done so much to
+establish, placed a garrison of 1400 infantry and a troop or two of horse
+in the citadel of Julich.
+
+Dire was the anger not unjustly excited in Spain when the news of this
+violation of neutrality reached that government. Julich, placed midway
+between Liege and Cologne, and commanding those fertile plains which make
+up the opulent duchy, seemed virtually converted into a province of the
+detested heretical republic. The German gate of the Spanish Netherlands
+was literally in the hands of its most formidable foe.
+
+The Spaniards about the court of the Archduke did not dissemble their
+rage. The seizure of Julich was a stain upon his reputation, they cried.
+Was it not enough, they asked, for the United Provinces to have made a
+truce to the manifest detriment and discredit of Spain, and to have
+treated her during all the negotiation with such insolence? Were they now
+to be permitted to invade neutral territory, to violate public faith, to
+act under no responsibility save to their own will? What was left for
+them to do except to set up a tribunal in Holland for giving laws to the
+whole of Northern Europe? Arrogating to themselves absolute power over
+the controverted states of Cleve, Julich, and the dependencies, they now
+pretended to dispose of them at their pleasure in order at the end
+insolently to take possession of them for themselves.
+
+These were the egregious fruits of the truce, they said tauntingly to the
+discomfited Archduke. It had caused a loss of reputation, the very soul
+of empires, to the crown of Spain. And now, to conclude her abasement,
+the troops in Flanders had been shaven down with such parsimony as to
+make the monarch seem a shopkeeper, not a king. One would suppose the
+obedient Netherlands to be in the heart of Spain rather than outlying
+provinces surrounded by their deadliest enemies. The heretics had gained
+possession of the government at Aix-la-Chapelle; they had converted the
+insignificant town of Mulheim into a thriving and fortified town in
+defiance of Cologne and to its manifest detriment, and in various other
+ways they had insulted the Catholics throughout those regions. And who
+could wonder at such insolence, seeing that the army in Flanders,
+formerly the terror of heretics, had become since the truce so weak as to
+be the laughing-stock of the United Provinces? If it was expensive to
+maintain these armies in the obedient Netherlands, let there be economy
+elsewhere, they urged.
+
+From India came gold and jewels. From other kingdoms came ostentation and
+a long series of vain titles for the crown of Spain. Flanders was its
+place of arms, its nursery of soldiers, its bulwark in Europe, and so it
+should be preserved.
+
+There was ground for these complaints. The army at the disposition of the
+Archduke had been reduced to 8000 infantry and a handful of cavalry. The
+peace establishment of the Republic amounted to 20,000 foot, 3000 horse,
+besides the French and English regiments.
+
+So soon as the news of the occupation of Julich was officially
+communicated to the Spanish cabinet, a subsidy of 400,000 crowns was at
+once despatched to Brussels. Levies of Walloons and Germans were made
+without delay by order of Archduke Albert and under guidance of Spinola,
+so that by midsummer the army was swollen to 18,000 foot and 3000 horse.
+With these the great Genoese captain took the field in the middle of
+August. On the 22nd of that month the army was encamped on some plains
+mid-way between Maestricht and Aachen. There was profound mystery both at
+Brussels and at the Hague as to the objective point of these military
+movements. Anticipating an attack upon Julich, the States had meantime
+strengthened the garrison of that important place with 3000 infantry and
+a regiment of horse. It seemed scarcely probable therefore that Spinola
+would venture a foolhardy blow at a citadel so well fortified and
+defended. Moreover, there was not only no declaration of war, but strict
+orders had been given by each of the apparent belligerents to their
+military commanders to abstain from all offensive movements against the
+adversary. And now began one of the strangest series of warlike
+evolution's that were ever recorded. Maurice at the head of an army of
+14,000 foot and 3000 horse manoeuvred in the neighbourhood of his great
+antagonist and professional rival without exchanging a blow. It was a
+phantom campaign, the prophetic rehearsal of dreadful marches and tragic
+histories yet to be, and which were to be enacted on that very stage and
+on still wider ones during a whole generation of mankind. That cynical
+commerce in human lives which was to become one of the chief branches of
+human industry in the century had already begun.
+
+Spinola, after hovering for a few days in the neighbourhood, descended
+upon the Imperial city of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle). This had been one of
+the earliest towns in Germany to embrace the Reformed religion, and up to
+the close of the sixteenth century the control of the magistracy had been
+in the hands of the votaries of that creed. Subsequently the Catholics
+had contrived to acquire and keep the municipal ascendency, secretly
+supported by Archduke Albert, and much oppressing the Protestants with
+imprisonments, fines, and banishment, until a new revolution which had
+occurred in the year 1610, and which aroused the wrath of Spinola.
+Certainly, according to the ideas of that day, it did not seem unnatural
+in a city where a very large majority of the population were Protestants
+that Protestants should have a majority in the town council. It seemed,
+however, to those who surrounded the Archduke an outrage which could no
+longer be tolerated, especially as a garrison of 600 Germans, supposed to
+have formed part of the States' army, had recently been introduced into
+the town. Aachen, lying mostly on an extended plain, had but very slight
+fortifications, and it was commanded by a neighbouring range of hills. It
+had no garrison but the 600 Germans. Spinola placed a battery or two on
+the hills, and within three days the town surrendered. The inhabitants
+expected a scene of carnage and pillage, but not a life was lost. No
+injury whatever was inflicted on person or property, according to the
+strict injunctions of the Archduke. The 600 Germans were driven out, and
+1200 other Germans then serving under Catholic banners were put in their
+places to protect the Catholic minority, to whose keeping the municipal
+government was now confided.
+
+Spinola, then entering the territory of Cleve, took session of Orsoy, an
+important place on the Rhine, besides Duren, Duisburg, Kaster,
+Greevenbroek and Berchem. Leaving garrisons in these places, he razed the
+fortifications of Mulheim, much to the joy of the Archbishop and his
+faithful subjects of Cologne, then crossed the Rhine at Rheinberg, and
+swooped down upon Wesel. This flourishing and prosperous city had
+formerly belonged to the Duchy of Cleve. Placed at the junction of the
+Rhine and Lippe and commanding both rivers, it had become both powerful
+and Protestant, and had set itself up as a free Imperial city,
+recognising its dukes no longer as sovereigns, but only as protectors. So
+fervent was it in the practice of the Reformed religion that it was
+called the Rhenish Geneva, the cradle of German Calvinism. So important
+was its preservation considered to the cause of Protestantism that the
+States-General had urged its authorities to accept from them a garrison.
+They refused. Had they complied, the city would have been saved, because
+it was the rule in this extraordinary campaign that the belligerents made
+war not upon each other, nor in each others territory, but against
+neutrals and upon neutral soil. The Catholic forces under Spinola or his
+lieutenants, meeting occasionally and accidentally with the Protestants
+under Maurice or his generals, exchanged no cannon shots or buffets, but
+only acts of courtesy; falling away each before the other, and each
+ceding to the other with extreme politeness the possession of towns which
+one had preceded the other in besieging.
+
+The citizens of Wesel were amazed at being attacked, considering
+themselves as Imperial burghers. They regretted too late that they had
+refused a garrison from Maurice, which would have prevented Spinola from
+assailing them. They had now nothing for it but to surrender, which they
+did within three days. The principal condition of the capitulation was
+that when Julich should be given up by the States Wesel should be
+restored to its former position. Spinola then took and garrisoned the
+city of Xanten, but went no further. Having weakened his army
+sufficiently by the garrisons taken from it for the cities captured by
+him, he declined to make any demonstration upon the neighbouring and
+important towns of Emmerich and Rees. The Catholic commander falling
+back, the Protestant moved forward. Maurice seized both Emmerich and
+Rees, and placed garrisons within them, besides occupying Goch,
+Kranenburg, Gennip, and various places in the County of Mark. This closed
+the amicable campaign.
+
+Spinola established himself and his forces near Wesel. The Prince
+encamped near Rees. The two armies were within two hours' march of each
+other. The Duke of Neuburg--for the Palatine had now succeeded on his
+father's death to the ancestral dukedom and to his share of the
+Condominium of the debateable provinces--now joined Spinola with an army
+of 4000 foot and 400 horse. The young Prince of Brandenburg came to
+Maurice with 800 cavalry and an infantry regiment of the
+Elector-Palatine.
+
+Negotiations destined to be as spectral and fleeting as the campaign had
+been illusory now began. The whole Protestant world was aflame with
+indignation at the loss of Wesel. The States' government had already
+proposed to deposit Julich in the hands of a neutral power if the
+Archduke would abstain from military movements. But Albert, proud of his
+achievements in Aachen, refused to pause in his career. Let them make the
+deposit first, he said.
+
+Both belligerents, being now satiated with such military glory as could
+flow from the capture of defenceless cities belonging to neutrals, agreed
+to hold conferences at Xanten. To this town, in the Duchy of Cleve, and
+midway between the rival camps, came Sir Henry Wotton and Sir Dudley
+Carleton, ambassadors of Great Britain; de Refuge and de Russy, the
+special and the resident ambassador of France at the Hague; Chancellor
+Peter Pecquius and Counsellor Visser, to represent the Archdukes; seven
+deputies from the United Provinces, three from the Elector of Cologne,
+three from Brandenburg, three from Neuburg, and two from the
+Elector-Palatine, as representative of the Protestant League.
+
+In the earlier conferences the envoys of the Archduke and of the Elector
+of Cologne were left out, but they were informed daily of each step in
+the negotiation. The most important point at starting was thought to be
+to get rid of the 'Condominium.' There could be no harmony nor peace in
+joint possession. The whole territory should be cut provisionally in
+halves, and each possessory prince rule exclusively within the portion
+assigned to him. There might also be an exchange of domain between the
+two every six months. As for Wesel and Julich, they could remain
+respectively in the hands then holding them, or the fortifications of
+Julich might be dismantled and Wesel restored to the status quo. The
+latter alternative would have best suited the States, who were growing
+daily more irritated at seeing Wesel, that Protestant stronghold, with an
+exclusively Calvinistic population, in the hands of Catholics.
+
+The Spanish ambassador at Brussels remonstrated, however, at the thought
+of restoring his precious conquest, obtained without loss of time, money,
+or blood, into the hands of heretics, at least before consultation with
+the government at Madrid and without full consent of the King.
+
+"How important to your Majesty's affairs in Flanders," wrote Guadaleste
+to Philip, "is the acquisition of Wesel may be seen by the manifest grief
+of your enemies. They see with immense displeasure your royal ensigns
+planted on the most important place on the Rhine, and one which would
+become the chief military station for all the armies of Flanders to
+assemble in at any moment.
+
+"As no acquisition could therefore be greater, so your Majesty should
+never be deprived of it without thorough consideration of the case. The
+Archduke fears, and so do his ministers, that if we refuse to restore
+Wesel, the United Provinces would break the truce. For my part I believe,
+and there are many who agree with me, that they would on the contrary be
+more inclined to stand by the truce, hoping to obtain by negotiation that
+which it must be obvious to them they cannot hope to capture by force.
+But let Wesel be at once restored. Let that be done which is so much
+desired by the United Provinces and other great enemies and rivals of
+your Majesty, and what security will there be that the same Provinces
+will not again attempt the same invasion? Is not the example of Julich
+fresh? And how much more important is Wesel! Julich was after all not
+situate on their frontiers, while Wesel lies at their principal gates.
+Your Majesty now sees the good and upright intentions of those Provinces
+and their friends. They have made a settlement between Brandenburg and
+Neuburg, not in order to breed concord but confusion between those two,
+not tranquillity for the country, but greater turbulence than ever
+before. Nor have they done this with any other thought than that the
+United Provinces might find new opportunities to derive the same profit
+from fresh tumults as they have already done so shamelessly from those
+which are past. After all I don't say that Wesel should never be
+restored, if circumstances require it, and if your Majesty, approving the
+Treaty of Xanten, should sanction the measure. But such a result should
+be reached only after full consultation with your Majesty, to whose
+glorious military exploits these splendid results are chiefly owing."
+
+The treaty finally decided upon rejected the principle of alternate
+possession, and established a permanent division of the territory in
+dispute between Brandenburg and Neuburg.
+
+The two portions were to be made as equal as possible, and lots were to
+be thrown or drawn by the two princes for the first choice. To the one
+side were assigned the Duchy of Cleve, the County of Mark, and the
+Seigniories of Ravensberg and Ravenstein, with some other baronies and
+feuds in Brabant and Flanders; to the other the Duchies of Julich and
+Berg with their dependencies. Each prince was to reside exclusively
+within the territory assigned to him by lot. The troops introduced by
+either party were to be withdrawn, fortifications made since the
+preceding month of May to be razed, and all persons who had been
+expelled, or who had emigrated, to be restored to their offices,
+property, or benefices. It was also stipulated that no place within the
+whole debateable territory should be put in the hands of a third power.
+
+These articles were signed by the ambassadors of France and England, by
+the deputies of the Elector-Palatine and of the United Provinces, all
+binding their superiors to the execution of the treaty. The arrangement
+was supposed to refer to the previous conventions between those two
+crowns, with the Republic, and the Protestant princes and powers. Count
+Zollern, whom we have seen bearing himself so arrogantly as envoy from
+the Emperor Rudolph to Henry IV., was now despatched by Matthias on as
+fruitless a mission to the congress at Xanten, and did his best to
+prevent the signature of the treaty, except with full concurrence of the
+Imperial government. He likewise renewed the frivolous proposition that
+the Emperor should hold all the provinces in sequestration until the
+question of rightful sovereignty should be decided. The "proud and
+haggard" ambassador was not more successful in this than in the
+diplomatic task previously entrusted to him, and he then went to
+Brussels, there to renew his remonstrances, menaces, and intrigues.
+
+For the treaty thus elaborately constructed, and in appearance a
+triumphant settlement of questions so complicated and so burning as to
+threaten to set Christendom at any moment in a blaze, was destined to an
+impotent and most unsatisfactory conclusion.
+
+The signatures were more easily obtained than the ratifications.
+Execution was surrounded with insurmountable difficulties which in
+negotiation had been lightly skipped over at the stroke of a pen. At the
+very first step, that of military evacuation, there was a stumble.
+Maurice and Spinola were expected to withdraw their forces, and to
+undertake to bring in no troops in the future, and to make no invasion of
+the disputed territory.
+
+But Spinola construed this undertaking as absolute; the Prince as only
+binding in consequence of, with reference to, and for the duration of;
+the Treaty of Xanten. The ambassadors and other commissioners, disgusted
+with the long controversy which ensued, were making up their minds to
+depart when a courier arrived from Spain, bringing not a ratification but
+strict prohibition of the treaty. The articles were not to be executed,
+no change whatever was to be made, and, above all, Wesel was not to be
+restored without fresh negotiations with Philip, followed by his explicit
+concurrence.
+
+Thus the whole great negotiation began to dissolve into a shadowy,
+unsatisfactory pageant. The solid barriers which were to imprison the
+vast threatening elements of religious animosity and dynastic hatreds,
+and to secure a peaceful future for Christendom, melted into films of
+gossamer, and the great war of demons, no longer to be quelled by the
+commonplaces of diplomatic exorcism, revealed its close approach. The
+prospects of Europe grew blacker than ever.
+
+The ambassadors, thoroughly disheartened and disgusted, all took their
+departure from Xanten, and the treaty remained rather a by-word than a
+solution or even a suggestion.
+
+"The accord could not be prevented," wrote Archduke Albert to Philip,
+"because it depended alone on the will of the signers. Nor can the
+promise to restore Wesel be violated, should Julich be restored. Who can
+doubt that such contravention would arouse great jealousies in France,
+England, the United Provinces, and all the members of the heretic League
+of Germany? Who can dispute that those interested ought to procure the
+execution of the treaty? Suspicions will not remain suspicions, but they
+light up the flames of public evil and disturbance. Either your Majesty
+wishes to maintain the truce, in which case Wesel must be restored, or to
+break the truce, a result which is certain if Wesel be retained. But the
+reasons which induced your Majesty to lay down your arms remain the same
+as ever. Our affairs are not looking better, nor is the requisition of
+Wesel of so great importance as to justify our involving Flanders in a
+new and more atrocious war than that which has so lately been suspended.
+The restitution is due to the tribunal of public faith. It is a great
+advantage when actions done for the sole end of justice are united to
+that of utility. Consider the great successes we have had. How well the
+affairs of Aachen and Mulbeim have been arranged; those of the Duke of
+Neuburg how completely re-established. The Catholic cause, always
+identical with that of the House of Austria, remains in great superiority
+to the cause of the heretics. We should use these advantages well, and to
+do so we should not immaturely pursue greater ones. Fortune changes,
+flies when we most depend on her, and delights in making her chief sport
+of the highest quality of mortals."
+
+Thus wrote the Archduke sensibly, honourably from his point of view, and
+with an intelligent regard to the interests of Spain and the Catholic
+cause. After months of delay came conditional consent from Madrid to the
+conventions, but with express condition that there should be absolute
+undertaking on the part of the United Provinces never to send or maintain
+troops in the duchies. Tedious and futile correspondence followed between
+Brussels, the Hague, London, Paris. But the difficulties grew every
+moment. It was a Penelope's web of negotiation, said one of the envoys.
+Amid pertinacious and wire-drawn subtleties, every trace of practical
+business vanished. Neuburg departed to look after his patrimonial
+estates; leaving his interests in the duchies to be watched over by the
+Archduke. Even Count Zollern, after six months of wrangling in Brussels,
+took his departure. Prince Maurice distributed his army in various places
+within the debateable land, and Spinola did the same, leaving a garrison
+of 3000 foot and 300 horse in the important city of Wesel. The town and
+citadel of Julich were as firmly held by Maurice for the Protestant
+cause. Thus the duchies were jointly occupied by the forces of
+Catholicism and Protestantism, while nominally possessed and administered
+by the princes of Brandenburg and Neuburg. And so they were destined to
+remain until that Thirty Years' War, now so near its outbreak, should
+sweep over the earth, and bring its fiery solution at last to all these
+great debates.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+   Proud Position of the Republic--France obeys her--Hatred of Carleton
+   --Position and Character of Aerssens--Claim for the "Third"--Recall
+   of Aerssens--Rivalry between Maurice and Barneveld, who always
+   sustains the separate Sovereignties of the Provinces--Conflict
+   between Church and State added to other Elements of Discord in the
+   Commonwealth--Religion a necessary Element in the Life of all
+   Classes.
+
+Thus the Republic had placed itself in as proud a position as it was
+possible for commonwealth or kingdom to occupy. It had dictated the
+policy and directed the combined military movements of Protestantism. It
+had gathered into a solid mass the various elements out of which the
+great Germanic mutiny against Rome, Spain, and Austria had been
+compounded. A breathing space of uncertain duration had come to interrupt
+and postpone the general and inevitable conflict. Meantime the Republic
+was encamped upon the enemy's soil.
+
+France, which had hitherto commanded, now obeyed. England, vacillating
+and discontented, now threatening and now cajoling, saw for the time at
+least its influence over the councils of the Netherlands neutralized by
+the genius of the great statesman who still governed the Provinces,
+supreme in all but name. The hatred of the British government towards the
+Republic, while in reality more malignant than at any previous period,
+could now only find vent in tremendous, theological pamphlets, composed
+by the King in the form of diplomatic instructions, and hurled almost
+weekly at the heads of the States-General, by his ambassador, Dudley
+Carleton.
+
+Few men hated Barneveld more bitterly than did Carleton. I wish to
+describe as rapidly, but as faithfully, as I can the outline at least of
+the events by which one of the saddest and most superfluous catastrophes
+in modern history was brought about. The web was a complex one, wrought
+apparently of many materials; but the more completely it is unravelled
+the more clearly we shall detect the presence of the few simple but
+elemental fibres which make up the tissue of most human destinies,
+whether illustrious or obscure, and out of which the most moving pictures
+of human history are composed.
+
+The religious element, which seems at first view to be the all pervading
+and controlling one, is in reality rather the atmosphere which surrounds
+and colours than the essence which constitutes the tragedy to be
+delineated.
+
+Personal, sometimes even paltry, jealousy; love of power, of money, of
+place; rivalry between civil and military ambition for predominance in a
+free state; struggles between Church and State to control and oppress
+each other; conflict between the cautious and healthy, but provincial and
+centrifugal, spirit on the one side, and the ardent centralizing,
+imperial, but dangerous, instinct on the other, for ascendancy in a
+federation; mortal combat between aristocracy disguised in the plebeian
+form of trading and political corporations and democracy sheltering
+itself under a famous sword and an ancient and illustrious name;--all
+these principles and passions will be found hotly at work in the
+melancholy five years with which we are now to be occupied, as they have
+entered, and will always enter, into every political combination in the
+great tragi-comedy which we call human history. As a study, a lesson, and
+a warning, perhaps the fate of Barneveld is as deserving of serious
+attention as most political tragedies of the last few centuries.
+
+Francis Aerssens, as we have seen, continued to be the Dutch ambassador
+after the murder of Henry IV. Many of the preceding pages of this volume
+have been occupied with his opinions, his pictures, his conversations,
+and his political intrigues during a memorable epoch in the history of
+the Netherlands and of France. He was beyond all doubt one of the ablest
+diplomatists in Europe. Versed in many languages, a classical student,
+familiar with history and international law, a man of the world and
+familiar with its usages, accustomed to associate with dignity and tact
+on friendliest terms with sovereigns, eminent statesmen, and men of
+letters; endowed with a facile tongue, a fluent pen, and an eye and ear
+of singular acuteness and delicacy; distinguished for unflagging industry
+and singular aptitude for secret and intricate affairs;--he had by the
+exercise of these various qualities during a period of nearly twenty
+years at the court of Henry the Great been able to render inestimable
+services to the Republic which he represented. Of respectable but not
+distinguished lineage, not a Hollander, but a Belgian by birth, son of
+Cornelis Aerssens, Grefter of the States-General, long employed in that
+important post, he had been brought forward from a youth by Barneveld and
+early placed by him in the diplomatic career, of which through his favour
+and his own eminent talents he had now achieved the highest honours.
+
+He had enjoyed the intimacy and even the confidence of Henry IV., so far
+as any man could be said to possess that monarch's confidence, and his
+friendly relations and familiar access to the King gave him political
+advantages superior to those of any of his colleagues at the same court.
+
+Acting entirely and faithfully according to the instructions of the
+Advocate of Holland, he always gratefully and copiously acknowledged the
+privilege of being guided and sustained in the difficult paths he had to
+traverse by so powerful and active an intellect. I have seldom alluded in
+terms to the instructions and despatches of the chief, but every
+position, negotiation, and opinion of the envoy--and the reader has seen
+many of them--is pervaded by their spirit. Certainly the correspondence
+of Aerssens is full to overflowing of gratitude, respect, fervent
+attachment to the person and exalted appreciation of the intellect and
+high character of the Advocate.
+
+There can be no question of Aerssen's consummate abilities. Whether his
+heart were as sound as his head, whether his protestations of devotion
+had the ring of true gold or not, time would show. Hitherto Barneveld had
+not doubted him, nor had he found cause to murmur at Barneveld.
+
+But the France of Henry IV., where the Dutch envoy was so all-powerful,
+had ceased to exist. A duller eye than that of Aerssens could have seen
+at a glance that the potent kingdom and firm ally of the Republic had
+been converted, for a long time to come at least, into a Spanish
+province. The double Spanish marriages (that of the young Louis XIII.
+with the Infanta Anna, and of his sister with the Infante, one day to be
+Philip IV.), were now certain, for it was to make them certain that the
+knife of Ravaillac had been employed. The condition precedent to those
+marriages had long been known. It was the renunciation of the alliance
+between France and Holland. It was the condemnation to death, so far as
+France had the power to condemn her to death, of the young Republic. Had
+not Don Pedro de Toledo pompously announced this condition a year and a
+half before? Had not Henry spurned the bribe with scorn? And now had not
+Francis Aerssens been the first to communicate to his masters the fruit
+which had already ripened upon Henry's grave? As we have seen, he had
+revealed these intrigues long before they were known to the world, and
+the French court knew that he had revealed them. His position had become
+untenable. His friendship for Henry could not be of use to him with the
+delicate-featured, double-chinned, smooth and sluggish Florentine, who
+had passively authorized and actively profited by her husband's murder.
+
+It was time for the Envoy to be gone. The Queen-Regent and Concini
+thought so. And so did Villeroy and Sillery and the rest of the old
+servants of the King, now become pensionaries of Spain. But Aerssens did
+not think so. He liked his position, changed as it was. He was deep in
+the plottings of Bouillon and Conde and the other malcontents against the
+Queen-Regent. These schemes, being entirely personal, the rank growth of
+the corruption and apparent disintegration of France, were perpetually
+changing, and could be reduced to no principle. It was a mere struggle of
+the great lords of France to wrest places, money, governments, military
+commands from the Queen-Regent, and frantic attempts on her part to save
+as much as possible of the general wreck for her lord and master Concini.
+
+It was ridiculous to ascribe any intense desire on the part of the Duc de
+Bouillon to aid the Protestant cause against Spain at that moment, acting
+as he was in combination with Conde, whom we have just seen employed by
+Spain as the chief instrument to effect the destruction of France and the
+bastardy of the Queen's children. Nor did the sincere and devout
+Protestants who had clung to the cause through good and bad report, men
+like Duplessis-Mornay, for example, and those who usually acted with him,
+believe in any of these schemes for partitioning France on pretence of
+saving Protestantism. But Bouillon, greatest of all French fishermen in
+troubled waters, was brother-in-law of Prince Maurice of Nassau, and
+Aerssens instinctively felt that the time had come when he should anchor
+himself to firm holding ground at home.
+
+The Ambassador had also a personal grievance. Many of his most secret
+despatches to the States-General in which he expressed himself very
+freely, forcibly, and accurately on the general situation in France,
+especially in regard to the Spanish marriages and the Treaty of Hampton
+Court, had been transcribed at the Hague and copies of them sent to the
+French government. No baser act of treachery to an envoy could be
+imagined. It was not surprising that Aerssens complained bitterly of the
+deed. He secretly suspected Barneveld, but with injustice, of having
+played him this evil turn, and the incident first planted the seeds of
+the deadly hatred which was to bear such fatal fruit.
+
+"A notable treason has been played upon me," he wrote to Jacques de
+Maldere, "which has outraged my heart. All the despatches which I have
+been sending for several months to M. de Barneveld have been communicated
+by copy in whole or in extracts to this court. Villeroy quoted from them
+at our interview to-day, and I was left as it were without power of
+reply. The despatches were long, solid, omitting no particularity for
+giving means to form the best judgment of the designs and intrigues of
+this court. No greater damage could be done to me and my usefulness. All
+those from whom I have hitherto derived information, princes and great
+personages, will shut themselves up from me . . . . What can be more
+ticklish than to pass judgment on the tricks of those who are governing
+this state? This single blow has knocked me down completely. For I was
+moving about among all of them, making my profit of all, without any
+reserve. M. de Barneveld knew by this means the condition of this kingdom
+as well as I do. Certainly in a well-ordered republic it would cost the
+life of a man who had thus trifled with the reputation of an ambassador.
+I believe M. de Barneveld will be sorry, but this will never restore to
+me the confidence which I have lost. If one was jealous of my position at
+this court, certainly I deserved rather pity from those who should
+contemplate it closely. If one wished to procure my downfall in order to
+raise oneself above me, there was no need of these tricks. I have been
+offering to resign my embassy this long time, which will now produce
+nothing but thorns for me. How can I negotiate after my private
+despatches have been read? L'Hoste, the clerk of Villeroy, was not so
+great a criminal as the man who revealed my despatches; and L'Hoste was
+torn by four horses after his death. Four months long I have been
+complaining of this to M. de Barneveld. . . . Patience! I am groaning
+without being able to hope for justice. I console myself, for my term of
+office will soon arrive. Would that my embassy could have finished under
+the agreeable and friendly circumstances with which it began. The man who
+may succeed me will not find that this vile trick will help him much.
+. . . Pray find out whence and from whom this intrigue has come."
+
+Certainly an envoy's position could hardly be more utterly compromised.
+Most unquestionably Aerssens had reason to be indignant, believing as he
+did that his conscientious efforts in the service of his government had
+been made use of by his chief to undermine his credit and blast his
+character. There was an intrigue between the newly appointed French
+minister, de Russy, at the Hague and the enemies of Aerssens to represent
+him to his own government as mischievous, passionate, unreasonably
+vehement in supporting the claims and dignity of his own country at the
+court to which he was accredited. Not often in diplomatic history has an
+ambassador of a free state been censured or removed for believing and
+maintaining in controversy that his own government is in the right. It
+was natural that the French government should be disturbed by the vivid
+light which he had flashed upon their pernicious intrigues with Spain to
+the detriment of the Republic, and at the pertinacity with which he
+resisted their preposterous claim to be reimbursed for one-third of the
+money which the late king had advanced as a free subsidy towards the war
+of the Netherlands for independence. But no injustice could be more
+outrageous than for the Envoy's own government to unite with the foreign
+State in damaging the character of its own agent for the crime of
+fidelity to itself.
+
+Of such cruel perfidy Aerssens had been the victim, and he most
+wrongfully suspected his chief as its real perpetrator.
+
+The claim for what was called the "Third" had been invented after the
+death of Henry. As already explained, the "Third" was not a gift from
+England to the Netherlands. It was a loan from England to France, or more
+properly a consent to abstain from pressing for payment for this
+proportion of an old debt. James, who was always needy, had often
+desired, but never obtained, the payment of this sum from Henry. Now that
+the King was dead, he applied to the Regent's government, and the
+Regent's government called upon the Netherlands, to pay the money.
+
+Aerssens, as the agent of the Republic, protested firmly against such
+claim. The money had been advanced by the King as a free gift, as his
+contribution to a war in which he was deeply interested, although he was
+nominally at peace with Spain. As to the private arrangements between
+France and England, the Republic, said the Dutch envoy, was in no sense
+bound by them. He was no party to the Treaty of Hampton Court, and knew
+nothing of its stipulations.
+
+Courtiers and politicians in plenty at the French court, now that Henry
+was dead, were quite sure that they had heard him say over and over again
+that the Netherlands had bound themselves to pay the Third. They
+persuaded Mary de' Medici that she likewise had often heard him say so,
+and induced her to take high ground on the subject in her interviews with
+Aerssens. The luckless queen, who was always in want of money to satisfy
+the insatiable greed of her favourites, and to buy off the enmity of the
+great princes, was very vehement--although she knew as much of those
+transactions as of the finances of Prester John or the Lama of Thibet--in
+maintaining this claim of her government upon the States.
+
+"After talking with the ministers," said Aerssens, "I had an interview
+with the Queen. I knew that she had been taught her lesson, to insist on
+the payment of the Third. So I did not speak at all of the matter, but
+talked exclusively and at length of the French regiments in the States'
+service. She was embarrassed, and did not know exactly what to say. At
+last, without replying a single word to what I had been saying, she
+became very red in the face, and asked me if I were not instructed to
+speak of the money due to England. Whereupon I spoke in the sense already
+indicated. She interrupted me by saying she had a perfect recollection
+that the late king intended and understood that we were to pay the Third
+to England, and had talked with her very seriously on the subject. If he
+were living, he would think it very strange, she said, that we refused;
+and so on.
+
+"Soissons, too, pretends to remember perfectly that such were the King's
+intentions. 'Tis a very strange thing, Sir. Every one knows now the
+secrets of the late king, if you are willing to listen. Yet he was not in
+the habit of taking all the world into his confidence. The Queen takes
+her opinions as they give them to her. 'Tis a very good princess, but I
+am sorry she is so ignorant of affairs. As she says she remembers, one is
+obliged to say one believes her. But I, who knew the King so intimately,
+and saw him so constantly, know that he could only have said that the
+Third was paid in acquittal of his debts to and for account of the King
+of England, and not that we were to make restitution thereof. The
+Chancellor tells me my refusal has been taken as an affront by the Queen,
+and Puysieux says it is a contempt which she can't swallow."
+
+Aerssens on his part remained firm; his pertinacity being the greater as
+he thoroughly understood the subject which he was talking about, an
+advantage which was rarely shared in by those with whom he conversed. The
+Queen, highly scandalized by his demeanour, became from that time forth
+his bitter enemy, and, as already stated, was resolved to be rid of him.
+
+Nor was the Envoy at first desirous of remaining. He had felt after
+Henry's death and Sully's disgrace, and the complete transformation of
+the France which he had known, that his power of usefulness was gone.
+"Our enemies," he said, "have got the advantage which I used to have in
+times past, and I recognize a great coldness towards us, which is
+increasing every day." Nevertheless, he yielded reluctantly to
+Barneveld's request that he should for the time at least remain at his
+post. Later on, as the intrigues against him began to unfold themselves,
+and his faithful services were made use of at home to blacken his
+character and procure his removal, he refused to resign, as to do so
+would be to play into the hands of his enemies, and by inference at least
+to accuse himself of infidelity to his trust.
+
+But his concealed rage and his rancor grew more deadly every day. He was
+fully aware of the plots against him, although he found it difficult to
+trace them to their source.
+
+"I doubt not," he wrote to Jacques de Maldere, the distinguished
+diplomatist and senator, who had recently returned from his embassy to
+England, "that this beautiful proposition of de Russy has been sent to
+your Province of Zealand. Does it not seem to you a plot well woven as
+well in Holland as at this court to remove me from my post with
+disreputation? What have I done that should cause the Queen to disapprove
+my proceedings? Since the death of the late king I have always opposed
+the Third, which they have been trying to fix upon the treasury, on the
+ground that Henry never spoke to me of restitution, that the receipts
+given were simple ones, and that the money given was spent for the common
+benefit of France and the States under direction of the King's
+government. But I am expected here to obey M. de Villeroy, who says that
+it was the intention of the late king to oblige us to make the payment. I
+am not accustomed to obey authority if it be not supported by reason. It
+is for my masters to reply and to defend me. The Queen has no reason to
+complain. I have maintained the interests of my superiors. But this is
+not the cause of the complaints. My misfortune is that all my despatches
+have been sent from Holland in copy to this court. Most of them contained
+free pictures of the condition and dealings of those who govern here. M.
+de Villeroy has found himself depicted often, and now under pretext of a
+public negotiation he has found an opportunity of revenging himself. . . .
+Besides this cause which Villeroy has found for combing my head, Russy
+has given notice here that I have kept my masters in the hopes of being
+honourably exempted from the claims of this government. The long letter
+which I wrote to M. de Barneveld justifies my proceedings."
+
+It is no wonder that the Ambassador was galled to the quick by the
+outrage which those concerned in the government were seeking to put upon
+him. How could an honest man fail to be overwhelmed with rage and anguish
+at being dishonoured before the world by his masters for scrupulously
+doing his duty, and for maintaining the rights and dignity of his own
+country? He knew that the charges were but pretexts, that the motives of
+his enemies were as base as the intrigues themselves, but he also knew
+that the world usually sides with the government against the individual,
+and that a man's reputation is rarely strong enough to maintain itself
+unsullied in a foreign land when his own government stretches forth its
+hand not to, shield, but to stab him.
+
+   [See the similarity of Aerssens position to that of Motley 250 years
+   later, in the biographical sketch of Motley by Oliver Wendell
+   Holmes. D.W.]
+
+"I know," he said, "that this plot has been woven partly in Holland and
+partly here by good correspondence, in order to drive me from my post
+with disreputation. To this has tended the communication of my despatches
+to make me lose my best friends. This too was the object of the
+particular imparting to de Russy of all my propositions, in order to draw
+a complaint against me from this court.
+
+"But as I have discovered this accurately, I have resolved to offer to my
+masters the continuance of my very humble service for such time and under
+such conditions as they may think good to prescribe. I prefer forcing my
+natural and private inclinations to giving an opportunity for the
+ministers of this kingdom to discredit us, and to my enemies to succeed
+in injuring me, and by fraud and malice to force me from my post . . . I
+am truly sorry, being ready to retire, wishing to have an honourable
+testimony in recompense of my labours, that one is in such hurry to take
+advantage of my fall. I cannot believe that my masters wish to suffer
+this. They are too prudent, and cannot be ignorant of the treachery which
+has been practised on me. I have maintained their cause. If they have
+chosen to throw down the fruits of my industry, the blame should be
+imputed to those who consider their own ambition more than the interests
+of the public . . . . What envoy will ever dare to speak with vigour if
+he is not sustained by the government at home? . . . . . . My enemies
+have misrepresented my actions, and my language as passionate,
+exaggerated, mischievous, but I have no passion except for the service of
+my superiors. They say that I have a dark and distrustful disposition,
+but I have been alarmed at the alliance now forming here with the King of
+Spain, through the policy of M. de Villeroy. I was the first to discover
+this intrigue, which they thought buried in the bosom of the Triumvirate.
+I gave notice of it to My Lords the States as in duty bound. It all came
+back to the government in the copies furnished of my secret despatches.
+This is the real source of the complaints against me. The rest of the
+charges, relating to the Third and other matters, are but pretexts. To
+parry the blow, they pretend that all that is said and done with the
+Spaniard is but feigning. Who is going to believe that? Has not the Pope
+intervened in the affair? . . . I tell you they are furious here because
+I have my eyes open. I see too far into their affairs to suit their
+purposes. A new man would suit them better."
+
+His position was hopelessly compromised. He remained in Paris, however,
+month after month, and even year after year, defying his enemies both at
+the Queen's court and in Holland, feeding fat the grudge he bore to
+Barneveld as the supposed author of the intrigue against him, and drawing
+closer the personal bands which united him to Bouillon and through him to
+Prince Maurice.
+
+The wrath of the Ambassador flamed forth without disguise against
+Barneveld and all his adherents when his removal, as will be related on a
+subsequent page, was at last effected. And his hatred was likely to be
+deadly. A man with a shrewd, vivid face, cleanly cut features and a
+restless eye; wearing a close-fitting skull cap, which gave him something
+the lock of a monk, but with the thoroughbred and facile demeanour of one
+familiar with the world; stealthy, smooth, and cruel, a man coldly
+intellectual, who feared no one, loved but few, and never forgot or
+forgave; Francis d'Aerssens, devoured by ambition and burning with
+revenge, was a dangerous enemy.
+
+Time was soon to show whether it was safe to injure him. Barneveld, from
+well-considered motives of public policy, was favouring his honourable
+recall. But he allowed a decorous interval of more than three years to
+elapse in which to terminate his affairs, and to take a deliberate
+departure from that French embassy to which the Advocate had originally
+promoted him, and in which there had been so many years of mutual benefit
+and confidence between the two statesmen. He used no underhand means. He
+did not abuse the power of the States-General which he wielded to cast
+him suddenly and brutally from the distinguished post which he occupied,
+and so to attempt to dishonour him before the world. Nothing could be
+more respectful and conciliatory than the attitude of the government from
+first to last towards this distinguished functionary. The Republic
+respected itself too much to deal with honourable agents whose services
+it felt obliged to dispense with as with vulgar malefactors who had been
+detected in crime. But Aerssens believed that it was the Advocate who had
+caused copies of his despatches to be sent to the French court, and that
+he had deliberately and for a fixed purpose been undermining his
+influence at home and abroad and blackening his character. All his
+ancient feelings of devotion, if they had ever genuinely existed towards
+his former friend and patron, turned to gall. He was almost ready to deny
+that he had ever respected Barneveld, appreciated his public services,
+admired his intellect, or felt gratitude for his guidance.
+
+A fierce controversy--to which at a later period it will be necessary to
+call the reader's attention, because it is intimately connected with dark
+scenes afterwards to be enacted--took place between the late ambassador
+and Cornelis van der Myle. Meantime Barneveld pursued the policy which he
+had marked out for the States-General in regard to France.
+
+Certainly it was a difficult problem. There could be no doubt that
+metamorphosed France could only be a dangerous ally for the Republic. It
+was in reality impossible that she should be her ally at all. And this
+Barneveld knew. Still it was better, so he thought, for the Netherlands
+that France should exist than that it should fall into utter
+decomposition. France, though under the influence of Spain, and doubly
+allied by marriage contracts to Spain, was better than Spain itself in
+the place of France. This seemed to be the only choice between two evils.
+Should the whole weight of the States-General be thrown into the scale of
+the malcontent and mutinous princes against the established but tottering
+government of France, it was difficult to say how soon Spain might
+literally, as well as inferentially, reign in Paris.
+
+Between the rebellion and the legitimate government, therefore, Barneveld
+did not hesitate. France, corporate France, with which the Republic had
+bean so long in close and mutually advantageous alliance, and from whose
+late monarch she had received such constant and valuable benefits, was in
+the Advocate's opinion the only power to be recognised, Papal and Spanish
+though it was. The advantage of an alliance with the fickle,
+self-seeking, and ever changing mutiny, that was seeking to make use of
+Protestantism to effect its own ends, was in his eyes rather specious
+than real.
+
+By this policy, while making the breach irreparable with Aerssens and as
+many leading politicians as Aerssens could influence, he first brought on
+himself the stupid accusation of swerving towards Spain. Dull murmurs
+like these, which were now but faintly making themselves heard against
+the reputation of the Advocate, were destined ere long to swell into a
+mighty roar; but he hardly listened now to insinuations which seemed
+infinitely below his contempt. He still effectually ruled the nation
+through his influence in the States of Holland, where he reigned supreme.
+Thus far Barneveld and My Lords the States-General were one personage.
+
+But there was another great man in the State who had at last grown
+impatient of the Advocate's power, and was secretly resolved to brook it
+no longer. Maurice of Nassau had felt himself too long rebuked by the
+genius of the Advocate. The Prince had perhaps never forgiven him for the
+political guardianship which he had exercised over him ever since the
+death of William the Silent. He resented the leading strings by which his
+youthful footstep had been sustained, and which he seemed always to feel
+about his limbs so long as Barneveld existed. He had never forgotten the
+unpalatable advice given to him by the Advocate through the
+Princess-Dowager.
+
+The brief campaign in Cleve and Julich was the last great political
+operation in which the two were likely to act in even apparent harmony.
+But the rivalry between the two had already pronounced itself
+emphatically during the negotiations for the truce. The Advocate had felt
+it absolutely necessary for the Republic to suspend the war at the first
+moment when she could treat with her ancient sovereign on a footing of
+equality. Spain, exhausted with the conflict, had at last consented to
+what she considered the humiliation of treating with her rebellious
+provinces as with free states over which she claimed no authority. The
+peace party, led by Barneveld, had triumphed, notwithstanding the steady
+opposition of Prince Maurice and his adherents.
+
+Why had Maurice opposed the treaty? Because his vocation was over,
+because he was the greatest captain of the age, because his emoluments,
+his consideration, his dignity before the world, his personal power, were
+all vastly greater in war than in his opinion they could possibly be in
+peace. It was easy for him to persuade himself that what was manifestly
+for his individual interest was likewise essential to the prosperity of
+the country.
+
+The diminution in his revenues consequent on the return to peace was made
+good to him, his brother, and his cousin, by most munificent endowments
+and pensions. And it was owing to the strenuous exertions of the Advocate
+that these large sums were voted. A hollow friendship was kept up between
+the two during the first few years of the truce, but resentment and
+jealousy lay deep in Maurice's heart.
+
+At about the period of the return of Aerssens from his French embassy,
+the suppressed fire was ready to flame forth at the first fanning by that
+artful hand. It was impossible, so Aerssens thought and whispered, that
+two heads could remain on one body politic. There was no room in the
+Netherlands for both the Advocate and the Prince. Barneveld was in all
+civil affairs dictator, chief magistrate, supreme judge; but he occupied
+this high station by the force of intellect, will, and experience, not
+through any constitutional provision. In time of war the Prince was
+generalissimo, commander-in-chief of all the armies of the Republic. Yet
+constitutionally he was not captain-general at all. He was only
+stadholder of five out of seven provinces.
+
+Barneveld suspected him of still wishing to make himself sovereign of the
+country. Perhaps his suspicions were incorrect. Yet there was every
+reason why Maurice should be ambitious of that position. It would have
+been in accordance with the openly expressed desire of Henry IV. and
+other powerful allies of the Netherlands. His father's assassination had
+alone prevented his elevation to the rank of sovereign Count of Holland.
+The federal policy of the Provinces had drifted into a republican form
+after their renunciation of their Spanish sovereign, not because the
+people, or the States as representing the people, had deliberately chosen
+a republican system, but because they could get no powerful monarch to
+accept the sovereignty. They had offered to become subjects of Protestant
+England and of Catholic France. Both powers had refused the offer, and
+refused it with something like contumely. However deep the subsequent
+regret on the part of both, there was no doubt of the fact. But the
+internal policy in all the provinces, and in all the towns, was
+republican. Local self-government existed everywhere. Each city
+magistracy was a little republic in itself. The death of William the
+Silent, before he had been invested with the sovereign power of all seven
+provinces, again left that sovereignty in abeyance. Was the supreme power
+of the Union, created at Utrecht in 1579, vested in the States-General?
+
+They were beginning theoretically to claim it, but Barneveld denied the
+existence of any such power either in law or fact. It was a league of
+sovereignties, he maintained; a confederacy of seven independent states,
+united for certain purposes by a treaty made some thirty years before.
+Nothing could be more imbecile, judging by the light of subsequent events
+and the experience of centuries, than such an organization. The
+independent and sovereign republic of Zealand or of Groningen, for
+example, would have made a poor figure campaigning, or negotiating, or
+exhibiting itself on its own account before the world. Yet it was
+difficult to show any charter, precedent, or prescription for the
+sovereignty of the States-General. Necessary as such an incorporation was
+for the very existence of the Union, no constitutional union had ever
+been enacted. Practically the Province of Holland, representing more than
+half the population, wealth, strength, and intellect of the whole
+confederation, had achieved an irregular supremacy in the States-General.
+But its undeniable superiority was now causing a rank growth of envy,
+hatred, and jealousy throughout the country, and the great Advocate of
+Holland, who was identified with the province, and had so long wielded
+its power, was beginning to reap the full harvest of that malice.
+
+Thus while there was so much of vagueness in theory and practice as to
+the sovereignty, there was nothing criminal on the part of Maurice if he
+was ambitious of obtaining the sovereignty himself. He was not seeking to
+compass it by base artifice or by intrigue of any kind. It was very
+natural that he should be restive under the dictatorship of the Advocate.
+If a single burgher and lawyer could make himself despot of the
+Netherlands, how much more reasonable that he--with the noblest blood of
+Europe in his veins, whose direct ancestor three centuries before had
+been emperor not only of those provinces, but of all Germany and half
+Christendom besides, whose immortal father had under God been the creator
+and saviour of the new commonwealth, had made sacrifices such as man
+never made for a people, and had at last laid down his life in its
+defence; who had himself fought daily from boyhood upwards in the great
+cause, who had led national armies from victory to victory till he had
+placed his country as a military school and a belligerent power foremost
+among the nations, and had at last so exhausted and humbled the great
+adversary and former tyrant that he had been glad of a truce while the
+rebel chief would have preferred to continue the war--should aspire to
+rule by hereditary right a land with which his name and his race were
+indelibly associated by countless sacrifices and heroic achievements.
+
+It was no crime in Maurice to desire the sovereignty. It was still less a
+crime in Barneveld to believe that he desired it. There was no special
+reason why the Prince should love the republican form of government
+provided that an hereditary one could be legally substituted for it. He
+had sworn allegiance to the statutes, customs, and privileges of each of
+the provinces of which he had been elected stadholder, but there would
+have been no treason on his part if the name and dignity of stadholder
+should be changed by the States themselves for those of King or sovereign
+Prince.
+
+Yet it was a chief grievance against the Advocate on the part of the
+Prince that Barneveld believed him capable of this ambition.
+
+The Republic existed as a fact, but it had not long existed, nor had it
+ever received a formal baptism. So undefined was its constitution, and so
+conflicting were the various opinions in regard to it of eminent men,
+that it would be difficult to say how high-treason could be committed
+against it. Great lawyers of highest intellect and learning believed the
+sovereign power to reside in the separate states, others found that
+sovereignty in the city magistracies, while during a feverish period of
+war and tumult the supreme function had without any written constitution,
+any organic law, practically devolved upon the States-General, who had
+now begun to claim it as a right. The Republic was neither venerable by
+age nor impregnable in law. It was an improvised aristocracy of lawyers,
+manufacturers, bankers, and corporations which had done immense work and
+exhibited astonishing sagacity and courage, but which might never have
+achieved the independence of the Provinces unaided by the sword of
+Orange-Nassau and the magic spell which belonged to that name.
+
+Thus a bitter conflict was rapidly developing itself in the heart of the
+Commonwealth. There was the civil element struggling with the military
+for predominance; sword against gown; states' rights against central
+authority; peace against war; above all the rivalry of one prominent
+personage against another, whose mutual hatred was now artfully inflamed
+by partisans.
+
+And now another element of discord had come, more potent than all the
+rest: the terrible, never ending, struggle of Church against State.
+Theological hatred which forty years long had found vent in the exchange
+of acrimony between the ancient and the Reformed churches was now
+assuming other shapes. Religion in that age and country was more than has
+often been the case in history the atmosphere of men's daily lives. But
+during the great war for independence, although the hostility between the
+two religious forces was always intense, it was modified especially
+towards the close of the struggle by other controlling influences. The
+love of independence and the passion for nationality, the devotion to
+ancient political privileges, was often as fervid and genuine in Catholic
+bosoms as in those of Protestants, and sincere adherents of the ancient
+church had fought to the death against Spain in defence of chartered
+rights.
+
+At that very moment it is probable that half the population of the United
+Provinces was Catholic. Yet it would be ridiculous to deny that the
+aggressive, uncompromising; self-sacrificing, intensely believing,
+perfectly fearless spirit of Calvinism had been the animating soul, the
+motive power of the great revolt. For the Provinces to have encountered
+Spain and Rome without Calvinism, and relying upon municipal enthusiasm
+only, would have been to throw away the sword and fight with the
+scabbard.
+
+But it is equally certain that those hot gospellers who had suffered so
+much martyrdom and achieved so many miracles were fully aware of their
+power and despotic in its exercise. Against the oligarchy of commercial
+and juridical corporations they stood there the most terrible aristocracy
+of all: the aristocracy of God's elect, predestined from all time and to
+all eternity to take precedence of and to look down upon their inferior
+and lost fellow creatures. It was inevitable that this aristocracy, which
+had done so much, which had breathed into a new-born commonwealth the
+breath of its life, should be intolerant, haughty, dogmatic.
+
+The Church of Rome, which had been dethroned after inflicting such
+exquisite tortures during its period of power, was not to raise its head.
+Although so large a proportion of the inhabitants of the country were
+secretly or openly attached to that faith, it was a penal offence to
+participate openly in its rites and ceremonies. Religious equality,
+except in the minds of a few individuals, was an unimaginable idea. There
+was still one Church which arrogated to itself the sole possession of
+truth, the Church of Geneva. Those who admitted the possibility of other
+forms and creeds were either Atheists or, what was deemed worse than
+Atheists, Papists, because Papists were assumed to be traitors also, and
+desirous of selling the country to Spain. An undevout man in that land
+and at that epoch was an almost unknown phenomenon. Religion was as much
+a recognized necessity of existence as food or drink. It were as easy to
+find people about without clothes as without religious convictions.
+
+The Advocate, who had always adhered to the humble spirit of his
+ancestral device, "Nil scire tutissima fedes," and almost alone among his
+fellow citizens (save those immediate apostles and pupils of his who
+became involved in his fate) in favour of religious toleration, began to
+be suspected of treason and Papacy because, had he been able to give the
+law, it was thought he would have permitted such horrors as the public
+exercise of the Roman Catholic religion.
+
+The hissings and screamings of the vulgar against him as he moved forward
+on his stedfast course he heeded less than those of geese on a common.
+But there was coming a time when this proud and scornful statesman,
+conscious of the superiority conferred by great talents and unparalleled
+experience, would find it less easy to treat the voice of slanderers,
+whether idiots or powerful and intellectual enemies, with contempt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+   Schism in the Church a Public Fact--Struggle for Power between the
+   Sacerdotal and Political Orders--Dispute between Arminius and
+   Gomarus--Rage of James I. at the Appointment of Voratius--Arminians
+   called Remonstrants--Hague Conference--Contra-Remonstrance by
+   Gomarites of Seven Points to the Remonstrants' Five--Fierce
+   Theological Disputes throughout the Country--Ryswyk Secession--
+   Maurice wishes to remain neutral, but finds himself the Chieftain of
+   the Contra-Remonstrant Party--The States of Holland Remonstrant by a
+   large Majority--The States-General Contra-Remonstrant--Sir Ralph
+   Winwood leaves the Hague--Three Armies to take the Field against
+   Protestantism.
+
+Schism in the Church had become a public fact, and theological hatred was
+in full blaze throughout the country.
+
+The great practical question in the Church had been as to the appointment
+of preachers, wardens, schoolmasters, and other officers. By the
+ecclesiastical arrangements of 1591 great power was conceded to the civil
+authority in church matters, especially in regard to such appointments,
+which were made by a commission consisting of four members named by the
+churches and four by the magistrates in each district.
+
+Barneveld, who above all things desired peace in the Church, had wished
+to revive this ordinance, and in 1612 it had been resolved by the States
+of Holland that each city or village should, if the magistracy approved,
+provisionally conform to it. The States of Utrecht made at the same time
+a similar arrangement.
+
+It was the controversy which has been going on since the beginning of
+history and is likely to be prolonged to the end of time--the struggle
+for power between the sacerdotal and political orders; the controversy
+whether priests shall control the state or the state govern the priests.
+
+This was the practical question involved in the fierce dispute as to
+dogma. The famous duel between Arminius and Gomarus; the splendid
+theological tournaments which succeeded; six champions on a side armed in
+full theological panoply and swinging the sharpest curtal axes which
+learning, passion, and acute intellect could devise, had as yet produced
+no beneficent result. Nobody had been convinced by the shock of argument,
+by the exchange of those desperate blows. The High Council of the Hague
+had declared that no difference of opinion in the Church existed
+sufficient to prevent fraternal harmony and happiness. But Gomarus loudly
+declared that, if there were no means of putting down the heresy of
+Arminius, there would before long be a struggle such as would set
+province against province, village against village, family against
+family, throughout the land. He should be afraid to die in such doctrine.
+He shuddered that any one should dare to come before God's tribunal with
+such blasphemies. Meantime his great adversary, the learned and eloquent,
+the musical, frolicsome, hospitable heresiarch was no more. Worn out with
+controversy, but peaceful and happy in the convictions which were so
+bitterly denounced by Gomarus and a large proportion of both preachers
+and laymen in the Netherlands, and convinced that the schism which in his
+view had been created by those who called themselves the orthodox would
+weaken the cause of Protestantism throughout Europe, Arminius died at the
+age of forty-nine.
+
+The magistrates throughout Holland, with the exception of a few cities,
+were Arminian, the preachers Gomarian; for Arminius ascribed to the civil
+authority the right to decide upon church matters, while Gomarus
+maintained that ecclesiastical affairs should be regulated in
+ecclesiastical assemblies. The overseers of Leyden University appointed
+Conrad Vorstius to be professor of theology in place of Arminius. The
+selection filled to the brim the cup of bitterness, for no man was more
+audaciously latitudinarian than he. He was even suspected of Socinianism.
+There came a shriek from King James, fierce and shrill enough to rouse
+Arminius from his grave. James foamed to the mouth at the insolence of
+the overseers in appointing such a monster of infidelity to the
+professorship. He ordered his books to be publicly burned in St. Paul's
+Churchyard and at both Universities, and would have burned the Professor
+himself with as much delight as Torquemada or Peter Titelman ever felt in
+roasting their victims, had not the day for such festivities gone by. He
+ordered the States of Holland on pain of for ever forfeiting his
+friendship to exclude Vorstius at once from the theological chair and to
+forbid him from "nestling anywhere in the country."
+
+He declared his amazement that they should tolerate such a pest as Conrad
+Vorstius. Had they not had enough of the seed sown by that foe of God,
+Arminius? He ordered the States-General to chase the blasphemous monster
+from the land, or else he would cut off all connection with their false
+and heretic churches and make the other Reformed churches of Europe do
+the same, nor should the youth of England ever be allowed to frequent the
+University of Leyden.
+
+In point of fact the Professor was never allowed to qualify, to preach,
+or to teach; so tremendous was the outcry of Peter Plancius and many
+orthodox preachers, echoing the wrath of the King. He lived at Gouda in a
+private capacity for several years, until the Synod of Dordrecht at last
+publicly condemned his opinions and deprived him of his professorship.
+
+Meantime, the preachers who were disciples of Arminius had in a private
+assembly drawn up what was called a Remonstrance, addressed to the States
+of Holland, and defending themselves from the reproach that they were
+seeking change in the Divine service and desirous of creating tumult and
+schism.
+
+This Remonstrance, set forth by the pen of the famous Uytenbogaert, whom
+Gomarus called the Court Trumpeter, because for a long time he had been
+Prince Maurice's favourite preacher, was placed in the hands of
+Barneveld, for delivery to the States of Holland. Thenceforth the
+Arminians were called Remonstrants.
+
+The Hague Conference followed, six preachers on a side, and the States of
+Holland exhorted to fraternal compromise. Until further notice, they
+decreed that no man should be required to believe more than had been laid
+down in the Five Points:
+
+I. God has from eternity resolved to choose to eternal life those who
+through his grace believe in Jesus Christ, and in faith and obedience so
+continue to the end, and to condemn the unbelieving and unconverted to
+eternal damnation.
+
+II. Jesus Christ died for all; so, nevertheless, that no one actually
+except believers is redeemed by His death.
+
+III. Man has not the saving belief from himself, nor out of his free
+will, but he needs thereto God's grace in Christ.
+
+IV. This grace is the beginning, continuation, and completion of man's
+salvation; all good deeds must be ascribed to it, but it does not work
+irresistibly.
+
+V. God's grace gives sufficient strength to the true believers to
+overcome evil; but whether they cannot lose grace should be more closely
+examined before it should be taught in full security.
+
+Afterwards they expressed themselves more distinctly on this point, and
+declared that a true believer, through his own fault, can fall away from
+God and lose faith.
+
+Before the conference, however, the Gomarite preachers had drawn up a
+Contra-Remonstrance of Seven Points in opposition to the Remonstrants'
+five.
+
+They demanded the holding of a National Synod to settle the difference
+between these Five and Seven Points, or the sending of them to foreign
+universities for arbitration, a mutual promise being given by the
+contending parties to abide by the decision.
+
+Thus much it has been necessary to state concerning what in the
+seventeenth century was called the platform of the two great parties: a
+term which has been perpetuated in our own country, and is familiar to
+all the world in the nineteenth.
+
+These were the Seven Points:
+
+I. God has chosen from eternity certain persons out of the human race,
+which in and with Adam fell into sin and has no more power to believe and
+Convert itself than a dead man to restore himself to life, in order to
+make them blessed through Christ; while He passes by the rest through His
+righteous judgment, and leaves them lying in their sins.
+
+II. Children of believing parents, as well as full-grown believers, are
+to be considered as elect so long as they with action do not prove the
+contrary.
+
+III. God in His election has not looked at the belief and the repentance
+of the elect; but, on the contrary, in His eternal and unchangeable
+design, has resolved to give to the elect faith and stedfastness, and
+thus to make them blessed.
+
+IV. He, to this end, in the first place, presented to them His only
+begotten Son, whose sufferings, although sufficient for the expiation of
+all men's sins, nevertheless, according to God's decree, serves alone to
+the reconciliation of the elect.
+
+V. God causest he Gospel to be preached to them, making the same through
+the Holy Ghost, of strength upon their minds; so that they not merely
+obtain power to repent and to believe, but also actually and voluntarily
+do repent and believe.
+
+VI. Such elect, through the same power of the Holy Ghost through which
+they have once become repentant and believing, are kept in such wise that
+they indeed through weakness fall into heavy sins; but can never wholly
+and for always lose the true faith.
+
+VII. True believers from this, however, draw no reason for fleshly quiet,
+it being impossible that they who through a true faith were planted in
+Christ should bring forth no fruits of thankfulness; the promises of
+God's help and the warnings of Scripture tending to make their salvation
+work in them in fear and trembling, and to cause them more earnestly to
+desire help from that spirit without which they can do nothing.
+
+There shall be no more setting forth of these subtle and finely wrought
+abstractions in our pages. We aspire not to the lofty heights of
+theological and supernatural contemplation, where the atmosphere becomes
+too rarefied for ordinary constitutions. Rather we attempt an objective
+and level survey of remarkable phenomena manifesting themselves on the
+earth; direct or secondary emanations from those distant spheres.
+
+For in those days, and in that land especially, theology and politics
+were one. It may be questioned at least whether this practical fusion of
+elements, which may with more safety to the Commonwealth be kept
+separate, did not tend quite as much to lower and contaminate the
+religious sentiments as to elevate the political idea. To mix habitually
+the solemn phraseology which men love to reserve for their highest and
+most sacred needs with the familiar slang of politics and trade seems to
+our generation not a very desirable proceeding.
+
+The aroma of doubly distilled and highly sublimated dogma is more
+difficult to catch than to comprehend the broader and more practical
+distinctions of every-day party strife.
+
+King James was furious at the thought that common men--the vulgar, the
+people in short--should dare to discuss deep problems of divinity which,
+as he confessed, had puzzled even his royal mind. Barneveld modestly
+disclaimed the power of seeing with absolute clearness into things beyond
+the reach of the human intellect. But the honest Netherlanders were not
+abashed by thunder from the royal pulpit, nor perplexed by hesitations
+which darkened the soul of the great Advocate.
+
+In burghers' mansions, peasants' cottages, mechanics' back-parlours, on
+board herring smacks, canal boats, and East Indiamen; in shops,
+counting-rooms, farmyards, guard-rooms, ale-houses; on the exchange, in
+the tennis-court, on the mall; at banquets, at burials, christenings, or
+bridals; wherever and whenever human creatures met each other,
+there was ever to be found the fierce wrangle of Remonstrant and
+Contra-Remonstrant, the hissing of red-hot theological rhetoric, the
+pelting of hostile texts. The blacksmith's iron cooled on the anvil, the
+tinker dropped a kettle half mended, the broker left a bargain
+unclinched, the Scheveningen fisherman in his wooden shoes forgot the
+cracks in his pinkie, while each paused to hold high converse with friend
+or foe on fate, free will, or absolute foreknowledge; losing himself in
+wandering mazes whence there was no issue. Province against province,
+city against city, family against family; it was one vast scene of
+bickering, denunciation, heart-burnings, mutual excommunication and
+hatred.
+
+Alas! a generation of mankind before, men had stood banded together to
+resist, with all the might that comes from union, the fell spirit of the
+Holy Inquisition, which was dooming all who had wandered from the ancient
+fold or resisted foreign tyranny to the axe, the faggot, the living
+grave. There had been small leisure then for men who fought for
+Fatherland, and for comparative liberty of conscience, to tear each
+others' characters in pieces, and to indulge in mutual hatreds and
+loathing on the question of predestination.
+
+As a rule the population, especially of the humbler classes, and a great
+majority of the preachers were Contra-Remonstrant; the magistrates, the
+burgher patricians, were Remonstrant. In Holland the controlling
+influence was Remonstrant; but Amsterdam and four or five other cities of
+that province held to the opposite doctrine. These cities formed
+therefore a small minority in the States Assembly of Holland sustained by
+a large majority in the States-General. The Province of Utrecht was
+almost unanimously Remonstrant. The five other provinces were decidedly
+Contra-Remonstrant.
+
+It is obvious therefore that the influence of Barneveld, hitherto so
+all-controlling in the States-General, and which rested on the complete
+submission of the States of Holland to his will, was tottering. The
+battle-line between Church and State was now drawn up; and it was at the
+same time a battle between the union and the principles of state
+sovereignty.
+
+It had long since been declared through the mouth of the Advocate, but in
+a solemn state manifesto, that My Lords the States-General were the
+foster-fathers and the natural protectors of the Church, to whom supreme
+authority in church matters belonged.
+
+The Contra-Remonstrants, on the other hand, maintained that all the
+various churches made up one indivisible church, seated above the States,
+whether Provincial or General, and governed by the Holy Ghost acting
+directly upon the congregations.
+
+As the schism grew deeper and the States-General receded from the
+position which they had taken up under the lead of the Advocate, the
+scene was changed. A majority of the Provinces being Contra-Remonstrant,
+and therefore in favour of a National Synod, the States-General as a body
+were of necessity for the Synod.
+
+It was felt by the clergy that, if many churches existed, they would all
+remain subject to the civil authority. The power of the priesthood would
+thus sink before that of the burgher aristocracy. There must be one
+church--the Church of Geneva and Heidelberg--if that theocracy which the
+Gomarites meant to establish was not to vanish as a dream. It was founded
+on Divine Right, and knew no chief magistrate but the Holy Ghost. A few
+years before the States-General had agreed to a National Synod, but with
+a condition that there should be revision of the Netherland Confession
+and the Heidelberg Catechism.
+
+Against this the orthodox infallibilists had protested and thundered,
+because it was an admission that the vile Arminian heresy might perhaps
+be declared correct. It was now however a matter of certainty that the
+States-General would cease to oppose the unconditional Synod, because the
+majority sided with the priesthood.
+
+The magistrates of Leyden had not long before opposed the demand for a
+Synod on the ground that the war against Spain was not undertaken to
+maintain one sect; that men of various sects and creeds had fought with
+equal valour against the common foe; that religious compulsion was
+hateful, and that no synod had a right to claim Netherlanders as slaves.
+
+To thoughtful politicians like Barneveld, Hugo Grotius, and men who acted
+with them, fraught with danger to the state, that seemed a doctrine by
+which mankind were not regarded as saved or doomed according to belief or
+deeds, but as individuals divided from all eternity into two classes
+which could never be united, but must ever mutually regard each other as
+enemies.
+
+And like enemies Netherlanders were indeed beginning to regard each
+other. The man who, banded like brothers, had so heroically fought for
+two generations long for liberty against an almost superhuman despotism,
+now howling and jeering against each other like demons, seemed determined
+to bring the very name of liberty into contempt.
+
+Where the Remonstrants were in the ascendant, they excited the hatred and
+disgust of the orthodox by their overbearing determination to carry their
+Five Points. A broker in Rotterdam of the Contra-Remonstrant persuasion,
+being about to take a wife, swore he had rather be married by a pig than
+a parson. For this sparkling epigram he was punished by the Remonstrant
+magistracy with loss of his citizenship for a year and the right to
+practise his trade for life. A casuistical tinker, expressing himself
+violently in the same city against the Five Points, and disrespectfully
+towards the magistrates for tolerating them, was banished from the town.
+A printer in the neighbourhood, disgusted with these and similar efforts
+of tyranny on the part of the dominant party, thrust a couple of lines of
+doggrel into the lottery:
+
+  "In name of the Prince of Orange, I ask once and again,
+   What difference between the Inquisition of Rotterdam and Spain?"
+
+For this poetical effort the printer was sentenced to forfeit the prize
+that he had drawn in the lottery, and to be kept in prison on bread and
+water for a fortnight.
+
+Certainly such punishments were hardly as severe as being beheaded or
+burned or buried alive, as would have been the lot of tinkers and
+printers and brokers who opposed the established church in the days of
+Alva, but the demon of intolerance, although its fangs were drawn, still
+survived, and had taken possession of both parties in the Reformed
+Church. For it was the Remonstrants who had possession of the churches at
+Rotterdam, and the printer's distich is valuable as pointing out that the
+name of Orange was beginning to identify itself with the
+Contra-Remonstrant faction. At this time, on the other hand, the gabble
+that Barneveld had been bought by Spanish gold, and was about to sell his
+country to Spain, became louder than a whisper. Men were not ashamed,
+from theological hatred, to utter such senseless calumnies against a
+venerable statesman whose long life had been devoted to the cause of his
+country's independence and to the death struggle with Spain.
+
+As if because a man admitted the possibility of all his fellow-creatures
+being saved from damnation through repentance and the grace of God, he
+must inevitably be a traitor to his country and a pensionary of her
+deadliest foe.
+
+And where the Contra-Remonstrants held possession of the churches and the
+city governments, acts of tyranny which did not then seem ridiculous were
+of everyday occurrence. Clergymen, suspected of the Five Points, were
+driven out of the pulpits with bludgeons or assailed with brickbats at
+the church door. At Amsterdam, Simon Goulart, for preaching the doctrine
+of universal salvation and for disputing the eternal damnation of young
+children, was forbidden thenceforth to preach at all.
+
+But it was at the Hague that the schism in religion and politics first
+fatally widened itself. Henry Rosaeus, an eloquent divine, disgusted with
+his colleague Uytenbogaert, refused all communion with him, and was in
+consequence suspended. Excluded from the Great Church, where he had
+formerly ministered, he preached every Sunday at Ryswyk, two or three
+miles distant. Seven hundred Contra-Remonstrants of the Hague followed
+their beloved pastor, and, as the roads to Ryswyk were muddy and sloppy
+in winter, acquired the unsavoury nickname of the "Mud Beggars." The
+vulgarity of heart which suggested the appellation does not inspire
+to-day great sympathy with the Remonstrant party, even if one were
+inclined to admit, what is not the fact, that they represented the cause
+of religious equality. For even the illustrious Grotius was at that very
+moment repudiating the notion that there could be two religions in one
+state. "Difference in public worship," he said, "was in kingdoms
+pernicious, but in free commonwealths in the highest degree destructive."
+
+It was the struggle between Church and State for supremacy over the whole
+body politic. "The Reformation," said Grotius, "was not brought about by
+synods, but by kings, princes, and magistrates." It was the same eternal
+story, the same terrible two-edged weapon, "Cujus reggio ejus religio,"
+found in the arsenal of the first Reformers, and in every
+politico-religious arsenal of history.
+
+"By an eternal decree of God," said Gomarus in accordance with Calvin,
+"it has been fixed who are to be saved and who damned. By His decree some
+are drawn to faith and godliness, and, being drawn, can never fall away.
+God leaves all the rest in the general corruption of human nature and
+their own misdeeds."
+
+"God has from eternity made this distinction in the fallen human race,"
+said Arminius, "that He pardons those who desist from their sins and put
+their faith in Christ, and will give them eternal life, but will punish
+those who remain impenitent. Moreover, it is pleasanter to God that all
+men should repent, and, coming to knowledge of truth, remain therein, but
+He compels none."
+
+This was the vital difference of dogma. And it was because they could
+hold no communion with those who believed in the efficacy of repentance
+that Rosaeus and his followers had seceded to Ryswyk, and the Reformed
+Church had been torn into two very unequal parts. But it is difficult to
+believe that out of this arid field of controversy so plentiful a harvest
+of hatred and civil convulsion could have ripened. More practical than
+the insoluble problems, whether repentance could effect salvation, and
+whether dead infants were hopelessly damned, was the question who should
+rule both Church and State.
+
+There could be but one church. On that Remonstrants and
+Contra-Remonstrants were agreed. But should the five Points or the Seven
+Points obtain the mastery? Should that framework of hammered iron, the
+Confession and Catechism, be maintained in all its rigidity around the
+sheepfold, or should the disciples of the arch-heretic Arminius, the
+salvation-mongers, be permitted to prowl within it?
+
+Was Barneveld, who hated the Reformed religion (so men told each other),
+and who believed in nothing, to continue dictator of the whole Republic
+through his influence over one province, prescribing its religious dogmas
+and laying down its laws; or had not the time come for the States-General
+to vindicate the rights of the Church, and to crush for ever the
+pernicious principle of State sovereignty and burgher oligarchy?
+
+The abyss was wide and deep, and the wild waves were raging more madly
+every hour. The Advocate, anxious and troubled, but undismayed, did his
+best in the terrible emergency. He conferred with Prince Maurice on the
+subject of the Ryswyk secession, and men said that he sought to impress
+upon him, as chief of the military forces, the necessity of putting down
+religious schism with the armed hand.
+
+The Prince had not yet taken a decided position. He was still under the
+influence of John Uytenbogaert, who with Arminius and the Advocate made
+up the fateful three from whom deadly disasters were deemed to have come
+upon the Commonwealth. He wished to remain neutral. But no man can be
+neutral in civil contentions threatening the life of the body politic any
+more than the heart can be indifferent if the human frame is sawn in two.
+
+"I am a soldier," said Maurice, "not a divine. These are matters of
+theology which I don't understand, and about which I don't trouble
+myself."
+
+On another occasion he is reported to have said, "I know nothing of
+predestination, whether it is green or whether it is blue; but I do know
+that the Advocate's pipe and mine will never play the same tune."
+
+It was not long before he fully comprehended the part which he must
+necessarily play. To say that he was indifferent to religious matters was
+as ridiculous as to make a like charge against Barneveld. Both were
+religious men. It would have been almost impossible to find an
+irreligious character in that country, certainly not among its
+highest-placed and leading minds. Maurice had strong intellectual powers.
+He was a regular attendant on divine worship, and was accustomed to hear
+daily religious discussions. To avoid them indeed, he would have been
+obliged not only to fly his country, but to leave Europe. He had a
+profound reverence for the memory of his father, Calbo y Calbanista, as
+William the Silent had called himself. But the great prince had died
+before these fierce disputes had torn the bosom of the Reformed Church,
+and while Reformers still were brethren. But if Maurice were a religious
+man, he was also a keen politician; a less capable politician, however,
+than a soldier, for he was confessedly the first captain of his age. He
+was not rapid in his conceptions, but he was sure in the end to
+comprehend his opportunity.
+
+The Church, the people, the Union--the sacerdotal, the democratic, and
+the national element--united under a name so potent to conjure with as
+the name of Orange-Nassau, was stronger than any other possible
+combination. Instinctively and logically therefore the Stadholder found
+himself the chieftain of the Contra-Remonstrant party, and without the
+necessity of an apostasy such as had been required of his great
+contemporary to make himself master of France.
+
+The power of Barneveld and his partisans was now put to a severe strain.
+His efforts to bring back the Hague seceders were powerless. The
+influence of Uytenbogaert over the Stadholder steadily diminished. He
+prayed to be relieved from his post in the Great Church of the Hague,
+especially objecting to serve with a Contra-Remonstrant preacher whom
+Maurice wished to officiate there in place of the seceding Rosaeus. But
+the Stadholder refused to let him go, fearing his influence in other
+places. "There is stuff in him," said Maurice, "to outweigh half a dozen
+Contra-Remonstrant preachers." Everywhere in Holland the opponents of the
+Five Points refused to go to the churches, and set up tabernacles for
+themselves in barns, outhouses, canal-boats. And the authorities in town
+and village nailed up the barn-doors, and dispersed the canal boat
+congregations, while the populace pelted them with stones. The seceders
+appealed to the Stadholder, pleading that at least they ought to be
+allowed to hear the word of God as they understood it without being
+forced into churches where they were obliged to hear Arminian blasphemy.
+At least their barns might be left them. "Barns," said Maurice, "barns
+and outhouses! Are we to preach in barns? The churches belong to us, and
+we mean to have them too."
+
+Not long afterwards the Stadholder, clapping his hand on his sword hilt,
+observed that these differences could only be settled by force of arms.
+An ominous remark and a dreary comment on the forty years' war against
+the Inquisition.
+
+And the same scenes that were enacting in Holland were going on in
+Overyssel and Friesland and Groningen; but with a difference. Here it was
+the Five Points men who were driven into secession, whose barns were
+nailed up, and whose preachers were mobbed. A lugubrious spectacle, but
+less painful certainly than the hangings and drownings and burnings alive
+in the previous century to prevent secession from the indivisible church.
+
+It is certain that stadholders and all other magistrates ever since the
+establishment of independence were sworn to maintain the Reformed
+religion and to prevent a public divine worship under any other form. It
+is equally certain that by the 13th Article of the Act of Union--the
+organic law of the confederation made at Utrecht in 1579--each province
+reserved for itself full control of religious questions. It would indeed
+seem almost unimaginable in a country where not only every province, but
+every city, every municipal board, was so jealous of its local privileges
+and traditional rights that the absolute disposition over the highest,
+gravest, and most difficult questions that can inspire and perplex
+humanity should be left to a general government, and one moreover which
+had scarcely come into existence.
+
+Yet into this entirely illogical position the Commonwealth was steadily
+drifting. The cause was simple enough. The States of Holland, as already
+observed, were Remonstrant by a large majority. The States-General were
+Contra-Remonstrant by a still greater majority. The Church, rigidly
+attached to the Confession and Catechism, and refusing all change except
+through decree of a synod to be called by the general government which it
+controlled, represented the national idea. It thus identified itself with
+the Republic, and was in sympathy with a large majority of the
+population.
+
+Logic, law, historical tradition were on the side of the Advocate and the
+States' right party. The instinct of national self-preservation,
+repudiating the narrow and destructive doctrine of provincial
+sovereignty, were on the side of the States-General and the Church.
+
+Meantime James of Great Britain had written letters both to the States of
+Holland and the States-General expressing his satisfaction with the Five
+Points, and deciding that there was nothing objectionable in the doctrine
+of predestination therein set forth. He had recommended unity and peace
+in Church and Assembly, and urged especially that these controverted
+points should not be discussed in the pulpit to the irritation and
+perplexity of the common people.
+
+The King's letters had produced much satisfaction in the moderate party.
+Barneveld and his followers were then still in the ascendant, and it
+seemed possible that the Commonwealth might enjoy a few moments of
+tranquillity. That James had given a new exhibition of his astounding
+inconsistency was a matter very indifferent to all but himself, and he
+was the last man to trouble himself for that reproach.
+
+It might happen, when he should come to realize how absolutely he had
+obeyed the tuition of the Advocate and favoured the party which he had
+been so vehemently opposing, that he might regret and prove willing to
+retract. But for the time being the course of politics had seemed running
+smoother. The acrimony of the relations between the English government
+and dominant party at the Hague was sensibly diminished. The King seemed
+for an instant to have obtained a true insight into the nature of the
+struggle in the States. That it was after all less a theological than a
+political question which divided parties had at last dawned upon him.
+
+"If you have occasion to write on the subject," said Barneveld, "it is
+above all necessary to make it clear that ecclesiastical persons and
+their affairs must stand under the direction of the sovereign authority,
+for our preachers understand that the disposal of ecclesiastical persons
+and affairs belongs to them, so that they alone are to appoint preachers,
+elders, deacons, and other clerical persons, and to regulate the whole
+ecclesiastical administration according to their pleasure or by a popular
+government which they call the community."
+
+"The Counts of Holland from all ancient times were never willing under
+the Papacy to surrender their right of presentation to the churches and
+control of all spiritual and ecclesiastical benefices. The Emperor
+Charles and King Philip even, as Counts of Holland, kept these rights to
+themselves, save that they in enfeoffing more than a hundred gentlemen,
+of noble and ancient families with seigniorial manors, enfeoffed them
+also with the right of presentation to churches and benefices on their
+respective estates. Our preachers pretend to have won this right against
+the Countship, the gentlemen, nobles, and others, and that it belongs to
+them."
+
+It is easy to see that this was a grave, constitutional, legal, and
+historical problem not to be solved offhand by vehement citations from
+Scripture, nor by pragmatical dissertations from the lips of foreign
+ambassadors.
+
+"I believe this point," continued Barneveld, "to be the most difficult
+question of all, importing far more than subtle searchings and
+conflicting sentiments as to passages of Holy Writ, or disputations
+concerning God's eternal predestination and other points thereupon
+depending. Of these doctrines the Archbishop of Canterbury well observed
+in the Conference of 1604 that one ought to teach them ascendendo and not
+descendendo."
+
+The letters of the King had been very favourably received both in the
+States-General and in the Assembly of Holland. "You will present the
+replies," wrote Barneveld to the ambassador in London, "at the best
+opportunity and with becoming compliments. You may be assured and assure
+his Majesty that they have been very agreeable to both assemblies. Our
+commissioners over there on the East Indian matter ought to know nothing
+of these letters."
+
+This statement is worthy of notice, as Grotius was one of those
+commissioners, and, as will subsequently appear, was accused of being the
+author of the letters.
+
+"I understand from others," continued the Advocate, "that the gentleman
+well known to you--[Obviously Francis Aerssens]--is not well pleased that
+through other agency than his these letters have been written and
+presented. I think too that the other business is much against his grain,
+but on the whole since your departure he has accommodated himself to the
+situation."
+
+But if Aerssens for the moment seemed quiet, the orthodox clergy were
+restive.
+
+"I know," said Barneveld, "that some of our ministers are so audacious
+that of themselves, or through others, they mean to work by direct or
+indirect means against these letters. They mean to show likewise that
+there are other and greater differences of doctrine than those already
+discussed. You will keep a sharp eye on the sails and provide against the
+effect of counter-currents. To maintain the authority of their Great
+Mightinesses over ecclesiastical matters is more than necessary for the
+conservation of the country's welfare and of the true Christian religion.
+As his Majesty would not allow this principle to be controverted in his
+own realms, as his books clearly prove, so we trust that he will not find
+it good that it should be controverted in our state as sure to lead to a
+very disastrous and inequitable sequel."
+
+And a few weeks later the Advocate and the whole party of toleration
+found themselves, as is so apt to be the case, between two fires. The
+Catholics became as turbulent as the extreme Calvinists, and already
+hopes were entertained by Spanish emissaries and spies that this rapidly
+growing schism in the Reformed Church might be dexterously made use of to
+bring the Provinces, when they should become fairly distracted, back to
+the dominion of Spain.
+
+"Our precise zealots in the Reformed religion, on the one side," wrote
+Barneveld, "and the Jesuits on the other, are vigorously kindling the
+fire of discord. Keep a good lookout for the countermine which is now
+working against the good advice of his Majesty for mutual toleration. The
+publication of the letters was done without order, but I believe with
+good intent, in the hope that the vehemence and exorbitance of some
+precise Puritans in our State should thereby be checked. That which is
+now doing against us in printed libels is the work of the aforesaid
+Puritans and a few Jesuits. The pretence in those libels, that there are
+other differences in the matter of doctrine, is mere fiction designed to
+make trouble and confusion."
+
+In the course of the autumn, Sir Ralph Winwood departed from the Hague,
+to assume soon afterwards in England the position of secretary of state
+for foreign affairs. He did not take personal farewell of Barneveld, the
+Advocate being absent in North Holland at the moment, and detained there
+by indisposition. The leave-taking was therefore by letter. He had done
+much to injure the cause which the Dutch statesman held vital to the
+Republic, and in so doing he had faithfully carried out the instructions
+of his master. Now that James had written these conciliatory letters to
+the States, recommending toleration, letters destined to be famous,
+Barneveld was anxious that the retiring ambassador should foster the
+spirit of moderation, which for a moment prevailed at the British court.
+But he was not very hopeful in the matter.
+
+"Mr. Winwood is doubtless over there now," he wrote to Caron. "He has
+promised in public and private to do all good offices. The States-General
+made him a present on his departure of the value of L4000. I fear
+nevertheless that he, especially in religious matters, will not do the
+best offices. For besides that he is himself very hard and precise, those
+who in this country are hard and precise have made a dead set at him, and
+tried to make him devoted to their cause, through many fictitious and
+untruthful means."
+
+The Advocate, as so often before, sent assurances to the King that "the
+States-General, and especially the States of Holland, were resolved to
+maintain the genuine Reformed religion, and oppose all novelties and
+impurities conflicting with it," and the Ambassador was instructed to see
+that the countermine, worked so industriously against his Majesty's
+service and the honour and reputation of the Provinces, did not prove
+successful.
+
+"To let the good mob play the master," he said, "and to permit hypocrites
+and traitors in the Flemish manner to get possession of the government of
+the provinces and cities, and to cause upright patriots whose faith and
+truth has so long been proved, to be abandoned, by the blessing of God,
+shall never be accomplished. Be of good heart, and cause these Flemish
+tricks to be understood on every occasion, and let men know that we mean
+to maintain, with unchanging constancy, the authority of the government,
+the privileges and laws of the country, as well as the true Reformed
+religion."
+
+The statesman was more than ever anxious for moderate counsels in the
+religious questions, for it was now more important than ever that there
+should be concord in the Provinces, for the cause of Protestantism, and
+with it the existence of the Republic, seemed in greater danger than at
+any moment since the truce. It appeared certain that the alliance between
+France and Spain had been arranged, and that the Pope, Spain, the
+Grand-duke of Tuscany, and their various adherents had organized a strong
+combination, and were enrolling large armies to take the field in the
+spring, against the Protestant League of the princes and electors in
+Germany. The great king was dead. The Queen-Regent was in the hand of
+Spain, or dreamed at least of an impossible neutrality, while the priest
+who was one day to resume the part of Henry, and to hang upon the sword
+of France the scales in which the opposing weights of Protestantism and
+Catholicism in Europe were through so many awful years to be balanced,
+was still an obscure bishop.
+
+The premonitory signs of the great religious war in Germany were not to
+be mistaken. In truth, the great conflict had already opened in the
+duchies, although few men as yet comprehended the full extent of that
+movement. The superficial imagined that questions of hereditary
+succession, like those involved in the dispute, were easily to be settled
+by statutes of descent, expounded by doctors of law, and sustained, if
+needful, by a couple of comparatively bloodless campaigns. Those who
+looked more deeply into causes felt that the limitations of Imperial
+authority, the ambition of a great republic, suddenly starting into
+existence out of nothing, and the great issues of the religious
+reformation, were matters not so easily arranged. When the scene shifted,
+as it was so soon to do, to the heart of Bohemia, when Protestantism had
+taken the Holy Roman Empire by the beard in its ancient palace, and
+thrown Imperial stadholders out of window, it would be evident to the
+blindest that something serious was taking place.
+
+Meantime Barneveld, ever watchful of passing events, knew that great
+forces of Catholicism were marshalling in the south. Three armies were to
+take the field against Protestantism at the orders of Spain and the Pope.
+One at the door of the Republic, and directed especially against the
+Netherlands, was to resume the campaign in the duchies, and to prevent
+any aid going to Protestant Germany from Great Britain or from Holland.
+Another in the Upper Palatinate was to make the chief movement against
+the Evangelical hosts. A third in Austria was to keep down the Protestant
+party in Bohemia, Hungary, Austria, Moravia, and Silesia. To sustain this
+movement, it was understood that all the troops then in Italy were to be
+kept all the winter on a war footing.'
+
+Was this a time for the great Protestant party in the Netherlands to tear
+itself in pieces for a theological subtlety, about which good Christians
+might differ without taking each other by the throat?
+
+"I do not lightly believe or fear," said the Advocate, in communicating a
+survey of European affairs at that moment to Carom "but present advices
+from abroad make me apprehend dangers."
+
+     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+     Aristocracy of God's elect
+     Determined to bring the very name of liberty into contempt
+     Disputing the eternal damnation of young children
+     Fate, free will, or absolute foreknowledge
+     Louis XIII.
+     No man can be neutral in civil contentions
+     No synod had a right to claim Netherlanders as slaves
+     Philip IV.
+     Priests shall control the state or the state govern the priests
+     Schism in the Church had become a public fact
+     That cynical commerce in human lives
+     The voice of slanderers
+     Theological hatred was in full blaze throughout the country
+     Theology and politics were one
+     To look down upon their inferior and lost fellow creatures
+     Whether dead infants were hopelessly damned
+     Whether repentance could effect salvation
+     Whose mutual hatred was now artfully inflamed by partisans
+     Work of the aforesaid Puritans and a few Jesuits
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND
+
+WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR
+
+By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+Life of John of Barneveld, 1613-15
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+   Aerssens remains Two Years longer in France--Derives many Personal
+   Advantages from his Post--He visits the States-General--Aubery du
+   Maurier appointed French Ambassador--He demands the Recall of
+   Aerssens--Peace of Sainte-Menehould--Asperen de Langerac appointed
+   in Aerssens' Place.
+
+Francis Aerssens had remained longer at his post than had been intended
+by the resolution of the States of Holland, passed in May 1611.
+
+It is an exemplification of the very loose constitutional framework of
+the United Provinces that the nomination of the ambassador to France
+belonged to the States of Holland, by whom his salary was paid, although,
+of course, he was the servant of the States-General, to whom his public
+and official correspondence was addressed. His most important despatches
+were however written directly to Barneveld so long as he remained in
+power, who had also the charge of the whole correspondence, public or
+private, with all the envoys of the States.
+
+Aerssens had, it will be remembered, been authorized to stay one year
+longer in France if he thought he could be useful there. He stayed two
+years, and on the whole was not useful. He had too many eyes and too many
+ears. He had become mischievous by the very activity of his intelligence.
+He was too zealous. There were occasions in France at that moment in
+which it was as well to be blind and deaf. It was impossible for the
+Republic, unless driven to it by dire necessity, to quarrel with its
+great ally. It had been calculated by Duplessis-Mornay that France had
+paid subsidies to the Provinces amounting from first to last to 200
+millions of livres. This was an enormous exaggeration. It was Barneveld's
+estimate that before the truce the States had received from France eleven
+millions of florins in cash, and during the truce up to the year 1613,
+3,600,000 in addition, besides a million still due, making a total of
+about fifteen millions. During the truce France kept two regiments of
+foot amounting to 4200 soldiers and two companies of cavalry in Holland
+at the service of the States, for which she was bound to pay yearly
+600,000 livres. And the Queen-Regent had continued all the treaties by
+which these arrangements were secured, and professed sincere and
+continuous friendship for the States. While the French-Spanish marriages
+gave cause for suspicion, uneasiness, and constant watchfulness in the
+States, still the neutrality of France was possible in the coming storm.
+So long as that existed, particularly when the relations of England with
+Holland through the unfortunate character of King James were perpetually
+strained to a point of imminent rupture, it was necessary to hold as long
+as it was possible to the slippery embrace of France.
+
+But Aerssens was almost aggressive in his attitude. He rebuked the
+vacillations, the shortcomings, the imbecility, of the Queen's government
+in offensive terms. He consorted openly with the princes who were on the
+point of making war upon the Queen-Regent. He made a boast to the
+Secretary of State Villeroy that he had unravelled all his secret plots
+against the Netherlands. He declared it to be understood in France, since
+the King's death, by the dominant and Jesuitical party that the crown
+depended temporally as well as spiritually on the good pleasure of the
+Pope.
+
+No doubt he was perfectly right in many of his opinions. No ruler or
+statesman in France worthy of the name would hesitate, in the impending
+religious conflict throughout Europe and especially in Germany, to
+maintain for the kingdom that all controlling position which was its
+splendid privilege. But to preach this to Mary de' Medici was waste of
+breath. She was governed by the Concini's, and the Concini's were
+governed by Spain. The woman who was believed to have known beforehand of
+the plot to murder her great husband, who had driven the one powerful
+statesman on whom the King relied, Maximilian de Bethune, into
+retirement, and whose foreign affairs were now completely in the hands of
+the ancient Leaguer Villeroy--who had served every government in the
+kingdom for forty years--was not likely to be accessible to high views of
+public policy.
+
+Two years had now elapsed since the first private complaints against the
+Ambassador, and the French government were becoming impatient at his
+presence. Aerssens had been supported by Prince Maurice, to whom he had
+long paid his court. He was likewise loyally protected by Barneveld, whom
+he publicly flattered and secretly maligned. But it was now necessary
+that he should be gone if peaceful relations with France were to be
+preserved.
+
+After all, the Ambassador had not made a bad business of his embassy from
+his own point of view. A stranger in the Republic, for his father the
+Greffier was a refugee from Brabant, he had achieved through his own
+industry and remarkable talents, sustained by the favour of Barneveld--to
+whom he owed all his diplomatic appointments--an eminent position in
+Europe. Secretary to the legation to France in 1594, he had been
+successively advanced to the post of resident agent, and when the
+Republic had been acknowledged by the great powers, to that of
+ambassador. The highest possible functions that representatives of
+emperors and kings could enjoy had been formally recognized in the person
+of the minister of a new-born republic. And this was at a moment when,
+with exception of the brave but insignificant cantons of Switzerland, the
+Republic had long been an obsolete idea.
+
+In a pecuniary point of view, too, he had not fared badly during his
+twenty years of diplomatic office. He had made much money in various
+ways. The King not long before his death sent him one day 20,000 florins
+as a present, with a promise soon to do much more for him.
+
+Having been placed in so eminent a post, he considered it as due to
+himself to derive all possible advantage from it. "Those who serve at the
+altar," he said a little while after his return, "must learn to live by
+it. I served their High Mightinesses at the court of a great king, and
+his Majesty's liberal and gracious favours were showered upon me. My
+upright conscience and steady obsequiousness greatly aided me. I did not
+look upon opportunity with folded arms, but seized it and made my profit
+by it. Had I not met with such fortunate accidents, my office would not
+have given me dry bread."
+
+Nothing could exceed the frankness and indeed the cynicism with which the
+Ambassador avowed his practice of converting his high and sacred office
+into merchandise. And these statements of his should be scanned closely,
+because at this very moment a cry was distantly rising, which at a later
+day was to swell into a roar, that the great Advocate had been bribed and
+pensioned. Nothing had occurred to justify such charges, save that at the
+period of the truce he had accepted from the King of France a fee of
+20,000 florins for extra official and legal services rendered him a dozen
+years before, and had permitted his younger son to hold the office of
+gentleman-in-waiting at the French court with the usual salary attached
+to it. The post, certainly not dishonourable in itself, had been intended
+by the King as a kindly compliment to the leading statesman of his great
+and good ally the Republic. It would be difficult to say why such a
+favour conferred on the young man should be held more discreditable to
+the receiver than the Order of the Garter recently bestowed upon the
+great soldier of the Republic by another friendly sovereign. It is
+instructive however to note the language in which Francis Aerssens spoke
+of favours and money bestowed by a foreign monarch upon himself, for
+Aerssens had come back from his embassy full of gall and bitterness
+against Barneveld. Thenceforth he was to be his evil demon.
+
+"I didn't inherit property," said this diplomatist. "My father and
+mother, thank God, are yet living. I have enjoyed the King's liberality.
+It was from an ally, not an enemy, of our country. Were every man obliged
+to give a reckoning of everything he possesses over and above his
+hereditary estates, who in the government would pass muster? Those who
+declare that they have served their country in her greatest trouble, and
+lived in splendid houses and in service of princes and great companies
+and the like on a yearly salary of 4000 florins, may not approve these
+maxims."
+
+It should be remembered that Barneveld, if this was a fling at the
+Advocate, had acquired a large fortune by marriage, and, although
+certainly not averse from gathering gear, had, as will be seen on a
+subsequent page, easily explained the manner in which his property had
+increased. No proof was ever offered or attempted of the anonymous
+calumnies levelled at him in this regard.
+
+"I never had the management of finances," continued Aerssens. "My profits
+I have gained in foreign parts. My condition of life is without excess,
+and in my opinion every means are good so long as they are honourable and
+legal. They say my post was given me by the Advocate. Ergo, all my
+fortune comes from the Advocate. Strenuously to have striven to make
+myself agreeable to the King and his counsellors, while fulfilling my
+office with fidelity and honour, these are the arts by which I have
+prospered, so that my splendour dazzles the eyes of the envious. The
+greediness of those who believe that the sun should shine for them alone
+was excited, and so I was obliged to resign the embassy."
+
+So long as Henry lived, the Dutch ambassador saw him daily, and at all
+hours, privately, publicly, when he would. Rarely has a foreign envoy at
+any court, at any period of history, enjoyed such privileges of being
+useful to his government. And there is no doubt that the services of
+Aerssens had been most valuable to his country, notwithstanding his
+constant care to increase his private fortune through his public
+opportunities. He was always ready to be useful to Henry likewise. When
+that monarch same time before the truce, and occasionally during the
+preliminary negotiations for it, had formed a design to make himself
+sovereign of the Provinces, it was Aerssens who charged himself with the
+scheme, and would have furthered it with all his might, had the project
+not met with opposition both from the Advocate and the Stadholder.
+Subsequently it appeared probable that Maurice would not object to the
+sovereignty himself, and the Ambassador in Paris, with the King's
+consent, was not likely to prove himself hostile to the Prince's
+ambition.
+
+"There is but this means alone," wrote Jeannini to Villeroy, "that can
+content him, although hitherto he has done like the rowers, who never
+look toward the place whither they wish to go." The attempt of the Prince
+to sound Barneveld on this subject through the Princess-Dowager has
+already been mentioned, and has much intrinsic probability.
+Thenceforward, the republican form of government, the municipal
+oligarchies, began to consolidate their power. Yet although the people as
+such were not sovereigns, but subjects, and rarely spoken of by the
+aristocratic magistrates save with a gentle and patronizing disdain, they
+enjoyed a larger liberty than was known anywhere else in the world.
+Buzenval was astonished at the "infinite and almost unbridled freedom"
+which he witnessed there during his embassy, and which seemed to him
+however "without peril to the state."
+
+The extraordinary means possessed by Aerssens to be important and useful
+vanished with the King's death. His secret despatches, painting in sombre
+and sarcastic colours the actual condition of affairs at the French
+court, were sent back in copy to the French court itself. It was not
+known who had played the Ambassador this vilest of tricks, but it was
+done during an illness of Barneveld, and without his knowledge. Early in
+the year 1613 Aerssens resolved, not to take his final departure, but to
+go home on leave of absence. His private intention was to look for some
+substantial office of honour and profit at home. Failing of this, he
+meant to return to Paris. But with an eye to the main chance as usual, he
+ingeniously caused it to be understood at court, without making positive
+statements to that effect, that his departure was final. On his
+leavetaking, accordingly, he received larger presents from the crown than
+had been often given to a retiring ambassador. At least 20,000 florins
+were thus added to the frugal store of profits on which he prided
+himself. Had he merely gone away on leave of absence, he would have
+received no presents whatever. But he never went back. The Queen-Regent
+and her ministers were so glad to get rid of him, and so little disposed,
+in the straits in which they found themselves, to quarrel with the
+powerful republic, as to be willing to write very complimentary public
+letters to the States, concerning the character and conduct of the man
+whom they so much detested.
+
+Pluming himself upon these, Aerssens made his appearance in the Assembly
+of the States-General, to give account by word of mouth of the condition
+of affairs, speaking as if he had only come by permission of their
+Mightinesses for temporary purposes. Two months later he was summoned
+before the Assembly, and ordered to return to his post.
+
+Meantime a new French ambassador had arrived at the Hague, in the spring
+of 1613. Aubery du Maurier, a son of an obscure country squire, a
+Protestant, of moderate opinions, of a sincere but rather obsequious
+character, painstaking, diligent, and honest, had been at an earlier day
+in the service of the turbulent and intriguing Due de Bouillon. He had
+also been employed by Sully as an agent in financial affairs between
+Holland and France, and had long been known to Villeroy. He was living on
+his estate, in great retirement from all public business, when Secretary
+Villeroy suddenly proposed him the embassy to the Hague. There was no
+more important diplomatic post at that time in Europe. Other countries
+were virtually at peace, but in Holland, notwithstanding the truce, there
+was really not much more than an armistice, and great armies lay in the
+Netherlands, as after a battle, sleeping face to face with arms in their
+hands. The politics of Christendom were at issue in the open, elegant,
+and picturesque village which was the social capital of the United
+Provinces. The gentry from Spain, Italy, the south of Europe, Catholic
+Germany, had clustered about Spinola at Brussels, to learn the art of war
+in his constant campaigning against Maurice. English and Scotch officers,
+Frenchmen, Bohemians, Austrians, youths from the Palatinate and all
+Protestant countries in Germany, swarmed to the banners of the prince who
+had taught the world how Alexander Farnese could be baffled, and the
+great Spinola outmanoeuvred. Especially there was a great number of
+Frenchmen of figure and quality who thronged to the Hague, besides the
+officers of the two French regiments which formed a regular portion of
+the States' army. That army was the best appointed and most conspicuous
+standing force in Europe. Besides the French contingent there were always
+nearly 30,000 infantry and 3000 cavalry on a war footing, splendidly
+disciplined, experienced, and admirably armed. The navy, consisting of
+thirty war ships, perfectly equipped and manned, was a match for the
+combined marine forces of all Europe, and almost as numerous.
+
+When the Ambassador went to solemn audience of the States-General, he was
+attended by a brilliant group of gentlemen and officers, often to the
+number of three hundred, who volunteered to march after him on foot to
+honour their sovereign in the person of his ambassador; the Envoy's
+carriage following empty behind. Such were the splendid diplomatic
+processions often received by the stately Advocate in his plain civic
+garb, when grave international questions were to be publicly discussed.
+
+There was much murmuring in France when the appointment of a personage
+comparatively so humble to a position so important was known. It was
+considered as a blow aimed directly at the malcontent princes of the
+blood, who were at that moment plotting their first levy of arms against
+the Queen. Du Maurier had been ill-treated by the Due de Bouillon, who
+naturally therefore now denounced the man whom he had injured to the
+government to which he was accredited. Being the agent of Mary de'
+Medici, he was, of course, described as a tool of the court and a secret
+pensioner of Spain. He was to plot with the arch traitor Barneveld as to
+the best means for distracting the Provinces and bringing them back into
+Spanish subjection. Du Maurier, being especially but secretly charged to
+prevent the return of Francis Aerssens to Paris, incurred of course the
+enmity of that personage and of the French grandees who ostentatiously
+protected him. It was even pretended by Jeannin that the appointment of a
+man so slightly known to the world, so inexperienced in diplomacy, and of
+a parentage so little distinguished, would be considered an affront by
+the States-General.
+
+But on the whole, Villeroy had made an excellent choice. No safer man
+could perhaps have been found in France for a post of such eminence, in
+circumstances so delicate, and at a crisis so grave. The man who had been
+able to make himself agreeable and useful, while preserving his
+integrity, to characters so dissimilar as the refining, self-torturing,
+intellectual Duplessis-Mornay, the rude, aggressive, and straightforward
+Sully, the deep-revolving, restlessly plotting Bouillon, and the smooth,
+silent, and tortuous Villeroy--men between whom there was no friendship,
+but, on the contrary, constant rancour--had material in him to render
+valuable services at this particular epoch. Everything depended on
+patience, tact, watchfulness in threading the distracting, almost
+inextricable, maze which had been created by personal rivalries,
+ambitions, and jealousies in the state he represented and the one to
+which he was accredited. "I ascribe it all to God," he said, in his
+testament to his children, "the impenetrable workman who in His goodness
+has enabled me to make myself all my life obsequious, respectful, and
+serviceable to all, avoiding as much as possible, in contenting some, not
+to discontent others." He recommended his children accordingly to
+endeavour "to succeed in life by making themselves as humble,
+intelligent, and capable as possible."
+
+This is certainly not a very high type of character, but a safer one for
+business than that of the arch intriguer Francis Aerssens. And he had
+arrived at the Hague under trying circumstances. Unknown to the foreign
+world he was now entering, save through the disparaging rumours
+concerning him, sent thither in advance by the powerful personages
+arrayed against his government, he might have sunk under such a storm at
+the outset, but for the incomparable kindness and friendly aid of the
+Princess-Dowager, Louise de Coligny. "I had need of her protection and
+recommendation as much as of life," said du Maurier; "and she gave them
+in such excess as to annihilate an infinity of calumnies which envy had
+excited against me on every side." He had also a most difficult and
+delicate matter to arrange at the very moment of his arrival.
+
+For Aerssens had done his best not only to produce a dangerous division
+in the politics of the Republic, but to force a rupture between the
+French government and the States. He had carried matters before the
+assembly with so high a hand as to make it seem impossible to get rid of
+him without public scandal. He made a parade of the official letters from
+the Queen-Regent and her ministers, in which he was spoken of in terms of
+conventional compliment. He did not know, and Barneveld wished, if
+possible, to spare him the annoyance of knowing, that both Queen and
+ministers, so soon as informed that there was a chance of coming back to
+them, had written letters breathing great repugnance to him and
+intimating that he would not be received. Other high personages of state
+had written to express their resentment at his duplicity, perpetual
+mischief-making, and machinations against the peace of the kingdom, and
+stating the impossibility of his resuming the embassy at Paris. And at
+last the queen wrote to the States-General to say that, having heard
+their intention to send him back to a post "from which he had taken leave
+formally and officially," she wished to prevent such a step. "We should
+see M. Aerssens less willingly than comports with our friendship for you
+and good neighbourhood. Any other you could send would be most welcome,
+as M. du Maurier will explain to you more amply."
+
+And to du Maurier himself she wrote distinctly, "Rather than suffer the
+return of the said Aerssens, you will declare that for causes which
+regard the good of our affairs and our particular satisfaction we cannot
+and will not receive him in the functions which he has exercised here,
+and we rely too implicitly upon the good friendship of My Lords the
+States to do anything in this that would so much displease us."
+
+And on the same day Villeroy privately wrote to the Ambassador, "If, in
+spite of all this, Aerssens should endeavour to return, he will not be
+received, after the knowledge we have of his factious spirit, most
+dangerous in a public personage in a state such as ours and in the
+minority of the King."
+
+Meantime Aerssens had been going about flaunting letters in everybody's
+face from the Duc de Bouillon insisting on the necessity of his return!
+The fact in itself would have been sufficient to warrant his removal, for
+the Duke was just taking up arms against his sovereign. Unless the States
+meant to interfere officially and directly in the civil war about to
+break out in France, they could hardly send a minister to the government
+on recommendation of the leader of the rebellion.
+
+It had, however, become impossible to remove him without an explosion.
+Barneveld, who, said du Maurier, "knew the man to his finger nails," had
+been reluctant to "break the ice," and wished for official notice in the
+matter from the Queen. Maurice protected the troublesome diplomatist.
+"'Tis incredible," said the French ambassador "how covertly Prince
+Maurice is carrying himself, contrary to his wont, in this whole affair.
+I don't know whether it is from simple jealousy to Barneveld, or if there
+is some mystery concealed below the surface."
+
+Du Maurier had accordingly been obliged to ask his government for
+distinct and official instructions. "He holds to his place," said he, "by
+so slight and fragile a root as not to require two hands to pluck him up,
+the little finger being enough. There is no doubt that he has been in
+concert with those who are making use of him to re-establish their credit
+with the States, and to embark Prince Maurice contrary to his preceding
+custom in a cabal with them."
+
+Thus a question of removing an obnoxious diplomatist could hardly be
+graver, for it was believed that he was doing his best to involve the
+military chief of his own state in a game of treason and rebellion
+against the government to which he was accredited. It was not the first
+nor likely to be the last of Bouillon's deadly intrigues. But the man who
+had been privy to Biron's conspiracy against the crown and life of his
+sovereign was hardly a safe ally for his brother-in-law, the
+straightforward stadholder.
+
+The instructions desired by du Maurier and by Barneveld had, as we have
+seen, at last arrived. The French ambassador thus fortified appeared
+before the Assembly of the States-General and officially demanded the
+recall of Aerssens. In a letter addressed privately and confidentially to
+their Mightinesses, he said, "If in spite of us you throw him at our
+feet, we shall fling him back at your head."
+
+At last Maurice yielded to, the representations of the French envoy, and
+Aerssens felt obliged to resign his claims to the post. The
+States-General passed a resolution that it would be proper to employ him
+in some other capacity in order to show that his services had been
+agreeable to them, he having now declared that he could no longer be
+useful in France. Maurice, seeing that it was impossible to save him,
+admitted to du Maurier his unsteadiness and duplicity, and said that, if
+possessed of the confidence of a great king, he would be capable of
+destroying the state in less than a year.
+
+But this had not always been the Prince's opinion, nor was it likely to
+remain unchanged. As for Villeroy, he denied flatly that the cause of his
+displeasure had been that Aerssens had penetrated into his most secret
+affairs. He protested, on the contrary, that his annoyance with him had
+partly proceeded from the slight acquaintance he had acquired of his
+policy, and that, while boasting to be better informed than any one, he
+was in the habit of inventing and imagining things in order to get credit
+for himself.
+
+It was highly essential that the secret of this affair should be made
+clear; for its influence on subsequent events was to be deep and wide.
+For the moment Aerssens remained without employment, and there was no
+open rupture with Barneveld. The only difference of opinion between the
+Advocate and himself, he said, was whether he had or had not definitely
+resigned his post on leaving Paris.
+
+Meantime it was necessary to fix upon a successor for this most important
+post. The war soon after the new year had broken out in France. Conde,
+Bouillon, and the other malcontent princes with their followers had taken
+possession of the fortress of Mezieres, and issued a letter in the name
+of Conde to the Queen-Regent demanding an assembly of the States-General
+of the kingdom and rupture of the Spanish marriages. Both parties, that
+of the government and that of the rebellion, sought the sympathy and
+active succour of the States. Maurice, acting now in perfect accord with
+the Advocate, sustained the Queen and execrated the rebellion of his
+relatives with perfect frankness. Conde, he said, had got his head
+stuffed full of almanacs whose predictions he wished to see realized. He
+vowed he would have shortened by a head the commander of the garrison who
+betrayed Mezieres, if he had been under his control. He forbade on pain
+of death the departure of any officer or private of the French regiments
+from serving the rebels, and placed the whole French force at the
+disposal of the Queen, with as many Netherland regiments as could be
+spared. One soldier was hanged and three others branded with the mark of
+a gibbet on the face for attempting desertion. The legal government was
+loyally sustained by the authority of the States, notwithstanding all the
+intrigues of Aerssens with the agents of the princes to procure them
+assistance. The mutiny for the time was brief, and was settled on the
+15th of May 1614, by the peace of Sainte-Menehould, as much a caricature
+of a treaty as the rising had been the parody of a war. Van der Myle,
+son-in-law of Barneveld, who had been charged with a special and
+temporary mission to France, brought back the terms, of the convention to
+the States-General. On the other hand, Conde and his confederates sent a
+special agent to the Netherlands to give their account of the war and the
+negotiation, who refused to confer either with du Maurier or Barneveld,
+but who held much conference with Aerssens.
+
+It was obvious enough that the mutiny of the princes would become
+chronic. In truth, what other condition was possible with two characters
+like Mary de' Medici and the Prince of Conde respectively at the head of
+the government and the revolt? What had France to hope for but to remain
+the bloody playground for mischievous idiots, who threw about the
+firebrands and arrows of reckless civil war in pursuit of the paltriest
+of personal aims?
+
+Van der Myle had pretensions to the vacant place of Aerssens. He had some
+experience in diplomacy. He had conducted skilfully enough the first
+mission of the States to Venice, and had subsequently been employed in
+matters of moment. But he was son-in-law to Barneveld, and although the
+Advocate was certainly not free from the charge of nepotism, he shrank
+from the reproach of having apparently removed Aerssens to make a place
+for one of his own family.
+
+Van der Myle remained to bear the brunt of the late ambassador's malice,
+and to engage at a little later period in hottest controversy with him,
+personal and political. "Why should van der Myle strut about, with his
+arms akimbo like a peacock?" complained Aerssens one day in confused
+metaphor. A question not easy to answer satisfactorily.
+
+The minister selected was a certain Baron Asperen de Langerac, wholly
+unversed in diplomacy or other public affairs, with abilities not above
+the average. A series of questions addressed by him to the Advocate, the
+answers to which, scrawled on the margin of the paper, were to serve for
+his general instructions, showed an ingenuousness as amusing as the
+replies of Barneveld were experienced and substantial.
+
+In general he was directed to be friendly and respectful to every one, to
+the Queen-Regent and her counsellors especially, and, within the limits
+of becoming reverence for her, to cultivate the good graces of the Prince
+of Conde and the other great nobles still malcontent and rebellious, but
+whose present movement, as Barneveld foresaw, was drawing rapidly to a
+close. Langerac arrived in Paris on the 5th of April 1614.
+
+Du Maurier thought the new ambassador likely to "fall a prey to the
+specious language and gentle attractions of the Due de Bouillon." He also
+described him as very dependent upon Prince Maurice. On the other hand
+Langerac professed unbounded and almost childlike reverence for
+Barneveld, was devoted to his person, and breathed as it were only
+through his inspiration. Time would show whether those sentiments would
+outlast every possible storm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+   Weakness of the Rulers of France and England--The Wisdom of
+   Barneveld inspires Jealousy--Sir Dudley Carleton succeeds Winwood--
+   Young Neuburg under the Guidance of Maximilian--Barneveld strives to
+   have the Treaty of Xanten enforced--Spain and the Emperor wish to
+   make the States abandon their Position with regard to the Duchies--
+   The French Government refuses to aid the States--Spain and the
+   Emperor resolve to hold Wesel--The great Religious War begun--The
+   Protestant Union and Catholic League both wish to secure the Border
+   Provinces--Troubles in Turkey--Spanish Fleet seizes La Roche--Spain
+   places large Armies on a War Footing.
+
+Few things are stranger in history than the apathy with which the wide
+designs of the Catholic party were at that moment regarded. The
+preparations for the immense struggle which posterity learned to call the
+Thirty Years' War, and to shudder when speaking of it, were going forward
+on every side. In truth the war had really begun, yet those most deeply
+menaced by it at the outset looked on with innocent calmness because
+their own roofs were not quite yet in a blaze. The passage of arms in the
+duchies, the outlines of which have just been indicated, and which was
+the natural sequel of the campaign carried out four years earlier on the
+same territory, had been ended by a mockery. In France, reduced almost to
+imbecility by the absence of a guiding brain during a long minority,
+fallen under the distaff of a dowager both weak and wicked, distracted by
+the intrigues and quarrels of a swarm of self-seeking grandees, and with
+all its offices, from highest to lowest, of court, state, jurisprudence,
+and magistracy, sold as openly and as cynically as the commonest wares,
+there were few to comprehend or to grapple with the danger. It should
+have seemed obvious to the meanest capacity in the kingdom that the great
+house of Austria, reigning supreme in Spain and in Germany, could not be
+allowed to crush the Duke of Savoy on the one side, and Bohemia, Moravia,
+and the Netherlands on the other without danger of subjection for France.
+Yet the aim of the Queen-Regent was to cultivate an impossible alliance
+with her inevitable foe.
+
+And in England, ruled as it then was with no master mind to enforce
+against its sovereign the great lessons of policy, internal and external,
+on which its welfare and almost its imperial existence depended, the only
+ambition of those who could make their opinions felt was to pursue the
+same impossibility, intimate alliance with the universal foe.
+
+Any man with slightest pretensions to statesmanship knew that the liberty
+for Protestant worship in Imperial Germany, extorted by force, had been
+given reluctantly, and would be valid only as long as that force could
+still be exerted or should remain obviously in reserve. The
+"Majesty-Letter" and the "Convention" of the two religions would prove as
+flimsy as the parchment on which they were engrossed, the Protestant
+churches built under that sanction would be shattered like glass, if once
+the Catholic rulers could feel their hands as clear as their consciences
+would be for violating their sworn faith to heretics. Men knew, even if
+the easy-going and uxorious emperor, into which character the once busy
+and turbulent Archduke Matthias had subsided, might be willing to keep
+his pledges, that Ferdinand of Styria, who would soon succeed him, and
+Maximilian of Bavaria were men who knew their own minds, and had mentally
+never resigned one inch of the ground which Protestantism imagined itself
+to have conquered.
+
+These things seem plain as daylight to all who look back upon them
+through the long vista of the past; but the sovereign of England did not
+see them or did not choose to see them. He saw only the Infanta and her
+two millions of dowry, and he knew that by calling Parliament together to
+ask subsidies for an anti-Catholic war he should ruin those golden
+matrimonial prospects for his son, while encouraging those "shoemakers,"
+his subjects, to go beyond their "last," by consulting the
+representatives of his people on matters pertaining to the mysteries of
+government. He was slowly digging the grave of the monarchy and building
+the scaffold of his son; but he did his work with a laborious and
+pedantic trifling, when really engaged in state affairs, most amazing to
+contemplate. He had no penny to give to the cause in which his nearest
+relatives mere so deeply involved and for which his only possible allies
+were pledged; but he was ready to give advice to all parties, and with
+ludicrous gravity imagined himself playing the umpire between great
+contending hosts, when in reality he was only playing the fool at the
+beck of masters before whom he quaked.
+
+"You are not to vilipend my counsel," said he one day to a foreign envoy.
+"I am neither a camel nor an ass to take up all this work on my
+shoulders. Where would you find another king as willing to do it as I
+am?"
+
+The King had little time and no money to give to serve his own family and
+allies and the cause of Protestantism, but he could squander vast sums
+upon worthless favourites, and consume reams of paper on controverted
+points of divinity. The appointment of Vorstius to the chair of theology
+in Leyden aroused more indignation in his bosom, and occupied more of his
+time, than the conquests of Spinola in the duchies, and the menaces of
+Spain against Savoy and Bohemia. He perpetually preached moderation to
+the States in the matter of the debateable territory, although moderation
+at that moment meant submission to the House of Austria. He chose to
+affect confidence in the good faith of those who were playing a comedy by
+which no statesman could be deceived, but which had secured the
+approbation of the Solomon of the age.
+
+But there was one man who was not deceived. The warnings and the
+lamentations of Barneveld sound to us out of that far distant time like
+the voice of an inspired prophet. It is possible that a portion of the
+wrath to come might have been averted had there been many men in high
+places to heed his voice. I do not wish to exaggerate the power and
+wisdom of the man, nor to set him forth as one of the greatest heroes of
+history. But posterity has done far less than justice to a statesman and
+sage who wielded a vast influence at a most critical period in the fate
+of Christendom, and uniformly wielded it to promote the cause of
+temperate human liberty, both political and religious. Viewed by the
+light of two centuries and a half of additional experience, he may appear
+to have made mistakes, but none that were necessarily disastrous or even
+mischievous. Compared with the prevailing idea of the age in which he
+lived, his schemes of polity seem to dilate into large dimensions, his
+sentiments of religious freedom, however limited to our modern ideas,
+mark an epoch in human progress, and in regard to the general
+commonwealth of Christendom, of which he was so leading a citizen, the
+part he played was a lofty one. No man certainly understood the tendency
+of his age more exactly, took a broader and more comprehensive view than
+he did of the policy necessary to preserve the largest portion of the
+results of the past three-quarters of a century, or had pondered the
+relative value of great conflicting forces more skilfully. Had his
+counsels been always followed, had illustrious birth placed him virtually
+upon a throne, as was the case with William the Silent, and thus allowed
+him occasionally to carry out the designs of a great mind with almost
+despotic authority, it might have been better for the world. But in that
+age it was royal blood alone that could command unflinching obedience
+without exciting personal rivalry. Men quailed before his majestic
+intellect, but hated him for the power which was its necessary result.
+They already felt a stupid delight in cavilling at his pedigree. To
+dispute his claim to a place among the ancient nobility to which he was
+an honour was to revenge themselves for the rank he unquestionably
+possessed side by side in all but birth with the kings and rulers of the
+world. Whether envy and jealousy be vices more incident to the republican
+form of government than to other political systems may be an open
+question. But it is no question whatever that Barneveld's every footstep
+from this period forward was dogged by envy as patient as it was
+devouring. Jealousy stuck to him like his shadow. We have examined the
+relations which existed between Winwood and himself; we have seen that
+ambassador, now secretary of state for James, never weary in denouncing
+the Advocate's haughtiness and grim resolution to govern the country
+according to its laws rather than at the dictate of a foreign sovereign,
+and in flinging forth malicious insinuations in regard to his relations
+to Spain. The man whose every hour was devoted in spite of a thousand
+obstacles strewn by stupidity, treachery, and apathy, as well as by envy,
+hatred, and bigotry--to the organizing of a grand and universal league of
+Protestantism against Spain, and to rolling up with strenuous and
+sometimes despairing arms a dead mountain weight, ever ready to fall back
+upon and crush him, was accused in dark and mysterious whispers, soon to
+grow louder and bolder, of a treacherous inclination for Spain.
+
+There is nothing less surprising nor more sickening for those who observe
+public life, and wish to retain faith in the human species, than the
+almost infinite power of the meanest of passions.
+
+The Advocate was obliged at the very outset of Langerac's mission to
+France to give him a warning on this subject.
+
+"Should her Majesty make kindly mention of me," he said, "you will say
+nothing of it in your despatches as you did in your last, although I am
+sure with the best intentions. It profits me not, and many take umbrage
+at it; wherefore it is wise to forbear."
+
+But this was a trifle. By and by there would be many to take umbrage at
+every whisper in his favour, whether from crowned heads or from the
+simplest in the social scale. Meantime he instructed the Ambassador,
+without paying heed to personal compliments to his chief, to do his best
+to keep the French government out of the hands of Spain, and with that
+object in view to smooth over the differences between the two great
+parties in the kingdom, and to gain the confidence, if possible, of Conde
+and Nevers and Bouillon, while never failing in straightforward respect
+and loyal friendship to the Queen-Regent and her ministers, as the
+legitimate heads of the government.
+
+From England a new ambassador was soon to take the place of Winwood. Sir
+Dudley Carleton was a diplomatist of respectable abilities, and well
+trained to business and routine. Perhaps on the whole there was none
+other, in that epoch of official mediocrity, more competent than he to
+fill what was then certainly the most important of foreign posts. His
+course of life had in no wise familiarized him with the intricacies of
+the Dutch constitution, nor could the diplomatic profession, combined
+with a long residence at Venice, be deemed especially favourable for deep
+studies of the mysteries of predestination. Yet he would be found ready
+at the bidding of his master to grapple with Grotius and Barneveld on the
+field of history and law, and thread with Uytenbogaert or Taurinus all
+the subtleties of Arminianism and Gomarism as if he had been half his
+life both a regular practitioner at the Supreme Court of the Hague and
+professor of theology at the University of Leyden. Whether the triumphs
+achieved in such encounters were substantial and due entirely to his own
+genius might be doubtful. At all events he had a sovereign behind him who
+was incapable of making a mistake on any subject.
+
+"You shall not forget," said James in his instructions to Sir Dudley,
+"that you are the minister of that master whom God hath made the sole
+protector of his religion . . . . . and you may let fall how hateful the
+maintaining of erroneous opinions is to the majesty of God and how
+displeasing to us."
+
+The warlike operations of 1614 had been ended by the abortive peace of
+Xanten. The two rival pretenders to the duchies were to halve the
+territory, drawing lots for the first choice, all foreign troops were to
+be withdrawn, and a pledge was to be given that no fortress should be
+placed in the hands of any power. But Spain at the last moment had
+refused to sanction the treaty, and everything was remitted to what might
+be exactly described as a state of sixes and sevens. Subsequently it was
+hoped that the States' troops might be induced to withdraw simultaneously
+with the Catholic forces on an undertaking by Spinola that there should
+be no re-occupation of the disputed territory either by the Republic or
+by Spain. But Barneveld accurately pointed out that, although the Marquis
+was a splendid commander and, so long as he was at the head of the
+armies, a most powerful potentate, he might be superseded at any moment.
+Count Bucquoy, for example, might suddenly appear in his place and refuse
+to be bound by any military arrangement of his predecessor. Then the
+Archduke proposed to give a guarantee that in case of a mutual withdrawal
+there should be no return of the troops, no recapture of garrisons. But
+Barneveld, speaking for the States, liked not the security. The Archduke
+was but the puppet of Spain, and Spain had no part in the guarantee. She
+held the strings, and might cause him at any moment to play what pranks
+she chose. It would be the easiest thing in the world for despotic Spain,
+so the Advocate thought, to reappear suddenly in force again at a
+moment's notice after the States' troops had been withdrawn and partially
+disbanded, and it would be difficult for the many-headed and many-tongued
+republic to act with similar promptness. To withdraw without a guarantee
+from Spain to the Treaty of Xanten, which had once been signed, sealed,
+and all but ratified, would be to give up fifty points in the game.
+Nothing but disaster could ensue. The Advocate as leader in all these
+negotiations and correspondence was ever actuated by the favourite
+quotation of William the Silent from Demosthenes, that the safest citadel
+against an invader and a tyrant is distrust. And he always distrusted in
+these dealings, for he was sure the Spanish cabinet was trying to make
+fools of the States, and there were many ready to assist it in the task.
+Now that one of the pretenders, temporary master of half the duchies, the
+Prince of Neuburg, had espoused both Catholicism and the sister of the
+Archbishop of Cologne and the Duke of Bavaria, it would be more safe than
+ever for Spain to make a temporary withdrawal. Maximilian of Bavaria was
+beyond all question the ablest and most determined leader of the Catholic
+party in Germany, and the most straightforward and sincere. No man before
+or since his epoch had, like him, been destined to refuse, and more than
+once refuse, the Imperial crown.
+
+Through his apostasy the Prince of Neuburg was in danger of losing his
+hereditary estates, his brothers endeavouring to dispossess him on the
+ground of the late duke's will, disinheriting any one of his heirs who
+should become a convert to Catholicism. He had accordingly implored aid
+from the King of Spain. Archduke Albert had urged Philip to render such
+assistance as a matter of justice, and the Emperor had naturally declared
+that the whole right as eldest son belonged, notwithstanding the will, to
+the Prince.
+
+With the young Neuburg accordingly under the able guidance of Maximilian,
+it was not likely that the grasp of the Spanish party upon these
+all-important territories would be really loosened. The Emperor still
+claimed the right to decide among the candidates and to hold the
+provinces under sequestration till the decision should be made--that was
+to say, until the Greek Kalends. The original attempt to do this through
+Archduke Leopold had been thwarted, as we have seen, by the prompt
+movements of Maurice sustained by the policy of Barneveld. The Advocate
+was resolved that the Emperor's name should not be mentioned either in
+the preamble or body of the treaty. And his course throughout the
+simulations, which were never negotiations, was perpetually baffled as
+much by the easiness and languor of his allies as the ingenuity of the
+enemy.
+
+He was reproached with the loss of Wesel, that Geneva of the Rhine, which
+would never be abandoned by Spain if it was not done forthwith. Let Spain
+guarantee the Treaty of Xanten, he said, and then she cannot come back.
+All else is illusion. Moreover, the Emperor had given positive orders
+that Wesel should not be given up. He was assured by Villeroy that France
+would never put on her harness for Aachen, that cradle of Protestantism.
+That was for the States-General to do, whom it so much more nearly
+concerned. The whole aim of Barneveld was not to destroy the Treaty of
+Xanten, but to enforce it in the only way in which it could be enforced,
+by the guarantee of Spain. So secured, it would be a barrier in the
+universal war of religion which he foresaw was soon to break out. But it
+was the resolve of Spain, instead of pledging herself to the treaty, to
+establish the legal control of the territory in the hand of the Emperor.
+Neuburg complained that Philip in writing to him did not give him the
+title of Duke of Julich and Cleve, although he had been placed in
+possession of those estates by the arms of Spain. Philip, referring to
+Archduke Albert for his opinion on this subject, was advised that, as the
+Emperor had not given Neuburg the investiture of the duchies, the King
+was quite right in refusing him the title. Even should the Treaty of
+Xanten be executed, neither he nor the Elector of Brandenburg would be
+anything but administrators until the question of right was decided by
+the Emperor.
+
+Spain had sent Neuburg the Order of the Golden Fleece as a reward for his
+conversion, but did not intend him to be anything but a man of straw in
+the territories which he claimed by sovereign right. They were to form a
+permanent bulwark to the Empire, to Spain, and to Catholicism.
+
+Barneveld of course could never see the secret letters passing between
+Brussels and Madrid, but his insight into the purposes of the enemy was
+almost as acute as if the correspondence of Philip and Albert had been in
+the pigeonholes of his writing-desk in the Kneuterdyk.
+
+The whole object of Spain and the Emperor, acting through the Archduke,
+was to force the States to abandon their positions in the duchies
+simultaneously with the withdrawal of the Spanish troops, and to be
+satisfied with a bare convention between themselves and Archduke Albert
+that there should be no renewed occupation by either party. Barneveld,
+finding it impossible to get Spain upon the treaty, was resolved that at
+least the two mediating powers, their great allies, the sovereigns of
+Great Britain and France, should guarantee the convention, and that the
+promises of the Archduke should be made to them. This was steadily
+refused by Spain; for the Archduke never moved an inch in the matter
+except according to the orders of Spain, and besides battling and
+buffeting with the Archduke, Barneveld was constantly deafened with the
+clamour of the English king, who always declared Spain to be in the right
+whatever she did, and forced to endure with what patience he might the
+goading of that King's envoy. France, on the other hand, supported the
+States as firmly as could have been reasonably expected.
+
+"We proposed," said the Archduke, instructing an envoy whom he was
+sending to Madrid with detailed accounts of these negotiations, "that the
+promise should be made to each other as usual in treaties. But the
+Hollanders said the promise should be made to the Kings of France and
+England, at which the Emperor would have been deeply offended, as if in
+the affair he was of no account at all. At any moment by this arrangement
+in concert with France and England the Hollanders might walk in and do
+what they liked."
+
+Certainly there could have been no succincter eulogy of the policy
+steadily recommended, as we shall have occasion to see, by Barneveld. Had
+he on this critical occasion been backed by England and France combined,
+Spain would have been forced to beat a retreat, and Protestantism in the
+great general war just beginning would have had an enormous advantage in
+position. But the English Solomon could not see the wisdom of this
+policy. "The King of England says we are right," continued the Archduke,
+"and has ordered his ambassador to insist on our view. The French
+ambassador here says that his colleague at the Hague has similar
+instructions, but admits that he has not acted up to them. There is not
+much chance of the Hollanders changing. It would be well that the King
+should send a written ultimatum that the Hollanders should sign the
+convention which we propose. If they don't agree, the world at least will
+see that it is not we who are in fault."
+
+The world would see, and would never have forgiven a statesman in the
+position of Barneveld, had he accepted a bald agreement from a
+subordinate like the Archduke, a perfectly insignificant personage in the
+great drama then enacting, and given up guarantees both from the
+Archduke's master and from the two great allies of the Republic. He stood
+out manfully against Spain and England at every hazard, and under a
+pelting storm of obloquy, and this was the man whose designs the English
+secretary of state had dared to describe "as of no other nature than to
+cause the Provinces to relapse into the hands of Spain."
+
+It appeared too a little later that Barneveld's influence with the French
+government, owing to his judicious support of it so long as it was a
+government, had been decidedly successful. Drugged as France was by the
+Spanish marriage treaty, she was yet not so sluggish nor spell-bound as
+the King of Great Britain.
+
+"France will not urge upon the Hollanders to execute the proposal as we
+made it," wrote the Archduke to the King, "so negotiations are at a
+standstill. The Hollanders say it is better that each party should remain
+with what each possesses. So that if it does not come to blows, and if
+these insolences go on as they have done, the Hollanders will be gaining
+and occupying more territory every day."
+
+Thus once more the ancient enemies and masters of the Republic were
+making the eulogy of the Dutch statesman. It was impossible at present
+for the States to regain Wesel, nor that other early stronghold of the
+Reformation, the old Imperial city of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle). The price
+to be paid was too exorbitant.
+
+The French government had persistently refused to assist the States and
+possessory princes in the recovery of this stronghold. The Queen-Regent
+was afraid of offending Spain, although her government had induced the
+citizens of the place to make the treaty now violated by that country.
+The Dutch ambassador had been instructed categorically to enquire whether
+their Majesties meant to assist Aachen and the princes if attacked by the
+Archdukes. "No," said Villeroy; "we are not interested in Aachen, 'tis
+too far off. Let them look for assistance to those who advised their
+mutiny."
+
+To the Ambassador's remonstrance that France was both interested in and
+pledged to them, the Secretary of State replied, "We made the treaty
+through compassion and love, but we shall not put on harness for Aachen.
+Don't think it. You, the States and the United Provinces, may assist them
+if you like."
+
+The Envoy then reminded the Minister that the States-General had always
+agreed to go forward evenly in this business with the Kings of Great
+Britain and France and the united princes, the matter being of equal
+importance to all. They had given no further pledge than this to the
+Union.
+
+It was plain, however, that France was determined not to lift a finger at
+that moment. The Duke of Bouillon and those acting with him had tried
+hard to induce their Majesties "to write seriously to the Archduke in
+order at least to intimidate him by stiff talk," but it was hopeless.
+They thought it was not a time then to quarrel with their neighbour and
+give offence to Spain.
+
+So the stiff talk was omitted, and the Archduke was not intimidated. The
+man who had so often intimidated him was in his grave, and his widow was
+occupied in marrying her son to the Infanta. "These are the
+first-fruits," said Aerssens, "of the new negotiations with Spain."
+
+Both the Spanish king and the Emperor were resolved to hold Wesel to the
+very last. Until the States should retire from all their positions on the
+bare word of the Archduke, that the Spanish forces once withdrawn would
+never return, the Protestants of those two cities must suffer. There was
+no help for it. To save them would be to abandon all. For no true
+statesman could be so ingenuous as thus to throw all the cards on the
+table for the Spanish and Imperial cabinet to shuffle them at pleasure
+for a new deal. The Duke of Neuburg, now Catholic and especially
+protected by Spain, had become, instead of a pretender with more or less
+law on his side, a mere standard-bearer and agent of the Great Catholic
+League in the debateable land. He was to be supported at all hazard by
+the Spanish forces, according to the express command of Philip's
+government, especially now that his two brothers with the countenance of
+the States were disputing his right to his hereditary dominions in
+Germany.
+
+The Archduke was sullen enough at what he called the weak-mindedness of
+France. Notwithstanding that by express orders from Spain he had sent
+5000 troops under command of Juan de Rivas to the Queen's assistance just
+before the peace of Sainte-Menehould, he could not induce her government
+to take the firm part which the English king did in browbeating the
+Hollanders.
+
+"'Tis certain," he complained, "that if, instead of this sluggishness on
+the part of France, they had done us there the same good services we have
+had from England, the Hollanders would have accepted the promise just as
+it was proposed by us." He implored the King, therefore, to use his
+strongest influence with the French government that it should strenuously
+intervene with the Hollanders, and compel them to sign the proposal which
+they rejected. "There is no means of composition if France does not
+oblige them to sign," said Albert rather piteously.
+
+But it was not without reason that Barneveld had in many of his letters
+instructed the States' ambassador, Langerac, "to caress the old
+gentleman" (meaning and never naming Villeroy), for he would prove to be
+in spite of all obstacles a good friend to the States, as he always had
+been. And Villeroy did hold firm. Whether the Archduke was right or not
+in his conviction, that, if France would only unite with England in
+exerting a strong pressure on the Hollanders, they would evacuate the
+duchies, and so give up the game, the correspondence of Barneveld shows
+very accurately. But the Archduke, of course, had not seen that
+correspondence.
+
+The Advocate knew what was plotting, what was impending, what was
+actually accomplished, for he was accustomed to sweep the whole horizon
+with an anxious and comprehensive glance. He knew without requiring to
+read the secret letters of the enemy that vast preparations for an
+extensive war against the Reformation were already completed. The
+movements in the duchies were the first drops of a coming deluge. The
+great religious war which was to last a generation of mankind had already
+begun; the immediate and apparent pretext being a little disputed
+succession to some petty sovereignties, the true cause being the
+necessity for each great party--the Protestant Union and the Catholic
+League--to secure these border provinces, the possession of which would
+be of such inestimable advantage to either. If nothing decisive occurred
+in the year 1614, the following year would still be more convenient for
+the League. There had been troubles in Turkey. The Grand Vizier had been
+murdered. The Sultan was engaged in a war with Persia. There was no
+eastern bulwark in Europe to the ever menacing power of the Turk and of
+Mahometanism in Europe save Hungary alone. Supported and ruled as that
+kingdom was by the House of Austria, the temper of the populations of
+Germany had become such as to make it doubtful in the present conflict of
+religious opinions between them and their rulers whether the Turk or the
+Spaniard would be most odious as an invader. But for the moment, Spain
+and the Emperor had their hands free. They were not in danger of an
+attack from below the Danube. Moreover, the Spanish fleet had been
+achieving considerable successes on the Barbary coast, having seized La
+Roche, and one or two important citadels, useful both against the
+corsairs and against sudden attacks by sea from the Turk. There were at
+least 100,000 men on a war footing ready to take the field at command of
+the two branches of the House of Austria, Spanish and German. In the
+little war about Montserrat, Savoy was on the point of being crushed, and
+Savoy was by position and policy the only possible ally, in the south, of
+the Netherlands and of Protestant Germany.
+
+While professing the most pacific sentiments towards the States, and a
+profound anxiety to withdraw his troops from their borders, the King of
+Spain, besides daily increasing those forces, had just raised 4,000,000
+ducats, a large portion of which was lodged with his bankers in Brussels.
+Deeds like those were of more significance than sugared words.
+
+     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+     Almost infinite power of the meanest of passions
+     Ludicrous gravity
+     Safest citadel against an invader and a tyrant is distrust
+     Their own roofs were not quite yet in a blaze
+     Therefore now denounced the man whom he had injured
+
+     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS, ENTIRE JOHN OF BARNEVELD 1609-1615:
+
+     Abstinence from inquisition into consciences and private parlour
+     Advanced orthodox party-Puritans
+     Allowed the demon of religious hatred to enter into its body
+     Almost infinite power of the meanest of passions
+     And now the knife of another priest-led fanatic
+     Aristocracy of God's elect
+     As with his own people, keeping no back-door open
+     At a blow decapitated France
+     Atheist, a tyrant, because he resisted dictation from the clergy
+     Behead, torture, burn alive, and bury alive all heretics
+     Christian sympathy and a small assistance not being sufficient
+     Conclusive victory for the allies seemed as predestined
+     Contained within itself the germs of a larger liberty
+     Could not be both judge and party in the suit
+     Covered now with the satirical dust of centuries
+     Deadly hatred of Puritans in England and Holland
+     Determined to bring the very name of liberty into contempt
+     Disputing the eternal damnation of young children
+     Doctrine of predestination in its sternest and strictest sense
+     Emperor of Japan addressed him as his brother monarch
+     Epernon, the true murderer of Henry
+     Estimating his character and judging his judges
+     Everybody should mind his own business
+     Fate, free will, or absolute foreknowledge
+     Father Cotton, who was only too ready to betray the secrets
+     Give him advice if he asked it, and money when he required
+     Great war of religion and politics was postponed
+     He was not imperial of aspect on canvas or coin
+     He was a sincere bigot
+     He who would have all may easily lose all
+     He who spreads the snare always tumbles into the ditch himself
+     Impatience is often on the part of the non-combatants
+     Intense bigotry of conviction
+     International friendship, the self-interest of each
+     It was the true religion, and there was none other
+     James of England, who admired, envied, and hated Henry
+     Jealousy, that potent principle
+     Jesuit Mariana--justifying the killing of excommunicated kings
+     King's definite and final intentions, varied from day to day
+     Language which is ever living because it is dead
+     Louis XIII.
+     Ludicrous gravity
+     More fiercely opposed to each other than to Papists
+     Most detestable verses that even he had ever composed
+     Neither kings nor governments are apt to value logic
+     No man can be neutral in civil contentions
+     No synod had a right to claim Netherlanders as slaves
+     No man pretended to think of the State
+     None but God to compel me to say more than I choose to say
+     Outdoing himself in dogmatism and inconsistency
+     Philip IV.
+     Power the poison of which it is so difficult to resist
+     Practised successfully the talent of silence
+     Presents of considerable sums of money to the negotiators made
+     Priests shall control the state or the state govern the priests
+     Princes show what they have in them at twenty-five or never
+     Putting the cart before the oxen
+     Queen is entirely in the hands of Spain and the priests
+     Religion was made the strumpet of Political Ambition
+     Religious toleration, which is a phrase of insult
+     Safest citadel against an invader and a tyrant is distrust
+     Schism in the Church had become a public fact
+     Secure the prizes of war without the troubles and dangers
+     Senectus edam maorbus est
+     She declined to be his procuress
+     Small matter which human folly had dilated into a great one
+     Smooth words, in the plentiful lack of any substantial
+     So much in advance of his time as to favor religious equality
+     Stroke of a broken table knife sharpened on a carriage wheel
+     That cynical commerce in human lives
+     The defence of the civil authority against the priesthood
+     The assassin, tortured and torn by four horses
+     The truth in shortest about matters of importance
+     The voice of slanderers
+     The Catholic League and the Protestant Union
+     The vehicle is often prized more than the freight
+     Their own roofs were not quite yet in a blaze
+     Theological hatred was in full blaze throughout the country
+     Theology and politics were one
+     There was no use in holding language of authority to him
+     There was but one king in Europe, Henry the Bearnese
+     Therefore now denounced the man whom he had injured
+     They have killed him, 'e ammazato,' cried Concini
+     Things he could tell which are too odious and dreadful
+     Thirty Years' War tread on the heels of the forty years
+     To look down upon their inferior and lost fellow creatures
+     Uncouple the dogs and let them run
+     Unimaginable outrage as the most legitimate industry
+     Vows of an eternal friendship of several weeks' duration
+     What could save the House of Austria, the cause of Papacy
+     Whether repentance could effect salvation
+     Whether dead infants were hopelessly damned
+     Whose mutual hatred was now artfully inflamed by partisans
+     Wish to appear learned in matters of which they are ignorant
+     Work of the aforesaid Puritans and a few Jesuits
+     Wrath of the Jesuits at this exercise of legal authority
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND
+WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR
+
+By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+MOTLEY'S HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS, Project Gutenberg Edition, Volume 98
+
+Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Complete, 1614-23
+
+
+
+
+Life and Death of John of Barneveld, v7, 1614-17
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+   The Advocate sounds the Alarm in Germany--His Instructions to
+   Langerac and his Forethought--The Prince--Palatine and his Forces
+   take Aachen, Mulheim, and other Towns--Supineness of the
+   Protestants--Increased Activity of Austria and the League--Barneveld
+   strives to obtain Help from England--Neuburg departs for Germany--
+   Barneveld the Prime Minister of Protestantism--Ernest Mansfield
+   takes service under Charles Emmanuel--Count John of Nassau goes to
+   Savoy--Slippery Conduct of King James in regard to the New Treaty
+   proposed--Barneveld's Influence greater in France than in England--
+   Sequestration feared--The Elector of Brandenburg cited to appear
+   before the Emperor at Prague--Murder of John van Wely--Uytenbogaert
+   incurs Maurice's Displeasure--Marriage of the King of France with
+   Anne of Austria--Conference between King James and Caron concerning
+   Piracy, Cloth Trade and Treaty of Xanten--Barneveld's Survey of the
+   Condition of Europe--His Efforts to avert the impending general War.
+
+I have thus purposely sketched the leading features of a couple of
+momentous, although not eventful, years--so far as the foreign policy of
+the Republic is concerned--in order that the reader may better understand
+the bearings and the value of the Advocate's actions and writings at that
+period. This work aims at being a political study. I would attempt to
+exemplify the influence of individual humours and passions--some of them
+among the highest and others certainly the basest that agitate
+humanity-upon the march of great events, upon general historical results
+at certain epochs, and upon the destiny of eminent personages. It may
+also be not uninteresting to venture a glance into the internal structure
+and workings of a republican and federal system of government, then for
+the first time reproduced almost spontaneously upon an extended scale.
+
+Perhaps the revelation of some of its defects, in spite of the faculty
+and vitality struggling against them, may not be without value for our
+own country and epoch. The system of Switzerland was too limited and
+homely, that of Venice too purely oligarchical, to have much moral for us
+now, or to render a study of their pathological phenomena especially
+instructive. The lessons taught us by the history of the Netherland
+confederacy may have more permanent meaning.
+
+Moreover, the character of a very considerable statesman at an
+all-important epoch, and in a position of vast responsibility, is always
+an historical possession of value to mankind. That of him who furnishes
+the chief theme for these pages has been either overlooked and neglected
+or perhaps misunderstood by posterity. History has not too many really
+important and emblematic men on its records to dispense with the memory
+of Barneveld, and the writer therefore makes no apology for dilating
+somewhat fully upon his lifework by means of much of his entirely
+unpublished and long forgotten utterances.
+
+The Advocate had ceaselessly been sounding the alarm in Germany. For the
+Protestant Union, fascinated, as it were, by the threatening look of the
+Catholic League, seemed relapsing into a drowse.
+
+"I believe," he said to one of his agents in that country, "that the
+Evangelical electors and princes and the other estates are not alive to
+the danger. I am sure that it is not apprehended in Great Britain. France
+is threatened with troubles. These are the means to subjugate the
+religion, the laws and liberties of Germany. Without an army the troops
+now on foot in Italy cannot be kept out of Germany. Yet we do not hear
+that the Evangelicals are making provision of troops, money, or any other
+necessaries. In this country we have about one hundred places occupied
+with our troops, among whom are many who could destroy a whole army. But
+the maintenance of these places prevents our being very strong in the
+field, especially outside our frontiers. But if in all Germany there be
+many places held by the Evangelicals which would disperse a great army is
+very doubtful. Keep a watchful eye. Economy is a good thing, but the
+protection of a country and its inhabitants must be laid to heart. Watch
+well if against these Provinces, and against Bohemia, Austria, and other
+as it is pretended rebellious states, these plans are not directed. Look
+out for the movements of the Italian and Bavarian troops against Germany.
+You see how they are nursing the troubles and misunderstandings in
+France, and turning them to account."
+
+He instructed the new ambassador in Paris to urge upon the French
+government the absolute necessity of punctuality in furnishing the
+payment of their contingent in the Netherlands according to convention.
+The States of Holland themselves had advanced the money during three
+years' past, but this anticipation was becoming very onerous. It was
+necessary to pay the troops every month regularly, but the funds from
+Paris were always in arrear. England contributed about one-half as much
+in subsidy, but these moneys went in paying the garrisons of Brielle,
+Flushing, and Rammekens, fortresses pledged to that crown. The Ambassador
+was shrewdly told not to enlarge on the special employment of the English
+funds while holding up to the Queen's government that she was not the
+only potentate who helped bear burthens for the Provinces, and insisted
+on a continuation of this aid. "Remember and let them remember," said the
+Advocate, "that the reforms which they are pretending to make there by
+relieving the subjects of contributions tends to enervate the royal
+authority and dignity both within and without, to diminish its lustre and
+reputation, and in sum to make the King unable to gratify and assist his
+subjects, friends, and allies. Make them understand that the taxation in
+these Provinces is ten times higher than there, and that My Lords the
+States hitherto by the grace of God and good administration have
+contrived to maintain it in order to be useful to themselves and their
+friends. Take great pains to have it well understood that this is even
+more honourable and more necessary for a king of France, especially in
+his minority, than for a republic 'hoc turbato seculo.' We all see
+clearly how some potentates in Europe are keeping at all time under one
+pretext or another strong forces well armed on a war footing. It
+therefore behoves his Majesty to be likewise provided with troops, and at
+least with a good exchequer and all the requirements of war, as well for
+the security of his own state as for the maintenance of the grandeur and
+laudable reputation left to him by the deceased king."
+
+Truly here was sound and substantial advice, never and nowhere more
+needed than in France. It was given too with such good effect as to bear
+fruit even upon stoniest ground, and it is a refreshing spectacle to see
+this plain Advocate of a republic, so lately sprung into existence out of
+the depths of oppression and rebellion, calmly summoning great kings as
+it were before him and instructing them in those vital duties of
+government in discharge of which the country he administered already
+furnished a model. Had England and France each possessed a Barneveld at
+that epoch, they might well have given in exchange for him a wilderness
+of Epernons and Sillerys, Bouillons and Conde's; of Winwoods, Lakes,
+Carrs, and Villierses. But Elizabeth with her counsellors was gone, and
+Henry was gone, and Richelieu had not come; while in England James and
+his minions were diligently opening an abyss between government and
+people which in less than half a lifetime more should engulph the
+kingdom.
+
+Two months later he informed the States' ambassador of the communications
+made by the Prince of Conde and the Dukes of Nevers and Bouillon to the
+government at the Hague now that they had effected a kind of
+reconciliation with the Queen. Langerac was especially instructed to do
+his best to assist in bringing about cordial relations, if that were
+possible, between the crown and the rebels, and meantime he was
+especially directed to defend du Maurier against the calumnious
+accusations brought against him, of which Aerssens had been the secret
+sower.
+
+"You will do your best to manage," he said, "that no special ambassador
+be sent hither, and that M. du Maurier may remain with us, he being a
+very intelligent and moderate person now well instructed as to the state
+of our affairs, a professor of the Reformed religion, and having many
+other good qualities serviceable to their Majesties and to us.
+
+"You will visit the Prince, and other princes and officers of the crown
+who are coming to court again, and do all good offices as well for the
+court as for M. du Maurier, in order that through evil plots and
+slanderous reports no harm may come to him.
+
+"Take great pains to find out all you can there as to the designs of the
+King of Spain, the Archdukes, and the Emperor, in the affair of Julich.
+You are also to let it be known that the change of religion on the part
+of the Prince-Palatine of Neuburg will not change our good will and
+affection for him, so far as his legal claims are concerned."
+
+So long as it was possible for the States to retain their hold on both
+the claimants, the Advocate, pursuant to his uniform policy of
+moderation, was not disposed to help throw the Palatine into the hands of
+the Spanish party. He was well aware, however, that Neuburg by his
+marriage and his conversion was inevitably to become the instrument of
+the League and to be made use of in the duchies at its pleasure, and that
+he especially would be the first to submit with docility to the decree of
+the Emperor. The right to issue such decree the States under guidance of
+Barneveld were resolved to resist at all hazards.
+
+"Work diligently, nevertheless," said he, "that they permit nothing there
+directly or indirectly that may tend to the furtherance of the League, as
+too prejudicial to us and to all our fellow religionists. Tell them too
+that the late king, the King of Great Britain, the united electors and
+princes of Germany, and ourselves, have always been resolutely opposed to
+making the dispute about the succession in the duchies depend on the will
+of the Emperor and his court. All our movements in the year 1610 against
+the attempted sequestration under Leopold were to carry out that purpose.
+Hold it for certain that our present proceedings for strengthening and
+maintaining the city and fortress of Julich are considered serviceable
+and indispensable by the British king and the German electors and
+princes. Use your best efforts to induce the French government to pursue
+the same policy--if it be not possible openly, then at least secretly. My
+conviction is that, unless the Prince-Palatine is supported by, and his
+whole designs founded upon, the general league against all our brethren
+of the religion, affairs may be appeased."
+
+The Envoy was likewise instructed to do his best to further the
+matrimonial alliance which had begun to be discussed between the Prince
+of Wales and the second daughter of France. Had it been possible at that
+moment to bring the insane dream of James for a Spanish alliance to
+naught, the States would have breathed more freely. He was also to urge
+payment of the money for the French regiments, always in arrears since
+Henry's death and Sully's dismissal, and always supplied by the exchequer
+of Holland. He was informed that the Republic had been sending some war
+ships to the Levant, to watch the armada recently sent thither by Spain,
+and other armed vessels into the Baltic, to pursue the corsairs with whom
+every sea was infested. In one year alone he estimated the loss to Dutch
+merchants by these pirates at 800,000 florins. "We have just captured two
+of the rovers, but the rascally scum is increasing," he said.
+
+Again alluding to the resistance to be made by the States to the Imperial
+pretensions, he observed, "The Emperor is about sending us a herald in
+the Julich matter, but we know how to stand up to him."
+
+And notwithstanding the bare possibility which he had admitted, that the
+Prince of Neuburg might not yet have wholly sold himself, body and soul,
+to the Papists, he gave warning a day or two afterwards in France that
+all should be prepared for the worst.
+
+"The Archdukes and the Prince of Neuburg appear to be taking the war
+earnestly in hand," he said. "We believe that the Papistical League is
+about to make a great effort against all the co-religionists. We are
+watching closely their movements. Aachen is first threatened, and the
+Elector-Palatine likewise. France surely, for reasons of state, cannot
+permit that they should be attacked. She did, and helped us to do, too
+much in the Julich campaign to suffer the Spaniards to make themselves
+masters there now."
+
+It has been seen that the part played by France in the memorable campaign
+of 1610 was that of admiring auxiliary to the States' forces; Marshal de
+la Chatre having in all things admitted the superiority of their army and
+the magnificent generalship of Prince Maurice. But the government of the
+Dowager had been committed by that enterprise to carry out the life-long
+policy of Henry, and to maintain his firm alliance with the Republic.
+Whether any of the great king's acuteness and vigour in countermining and
+shattering the plans of the House of Austria was left in the French
+court, time was to show. Meantime Barneveld was crying himself hoarse
+with warnings into the dull ears of England and France.
+
+A few weeks later the Prince of Neuburg had thrown off the mask. Twelve
+thousand foot and 1500 horse had been raised in great haste, so the
+Advocate informed the French court, by Spain and the Archdukes, for the
+use of that pretender. Five or six thousand Spaniards were coming by sea
+to Flanders, and as many Italians were crossing the mountains, besides a
+great number mustering for the same purpose in Germany and Lorraine.
+Barneveld was constantly receiving most important intelligence of
+military plans and movements from Prague, which he placed daily before
+the eyes of governments wilfully blind.
+
+"I ponder well at this crisis," he said to his friend Caron, "the
+intelligence I received some months back from Ratisbon, out of the
+cabinet of the Jesuits, that the design of the Catholic or Roman League
+is to bring this year a great army into the field, in order to make
+Neuburg, who was even then said to be of the Roman profession and League,
+master of Julich and the duchies; to execute the Imperial decree against
+Aachen and Mulheim, preventing any aid from being sent into Germany by
+these Provinces, or by Great Britain, and placing the Archduke and
+Marquis Spinola in command of the forces; to put another army on the
+frontiers of Austria, in order to prevent any succour coming from
+Hungary, Bohemia, Austria, Moravia, and Silesia into Germany; to keep all
+these disputed territories in subjection and devotion to the Emperor, and
+to place the general conduct of all these affairs in the hands of
+Archduke Leopold and other princes of the House of Austria. A third army
+is to be brought into the Upper Palatinate, under command of the Duke of
+Bavaria and others of the League, destined to thoroughly carry out its
+designs against the Elector-Palatine, and the other electors, princes,
+and estates belonging to the religion."
+
+This intelligence, plucked by Barneveld out of the cabinet of the
+Jesuits, had been duly communicated by him months before to those whom it
+most concerned, and as usual it seemed to deepen the lethargy of the
+destined victims and their friends. Not only the whole Spanish campaign
+of the present year had thus been duly mapped out by the Advocate, long
+before it occurred, but this long buried and forgotten correspondence of
+the statesman seems rather like a chronicle of transactions already past,
+so closely did the actual record, which posterity came to know too well,
+resemble that which he saw, and was destined only to see, in prophetic
+vision.
+
+Could this political seer have cast his horoscope of the Thirty Years'
+War at this hour of its nativity for the instruction of such men as
+Walsingham or Burleigh, Henry of Navarre or Sully, Richelieu or Gustavus
+Adolphus, would the course of events have been modified? These very
+idlest of questions are precisely those which inevitably occur as one
+ponders the seeming barrenness of an epoch in reality so pregnant.
+
+"One would think," said Barneveld, comparing what was then the future
+with the real past, "that these plans in Prague against the
+Elector-Palatine are too gross for belief; but when I reflect on the
+intense bitterness of these people, when I remember what was done within
+living men's memory to the good elector Hans Frederic of Saxony for
+exactly the same reasons, to wit, hatred of our religion, and
+determination to establish Imperial authority, I have great apprehension.
+I believe that the Roman League will use the present occasion to carry
+out her great design; holding France incapable of opposition to her,
+Germany in too great division, and imagining to themselves that neither
+the King of Great Britain nor these States are willing or able to offer
+effectual and forcible resistance. Yet his Majesty of Great Britain ought
+to be able to imagine how greatly the religious matter in general
+concerns himself and the electoral house of the Palatine, as principal
+heads of the religion, and that these vast designs should be resisted
+betimes, and with all possible means and might. My Lords the States have
+good will, but not sufficient strength, to oppose these great forces
+single-handed. One must not believe that without great and prompt
+assistance in force from his Majesty and other fellow religionists My
+Lords the States can undertake so vast an affair. Do your uttermost duty
+there, in order that, ere it be too late, this matter be taken to heart
+by his Majesty, and that his authority and credit be earnestly used with
+other kings, electors, princes, and republics, that they do likewise. The
+promptest energy, good will, and affection may be reckoned on from us."
+
+Alas! it was easy for his Majesty to take to heart the matter of Conrad
+Vorstius, to spend reams of diplomatic correspondence, to dictate whole
+volumes for orations brimming over with theological wrath, for the
+edification of the States-General, against that doctor of divinity. But
+what were the special interests of his son-in-law, what the danger to all
+the other Protestant electors and kings, princes and republics, what the
+imperilled condition of the United Provinces, and, by necessary
+consequence, the storm gathering over his own throne, what the whole fate
+of Protestantism, from Friesland to Hungary, threatened by the
+insatiable, all-devouring might of the double house of Austria, the
+ancient church, and the Papistical League, what were hundred thousands of
+men marching towards Bohemia, the Netherlands, and the duchies, with the
+drum beating for mercenary recruits in half the villages of Spain, Italy,
+and Catholic Germany, compared with the danger to Christendom from an
+Arminian clergyman being appointed to the theological professorship at
+Leyden?
+
+The world was in a blaze, kings and princes were arming, and all the time
+that the monarch of the powerful, adventurous, and heroic people of Great
+Britain could spare from slobbering over his minions, and wasting the
+treasures of the realm to supply their insatiate greed, was devoted to
+polemical divinity, in which he displayed his learning, indeed, but
+changed his positions and contradicted himself day by day. The magnitude
+of this wonderful sovereign's littleness oppresses the imagination.
+
+Moreover, should he listen to the adjurations of the States and his
+fellow religionists, should he allow himself to be impressed by the
+eloquence of Barneveld and take a manly and royal decision in the great
+emergency, it would be indispensable for him to come before that odious
+body, the Parliament of Great Britain, and ask for money. It would be
+perhaps necessary for him to take them into his confidence, to degrade
+himself by speaking to them of the national affairs. They might not be
+satisfied with the honour of voting the supplies at his demand, but were
+capable of asking questions as to their appropriation. On the whole it
+was more king-like and statesman-like to remain quiet, and give advice.
+Of that, although always a spendthrift, he had an inexhaustible supply.
+
+Barneveld had just hopes from the Commons of Great Britain, if the King
+could be brought to appeal to Parliament. Once more he sounded the bugle
+of alarm. "Day by day the Archdukes are making greater and greater
+enrolments of riders and infantry in ever increasing mass," he cried,
+"and therewith vast provision of artillery and all munitions of war.
+Within ten or twelve days they will be before Julich in force. We are
+sending great convoys to reinforce our army there. The Prince of Neuburg
+is enrolling more and more troops every day. He will soon be master of
+Mulheim. If the King of Great Britain will lay this matter earnestly to
+heart for the preservation of the princes, electors, and estates of the
+religion, I cannot doubt that Parliament would cooperate well with his
+Majesty, and this occasion should be made use of to redress the whole
+state of affairs."
+
+It was not the Parliament nor the people of Great Britain that would be
+in fault when the question arose of paying in money and in blood for the
+defence of civil and religious liberty. But if James should venture
+openly to oppose Spain, what would the Count of Gondemar say, and what
+would become of the Infanta and the two millions of dowry?
+
+It was not for want of some glimmering consciousness in the mind of James
+of the impending dangers to Northern Europe and to Protestantism from the
+insatiable ambition of Spain, and the unrelenting grasp of the Papacy
+upon those portions of Christendom which were slipping from its control,
+that his apathy to those perils was so marked. We have seen his leading
+motives for inaction, and the world was long to feel its effects.
+
+"His Majesty firmly believes," wrote Secretary Winwood, "that the
+Papistical League is brewing great and dangerous plots. To obviate them
+in everything that may depend upon him, My Lords the States will find him
+prompt. The source of all these entanglements comes from Spain. We do not
+think that the Archduke will attack Julich this year, but rather fear for
+Mulheim and Aix-la-Chapelle."
+
+But the Secretary of State, thus acknowledging the peril, chose to be
+blind to its extent, while at the same time undervaluing the powers by
+which it might be resisted. "To oppose the violence of the enemy," he
+said, "if he does resort to violence, is entirely impossible. It would be
+furious madness on our part to induce him to fall upon the
+Elector-Palatine, for this would be attacking Great Britain and all her
+friends and allies. Germany is a delicate morsel, but too much for the
+throat of Spain to swallow all at once. Behold the evil which troubles
+the conscience of the Papistical League. The Emperor and his brothers are
+all on the brink of their sepulchre, and the Infants of Spain are too
+young to succeed to the Empire. The Pope would more willingly permit its
+dissolution than its falling into the hands of a prince not of his
+profession. All that we have to do in this conjuncture is to attend the
+best we can to our own affairs, and afterwards to strengthen the good
+alliance existing among us, and not to let ourselves be separated by the
+tricks and sleights of hand of our adversaries. The common cause can
+reckon firmly upon the King of Great Britain, and will not find itself
+deceived."
+
+Excellent commonplaces, but not very safe ones. Unluckily for the allies,
+to attend each to his own affairs when the enemy was upon them, and to
+reckon firmly upon a king who thought it furious madness to resist the
+enemy, was hardly the way to avert the danger. A fortnight later, the man
+who thought it possible to resist, and time to resist, before the net was
+over every head, replied to the Secretary by a picture of the Spaniards'
+progress.
+
+"Since your letter," he said, "you have seen the course of Spinola with
+the army of the King and the Archdukes. You have seen the Prince-Palatine
+of Neuburg with his forces maintained by the Pope and other members of
+the Papistical League. On the 29th of August they forced Aachen, where
+the magistrates and those of the Reformed religion have been extremely
+maltreated. Twelve hundred soldiers are lodged in the houses there of
+those who profess our religion. Mulheim is taken and dismantled, and the
+very houses about to be torn down. Duren, Castre, Grevenborg, Orsoy,
+Duisburg, Ruhrort, and many other towns, obliged to receive Spanish
+garrisons. On the 4th of September they invested Wesel. On the 6th it was
+held certain that the cities of Cleve, Emmerich, Rees, and others in that
+quarter, had consented to be occupied. The States have put one hundred
+and thirty-five companies of foot (about 14,000 men) and 4000 horse and a
+good train of artillery in the field, and sent out some ships of war.
+Prince Maurice left the Hague on the 4th of September to assist Wesel,
+succour the Prince of Brandenburg, and oppose the hostile proceedings of
+Spinola and the Palatine of Neuburg . . . . Consider, I pray you, this
+state of things, and think how much heed they have paid to the demands of
+the Kings of Great Britain and France to abstain from hostilities. Be
+sure that without our strong garrison in Julich they would have snapped
+up every city in Julich, Cleve, and Berg. But they will now try to make
+use of their slippery tricks, their progress having been arrested by our
+army. The Prince of Neuburg is sending his chancellor here 'cum mediis
+componendae pacis,' in appearance good and reasonable, in reality
+deceptive . . . . If their Majesties, My Lords the States, and the
+princes of the Union, do not take an energetic resolution for making head
+against their designs, behold their League in full vigour and ours
+without soul. Neither the strength nor the wealth of the States are
+sufficient of themselves to withstand their ambitious and dangerous
+designs. We see the possessory princes treated as enemies upon their own
+estates, and many thousand souls of the Reformed religion cruelly
+oppressed by the Papistical League. For myself I am confirmed in my
+apprehensions and believe that neither our religion nor our Union can
+endure such indignities. The enemy is making use of the minority in
+France and the divisions among the princes of Germany to their great
+advantage . . . . I believe that the singular wisdom of his Majesty will
+enable him to apply promptly the suitable remedies, and that your
+Parliament will make no difficulty in acquitting itself well in repairing
+those disorders."
+
+The year dragged on to its close. The supineness of the Protestants
+deepened in direct proportion to the feverish increase of activity on the
+part of Austria and the League. The mockery of negotiation in which
+nothing could be negotiated, the parade of conciliation when war of
+extermination was intended, continued on the part of Spain and Austria.
+Barneveld was doing his best to settle all minor differences between the
+States and Great Britain, that these two bulwarks of Protestantism might
+stand firmly together against the rising tide. He instructed the
+Ambassador to exhaust every pacific means of arrangement in regard to the
+Greenland fishery disputes, the dyed cloth question, and like causes of
+ill feeling. He held it more than necessary, he said, that the
+inhabitants of the two countries should now be on the very best terms
+with each other. Above all, he implored the King through the Ambassador
+to summon Parliament in order that the kingdom might be placed in
+position to face the gathering danger.
+
+"I am amazed and distressed," he said, "that the statesmen of England do
+not comprehend the perils with which their fellow religionists are
+everywhere threatened, especially in Germany and in these States. To
+assist us with bare advice and sometimes with traducing our actions,
+while leaving us to bear alone the burthens, costs, and dangers, is not
+serviceable to us." Referring to the information and advice which he had
+sent to England and to France fifteen months before, he now gave
+assurance that the Prince of Neuburg and Spinola were now in such force,
+both foot and cavalry, with all necessary munitions, as to hold these
+most important territories as a perpetual "sedem bedli," out of which to
+attack Germany at their pleasure and to cut off all possibility of aid
+from England and the States. He informed the court of St. James that
+besides the forces of the Emperor and the House of Austria, the Duke of
+Bavaria and Spanish Italy, there were now several thousand horse and foot
+under the Bishop of Wurzburg, 8000 or 9000 under the Bishop-Elector of
+Mayence, and strong bodies of cavalry under Count Vaudemont in Lorraine,
+all mustering for the war. The pretext seems merely to reduce Frankfurt
+to obedience, even as Donauworth had previously been used as a colour for
+vast designs. The real purpose was to bring the Elector-Palatine and the
+whole Protestant party in Germany to submission. "His Majesty," said the
+Advocate, "has now a very great and good subject upon which to convoke
+Parliament and ask for a large grant. This would be doubtless consented
+to if Parliament receives the assurance that the money thus accorded
+shall be applied to so wholesome a purpose. You will do your best to
+further this great end. We are waiting daily to hear if the Xanten
+negotiation is broken off or not. I hope and I fear. Meantime we bear as
+heavy burthens as if we were actually at war."
+
+He added once more the warning, which it would seem superfluous to repeat
+even to schoolboys in diplomacy, that this Xanten treaty, as proposed by
+the enemy, was a mere trap.
+
+Spinola and Neuburg, in case of the mutual disbanding, stood ready at an
+instant's warning to re-enlist for the League not only all the troops
+that the Catholic army should nominally discharge, but those which would
+be let loose from the States' army and that of Brandenburg as well. They
+would hold Rheinberg, Groll, Lingen, Oldenzaal, Wachtendonk, Maestricht,
+Aachen, and Mulheim with a permanent force of more than 20,000 men. And
+they could do all this in four days' time.
+
+A week or two later all his prophesies had been fulfilled. "The Prince of
+Neuburg," he said, "and Marquis Spinola have made game of us most
+impudently in the matter of the treaty. This is an indignity for us,
+their Majesties, and the electors and princes. We regard it as
+intolerable. A despatch came from Spain forbidding a further step in the
+negotiation without express order from the King. The Prince and Spinola
+are gone to Brussels, the ambassadors have returned to the Hague, the
+armies are established in winter-quarters. The cavalry are ravaging the
+debateable land and living upon the inhabitants at their discretion. M.
+de Refuge is gone to complain to the Archdukes of the insult thus put
+upon his sovereign. Sir Henry Wotton is still here. We have been plunged
+into an immensity of extraordinary expense, and are amazed that at this
+very moment England should demand money from us when we ought to be
+assisted by a large subsidy by her. We hope that now at least his Majesty
+will take a vigorous resolution and not suffer his grandeur and dignity
+to be vilipended longer. If the Spaniard is successful in this step, he
+is ready for greater ones, and will believe that mankind is ready to bear
+and submit to everything. His Majesty is the first king of the religion.
+He bears the title of Defender of the Faith. His religion, his only
+daughter, his son-in-law, his grandson are all especially interested
+besides his own dignity, besides the common weal."
+
+He then adverted to the large subsidies from Queen Elizabeth many years
+before, guaranteed, it was true, by the cautionary towns, and to the
+gallant English regiments, sent by that great sovereign, which had been
+fighting so long and so splendidly in the Netherlands for the common
+cause of Protestantism and liberty. Yet England was far weaker then, for
+she had always her northern frontier to defend against Scotland, ever
+ready to strike her in the back. "But now his Majesty," said Barneveld,
+"is King of England and Scotland both. His frontier is free. Ireland is
+at peace. He possesses quietly twice as much as the Queen ever did. He is
+a king. Her Majesty was a woman. The King has children and heirs. His
+nearest blood is engaged in this issue. His grandeur and dignity have
+been wronged. Each one of these considerations demands of itself a manly
+resolution. You will do your best to further it."
+
+The almost ubiquitous power of Spain, gaining after its exhaustion new
+life through the strongly developed organization of the League, and the
+energy breathed into that mighty conspiracy against human liberty by the
+infinite genius of the "cabinet of Jesuits," was not content with
+overshadowing Germany, the Netherlands, and England, but was threatening
+Savoy with 40,000 men, determined to bring Charles Emmanuel either to
+perdition or submission.
+
+Like England, France was spell-bound by the prospect of Spanish
+marriages, which for her at least were not a chimera, and looked on
+composedly while Savoy was on point of being sacrificed by the common
+invader of independent nationality whether Protestant or Catholic.
+Nothing ever showed more strikingly the force residing in singleness of
+purpose with breadth and unity of design than all these primary movements
+of the great war now beginning. The chances superficially considered were
+vastly in favour of the Protestant cause. In the chief lands, under the
+sceptre of the younger branch of Austria, the Protestants outnumbered the
+Catholics by nearly ten to one. Bohemia, the Austrias, Moravia, Silesia,
+Hungary were filled full of the spirit of Huss, of Luther, and even of
+Calvin. If Spain was a unit, now that the Moors and Jews had been
+expelled, and the heretics of Castille and Aragon burnt into submission,
+she had a most lukewarm ally in Venice, whose policy was never controlled
+by the Church, and a dangerous neighbour in the warlike, restless, and
+adventurous House of Savoy, to whom geographical considerations were ever
+more vital than religious scruples. A sincere alliance of France, the
+very flower of whose nobility and people inclined to the Reformed
+religion, was impossible, even if there had been fifty infantes to
+espouse fifty daughters of France. Great Britain, the Netherlands, and
+the united princes of Germany seemed a solid and serried phalanx of
+Protestantism, to break through which should be hopeless. Yet at that
+moment, so pregnant with a monstrous future, there was hardly a sound
+Protestant policy anywhere but in Holland. How long would that policy
+remain sound and united? How long would the Republic speak through the
+imperial voice of Barneveld? Time was to show and to teach many lessons.
+The united princes of Germany were walking, talking, quarrelling in their
+sleep; England and France distracted and bedrugged, while Maximilian of
+Bavaria and Ferdinand of Gratz, the cabinets of Madrid and the Vatican,
+were moving forward to their aims slowly, steadily, relentlessly as Fate.
+And Spain was more powerful than she had been since the Truce began. In
+five years she had become much more capable of aggression. She had
+strengthened her positions in the Mediterranean by the acquisition and
+enlargement of considerable fortresses in Barbary and along a large sweep
+of the African coast, so as to be almost supreme in Africa. It was
+necessary for the States, the only power save Turkey that could face her
+in those waters, to maintain a perpetual squadron of war ships there to
+defend their commerce against attack from the Spaniard and from the
+corsairs, both Mahometan and Christian, who infested every sea. Spain was
+redoubtable everywhere, and the Turk, engaged in Persian campaigns, was
+offering no diversion against Hungary and Vienna.
+
+"Reasons of state worthy of his Majesty's consideration and wisdom," said
+Barneveld, "forbid the King of Great Britain from permitting the Spaniard
+to give the law in Italy. He is about to extort obedience and humiliation
+from the Duke of Savoy, or else with 40,000 men to mortify and ruin him,
+while entirely assuring himself of France by the double marriages. Then
+comes the attack on these Provinces, on Protestant Germany, and all other
+states and realms of the religion."
+
+With the turn of the year, affairs were growing darker and darker. The
+League was rolling up its forces in all directions; its chiefs proposed
+absurd conditions of pacification, while war was already raging, and yet
+scarcely any government but that of the Netherlands paid heed to the
+rising storm. James, fatuous as ever, listened to Gondemar, and wrote
+admonitory letters to the Archduke. It was still gravely proposed by the
+Catholic party that there should be mutual disbanding in the duchies,
+with a guarantee from Marquis Spinola that there should be no more
+invasion of those territories. But powers and pledges from the King of
+Spain were what he needed.
+
+To suppose that the Republic and her allies would wait quietly, and not
+lift a finger until blows were actually struck against the Protestant
+electors or cities of Germany, was expecting too much ingenuousness on
+the part of statesmen who had the interests of Protestantism at heart.
+What they wanted was the signed, sealed, ratified treaty faithfully
+carried out. Then if the King of Spain and the Archdukes were willing to
+contract with the States never to make an attempt against the Holy German
+Empire, but to leave everything to take its course according to the
+constitutions, liberties, and traditions and laws of that empire, under
+guidance of its electors, princes, estates, and cities, the United
+Provinces were ready, under mediation of the two kings, their allies and
+friends, to join in such an arrangement. Thus there might still be peace
+in Germany, and religious equality as guaranteed by the "Majesty-Letter,"
+and the "Compromise" between the two great churches, Roman and Reformed,
+be maintained. To bring about this result was the sincere endeavour of
+Barneveld, hoping against hope. For he knew that all was hollowness and
+sham on the part of the great enemy. Even as Walsingham almost alone had
+suspected and denounced the delusive negotiations by which Spain
+continued to deceive Elizabeth and her diplomatists until the Armada was
+upon her coasts, and denounced them to ears that were deafened and souls
+that were stupified by the frauds practised upon them, so did Barneveld,
+who had witnessed all that stupendous trickery of a generation before,
+now utter his cries of warning that Germany might escape in time from her
+impending doom.
+
+"Nothing but deceit is lurking in the Spanish proposals," he said. "Every
+man here wonders that the English government does not comprehend these
+malversations. Truly the affair is not to be made straight by new
+propositions, but by a vigorous resolution of his Majesty. It is in the
+highest degree necessary to the salvation of Christendom, to the
+conservation of his Majesty's dignity and greatness, to the service of
+the princes and provinces, and of all Germany, nor can this vigorous
+resolution be longer delayed without enormous disaster to the common weal
+. . . . . I have the deepest affection for the cause of the Duke of
+Savoy, but I cannot further it so long as I cannot tell what his Majesty
+specifically is resolved to do, and what hope is held out from Venice,
+Germany, and other quarters. Our taxes are prodigious, the ordinary and
+extraordinary, and we have a Spanish army at our front door."
+
+The armaments, already so great, had been enlarged during the last month
+of the year. Vaudemont was at the head of a further force of 2000 cavalry
+and 8000 foot, paid for by Spain and the Pope; 24,000 additional
+soldiers, riders and infantry together, had been gathered by Maximilian
+of Bavaria at the expense of the League. Even if the reports were
+exaggerated, the Advocate thought it better to be too credulous than as
+apathetic as the rest of the Protestants.
+
+"We receive advices every day," he wrote to Caron, "that the Spaniards
+and the Roman League are going forward with their design. They are trying
+to amuse the British king and to gain time, in order to be able to deal
+the heavier blows. Do all possible duty to procure a timely and vigorous
+resolution there. To wait again until we are anticipated will be fatal to
+the cause of the Evangelical electors and princes of Germany and
+especially of his Electoral Highness of Brandenburg. We likewise should
+almost certainly suffer irreparable damage, and should again bear our
+cross, as men said last year in regard to Aachen, Wesel, and so many
+other places. The Spaniard is sly, and has had a long time to contrive
+how he can throw the net over the heads of all our religious allies.
+Remember all the warnings sent from here last year, and how they were all
+tossed to the winds, to the ruin of so many of our co-religionists. If it
+is now intended over there to keep the Spaniards in check merely by
+speeches or letters, it would be better to say so clearly to our friends.
+So long as Parliament is not convoked in order to obtain consents and
+subsidies for this most necessary purpose, so long I fail to believe that
+this great common cause of Christendom, and especially of Germany, is
+taken to heart by England."
+
+He adverted with respectfully subdued scorn to King James's proposition
+that Spinola should give a guarantee. "I doubt if he accepts the
+suggestion," said Barneveld, "unless as a notorious trick, and if he did,
+what good would the promise of Spinola do us? We consider Spinola a great
+commander having the purses and forces of the Spaniards and the Leaguers
+in his control; but should they come into other hands, he would not be a
+very considerable personage for us. And that may happen any day. They
+don't seem in England to understand the difference between Prince Maurice
+in his relations to our state and that of Marquis Spinola to his
+superiors. Try to make them comprehend it. A promise from the Emperor,
+King of Spain, and the princes of the League, such as his Majesty in his
+wisdom has proposed to Spinola, would be most tranquillizing for all the
+Protestant princes and estates of the Empire, especially for the Elector
+and Electress Palatine, and for ourselves. In such a case no difficulty
+would be made on our side."
+
+After expressing his mind thus freely in regard to James and his policy,
+he then gave the Ambassador a word of caution in characteristic fashion.
+"Cogita," he said, "but beware of censuring his Majesty's projects. I do
+not myself mean to censure them, nor are they publicly laughed at here,
+but look closely at everything that comes from Brussels, and let me know
+with diligence."
+
+And even as the Advocate was endeavouring with every effort of his skill
+and reason to stir the sluggish James into vigorous resolution in behalf
+of his own children, as well as of the great cause of Protestantism and
+national liberty, so was he striving to bear up on his strenuous
+shoulders the youthful king of France, and save him from the swollen
+tides of court intrigue and Jesuitical influence fast sweeping him to
+destruction.
+
+He had denounced the recent and paltry proposition made on the part of
+the League, and originally suggested by James, as a most open and
+transparent trap, into which none but the blind would thrust themselves.
+The Treaty of Xanten, carried out as it had been signed and guaranteed by
+the great Catholic powers, would have brought peace to Christendom. To
+accept in place of such guarantee the pledge of a simple soldier, who
+to-morrow might be nothing, was almost too ridiculous a proposal to be
+answered gravely. Yet Barneveld through the machinations of the Catholic
+party was denounced both at the English and French courts as an obstacle
+to peace, when in reality his powerful mind and his immense industry were
+steadily directed to the noblest possible end--to bring about a solemn
+engagement on the part of Spain, the Emperor, and the princes of the
+League, to attack none of the Protestant powers of Germany, especially
+the Elector-Palatine, but to leave the laws, liberties, and privileges of
+the States within the Empire in their original condition. And among those
+laws were the great statutes of 1609 and 1610, the "Majesty-Letter" and
+the "Compromise," granting full right of religious worship to the
+Protestants of the Kingdom of Bohemia. If ever a policy deserved to be
+called truly liberal and truly conservative, it was the policy thus
+steadily maintained by Barneveld.
+
+Adverting to the subterfuge by which the Catholic party had sought to set
+aside the treaty of Xanten, he instructed Langerac, the States'
+ambassador in Paris, and his own pupils to make it clear to the French
+government that it was impossible that in such arrangements the Spanish
+armies would not be back again in the duchies at a moment's notice. It
+could not be imagined even that they were acting sincerely.
+
+"If their upright intention," he said, "is that no actual, hostile,
+violent attack shall be made upon the duchies, or upon any of the
+princes, estates, or cities of the Holy Empire, as is required for the
+peace and tranquillity of Christendom, and if all the powers interested
+therein will come into a good and solid convention to that effect. My
+Lords the States will gladly join in such undertaking and bind themselves
+as firmly as the other powers. If no infraction of the laws and liberties
+of the Holy Empire be attempted, there will be peace for Germany and its
+neighbours. But the present extravagant proposition can only lead to
+chicane and quarrels. To press such a measure is merely to inflict a
+disgrace upon us. It is an attempt to prevent us from helping the
+Elector-Palatine and the other Protestant princes of Germany and
+coreligionists everywhere against hostile violence. For the
+Elector-Palatine can receive aid from us and from Great Britain through
+the duchies only. It is plainly the object of the enemy to seclude us
+from the Palatine and the rest of Protestant Germany. It is very
+suspicious that the proposition of Prince Maurice, supported by the two
+kings and the united princes of Germany, has been rejected."
+
+The Advocate knew well enough that the religious franchises granted by
+the House of Habsburg at the very moment in which Spain signed her peace
+with the Netherlands, and exactly as the mad duke of Cleve was
+expiring--with a dozen princes, Catholic and Protestant, to dispute his
+inheritance--would be valuable just so long as they could be maintained
+by the united forces of Protestantism and of national independence and no
+longer. What had been extorted from the Catholic powers by force would be
+retracted by force whenever that force could be concentrated. It had been
+necessary for the Republic to accept a twelve years' truce with Spain in
+default of a peace, while the death of John of Cleve, and subsequently of
+Henry IV., had made the acquisition of a permanent pacification between
+Catholicism and Protestantism, between the League and the Union, more
+difficult than ever. The so-called Thirty Years' War--rather to be called
+the concluding portion of the Eighty Years' War--had opened in the
+debateable duchies exactly at the moment when its forerunner, the forty
+years' war of the Netherlands, had been temporarily and nominally
+suspended. Barneveld was perpetually baffled in his efforts to obtain a
+favourable peace for Protestant Europe, less by the open diplomacy and
+military force of the avowed enemies of Protestantism than by the secret
+intrigues and faintheartedness of its nominal friends. He was unwearied
+in his efforts simultaneously to arouse the courts of England and France
+to the danger to Europe from the overshadowing power of the House of
+Austria and the League, and he had less difficulty in dealing with the
+Catholic Lewis and his mother than with Protestant James. At the present
+moment his great designs were not yet openly traversed by a strong
+Protestant party within the very republic which he administered.
+
+"Look to it with earnestness and grave deliberation," he said to
+Langerac, "that they do not pursue us there with vain importunity to
+accept something so notoriously inadmissible and detrimental to the
+common weal. We know that from the enemy's side every kind of unseemly
+trick is employed, with the single object of bringing about
+misunderstanding between us and the King of France. A prompt and vigorous
+resolution on the part of his Majesty, to see the treaty which we made
+duly executed, would be to help the cause. Otherwise, not. We cannot here
+believe that his Majesty, in this first year of his majority, will submit
+to such a notorious and flagrant affront, or that he will tolerate the
+oppression of the Duke of Savoy. Such an affair in the beginning of his
+Majesty's reign cannot but have very great and prejudicial consequences,
+nor can it be left to linger on in uncertainty and delay. Let him be
+prompt in this. Let him also take a most Christian--kingly, vigorous
+resolution against the great affront put upon him in the failure to carry
+out the treaty. Such a resolve on the part of the two kings would restore
+all things to tranquillity and bring the Spaniard and his adherents 'in
+terminos modestiae. But so long as France is keeping a suspicious eye
+upon England, and England upon France, everything will run to combustion,
+detrimental to their Majesties and to us, and ruinous to all the good
+inhabitants."
+
+To the Treaty of Xanten faithfully executed he held as to an anchor in
+the tempest until it was torn away, not by violence from without, but by
+insidious mutiny within. At last the government of James proposed that
+the pledges on leaving the territory should be made to the two allied
+kings as mediators and umpires. This was better than the naked promises
+originally suggested, but even in this there was neither heartiness nor
+sincerity. Meantime the Prince of Neuburg, negotiations being broken off,
+departed for Germany, a step which the Advocate considered ominous. Soon
+afterwards that prince received a yearly pension of 24,000 crowns from
+Spain, and for this stipend his claims on the sovereignty of the duchies
+were supposed to be surrendered.
+
+"If this be true," said Barneveld, "we have been served with covered
+dishes."
+
+The King of England wrote spirited and learned letters to the
+Elector-Palatine, assuring him of his father-in-law's assistance in case
+he should be attacked by the League. Sir Henry Wotton, then on special
+mission at the Hague, showed these epistles to Barneveld.
+
+"When I hear that Parliament has been assembled and has granted great
+subsidies," was the Advocate's comment, "I shall believe that effects may
+possibly follow from all these assurances."
+
+It was wearisome for the Advocate thus ever to be foiled; by the
+pettinesses and jealousies of those occupying the highest earthly places,
+in his efforts to stem the rising tide of Spanish and Catholic
+aggression, and to avert the outbreak of a devastating war to which he
+saw Europe doomed. It may be wearisome to read the record. Yet it is the
+chronicle of Christendom during one of the most important and fateful
+epochs of modern history. No man can thoroughly understand the
+complication and precession of phenomena attending the disastrous dawn of
+the renewed war, on an even more awful scale than the original conflict
+in the Netherlands, without studying the correspondence of Barneveld. The
+history of Europe is there. The fate of Christendom is there. The
+conflict of elements, the crash of contending forms of religion and of
+nationalities, is pictured there in vivid if homely colours. The
+Advocate, while acting only in the name of a slender confederacy, was in
+truth, so long as he held his place, the prime minister of European
+Protestantism. There was none other to rival him, few to comprehend him,
+fewer still to sustain him. As Prince Maurice was at that moment the
+great soldier of Protestantism without clearly scanning the grandeur of
+the field in which he was a chief actor, or foreseeing the vastness of
+its future, so the Advocate was its statesman and its prophet. Could the
+two have worked together as harmoniously as they had done at an earlier
+day, it would have been a blessing for the common weal of Europe. But,
+alas! the evil genius of jealousy, which so often forbids cordial
+relations between soldier and statesman, already stood shrouded in the
+distance, darkly menacing the strenuous patriot, who was wearing his life
+out in exertions for what he deemed the true cause of progress and
+humanity.
+
+Nor can the fate of the man himself, his genuine character, and the
+extraordinary personal events towards which he was slowly advancing, be
+accurately unfolded without an attempt by means of his letters to lay
+bare his inmost thoughts. Especially it will be seen at a later moment
+how much value was attached to this secret correspondence with the
+ambassadors in London and Paris.
+
+The Advocate trusted to the support of France, Papal and Medicean as the
+court of the young king was, because the Protestant party throughout the
+kingdom was too powerful, warlike, and numerous to be trifled with, and
+because geographical considerations alone rendered a cordial alliance
+between Spain and France very difficult. Notwithstanding the Spanish
+marriages, which he opposed so long as opposition was possible, he knew
+that so long as a statesman remained in the kingdom, or a bone for one
+existed, the international policy of Henry, of Sully, and of Jeannin
+could not be wholly abandoned.
+
+He relied much on Villeroy, a political hack certainly, an ancient
+Leaguer, and a Papist, but a man too cool, experienced, and wily to be
+ignorant of the very hornbook of diplomacy, or open to the shallow
+stratagems by which Spain found it so easy to purchase or to deceive. So
+long as he had a voice in the council, it was certain that the Netherland
+alliance would not be abandoned, nor the Duke of Savoy crushed. The old
+secretary of state was not especially in favour at that moment, but
+Barneveld could not doubt his permanent place in French affairs until
+some man of real power should arise there. It was a dreary period of
+barrenness and disintegration in that kingdom while France was mourning
+Henry and waiting for Richelieu.
+
+The Dutch ambassador at Paris was instructed accordingly to maintain.
+good relations with Villeroy, who in Barneveld's opinion had been a
+constant and sincere friend to the Netherlands. "Don't forget to caress
+the old gentleman you wot of," said the Advocate frequently, but
+suppressing his name, "without troubling yourself with the reasons
+mentioned in your letter. I am firmly convinced that he will overcome all
+difficulties. Don't believe either that France will let the Duke of Savoy
+be ruined. It is against every reason of State." Yet there were few to
+help Charles Emmanuel in this Montferrat war, which was destined to drag
+feebly on, with certain interludes of negotiations, for two years longer.
+The already notorious condottiere Ernest Mansfeld, natural son of old
+prince Peter Ernest, who played so long and so high a part in command of
+the Spanish armies in the Netherlands, had, to be sure, taken service
+under the Duke. Thenceforth he was to be a leader and a master in that
+wild business of plunder, burning, blackmailing, and murder, which was
+opening upon Europe, and was to afford occupation for many thousands of
+adventurers of high and low degree.
+
+Mansfeld, reckless and profligate, had already changed his banner more
+than once. Commanding a company under Leopold in the duchies, he had been
+captured by the forces of the Union, and, after waiting in vain to be
+ransomed by the Archduke, had gone secretly over to the enemy. Thus
+recovering his liberty, he had enlisted a regiment under Leopold's name
+to fight the Union, and had then, according to contract, transferred
+himself and most of his adventurers to the flag of the Union. The
+military operations fading away in the duchies without being succeeded by
+permanent peace, the Count, as he was called, with no particular claim to
+such title, had accepted a thousand florins a year as retainer from the
+Union and had found occupation under Charles Emmanuel. Here the Spanish
+soldier of a year or two before found much satisfaction and some profit
+in fighting Spanish soldiers. He was destined to reappear in the
+Netherlands, in France, in Bohemia, in many places where there were
+villages to be burned, churches to be plundered, cities to be sacked,
+nuns and other women to be outraged, dangerous political intrigues to be
+managed. A man in the prime of his age, fair-haired, prematurely
+wrinkled, battered, and hideous of visage, with a hare-lip and a
+humpback; slovenly of dress, and always wearing an old grey hat without a
+band to it; audacious, cruel, crafty, and licentious--such was Ernest
+Mansfeld, whom some of his contemporaries spoke of as Ulysses Germanicus,
+others as the new Attila, all as a scourge to the human race. The
+cockneys of Paris called him "Machefer," and nurses long kept children
+quiet by threatening them with that word. He was now enrolled on the
+Protestant side, although at the moment serving Savoy against Spain in a
+question purely personal. His armies, whether in Italy or in Germany,
+were a miscellaneous collection of adventurers of high and low degree, of
+all religions, of all countries, unfrocked priests and students, ruined
+nobles, bankrupt citizens, street vagabonds--earliest type perhaps of the
+horrible military vermin which were destined to feed so many years long
+on the unfortunate dismembered carcass of Germany.
+
+Many demands had been made upon the States for assistance to Savoy,--as
+if they and they alone were to bear the brunt and pay the expense of all
+the initiatory campaigns against Spain.
+
+"We are much importuned," said the Advocate, "to do something for the
+help of Savoy . . . . We wish and we implore that France, Great Britain,
+the German princes, the Venetians, and the Swiss would join us in some
+scheme of effective assistance. But we have enough on our shoulders at
+this moment."
+
+They had hardly money enough in their exchequer, admirably ordered as it
+was, for enterprises so far from home when great Spanish armies were
+permanently encamped on their border.
+
+Partly to humour King James and partly from love of adventure, Count John
+of Nassau had gone to Savoy at the head of a small well disciplined body
+of troops furnished by the States.
+
+"Make use of this piece of news," said Barneveld, communicating the fact
+to Langerac, "opportunely and with discretion. Besides the wish to give
+some contentment to the King of Great Britain, we consider it
+inconsistent with good conscience and reasons of state to refuse help to
+a great prince against oppression by those who mean to give the law to
+everybody; especially as we have been so earnestly and frequently
+importuned to do so."
+
+And still the Spaniards and the League kept their hold on the duchies,
+while their forces, their munitions, their accumulation of funds waged
+hourly. The war of chicane was even more deadly than an actual campaign,
+for when there was no positive fighting the whole world seemed against
+the Republic. And the chicane was colossal.
+
+"We cannot understand," said Barneveld, "why M. de Prevaulx is coming
+here on special mission. When a treaty is signed and sealed, it only
+remains to execute it. The Archduke says he is himself not known in the
+treaty, and that nothing can be demanded of him in relation to it. This
+he says in his letters to the King of Great Britain. M. de Refuge knows
+best whether or not Marquis Spinola, Ottavio Visconti, Chancellor
+Pecquius, and others, were employed in the negotiation by the Archduke.
+We know very well here that the whole business was conducted by them. The
+Archduke is willing to give a clean and sincere promise not to re-occupy,
+and asks the same from the States. If he were empowered by the Emperor,
+the King of Spain, and the League, and acted in such quality, something
+might be done for the tranquillity of Germany. But he promises for
+himself only, and Emperor, King, or League, may send any general to do
+what they like to-morrow. What is to prevent it?
+
+"And so My Lords the States, the Elector of Brandenburg, and others
+interested are cheated and made fools of. And we are as much troubled by
+these tricks as by armed force. Yes, more; for we know that great
+enterprises are preparing this year against Germany and ourselves, that
+all Neuburg's troops have been disbanded and re-enlisted under the
+Spanish commanders, and that forces are levying not only in Italy and
+Spain, but in Germany, Lorraine, Luxemburg, and Upper Burgundy, and that
+Wesel has been stuffed full of gunpowder and other munitions, and very
+strongly fortified."
+
+For the States to agree to a treaty by which the disputed duchies should
+be held jointly by the Princes of Neuburg and of Brandenburg, and the
+territory be evacuated by all foreign troops; to look quietly on while
+Neuburg converted himself to Catholicism, espoused the sister of
+Maximilian of Bavaria, took a pension from Spain, resigned his claims in
+favour of Spain, and transferred his army to Spain; and to expect that
+Brandenburg and all interested in Brandenburg, that is to say, every
+Protestant in Europe, should feel perfectly easy under such arrangement
+and perfectly protected by the simple promise of a soldier of fortune
+against Catholic aggression, was a fantastic folly hardly worthy of a
+child. Yet the States were asked to accept this position, Brandenburg and
+all Protestant Germany were asked to accept it, and Barneveld was howled
+at by his allies as a marplot and mischief-maker, and denounced and
+insulted by diplomatists daily, because he mercilessly tore away the
+sophistries of the League and of the League's secret friend, James
+Stuart.
+
+The King of Spain had more than 100,000 men under arms, and was enlisting
+more soldiers everywhere and every day, had just deposited 4,000,000
+crowns with his Antwerp bankers for a secret purpose, and all the time
+was exuberant in his assurances of peace. One would have thought that
+there had never been negotiations in Bourbourg, that the Spanish Armada
+had never sailed from Coruna.
+
+"You are wise and prudent in France," said the Advocate, "but we are used
+to Spanish proceedings, and from much disaster sustained are filled with
+distrust. The King of England seems now to wish that the Archduke should
+draw up a document according to his good pleasure, and that the States
+should make an explanatory deed, which the King should sign also and ask
+the King of France to do the same. But this is very hazardous.
+
+"We do not mean to receive laws from the King of Spain, nor the Archduke
+. . . . The Spanish proceedings do not indicate peace but war. One must
+not take it ill of us that we think these matters of grave importance to
+our friends and ourselves. Affairs have changed very much in the last
+four months. The murder of the first vizier of the Turkish emperor and
+his designs against Persia leave the Spanish king and the Emperor free
+from attack in that quarter, and their armaments are far greater than
+last year . . . . I cannot understand why the treaty of Xanten, formerly
+so highly applauded, should now be so much disapproved. . . . The King of
+Spain and the Emperor with their party have a vast design to give the law
+to all Christendom, to choose a Roman king according to their will, to
+reduce the Evangelical electors, princes, and estates of Germany to
+obedience, to subject all Italy, and, having accomplished this, to
+proceed to triumph over us and our allies, and by necessary consequence
+over France and England. They say they have established the Emperor's
+authority by means of Aachen and Mulheim, will soon have driven us out of
+Julich, and have thus arranged matters entirely to their heart's content.
+They can then, in name of the Emperor, the League, the Prince of Neuburg,
+or any one else, make themselves in eight days masters of the places
+which they are now imaginarily to leave as well as of those which we are
+actually to surrender, and by possession of which we could hold out a
+long time against all their power."
+
+Those very places held by the States--Julich, Emmerich, and others--had
+recently been fortified at much expense, under the superintendence of
+Prince Maurice, and by advice of the Advocate. It would certainly be an
+act of madness to surrender them on the terms proposed. These warnings
+and forebodings of Barneveld sound in our ears like recorded history, yet
+they were far earlier than the actual facts. And now to please the
+English king, the States had listened to his suggestion that his name and
+that of the King of France should be signed as mediators to a new
+arrangement proposed in lieu of the Xanten treaty. James had suggested
+this, Lewis had agreed to it. Yet before the ink had dried in James's
+pen, he was proposing that the names of the mediating sovereigns should
+be omitted from the document? And why? Because Gondemar was again
+whispering in his ear. "They are renewing the negotiations in England,"
+said the Advocate, "about the alliance between the Prince of Wales and
+the second daughter of Spain; and the King of Great Britain is seriously
+importuning us that the Archdukes and My Lords the States should make
+their pledges 'impersonaliter' and not to the kings." James was also
+willing that the name of the Emperor should appear upon it. To prevent
+this, Barneveld would have had himself burned at the stake. It would be
+an ignominious and unconditional surrender of the whole cause.
+
+"The Archduke will never be contented," said the Advocate, "unless his
+Majesty of Great Britain takes a royal resolution to bring him to reason.
+That he tries to lay the fault on us is pure malice. We have been ready
+and are still ready to execute the treaty of Xanten. The Archduke is the
+cause of the dispute concerning the act. We approved the formularies of
+their Majesties, and have changed them three times to suit the King of
+Great Britain. Our Provincial States have been notified in the matter, so
+that we can no longer digest the Spanish impudence, and are amazed that
+his Majesty can listen any more to the Spanish ministers. We fear that
+those ministers are working through many hands, in order by one means or
+another to excite quarrels between his Majesty, us, and the respective
+inhabitants of the two countries . . . . . Take every precaution that no
+attempt be made there to bring the name of the Emperor into the act. This
+would be contrary to their Majesties' first resolution, very prejudicial
+to the Elector of Brandenburg, to the duchies, and to ourselves. And it
+is indispensable that the promise be made to the two kings as mediators,
+as much for their reputation and dignity as for the interests of the
+Elector, the territories, and ourselves. Otherwise too the Spaniards will
+triumph over us as if they had driven us by force of arms into this
+promise."
+
+The seat of war, at the opening of the apparently inevitable conflict
+between the Catholic League and the Protestant Union, would be those
+debateable duchies, those border provinces, the possession of which was
+of such vital importance to each of the great contending parties, and the
+populations of which, although much divided, were on the whole more
+inclined to the League than to the Union. It was natural enough that the
+Dutch statesman should chafe at the possibility of their being lost to
+the Union through the adroitness of the Catholic managers and the
+supineness of the great allies of the Republic.
+
+Three weeks later than these last utterances of the Advocate, he was
+given to understand that King James was preparing to slide away from the
+position which had been three times changed to make it suitable for him.
+His indignation was hot.
+
+"Sir Henry Wotton," he said, "has communicated to me his last despatches
+from Newmarket. I am in the highest degree amazed that after all our
+efforts at accommodation, with so much sacrifice to the electors, the
+provinces, and ourselves, they are trying to urge us there to consent
+that the promise be not made to the Kings of France and Great Britain as
+mediators, although the proposition came from the Spanish side. After we
+had renounced, by desire of his Majesty, the right to refer the promise
+to the Treaty of Xanten, it was judged by both kings to be needful and
+substantial that the promise be made to their Majesties. To change this
+now would be prejudicial to the kings, to the electors, the duchies, and
+to our commonwealth; to do us a wrong and to leave us naked. France
+maintains her position as becoming and necessary. That Great Britain
+should swerve from it is not to be digested here. You will do your utmost
+according to my previous instructions to prevent any pressure to this
+end. You will also see that the name of the Emperor is mentioned neither
+in the preamble nor the articles of the treaty. It would be contrary to
+all our policy since 1610. You may be firmly convinced that malice is
+lurking under the Emperor's name, and that he and the King of Spain and
+their adherents, now as before, are attempting a sequestration. This is
+simply a pretext to bring those principalities and provinces into the
+hands of the Spaniards, for which they have been labouring these thirty
+years. We are constantly cheated by these Spanish tricks. Their intention
+is to hold Wesel and all the other places until the conclusion of the
+Italian affair, and then to strike a great blow."
+
+Certainly were never words more full of sound statesmanship, and of
+prophecy too soon to be fulfilled, than these simple but pregnant
+warnings. They awakened but little response from the English government
+save cavils and teasing reminders that Wesel had been the cradle of
+German Calvinism, the Rhenish Geneva, and that it was sinful to leave it
+longer in the hands of Spain. As if the Advocate had not proved to
+demonstration that to stock hands for a new deal at that moment was to
+give up the game altogether.
+
+His influence in France was always greater than in England, and this had
+likewise been the case with William the Silent. And even now that the
+Spanish matrimonial alliance was almost a settled matter at the French
+court, while with the English king it was but a perpetual will-o'the-wisp
+conducting to quagmires ineffable, the government at Paris sustained the
+policy of the Advocate with tolerable fidelity, while it was constantly
+and most capriciously traversed by James.
+
+Barneveld sighed over these approaching nuptials, but did not yet
+despair. "We hope that the Spanish-French marriages," he said, "may be
+broken up of themselves; but we fear that if we should attempt to delay
+or prevent them authoritatively, or in conjunction with others, the
+effort would have the contrary effect."
+
+In this certainly he was doomed to disappointment.
+
+He had already notified the French court of the absolute necessity of the
+great points to be insisted upon in the treaty, and there he found more
+docility than in London or Newmarket.
+
+All summer he was occupied with this most important matter, uttering
+Cassandra-like warnings into ears wilfully deaf. The States had gone as
+far as possible in concession. To go farther would be to wreck the great
+cause upon the very quicksands which he had so ceaselessly pointed out.
+"We hope that nothing further will be asked of us, no scruples be felt as
+to our good intentions," he said, "and that if Spain and the Archdukes
+are not ready now to fulfil the treaty, their Majesties will know how to
+resent this trifling with their authority and dignity, and how to set
+matters to rights with their own hands in the duchies. A new treaty,
+still less a sequestration, is not to be thought of for a moment."
+
+Yet the month of August came and still the names of the mediating kings
+were not on the treaty, and still the spectre of sequestration had not
+been laid. On the contrary, the peace of Asti, huddled up between Spain
+and Savoy, to be soon broken again, had caused new and painful
+apprehensions of an attempt at sequestration, for it was established by
+several articles in that treaty that all questions between Savoy and
+Mantua should be referred to the Emperor's decision. This precedent was
+sure to be followed in the duchies if not resisted by force, as it had
+been so successfully resisted five years before by the armies of the
+States associated with those of France. Moreover the first step at
+sequestration had been actually taken. The Emperor had peremptorily
+summoned the Elector of Brandenburg and all other parties interested to
+appear before him on the 1st of August in Prague. There could be but one
+object in this citation, to drive Brandenburg and the States out of the
+duchies until the Imperial decision as to the legitimate sovereignty
+should be given. Neuburg being already disposed of and his claims ceded
+to the Emperor, what possibility was there in such circumstances of
+saving one scrap of the territory from the clutch of the League? None
+certainly if the Republic faltered in its determination, and yielded to
+the cowardly advice of James. "To comply with the summons," said
+Barneveld, "and submit to its consequences will be an irreparable injury
+to the electoral house of Brandenburg, to the duchies, and to our
+co-religionists everywhere, and a very great disgrace to both their
+Majesties and to us."
+
+He continued, through the ambassador in London, to hold up to the King,
+in respectful but plain language, the shamelessness of his conduct in
+dispensing the enemy from his pledge to the mediators, when the Republic
+expressly, in deference to James, had given up the ampler guarantees of
+the treaty. The arrangement had been solemnly made, and consented to by
+all the provinces, acting in their separate and sovereign capacity. Such
+a radical change, even if it were otherwise permissible, could not be
+made without long debates, consultations, and votes by the several
+states. What could be more fatal at such a crisis than this childish and
+causeless delay. There could be no doubt in any statesman's eyes that the
+Spanish party meant war and a preparatory hoodwinking. And it was even
+worse for the government of the Republic to be outwitted in diplomacy
+than beaten in the field.
+
+"Every man here," said the Advocate, "has more apprehension of fraud than
+of force. According to the constitution of our state, to be overcome by
+superior power must be endured, but to be overreached by trickery is a
+reproach to the government."
+
+The summer passed away. The States maintained their positions in the
+duchies, notwithstanding the objurgations of James, and Barneveld
+remained on his watch-tower observing every movement of the
+fast-approaching war, and refusing at the price of the whole territory in
+dispute to rescue Wesel and Aix-la-Chapelle from the grasp of the League.
+
+Caron came to the Hague to have personal consultations with the
+States-General, the Advocate, and Prince Maurice, and returned before the
+close of the year. He had an audience of the King at the palace of
+Whitehall early in November, and found him as immovable as ever in his
+apathetic attitude in regard to the affairs of Germany. The murder of Sir
+Thomas Overbury and the obscene scandals concerning the King's beloved
+Carr and his notorious bride were then occupying the whole attention of
+the monarch, so that he had not even time for theological lucubrations,
+still less for affairs of state on which the peace of Christendom and the
+fate of his own children were hanging.
+
+The Ambassador found him sulky and dictatorial, but insisted on
+expressing once more to him the apprehensions felt by the States-General
+in regard to the trickery of the Spanish party in the matter of Cleve and
+Julich. He assured his Majesty that they had no intention of maintaining
+the Treaty of Xanten, and respectfully requested that the King would no
+longer urge the States to surrender the places held by them. It was a
+matter of vital importance to retain them, he said.
+
+"Sir Henry Wotton told me," replied James, "that the States at his
+arrival were assembled to deliberate on this matter, and he had no doubt
+that they would take a resolution in conformity with my intention. Now I
+see very well that you don't mean to give up the places. If I had known
+that before, I should not have warned the Archduke so many times, which I
+did at the desire of the States themselves. And now that the Archdukes
+are ready to restore their cities, you insist on holding yours. That is
+the dish you set before me."
+
+And upon this James swore a mighty oath, and beat himself upon the
+breast.
+
+"Now and nevermore will I trouble myself about the States' affairs, come
+what come will," he continued. "I have always been upright in my words
+and my deeds, and I am not going to embark myself in a wicked war because
+the States have plunged themselves into one so entirely unjust. Next
+summer the Spaniard means to divide himself into two or three armies in
+order to begin his enterprises in Germany."
+
+Caron respectfully intimated that these enterprises would be most
+conveniently carried on from the very advantageous positions which he
+occupied in the duchies. "No," said the King, "he must restore them on
+the same day on which you make your surrender, and he will hardly come
+back in a hurry."
+
+"Quite the contrary," said the Ambassador, "they will be back again in a
+twinkling, and before we have the slightest warning of their intention."
+
+But it signified not the least what Caron said. The King continued to
+vociferate that the States had never had any intention of restoring the
+cities.
+
+"You mean to keep them for yourselves," he cried, "which is the greatest
+injustice that could be perpetrated. You have no right to them, and they
+belong to other people."
+
+The Ambassador reminded him that the Elector of Brandenburg was well
+satisfied that they should be occupied by the States for his greater
+security and until the dispute should be concluded.
+
+"And that will never be," said James; "never, never. The States are
+powerful enough to carry on the war all alone and against all the world."
+
+And so he went on, furiously reiterating the words with which he had
+begun the conversation, "without accepting any reasons whatever in
+payment," as poor Caron observed.
+
+"It makes me very sad," said the Ambassador, "to find your Majesty so
+impatient and so resolved. If the names of the kings are to be omitted
+from the document, the Treaty of Xanten should at least be modified
+accordingly."
+
+"Nothing of the kind," said James; "I don't understand it so at all. I
+speak plainly and without equivocation. It must be enough for the States
+that I promise them, in case the enemy is cheating or is trying to play
+any trick whatever, or is seeking to break the Treaty of Xanten in a
+single point, to come to their assistance in person."
+
+And again the warlike James swore a big oath and smote his breast,
+affirming that he meant everything sincerely; that he cheated no one, but
+always spoke his thoughts right on, clearly and uprightly.
+
+It was certainly not a cheerful prospect for the States. Their chief ally
+was determined that they should disarm, should strip themselves naked,
+when the mightiest conspiracy against the religious freedom and
+international independence of Europe ever imagined was perfecting itself
+before their eyes, and when hostile armies, more numerous than ever
+before known, were at their very door. To wait until the enemy was at
+their throat, and then to rely upon a king who trembled at the sight of a
+drawn sword, was hardly the highest statesmanship. Even if it had been
+the chivalrous Henry instead of the pacific James that had held out the
+promise of help, they would have been mad to follow such counsel.
+
+The conversation lasted more than an hour. It was in vain that Caron
+painted in dark colours the cruel deeds done by the Spaniards in Mulheim
+and Aachen, and the proceedings of the Archbishop of Cologne in Rees. The
+King was besotted, and no impression could be made upon him.
+
+"At any rate," said the Envoy, "the arrangement cannot be concluded
+without the King of France."
+
+"What excuse is that?" said James. "Now that the King is entirely
+Spanish, you are trying to excuse your delays by referring to him. You
+have deferred rescuing the poor city of Wesel from the hands of the
+Spaniard long enough. I am amazed to have heard never a word from you on
+that subject since your departure. I had expressed my wish to you clearly
+enough that you should inform the States of my intention to give them any
+assurance they chose to demand."
+
+Caron was much disappointed at the humour of his Majesty. Coming freshly
+as he did from the council of the States, and almost from the seat of
+war, he had hoped to convince and content him. But the King was very
+angry with the States for putting him so completely in the wrong. He had
+also been much annoyed at their having failed to notify him of their
+military demonstration in the Electorate of Cologne to avenge the
+cruelties practised upon the Protestants there. He asked Caron if he was
+instructed to give him information regarding it. Being answered in the
+negative, he said he had thought himself of sufficient importance to the
+States and enough in their confidence to be apprised of their military
+movements. It was for this, he said, that his ambassador sat in their
+council. Caron expressed the opinion that warlike enterprises of the kind
+should be kept as secret as possible in order to be successful. This the
+King disputed, and loudly declared his vexation at being left in
+ignorance of the matter. The Ambassador excused himself as well as he
+could, on the ground that he had been in Zealand when the troops were
+marching, but told the King his impression that they had been sent to
+chastise the people of Cologne for their cruelty in burning and utterly
+destroying the city of Mulheim.
+
+"That is none of your affair," said the King.
+
+"Pardon me, your Majesty," replied Caron, "they are our fellow
+religionists, and some one at least ought to resent the cruelty practised
+upon them."
+
+The King admitted that the destruction of the city had been an
+unheard--of cruelty, and then passed on to speak of the quarrel between
+the Duke and City of Brunswick, and other matters. The interview ended,
+and the Ambassador, very downhearted, went to confer with the Secretary
+of State Sir Ralph Winwood, and Sir Henry Wotton.
+
+He assured these gentlemen that without fully consulting the French
+government these radical changes in the negotiations would never be
+consented to by the States. Winwood promised to confer at once with the
+French ambassador, admitting it to be impossible for the King to take up
+this matter alone. He would also talk with the Archduke's ambassador next
+day noon at dinner, who was about leaving for Brussels, and "he would put
+something into his hand that he might take home with him."
+
+"When he is fairly gone," said Caron, "it is to be hoped that the King's
+head will no longer be so muddled about these things. I wish it with all
+my heart."
+
+It was a dismal prospect for the States. The one ally on whom they had a
+right to depend, the ex-Calvinist and royal Defender of the Faith, in
+this mortal combat of Protestantism with the League, was slipping out of
+their grasp with distracting lubricity. On the other hand, the Most
+Christian King, a boy of fourteen years, was still in the control of a
+mother heart and soul with the League--so far as she had heart or
+soul--was betrothed to the daughter of Spain, and saw his kingdom torn to
+pieces and almost literally divided among themselves by rebellious
+princes, who made use of the Spanish marriages as a pretext for unceasing
+civil war.
+
+The Queen-Mother was at that moment at Bordeaux, and an emissary from the
+princes was in London. James had sent to offer his mediation between them
+and the Queen. He was fond of mediation. He considered it his special
+mission in the world to mediate. He imagined himself as looked up to by
+the nations as the great arbitrator of Christendom, and was wont to issue
+his decrees as if binding in force and infallible by nature. He had
+protested vigorously against the Spanish-French marriages, and declared
+that the princes were justified in formalizing an opposition to them, at
+least until affairs in France were restored to something like order. He
+warned the Queen against throwing the kingdom "into the combustion of war
+without necessity," and declared that, if she would trust to his
+guidance, she might make use of him as if her affairs were his own. An
+indispensable condition for much assistance, however, would be that the
+marriages should be put off.
+
+As James was himself pursuing a Spanish marriage for his son as the chief
+end and aim of his existence, there was something almost humorous in this
+protest to the Queen-Dowager and in his encouragement of mutiny in France
+in order to prevent a catastrophe there which he desired at home.
+
+The same agent of the princes, de Monbaran by name, was also privately
+accredited by them to the States with instructions to borrow 200,000
+crowns of them if he could. But so long as the policy of the Republic was
+directed by Barneveld, it was not very probable that, while maintaining
+friendly and even intimate relations with the legitimate government, she
+would enter into negotiations with rebels against it, whether princes or
+plebeians, and oblige them with loans. "He will call on me soon, no
+doubt," said Caron, "but being so well instructed as to your Mightinesses
+intentions in this matter, I hope I shall keep him away from you."
+Monbaran was accordingly kept away, but a few weeks later another
+emissary of Conde and Bouillon made his appearance at the Hague, de
+Valigny by name. He asked for money and for soldiers to reinforce
+Bouillon's city of Sedan, but he was refused an audience of the
+States-General. Even the martial ardour of Maurice and his sympathy for
+his relatives were cooled by this direct assault on his pocket. "The
+Prince," wrote the French ambassador, du Maurier, "will not furnish him
+or his adherents a thousand crowns, not if they had death between their
+teeth. Those who think it do not know how he loves his money."
+
+In the very last days of the year (1615) Caron had another interview with
+the King in which James was very benignant. He told the Ambassador that
+he should wish the States to send him some special commissioners to make
+a new treaty with him, and to treat of all unsettled affairs which were
+daily arising between the inhabitants of the respective countries. He
+wished to make a firmer union and accord between Great Britain and the
+Netherlands. He was very desirous of this, "because," said he, "if we can
+unite with and understand each other, we have under God no one what ever
+to fear, however mighty they may be."
+
+Caron duly notified Barneveld of these enthusiastic expressions of his
+Majesty. The Advocate too was most desirous of settling the troublesome
+questions about the cloth trade, the piracies, and other matters, and was
+in favour of the special commission. In regard to a new treaty of
+alliance thus loosely and vaguely suggested, he was not so sanguine
+however. He had too much difficulty in enforcing the interests of
+Protestantism in the duchies against the infatuation of James in regard
+to Spain, and he was too well aware of the Spanish marriage delusion,
+which was the key to the King's whole policy, to put much faith in these
+casual outbursts of eternal friendship with the States. He contented
+himself therefore with cautioning Caron to pause before committing
+himself to any such projects. He had frequently instructed him, however,
+to bring the disputed questions to his Majesty's notice as often as
+possible with a view to amicable arrangement.
+
+This preventive policy in regard to France was highly approved by
+Barneveld, who was willing to share in the blame profusely heaped upon
+such sincere patriots and devoted Protestants as Duplessis-Mornay and
+others, who saw small advantage to the great cause from a mutiny against
+established government, bad as it was, led by such intriguers as Conde
+and Bouillon. Men who had recently been in the pay of Spain, and one of
+whom had been cognizant of Biron's plot against the throne and life of
+Henry IV., to whom sedition was native atmosphere and daily bread, were
+not likely to establish a much more wholesome administration than that of
+Mary de' Medici. Prince Maurice sympathized with his relatives by
+marriage, who were leading the civil commotions in France and
+endeavouring to obtain funds in the Netherlands. It is needless to say
+that Francis Aerssens was deep in their intrigues, and feeding full the
+grudge which the Stadholder already bore the Advocate for his policy on
+this occasion.
+
+The Advocate thought it best to wait until the young king should himself
+rise in mutiny against his mother and her minions. Perhaps the downfall
+of the Concini's and their dowager and the escape of Lewis from thraldom
+might not be so distant as it seemed. Meantime this was the legal
+government, bound to the States by treaties of friendship and alliance,
+and it would be a poor return for the many favours and the constant aid
+bestowed by Henry IV. on the Republic, and an imbecile mode of avenging
+his murder to help throw his kingdom into bloodshed and confusion before
+his son was able to act for himself. At the same time he did his best to
+cultivate amicable relations with the princes, while scrupulously
+abstaining from any sympathy with their movements. "If the Prince and the
+other gentlemen come to court," he wrote to Langerac, "you will treat
+them with all possible caresses so far as can be done without disrespect
+to the government."
+
+While the British court was occupied with the foul details of the
+Overbury murder and its consequences, a crime of a more commonplace
+nature, but perhaps not entirely without influence on great political
+events, had startled the citizens of the Hague. It was committed in the
+apartments of the Stadholder and almost under his very eyes. A jeweller
+of Amsterdam, one John van Wely, had come to the court of Maurice to lay
+before him a choice collection of rare jewellery. In his caskets were
+rubies and diamonds to the value of more than 100,000 florins, which
+would be the equivalent of perhaps ten times as much to-day. In the
+Prince's absence the merchant was received by a confidential groom of the
+chambers, John of Paris by name, and by him, with the aid of a third
+John, a soldier of his Excellency's guard, called Jean de la Vigne,
+murdered on the spot. The deed was done in the Prince's private study.
+The unfortunate jeweller was shot, and to make sure was strangled with
+the blue riband of the Order of the Garter recently conferred upon
+Maurice, and which happened to be lying conspicuously in the room.
+
+The ruffians had barely time to take possession of the booty, to thrust
+the body behind the tapestry of the chamber, and to remove the more
+startling evidences of the crime, when the Prince arrived. He supped soon
+afterwards in the same room, the murdered jeweller still lying behind the
+arras. In the night the valet and soldier carried the corpse away from
+the room, down the stairs, and through the great courtyard, where,
+strange to say, no sentinels were on duty, and threw it into an ashpit.
+
+A deed so bloody, audacious, and stupid was of course soon discovered and
+the murderers arrested and executed. Nothing would remove the incident
+from the catalogue of vulgar crimes, or even entitle it to a place in
+history save a single circumstance. The celebrated divine John
+Uytenbogaert, leader among the Arminians, devoted friend of Barneveld,
+and up to that moment the favorite preacher of Maurice, stigmatized
+indeed, as we have seen, by the orthodox as "Court Trumpeter," was
+requested by the Prince to prepare the chief criminal for death. He did
+so, and from that day forth the Stadholder ceased to be his friend,
+although regularly listening to his preaching in the French chapel of the
+court for more than a year longer. Some time afterwards the Advocate
+informed Uytenbogaert that the Prince was very much embittered against
+him. "I knew it well," says the clergyman in his memoirs, "but not the
+reasons for it, nor do I exactly comprehend them to this day. Truly I
+have some ideas relating to certain things which I was obliged to do in
+discharge of my official duty, but I will not insist upon them, nor will
+I reveal them to any man."
+
+These were mysterious words, and the mystery is said to have been
+explained; for it would seem that the eminent preacher was not so
+entirely reticent among his confidential friends as before the public.
+Uytenbogaert--so ran the tale--in the course of his conversation with the
+condemned murderer, John of Paris, expressed a natural surprise that
+there should have been no soldiers on guard in the court on the evening
+when the crime was committed and the body subsequently removed. The valet
+informed him that he had for a long time been empowered by the Prince to
+withdraw the sentinels from that station, and that they had been
+instructed to obey his orders--Maurice not caring that they should be
+witnesses to the equivocal kind of female society that John of Paris was
+in the habit of introducing of an evening to his master's apartments. The
+valet had made use of this privilege on the night in question to rid
+himself of the soldiers who would have been otherwise on guard.
+
+The preacher felt it his duty to communicate these statements to the
+Prince, and to make perhaps a somewhat severe comment upon them. Maurice
+received the information sullenly, and, as soon as Uytenbogaert was gone,
+fell into a violent passion, throwing his hat upon the floor, stamping
+upon it, refusing to eat his supper, and allowing no one to speak to him.
+Next day some courtiers asked the clergyman what in the world he had been
+saying to the Stadholder.
+
+From that time forth his former partiality for the divine, on whose
+preaching he had been a regular attendant, was changed to hatred; a
+sentiment which lent a lurid colour to subsequent events.
+
+The attempts of the Spanish party by chicane or by force to get
+possession of the coveted territories continued year after year, and were
+steadily thwarted by the watchfulness of the States under guidance of
+Barneveld. The martial stadholder was more than ever for open war, in
+which he was opposed by the Advocate, whose object was to postpone and,
+if possible, to avert altogether the dread catastrophe which he foresaw
+impending over Europe. The Xanten arrangement seemed hopelessly thrown to
+the winds, nor was it destined to be carried out; the whole question of
+sovereignty and of mastership in those territories being swept
+subsequently into the general whirlpool of the Thirty Years' War. So long
+as there was a possibility of settlement upon that basis, the Advocate
+was in favour of settlement, but to give up the guarantees and play into
+the hands of the Catholic League was in his mind to make the Republic one
+of the conspirators against the liberties of Christendom.
+
+"Spain, the Emperor and the rest of them," said he, "make all three modes
+of pacification--the treaty, the guarantee by the mediating kings, the
+administration divided between the possessory princes--alike impossible.
+They mean, under pretext of sequestration, to make themselves absolute
+masters there. I have no doubt that Villeroy means sincerely, and
+understands the matter, but meantime we sit by the fire and burn. If the
+conflagration is neglected, all the world will throw the blame on us."
+
+Thus the Spaniards continued to amuse the British king with assurances of
+their frank desire to leave those fortresses and territories which they
+really meant to hold till the crack of doom. And while Gondemar was
+making these ingenuous assertions in London, his colleagues at Paris and
+at Brussels distinctly and openly declared that there was no authority
+whatever for them, that the Ambassador had received no such instructions,
+and that there was no thought of giving up Wesel or any other of the
+Protestant strongholds captured, whether in the duchies or out of them.
+And Gondemar, still more to keep that monarch in subjection, had been
+unusually flattering in regard to the Spanish marriage. "We are in great
+alarm here," said the Advocate, "at the tidings that the projected
+alliance of the Prince of Wales with the daughter of Spain is to be
+renewed; from which nothing good for his Majesty's person, his kingdom,
+nor for our state can be presaged. We live in hope that it will never
+be."
+
+But the other marriage was made. Despite the protest of James, the
+forebodings of Barneveld, and the mutiny of the princes, the youthful
+king of France had espoused Anne of Austria early in the year 1616. The
+British king did his best to keep on terms with France and Spain, and by
+no means renounced his own hopes. At the same time, while fixed as ever
+in his approbation of the policy pursued by the Emperor and the League,
+and as deeply convinced of their artlessness in regard to the duchies,
+the Protestant princes of Germany, and the Republic, he manifested more
+cordiality than usual in his relations with the States. Minor questions
+between the countries he was desirous of arranging--so far as matters of
+state could be arranged by orations--and among the most pressing of these
+affairs were the systematic piracy existing and encouraged in English
+ports, to the great damage of all seafaring nations and to the Hollanders
+most of all, and the quarrel about the exportation of undyed cloths,
+which had almost caused a total cessation of the woollen trade between
+the two countries. The English, to encourage their own artisans, had
+forbidden the export of undyed cloths, and the Dutch had retorted by
+prohibiting the import of dyed ones.
+
+The King had good sense enough to see the absurdity of this condition of
+things, and it will be remembered that Barneveld had frequently urged
+upon the Dutch ambassador to bring his Majesty's attention to these
+dangerous disputes. Now that the recovery of the cautionary towns had
+been so dexterously and amicably accomplished, and at so cheap a rate, it
+seemed a propitious moment to proceed to a general extinction of what
+would now be called "burning questions."
+
+James was desirous that new high commissioners might be sent from the
+States to confer with himself and his ministers upon the subjects just
+indicated, as well as upon the fishery questions as regarded both
+Greenland and Scotland, and upon the general affairs of India.
+
+He was convinced, he said to Caron, that the sea had become more and more
+unsafe and so full of freebooters that the like was never seen or heard
+of before. It will be remembered that the Advocate had recently called
+his attention to the fact that the Dutch merchants had lost in two months
+800,000 florins' worth of goods by English pirates.
+
+The King now assured the Ambassador of his intention of equipping a fleet
+out of hand and to send it forth as speedily as possible under command of
+a distinguished nobleman, who would put his honour and credit in a
+successful expedition, without any connivance or dissimulation whatever.
+In order thoroughly to scour these pirates from the seas, he expressed
+the hope that their Mightinesses the States would do the same either
+jointly or separately as they thought most advisable. Caron bluntly
+replied that the States had already ten or twelve war-ships at sea for
+this purpose, but that unfortunately, instead of finding any help from
+the English in this regard, they had always found the pirates favoured in
+his Majesty's ports, especially in Ireland and Wales.
+
+"Thus they have so increased in numbers," continued the Ambassador, "that
+I quite believe what your Majesty says, that not a ship can pass with
+safety over the seas. More over, your Majesty has been graciously pleased
+to pardon several of these corsairs, in consequence of which they have
+become so impudent as to swarm everywhere, even in the river Thames,
+where they are perpetually pillaging honest merchantmen."
+
+"I confess," said the King, "to having pardoned a certain Manning, but
+this was for the sake of his old father, and I never did anything so
+unwillingly in my life. But I swear that if it were the best nobleman in
+England, I would never grant one of them a pardon again."
+
+Caron expressed his joy at hearing such good intentions on the part of
+his Majesty, and assured him that the States-General would be equally
+delighted.
+
+In the course of the summer the Dutch ambassador had many opportunities
+of seeing the King very confidentially, James having given him the use of
+the royal park at Bayscot, so that during the royal visits to that place
+Caron was lodged under his roof.
+
+On the whole, James had much regard and respect for Noel de Caron. He
+knew him to be able, although he thought him tiresome. It is amusing to
+observe the King and Ambassador in their utterances to confidential
+friends each frequently making the charge of tediousness against the
+other. "Caron's general education," said James on one occasion to Cecil,
+"cannot amend his native German prolixity, for had I not interrupted him,
+it had been tomorrow morning before I had begun to speak. God preserve me
+from hearing a cause debated between Don Diego and him! . . . But in
+truth it is good dealing with so wise and honest a man, although he be
+somewhat longsome."
+
+Subsequently James came to Whitehall for a time, and then stopped at
+Theobalds for a few days on his way to Newmarket, where he stayed until
+Christmas. At Theobalds he sent again for the Ambassador, saying that at
+Whitehall he was so broken down with affairs that it would be impossible
+to live if he stayed there.
+
+He asked if the States were soon to send the commissioners, according to
+his request, to confer in regard to the cloth-trade. Without interference
+of the two governments, he said, the matter would never be settled. The
+merchants of the two countries would never agree except under higher
+authority.
+
+"I have heard both parties," he said, "the new and the old companies, two
+or three times in full council, and tried to bring them to an agreement,
+but it won't do. I have heard that My Lords the States have been hearing
+both sides, English and the Hollanders, over and over again, and that the
+States have passed a provisional resolution, which however does not suit
+us. Now it is not reasonable, as we are allies, that our merchants should
+be obliged to send their cloths roundabout, not being allowed either to
+sell them in the United Provinces or to pass them through your
+territories. I wish I could talk with them myself, for I am certain, if
+they would send some one here, we could make an agreement. It is not
+necessary that one should take everything from them, or that one should
+refuse everything to us. I am sure there are people of sense in your
+assembly who will justify me in favouring my own people so far as I
+reasonably can, and I know very well that My Lords the States must stand
+up for their own citizens. If we have been driving this matter to an
+extreme and see that we are ruining each other, we must take it up again
+in other fashion, for Yesterday is the preceptor of To-morrow. Let the
+commissioners come as soon as possible. I know they have complaints to
+make, and I have my complaints also. Therefore we must listen to each
+other, for I protest before God that I consider the community of your
+state with mine to be so entire that, if one goes to perdition, the other
+must quickly follow it."
+
+Thus spoke James, like a wise and thoughtful sovereign interested in the
+welfare of his subjects and allies, with enlightened ideas for the time
+upon public economy. It is difficult, in the man conversing thus amicably
+and sensibly with the Dutch ambassador, to realise the shrill pedant
+shrieking against Vorstius, the crapulous comrade of Carrs and Steenies,
+the fawning solicitor of Spanish marriages, the "pepperer" and hangman of
+Puritans, the butt and dupe of Gondemar and Spinola.
+
+"I protest," he said further, "that I seek nothing in your state but all
+possible friendship and good fellowship. My own subjects complain
+sometimes that your people follow too closely on their heels, and confess
+that your industry goes far above their own. If this be so, it is a lean
+kind of reproach; for the English should rather study to follow you.
+Nevertheless, when industry is directed by malice, each may easily be
+attempting to snap an advantage from the other. I have sometimes
+complained of many other things in which my subjects suffered great
+injustice from you, but all that is excusable. I will willingly listen to
+your people and grant them to be in the right when they are so. But I
+will never allow them to be in the right when they mistrust me. If I had
+been like many other princes, I should never have let the advantage of
+the cautionary towns slip out of my fingers, but rather by means of them
+attempted to get even a stronger hold on your country. I have had plenty
+of warnings from great statesmen in France, Germany, and other nations
+that I ought to give them up nevermore. Yet you know how frankly and
+sincerely I acquitted myself in that matter without ever making
+pretensions upon your state than the pretensions I still make to your
+friendship and co-operation."
+
+James, after this allusion to an important transaction to be explained in
+the next chapter, then made an observation or two on a subject which was
+rapidly overtopping all others in importance to the States, and his
+expressions were singularly at variance with his last utterances in that
+regard. "I tell you," he said, "that you have no right to mistrust me in
+anything, not even in the matter of religion. I grieve indeed to hear
+that your religious troubles continue. You know that in the beginning I
+occupied myself with this affair, but fearing that my course might be
+misunderstood, and that it might be supposed that I was seeking to
+exercise authority in your republic, I gave it up, and I will never
+interfere with the matter again, but will ever pray God that he may give
+you a happy issue out of these troubles."
+
+Alas! if the King had always kept himself on that height of amiable
+neutrality, if he had been able to govern himself in the future by these
+simplest principles of reason and justice, there might have been perhaps
+a happier issue from the troubles than time was like to reveal.
+
+Once more James referred to the crisis pending in German affairs, and as
+usual spoke of the Clove and Julich question as if it were a simple
+matter to be settled by a few strokes of the pen and a pennyworth of
+sealing-wax, instead of being the opening act in a vast tragedy, of which
+neither he, nor Carom nor Barneveld, nor Prince Maurice, nor the youthful
+king of France, nor Philip, nor Matthias, nor any of the men now foremost
+in the conduct of affairs, was destined to see the end.
+
+The King informed Caron that he had just received most satisfactory
+assurances from the Spanish ambassador in his last audience at Whitehall.
+
+"He has announced to me on the part of the King his master with great
+compliments that his Majesty seeks to please me and satisfy me in
+everything that I could possibly desire of him," said James, rolling over
+with satisfaction these unctuous phrases as if they really had any
+meaning whatever.
+
+"His Majesty says further," added the King, "that as he has been at
+various times admonished by me, and is daily admonished by other princes,
+that he ought to execute the treaty of Xanten by surrendering the city of
+Wesel and all other places occupied by Spinola, he now declares himself
+ready to carry out that treaty in every point. He will accordingly
+instruct the Archduke to do this, provided the Margrave of Brandenburg
+and the States will do the same in regard to their captured places. As he
+understands however that the States have been fortifying Julich even as
+he might fortify Wesel, he would be glad that no innovation be made
+before the end of the coming month of March. When this term shall have
+expired, he will no longer be bound by these offers, but will proceed to
+fortify Wesel and the other places, and to hold them as he best may for
+himself. Respect for me has alone induced his Majesty to make this
+resolution."
+
+We have already seen that the Spanish ambassador in Paris was at this
+very time loudly declaring that his colleague in London had no commission
+whatever to make these propositions. Nor when they were in the slightest
+degree analysed, did they appear after all to be much better than
+threats. Not a word was said of guarantees. The names of the two kings
+were not mentioned. It was nothing but Albert and Spinola then as always,
+and a recommendation that Brandenburg and the States and all the
+Protestant princes of Germany should trust to the candour of the Catholic
+League. Caron pointed out to the King that in these proposals there were
+no guarantees nor even promises that the fortresses would not be
+reoccupied at convenience of the Spaniards. He engaged however to report
+the whole statement to his masters. A few weeks afterwards the Advocate
+replied in his usual vein, reminding the King through the Ambassador that
+the Republic feared fraud on the part of the League much more than force.
+He also laid stress on the affairs of Italy, considering the fate of
+Savoy and the conflicts in which Venice was engaged as components of a
+general scheme. The States had been much solicited, as we have seen, to
+render assistance to the Duke of Savoy, the temporary peace of Asti being
+already broken, and Barneveld had been unceasing in his efforts to arouse
+France as well as England to the danger to themselves and to all
+Christendom should Savoy be crushed. We shall have occasion to see the
+prominent part reserved to Savoy in the fast opening debate in Germany.
+Meantime the States had sent one Count of Nassau with a couple of
+companies to Charles Emmanuel, while another (Ernest) had just gone to
+Venice at the head of more than three thousand adventurers. With so many
+powerful armies at their throats, as Barneveld had more than once
+observed, it was not easy for them to despatch large forces to the other
+end of Europe, but he justly reminded his allies that the States were now
+rendering more effective help to the common cause by holding great
+Spanish armies in check on their own frontier than if they assumed a more
+aggressive line in the south. The Advocate, like every statesman worthy
+of the name, was accustomed to sweep the whole horizon in his
+consideration of public policy, and it will be observed that he always
+regarded various and apparently distinct and isolated movements in
+different parts of Europe as parts of one great whole. It is easy enough
+for us, centuries after the record has been made up, to observe the
+gradual and, as it were, harmonious manner in which the great Catholic
+conspiracy against the liberties of Europe was unfolded in an ever
+widening sphere. But to the eyes of contemporaries all was then misty and
+chaotic, and it required the keen vision of a sage and a prophet to
+discern the awful shape which the future might assume. Absorbed in the
+contemplation of these portentous phenomena, it was not unnatural that
+the Advocate should attach less significance to perturbations nearer
+home. Devoted as was his life to save the great European cause of
+Protestantism, in which he considered political and religious liberty
+bound up, from the absolute extinction with which it was menaced, he
+neglected too much the furious hatreds growing up among Protestants
+within the narrow limits of his own province. He was destined one day to
+be rudely awakened. Meantime he was occupied with organizing a general
+defence of Italy, Germany, France, and England, as well as the
+Netherlands, against the designs of Spain and the League.
+
+"We wish to know," he said in answer to the affectionate messages and
+fine promises of the King of Spain to James as reported by Caron, "what
+his Majesty of Great Britain has done, is doing, and is resolved to do
+for the Duke of Savoy and the Republic of Venice. If they ask you what we
+are doing, answer that we with our forces and vigour are keeping off from
+the throats of Savoy and Venice 2000 riders and 10,000 infantry, with
+which forces, let alone their experience, more would be accomplished than
+with four times the number of new troops brought to the field in Italy.
+This is our succour, a great one and a very costly one, for the expense
+of maintaining our armies to hold the enemy in check here is very great."
+
+He alluded with his usual respectful and quiet scorn to the arrangements
+by which James so wilfully allowed himself to be deceived.
+
+"If the Spaniard really leaves the duchies," he said, "it is a grave
+matter to decide whether on the one side he is not resolved by that means
+to win more over us and the Elector of Brandenburg in the debateable land
+in a few days than he could gain by force in many years, or on the other
+whether by it he does not intend despatching 1200 or 1500 cavalry and
+5000 or 6000 foot, all his most experienced soldiers, from the
+Netherlands to Italy, in order to give the law at his pleasure to the
+Duke of Savoy and the Republic of Venice, reserving his attack upon
+Germany and ourselves to the last. The Spaniards, standing under a
+monarchical government, can in one hour resolve to seize to-morrow all
+that they and we may abandon to-day. And they can carry such a resolution
+into effect at once. Our form of government does not permit this, so that
+our republic must be conserved by distrust and good garrisons."
+
+Thus during this long period of half hostilities Barneveld, while
+sincerely seeking to preserve the peace in Europe, was determined, if
+possible, that the Republic should maintain the strongest defensive
+position when the war which he foreboded should actually begin. Maurice
+and the war party had blamed him for the obstacles which he interposed to
+the outbreak of hostilities, while the British court, as we have seen,
+was perpetually urging him to abate from his demands and abandon both the
+well strengthened fortresses in the duchies and that strong citadel of
+distrust which in his often repeated language he was determined never to
+surrender. Spinola and the military party of Spain, while preaching
+peace, had been in truth most anxious for fighting. "The only honour I
+desire henceforth," said that great commander, "is to give battle to
+Prince Maurice." The generals were more anxious than the governments to
+make use of the splendid armies arrayed against each other in such
+proximity that, the signal for conflict not having been given, it was not
+uncommon for the soldiers of the respective camps to aid each other in
+unloading munition waggons, exchanging provisions and other articles of
+necessity, and performing other small acts of mutual service.
+
+But heavy thunder clouds hanging over the earth so long and so closely
+might burst into explosion at any moment. Had it not been for the
+distracted condition of France, the infatuation of the English king, and
+the astounding inertness of the princes of the German Union, great
+advantages might have been gained by the Protestant party before the
+storm should break. But, as the French ambassador at the Hague well
+observed, "the great Protestant Union of Germany sat with folded arms
+while Hannibal was at their gate, the princes of which it was composed
+amusing themselves with staring at each other. It was verifying," he
+continued, bitterly, "the saying of the Duke of Alva, 'Germany is an old
+dog which still can bark, but has lost its teeth to bite with.'"
+
+To such imbecility had that noble and gifted people--which had never been
+organized into a nation since it crushed the Roman empire and established
+a new civilization on its ruins, and was to wait centuries longer until
+it should reconstruct itself into a whole--been reduced by subdivision,
+disintegration, the perpetual dissolvent of religious dispute, and the
+selfish policy of infinitesimal dynasties.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+   James still presses for the Payment of the Dutch Republic's Debt to
+   him--A Compromise effected, with Restitution of the Cautionary
+   Towns--Treaty of Loudun--James's Dream of a Spanish Marriage
+   revives--James visits Scotland--The States-General agree to furnish
+   Money and Troops in fulfilment of the Treaty of 1609--Death of
+   Concini--Villeroy returns to Power.
+
+Besides matters of predestination there were other subjects political and
+personal which increased the King's jealousy and hatred. The debt of the
+Republic to the British crown, secured by mortgage of the important
+sea-ports and fortified towns of Flushing, Brielle, Rammekens, and other
+strong places, still existed. The possession of those places by England
+was a constant danger and irritation to the States. It was an axe
+perpetually held over their heads. It threatened their sovereignty, their
+very existence. On more than one occasion, in foreign courts, the
+representatives of the Netherlands had been exposed to the taunt that the
+Republic was after all not an independent power, but a British province.
+The gibe had always been repelled in a manner becoming the envoys of a
+proud commonwealth; yet it was sufficiently galling that English
+garrisons should continue to hold Dutch towns; one of them among the most
+valuable seaports of the Republic,--the other the very cradle of its
+independence, the seizure of which in Alva's days had always been
+reckoned a splendid achievement. Moreover, by the fifth article of the
+treaty of peace between James and Philip III., although the King had
+declared himself bound by the treaties made by Elizabeth to deliver up
+the cautionary towns to no one but the United States, he promised Spain
+to allow those States a reasonable time to make peace with the Archdukes
+on satisfactory conditions. Should they refuse to do so, he held himself
+bound by no obligations to them, and would deal with the cities as he
+thought proper, and as the Archdukes themselves might deem just.
+
+The King had always been furious at "the huge sum of money to be
+advanced, nay, given, to the States," as he phrased it. "It is so far out
+of all square," he had said, "as on my conscience I cannot think that
+ever they craved it 'animo obtinendi,' but only by that objection to
+discourage me from any thought of getting any repayment of my debts from
+them when they shall be in peace. . . . Should I ruin myself for
+maintaining them? Should I bestow as much on them as cometh to the value
+of my whole yearly rent?" He had proceeded to say very plainly that, if
+the States did not make great speed to pay him all his debt so soon as
+peace was established, he should treat their pretence at independence
+with contempt, and propose dividing their territory between himself and
+the King of France.
+
+"If they be so weak as they cannot subsist either in peace or war," he
+said, "without I ruin myself for upholding them, in that case surely
+'minus malunv est eligendum,' the nearest harm is first to be eschewed, a
+man will leap out of a burning ship and drown himself in the sea; and it
+is doubtless a farther off harm for me to suffer them to fall again in
+the hands of Spain, and let God provide for the danger that may with time
+fall upon me or my posterity than presently to starve myself and mine
+with putting the meat in their mouth. Nay, rather if they be so weak as
+they can neither sustain themselves in peace nor war, let them leave this
+vainglorious thirsting for the title of a free state (which no people are
+worthy or able to enjoy that cannot stand by themselves like
+substantives), and 'dividantur inter nos;' I mean, let their countries be
+divided between France and me, otherwise the King of Spain shall be sure
+to consume us."
+
+Such were the eyes with which James had always regarded the great
+commonwealth of which he affected to be the ally, while secretly aspiring
+to be its sovereign, and such was his capacity to calculate political
+forces and comprehend coming events.
+
+Certainly the sword was hanging by a thread. The States had made no peace
+either with the Archdukes or with Spain. They had made a truce, half the
+term of which had already run by. At any moment the keys of their very
+house-door might be placed in the hands of their arch enemy. Treacherous
+and base as the deed would be, it might be defended by the letter of a
+treaty in which the Republic had no part; and was there anything too
+treacherous or too base to be dreaded from James Stuart?
+
+But the States owed the crown of England eight millions of florins,
+equivalent to about L750,000. Where was this vast sum to be found? It was
+clearly impossible for the States to beg or to borrow it, although they
+were nearly as rich as any of the leading powers at that day.
+
+It was the merit of Barneveld, not only that he saw the chance for a good
+bargain, but that he fully comprehended a great danger. Years long James
+had pursued the phantom of a Spanish marriage for his son. To achieve
+this mighty object, he had perverted the whole policy of the realm; he
+had grovelled to those who despised him, had repaid attempts at wholesale
+assassination with boundless sycophancy. It is difficult to imagine
+anything more abject than the attitude of James towards Philip. Prince
+Henry was dead, but Charles had now become Prince of Wales in his turn,
+and there was a younger infanta whose hand was not yet disposed of.
+
+So long as the possible prize of a Most Catholic princess was dangling
+before the eyes of the royal champion of Protestantism, so long there was
+danger that the Netherlanders might wake up some fine morning and see the
+flag of Spain waving over the walls of Flushing, Brielle, and Rammekens.
+
+It was in the interest of Spain too that the envoys of James at the Hague
+were perpetually goading Barneveld to cause the States' troops to be
+withdrawn from the duchies and the illusory treaty of Xanten to be
+executed. Instead of an eighth province added to the free Netherlands,
+the result of such a procedure would have been to place that territory
+enveloping them in the hands of the enemy; to strengthen and sharpen the
+claws, as the Advocate had called them, by which Spain was seeking to
+clutch and to destroy the Republic.
+
+The Advocate steadily refused to countenance such policy in the duchies,
+and he resolved on a sudden stroke to relieve the Commonwealth from the
+incubus of the English mortgage.
+
+James was desperately pushed for money. His minions, as insatiable in
+their demands on English wealth as the parasites who fed on the
+Queen-Regent were exhaustive of the French exchequer, were greedier than
+ever now that James, who feared to face a parliament disgusted with the
+meanness of his policy and depravity of his life, could not be relied
+upon to minister to their wants.
+
+The Advocate judiciously contrived that the proposal of a compromise
+should come from the English government. Noel de Caron, the veteran
+ambassador of the States in London, after receiving certain proposals,
+offered, under instructions' from Barneveld, to pay L250,000 in full of
+all demands. It was made to appear that the additional L250,000 was in
+reality in advance of his instructions. The mouths of the minions watered
+at the mention of so magnificent a sum of money in one lump.
+
+The bargain was struck. On the 11th June 1616, Sir Robert Sidney, who had
+become Lord Lisle, gave over the city of Flushing to the States,
+represented by the Seignior van Maldere, while Sir Horace Vere placed the
+important town of Brielle in the hands of the Seignior van Mathenesse.
+According to the terms of the bargain, the English garrisons were
+converted into two regiments, respectively to be commanded by Lord
+Lisle's son, now Sir Robert Sidney, and by Sir Horace Vere, and were to
+serve the States. Lisle, who had been in the Netherlands since the days
+of his uncle Leicester and his brother Sir Philip Sidney, now took his
+final departure for England.
+
+Thus this ancient burthen had been taken off the Republic by the masterly
+policy of the Advocate. A great source of dread for foreign complication
+was closed for ever.
+
+The French-Spanish marriages had been made. Henry IV. had not been
+murdered in vain. Conde and his confederates had issued their manifesto.
+A crisis came to the States, for Maurice, always inclined to take part
+for the princes, and urged on by Aerssens, who was inspired by a deadly
+hatred for the French government ever since they had insisted on his
+dismissal from his post, and who fed the Stadholder's growing jealousy of
+the Advocate to the full, was at times almost ready for joining in the
+conflict. It was most difficult for the States-General, led by Barneveld,
+to maintain relations of amity with a government controlled by Spain,
+governed by the Concini's, and wafted to and fro by every wind that blew.
+Still it was the government, and the States might soon be called upon, in
+virtue of their treaties with Henry, confirmed by Mary de' Medici, not
+only to prevent the daily desertion of officers and soldiers of the
+French regiments to the rebellious party, but to send the regiments
+themselves to the assistance of the King and Queen.
+
+There could be no doubt that the alliance of the French Huguenots at
+Grenoble with the princes made the position of the States very critical.
+Bouillon was loud in his demands upon Maurice and the States for money
+and reinforcements, but the Prince fortunately understood the character
+of the Duke and of Conde, and comprehended the nature of French politics
+too clearly to be led into extremities by passion or by pique. He said
+loudly to any one that chose to listen:
+
+"It is not necessary to ruin the son in order to avenge the death of the
+father. That should be left to the son, who alone has legitimate
+authority to do it." Nothing could be more sensible, and the remark
+almost indicated a belief on the Prince's part in Mary's complicity in
+the murder of her husband. Duplessis-Mornay was in despair, and, like all
+true patriots and men of earnest character, felt it almost an
+impossibility to choose between the two ignoble parties contending for
+the possession of France, and both secretly encouraged by France's deadly
+enemy.
+
+The Treaty of Loudun followed, a treaty which, said du Maurier, had about
+as many negotiators as there were individuals interested in the
+arrangements. The rebels were forgiven, Conde sold himself out for a
+million and a half livres and the presidency of the council, came to
+court, and paraded himself in greater pomp and appearance of power than
+ever. Four months afterwards he was arrested and imprisoned. He submitted
+like a lamb, and offered to betray his confederates.
+
+King James, faithful to his self-imposed part of mediator-general, which
+he thought so well became him, had been busy in bringing about this
+pacification, and had considered it eminently successful. He was now
+angry at this unexpected result. He admitted that Conde had indulged in
+certain follies and extravagancies, but these in his opinion all came out
+of the quiver of the Spaniard, "who was the head of the whole intrigue."
+He determined to recall Lord Hayes from Madrid and even Sir Thomas
+Edmonds from Paris, so great was his indignation. But his wrath was
+likely to cool under the soothing communications of Gondemar, and the
+rumour of the marriage of the second infanta with the Prince of Wales
+soon afterwards started into new life. "We hope," wrote Barneveld, "that
+the alliance of his Highness the Prince of Wales with the daughter of the
+Spanish king will make no further progress, as it will place us in the
+deepest embarrassment and pain."
+
+For the reports had been so rife at the English court in regard to this
+dangerous scheme that Caron had stoutly gone to the King and asked him
+what he was to think about it. "The King told me," said the Ambassador,
+"that there was nothing at all in it, nor any appearance that anything
+ever would come of it. It was true, he said, that on the overtures made
+to him by the Spanish ambassador he had ordered his minister in Spain to
+listen to what they had to say, and not to bear himself as if the
+overtures would be rejected."
+
+The coyness thus affected by James could hardly impose on so astute a
+diplomatist as Noel de Caron, and the effect produced upon the policy of
+one of the Republic's chief allies by the Spanish marriages naturally
+made her statesmen shudder at the prospect of their other powerful friend
+coming thus under the malign influence of Spain.
+
+"He assured me, however," said the Envoy, "that the Spaniard is not
+sincere in the matter, and that he has himself become so far alienated
+from the scheme that we may sleep quietly upon it." And James appeared at
+that moment so vexed at the turn affairs were taking in France, so
+wounded in his self-love, and so bewildered by the ubiquitous nature of
+nets and pitfalls spreading over Europe by Spain, that he really seemed
+waking from his delusion. Even Caron was staggered? "In all his talk he
+appears so far estranged from the Spaniard," said he, "that it would seem
+impossible that he should consider this marriage as good for his state. I
+have also had other advices on the subject which in the highest degree
+comfort me. Now your Mightinesses may think whatever you like about it."
+
+The mood of the King was not likely to last long in so comfortable a
+state. Meantime he took the part of Conde and the other princes,
+justified their proceedings to the special envoy sent over by Mary de'
+Medici, and wished the States to join with him in appealing to that Queen
+to let the affair, for his sake, pass over once more.
+
+"And now I will tell your Mightinesses," said Caron, reverting once more
+to the dreaded marriage which occupies so conspicuous a place in the
+strangely mingled and party-coloured tissue of the history of those days,
+"what the King has again been telling me about the alliance between his
+son and the Infanta. He hears from Carleton that you are in very great
+alarm lest this event may take place. He understands that the special
+French envoy at the Hague, M. de la None, has been representing to you
+that the King of Great Britain is following after and begging for the
+daughter of Spain for his son. He says it is untrue. But it is true that
+he has been sought and solicited thereto, and that in consequence there
+have been talks and propositions and rejoinders, but nothing of any
+moment. As he had already told me not to be alarmed until he should
+himself give me cause for it, he expressed his amazement that I had not
+informed your Mightinesses accordingly. He assured me again that he
+should not proceed further in the business without communicating it to
+his good friends and neighbours, that he considered My Lords the States
+as his best friends and allies, who ought therefore to conceive no
+jealousy in the matter."
+
+This certainly was cold comfort. Caron knew well enough, not a clerk in
+his office but knew well enough, that James had been pursuing this prize
+for years. For the King to represent himself as persecuted by Spain to
+give his son to the Infanta was about as ridiculous as it would have been
+to pretend that Emperor Matthias was persuading him to let his son-in-law
+accept the crown of Bohemia. It was admitted that negotiations for the
+marriage were going on, and the assertion that the Spanish court was more
+eager for it than the English government was not especially calculated to
+allay the necessary alarm of the States at such a disaster. Nor was it
+much more tranquillizing for them to be assured, not that the marriage
+was off, but that, when it was settled, they, as the King's good friends
+and neighbours, should have early information of it.
+
+"I told him," said the Ambassador, "that undoubtedly this matter was of
+the highest 'importance to your Mightinesses, for it was not good for us
+to sit between two kingdoms both so nearly allied with the Spanish
+monarch, considering the pretensions he still maintained to sovereignty
+over us. Although his Majesty might not now be willing to treat to our
+prejudice, yet the affair itself in the sequence of time must of
+necessity injure our commonwealth. We hoped therefore that it would never
+come to pass."
+
+Caron added that Ambassador Digby was just going to Spain on
+extraordinary mission in regard to this affair, and that eight or ten
+gentlemen of the council had been deputed to confer with his Majesty
+about it. He was still inclined to believe that the whole negotiation
+would blow over, the King continuing to exhort him not to be alarmed, and
+assuring him that there were many occasions moving princes to treat of
+great affairs although often without any effective issue.
+
+At that moment too the King was in a state of vehement wrath with the
+Spanish Netherlands on account of a stinging libel against himself, "an
+infamous and wonderfully scandalous pamphlet," as he termed it, called
+'Corona Regis', recently published at Louvain. He had sent Sir John
+Bennet as special ambassador to the Archdukes to demand from them justice
+and condign and public chastisement on the author of the work--a rector
+Putianus as he believed, successor of Justus Lipsius in his professorship
+at Louvain--and upon the printer, one Flaminius. Delays and excuses
+having followed instead of the punishment originally demanded, James had
+now instructed his special envoy in case of further delay or evasion to
+repudiate all further friendship or intercourse with the Archduke, to
+ratify the recall of his minister-resident Trumbull, and in effect to
+announce formal hostilities.
+
+"The King takes the thing wonderfully to heart," said Caron.
+
+James in effect hated to be made ridiculous, and we shall have occasion
+to see how important a part other publications which he deemed
+detrimental to the divinity of his person were to play in these affairs.
+
+Meantime it was characteristic of this sovereign that--while ready to
+talk of war with Philip's brother-in-law for a pamphlet, while seeking
+the hand of Philip's daughter for his son--he was determined at the very
+moment when the world was on fire to take himself, the heaven-born
+extinguisher of all political conflagrations, away from affairs and to
+seek the solace of along holiday in Scotland. His counsellors
+persistently and vehemently implored him to defer that journey until the
+following year at least, all the neighbouring nations being now in a
+state of war and civil commotion. But it was in vain. He refused to
+listen to them for a moment, and started for Scotland before the middle
+of March.
+
+Conde, who had kept France in a turmoil, had sought aid alternately from
+the Calvinists at Grenoble and the Jesuits in Rome, from Spain and from
+the Netherlands, from the Pope and from Maurice of Nassau, had thus been
+caged at last. But there was little gained. There was one troublesome but
+incompetent rebel the less, but there was no king in the land. He who
+doubts the influence of the individual upon the fate of a country and
+upon his times through long passages of history may explain the
+difference between France of 1609, with a martial king aided by great
+statesmen at its head, with an exchequer overflowing with revenue hoarded
+for a great cause--and that cause an attempt at least to pacificate
+Christendom and avert a universal and almost infinite conflict now
+already opening--and the France of 1617, with its treasures already
+squandered among ignoble and ruffianly favourites, with every office in
+state, church, court, and magistracy sold to the highest bidder, with a
+queen governed by an Italian adventurer who was governed by Spain, and
+with a little king who had but lately expressed triumph at his
+confirmation because now he should no longer be whipped, and who was just
+married to a daughter of the hereditary and inevitable foe of France.
+
+To contemplate this dreary interlude in the history of a powerful state
+is to shiver at the depths of inanity and crime to which mankind can at
+once descend. What need to pursue the barren, vulgar, and often repeated
+chronicle? France pulled at by scarcely concealed strings and made to
+perform fantastic tricks according as its various puppets were swerved
+this way or that by supple bands at Madrid and Rome is not a refreshing
+spectacle. The States-General at last, after an agitated discussion,
+agreed in fulfilment of the treaty of 1609 to send 4000 men, 2000 being
+French, to help the King against the princes still in rebellion. But the
+contest was a most bitter one, and the Advocate had a difficult part to
+play between a government and a rebellion, each more despicable than the
+other. Still Louis XIII. and his mother were the legitimate government
+even if ruled by Concini. The words of the treaty made with Henry IV.
+were plain, and the ambassadors of his son had summoned the States to
+fulfil it. But many impediments were placed in the path of obvious duty
+by the party led by Francis Aerssens.
+
+"I know very well," said the Advocate to ex-Burgomaster Hooft of
+Amsterdam, father of the great historian, sending him confidentially a
+copy of the proposals made by the French ambassadors, "that many in this
+country are striving hard to make us refuse to the King the aid demanded,
+notwithstanding that we are bound to do it by the pledges given not only
+by the States-General but by each province in particular. By this no one
+will profit but the Spaniard, who unquestionably will offer much, aye,
+very much, to bring about dissensions between France and us, from which I
+foresee great damage, inconvenience, and difficulties for the whole
+commonwealth and for Holland especially. This province has already
+advanced 1,000,000 florins to the general government on the money still
+due from France, which will all be lost in case the subsidy should be
+withheld, besides other evils which cannot be trusted to the pen."
+
+On the same day on which it had been decided at the Hague to send the
+troops, a captain of guards came to the aid of the poor little king and
+shot Concini dead one fine spring morning on the bridge of the Louvre.
+"By order of the King," said Vitry. His body was burned before the statue
+of Henry IV. by the people delirious with joy. "L'hanno ammazzato" was
+shouted to his wife, Eleanora Galigai, the supposed sorceress. They were
+the words in which Concini had communicated to the Queen the murder of
+her husband seven years before. Eleanora, too, was burned after having
+been beheaded. Thus the Marshal d'Ancre and wife ceased to reign in
+France.
+
+The officers of the French regiments at the Hague danced for joy on the
+Vyverberg when the news arrived there. The States were relieved from an
+immense embarrassment, and the Advocate was rewarded for having pursued
+what was after all the only practicable policy. "Do your best," said he
+to Langerac, "to accommodate differences so far as consistent with the
+conservation of the King's authority. We hope the princes will submit
+themselves now that the 'lapis offensionis,' according to their pretence,
+is got rid of. We received a letter from them to-day sealed with the
+King's arms, with the circumscription 'Periclitante Regno, Regis vita et
+Regia familia."
+
+The shooting of Concini seemed almost to convert the little king into a
+hero. Everyone in the Netherlands, without distinction of party, was
+delighted with the achievement. "I cannot represent to the King," wrote
+du Maurier to Villeroy, "one thousandth part of the joy of all these
+people who are exalting him to heaven for having delivered the earth from
+this miserable burthen. I can't tell you in what execration this public
+pest was held. His Majesty has not less won the hearts of this state than
+if he had gained a great victory over the Spaniards. You would not
+believe it, and yet it is true, that never were the name and reputation
+of the late king in greater reverence than those of our reigning king at
+this moment."
+
+Truly here was glory cheaply earned. The fame of Henry the Great, after a
+long career of brilliant deeds of arms, high statesmanship, and twenty
+years of bountiful friendship for the States, was already equalled by
+that of Louis XIII., who had tremblingly acquiesced in the summary
+execution of an odious adventurer--his own possible father--and who never
+had done anything else but feed his canary birds.
+
+As for Villeroy himself, the Ambassador wrote that he could not find
+portraits enough of him to furnish those who were asking for them since
+his return to power.
+
+Barneveld had been right in so often instructing Langerac to "caress the
+old gentleman."
+
+     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+     And give advice. Of that, although always a spendthrift
+     Casual outbursts of eternal friendship
+     Changed his positions and contradicted himself day by day
+     Conciliation when war of extermination was intended
+     Considered it his special mission in the world to mediate
+     Denoungced as an obstacle to peace
+     France was mourning Henry and waiting for Richelieu
+     Hardly a sound Protestant policy anywhere but in Holland
+     History has not too many really important and emblematic men
+     I hope and I fear
+     King who thought it furious madness to resist the enemy
+     Mockery of negotiation in which nothing could be negotiated
+     More apprehension of fraud than of force
+     Opening an abyss between government and people
+     Successful in this step, he is ready for greater ones
+     That he tries to lay the fault on us is pure malice
+     The magnitude of this wonderful sovereign's littleness
+     This wonderful sovereign's littleness oppresses the imagination
+     Wise and honest a man, although he be somewhat longsome
+     Yesterday is the preceptor of To-morrow
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND
+
+WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR
+
+By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+Life and Death of John of Barneveld, v8, 1617
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+   Ferdinand of Gratz crowned King of Bohemia--His Enmity to
+   Protestants--Slawata and Martinitz thrown from the Windows of the
+   Hradschin--Real Beginning of the Thirty Years' War--The Elector-
+   Palatine's Intrigues in Opposition to the House of Austria--He
+   supports the Duke of Savoy--The Emperor Matthias visits Dresden--
+   Jubilee for the Hundredth Anniversary of the Reformation.
+
+When the forlorn emperor Rudolph had signed the permission for his
+brother Matthias to take the last crown but one from his head, he bit the
+pen in a paroxysm of helpless rage. Then rushing to the window of his
+apartment, he looked down on one of the most stately prospects that the
+palaces of the earth can offer. From the long monotonous architectural
+lines of the Hradschin, imposing from its massiveness and its imperial
+situation, and with the dome and minarets of the cathedral clustering
+behind them, the eye swept across the fertile valley, through which the
+rapid, yellow Moldau courses, to the opposite line of cliffs crested with
+the half imaginary fortress-palaces of the Wyscherad. There, in the
+mythical legendary past of Bohemia had dwelt the shadowy Libuscha,
+daughter of Krok, wife of King Premysl, foundress of Prague, who, when
+wearied of her lovers, was accustomed to toss them from those heights
+into the river. Between these picturesque precipices lay the two Pragues,
+twin-born and quarrelsome, fighting each other for centuries, and growing
+up side by side into a double, bellicose, stormy, and most splendid city,
+bristling with steeples and spires, and united by the ancient
+many-statued bridge with its blackened mediaeval entrance towers.
+
+But it was not to enjoy the prospect that the aged, discrowned, solitary
+emperor, almost as dim a figure among sovereigns as the mystic Libuscha
+herself, was gazing from the window upon the imperial city.
+
+"Ungrateful Prague," he cried, "through me thou hast become thus
+magnificent, and now thou hast turned upon and driven away thy
+benefactor. May the vengeance of God descend upon thee; may my curse come
+upon thee and upon all Bohemia."
+
+History has failed to record the special benefits of the Emperor through
+which the city had derived its magnificence and deserved this
+malediction. But surely if ever an old man's curse was destined to be
+literally fulfilled, it seemed to be this solemn imprecation of Rudolph.
+Meantime the coronation of Matthias had gone on with pomp and popular
+gratulations, while Rudolph had withdrawn into his apartments to pass the
+little that was left to him of life in solitude and in a state of
+hopeless pique with Matthias, with the rest of his brethren, with all the
+world.
+
+And now that five years had passed since his death, Matthias, who had
+usurped so much power prematurely, found himself almost in the same
+condition as that to which he had reduced Rudolph.
+
+Ferdinand of Styria, his cousin, trod closely upon his heels. He was the
+presumptive successor to all his crowns, had not approved of the
+movements of Matthias in the lifetime of his brother, and hated the
+Vienna Protestant baker's son, Cardinal Clesel, by whom all those
+movements had been directed. Professor Taubmann, of Wittenberg,
+ponderously quibbling on the name of that prelate, had said that he was
+of "one hundred and fifty ass power." Whether that was a fair measure of
+his capacity may be doubted, but it certainly was not destined to be
+sufficient to elude the vengeance of Ferdinand, and Ferdinand would soon
+have him in his power.
+
+Matthias, weary of ambitious intrigue, infirm of purpose, and shattered
+in health, had withdrawn from affairs to devote himself to his gout and
+to his fair young wife, Archduchess Anna of Tyrol, whom at the age of
+fifty-four he had espoused.
+
+On the 29th June 1617, Ferdinand of Gratz was crowned King of Bohemia.
+The event was a shock and a menace to the Protestant cause all over the
+world. The sombre figure of the Archduke had for years appeared in the
+background, foreshadowing as it were the wrath to come, while throughout
+Bohemia and the neighbouring countries of Moravia, Silesia, and the
+Austrias, the cause of Protestantism had been making such rapid progress.
+The Emperor Maximilian II. had left five stalwart sons, so that there had
+seemed little probability that the younger line, the sons of his brother,
+would succeed. But all the five were childless, and now the son of
+Archduke Charles, who had died in 1590, had become the natural heir after
+the death of Matthias to the immense family honours--his cousins
+Maximilian and Albert having resigned their claims in his favour.
+
+Ferdinand, twelve years old at his father's death, had been placed under
+the care of his maternal uncle, Duke William of Bavaria. By him the boy
+was placed at the high school of Ingolstadt, to be brought up by the
+Jesuits, in company with Duke William's own son Maximilian, five years
+his senior. Between these youths, besides the tie of cousinship, there
+grew up the most intimate union founded on perfect sympathy in religion
+and politics.
+
+When Ferdinand entered upon the government of his paternal estates of
+Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, he found that the new religion, at which
+the Jesuits had taught him to shudder as at a curse and a crime, had been
+widely spreading. His father had fought against heresy with all his
+might, and had died disappointed and broken-hearted at its progress. His
+uncle of Bavaria, in letters to his son and nephew, had stamped into
+their minds with the enthusiasm of perfect conviction that all happiness
+and blessing for governments depended on the restoration and maintenance
+of the unity of the Catholic faith. All the evils in times past and
+present resulting from religious differences had been held up to the two
+youths by the Jesuits in the most glaring colours. The first duty of a
+prince, they had inculcated, was to extirpate all false religions, to
+give the opponents of the true church no quarter, and to think no
+sacrifice too great by which the salvation of human society, brought
+almost to perdition by the new doctrines, could be effected.
+
+Never had Jesuits an apter scholar than Ferdinand. After leaving school,
+he made a pilgrimage to Loretto to make his vows to the Virgin Mary of
+extirpation of heresy, and went to Rome to obtain the blessing of Pope
+Clement VIII.
+
+Then, returning to the government of his inheritance, he seized that
+terrible two-edged weapon of which the Protestants of Germany had taught
+him the use.
+
+"Cujus regio ejus religio;" to the prince the choice of religion, to the
+subject conformity with the prince, as if that formula of shallow and
+selfish princelings, that insult to the dignity of mankind, were the
+grand result of a movement which was to go on centuries after they had
+all been forgotten in their tombs. For the time however it was a valid
+and mischievous maxim. In Saxony Catholics and Calvinists were
+proscribed; in Heidelberg Catholics and Lutherans. Why should either
+Calvinists or Lutherans be tolerated in Styria? Why, indeed? No logic
+could be more inexorable, and the pupil of the Ingolstadt Jesuits
+hesitated not an instant to carry out their teaching with the very
+instrument forged for him by the Reformation. Gallows were erected in the
+streets of all his cities, but there was no hanging. The sight of them
+proved enough to extort obedience to his edict, that every man, woman,
+and child not belonging to the ancient church should leave his dominions.
+They were driven out in hordes in broad daylight from Gratz and other
+cities. Rather reign over a wilderness than over heretics was the device
+of the Archduke, in imitation of his great relative, Philip II. of Spain.
+In short space of time his duchies were as empty of Protestants as the
+Palatinate of Lutherans, or Saxony of Calvinists, or both of Papists.
+Even the churchyards were rifled of dead Lutherans and Utraquists, their
+carcasses thrown where they could no longer pollute the true believers
+mouldering by their side.
+
+It was not strange that the coronation as King of Bohemia of a man of
+such decided purposes--a country numbering ten Protestants to one
+Catholic--should cause a thrill and a flutter. Could it be doubted that
+the great elemental conflict so steadily prophesied by Barneveld and
+instinctively dreaded by all capable of feeling the signs of the time
+would now begin? It had begun. Of what avail would be Majesty-Letters and
+Compromises extorted by force from trembling or indolent emperors, now
+that a man who knew his own mind, and felt it to be a crime not to
+extirpate all religions but the one orthodox religion, had mounted the
+throne? It is true that he had sworn at his coronation to maintain the
+laws of Bohemia, and that the Majesty-Letter and the Compromise were part
+of the laws.
+
+But when were doctors ever wanting to prove the unlawfulness of law which
+interferes with the purposes of a despot and the convictions of the
+bigot?
+
+"Novus rex, nova lex," muttered the Catholics, lifting up their heads and
+hearts once more out of the oppression and insults which they had
+unquestionably suffered at the hands of the triumphant Reformers. "There
+are many empty poppy-heads now flaunting high that shall be snipped off,"
+said others. "That accursed German Count Thurn and his fellows, whom the
+devil has sent from hell to Bohemia for his own purposes, shall be
+disposed of now," was the general cry.
+
+It was plain that heresy could no longer be maintained except by the
+sword. That which had been extorted by force would be plucked back by
+force. The succession of Ferdinand was in brief a warshout to be echoed
+by all the Catholics of Europe. Before the end of the year the Protestant
+churches of Brunnau were sealed up. Those at Klostergrab were demolished
+in three days by command of the Archbishop of Prague. These dumb walls
+preached in their destruction more stirring sermons than perhaps would
+ever have been heard within them had they stood. This tearing in pieces
+of the Imperial patent granting liberty of Protestant worship, this
+summary execution done upon senseless bricks and mortar, was an act of
+defiance to the Reformed religion everywhere. Protestantism was struck in
+the face, spat upon, defied.
+
+The effect was instantaneous. Thurn and the other defenders of the
+Protestant faith were as prompt in action as the Catholics had been in
+words. A few months passed away. The Emperor was in Vienna, but his ten
+stadholders were in Prague. The fateful 23rd of May 1618 arrived.
+
+Slawata, a Bohemian Protestant, who had converted himself to the Roman
+Church in order to marry a rich widow, and who converted his peasants by
+hunting them to mass with his hounds, and Martinitz, the two stadholders
+who at Ferdinand's coronation had endeavoured to prevent him from
+including the Majesty-Letter among the privileges he was swearing to
+support, and who were considered the real authors of the royal letters
+revoking all religious rights of Protestants, were the most obnoxious of
+all. They were hurled from the council-chamber window of the Hradschin.
+The unfortunate secretary Fabricius was tossed out after them.
+Twenty-eight ells deep they fell, and all escaped unhurt by the fall;
+Fabricius being subsequently ennobled by a grateful emperor with the
+well-won title of Baron Summerset.
+
+The Thirty Years' War, which in reality had been going on for several
+years already, is dated from that day. A provisional government was
+established in Prague by the Estates under Protestant guidance, a college
+of thirty directors managing affairs.
+
+The Window-Tumble, as the event has always been called in history,
+excited a sensation in Europe. Especially the young king of France, whose
+political position should bring him rather into alliance with the rebels
+than the Emperor, was disgusted and appalled. He was used to rebellion.
+Since he was ten years old there had been a rebellion against himself
+every year. There was rebellion now. But his ministers had never been
+thrown out of window. Perhaps one might take some day to tossing out
+kings as well. He disapproved the process entirely.
+
+Thus the great conflict of Christendom, so long impending, seemed at last
+to have broken forth in full fury on a comparatively insignificant
+incident. Thus reasoned the superficial public, as if the throwing out of
+window of twenty stadholders could have created a general war in Europe
+had not the causes of war lain deep and deadly in the whole framework of
+society.
+
+The succession of Ferdinand to the throne of the holy Wenzel, in which
+his election to the German Imperial crown was meant to be involved, was a
+matter which concerned almost every household in Christendom. Liberty of
+religion, civil franchise, political charters, contract between
+government and subject, right to think, speak, or act, these were the
+human rights everywhere in peril. A compromise between the two religious
+parties had existed for half a dozen years in Germany, a feeble
+compromise by which men had hardly been kept from each others' throats.
+That compromise had now been thrown to the winds. The vast conspiracy of
+Spain, Rome, the House of Austria, against human liberty had found a
+chief in the docile, gloomy pupil of the Jesuits now enthroned in
+Bohemia, and soon perhaps to wield the sceptre of the Holy Roman Empire.
+There was no state in Europe that had not cause to put hand on
+sword-hilt. "Distrust and good garrisons," in the prophetic words of
+Barneveld, would now be the necessary resource for all intending to hold
+what had been gained through long years of toil, martyrdom, and hard
+fighting.
+
+The succession of Ferdinand excited especial dismay and indignation in
+the Palatinate. The young elector had looked upon the prize as his own.
+The marked advance of Protestant sentiment throughout the kingdom and its
+neighbour provinces had seemed to render the succession of an extreme
+Papist impossible. When Frederic had sued for and won the hand of the
+fair Elizabeth, daughter of the King of Great Britain, it was understood
+that the alliance would be more brilliant for her than it seemed. James
+with his usual vanity spoke of his son-in-law as a future king.
+
+It was a golden dream for the Elector and for the general cause of the
+Reformed religion. Heidelberg enthroned in the ancient capital of the
+Wenzels, Maximilians, and Rudolphs, the Catechism and Confession enrolled
+among the great statutes of the land, this was progress far beyond flimsy
+Majesty-Letters and Compromises, made only to be torn to pieces.
+
+Through the dim vista of futurity and in ecstatic vision no doubt even
+the Imperial crown might seem suspended over the Palatine's head. But
+this would be merely a midsummer's dream. Events did not whirl so rapidly
+as they might learn to do centuries later, and--the time for a Protestant
+to grasp at the crown of Germany could then hardly be imagined as
+ripening.
+
+But what the Calvinist branch of the House of Wittelsbach had indeed long
+been pursuing was to interrupt the succession of the House of Austria to
+the German throne. That a Catholic prince must for the immediate future
+continue to occupy it was conceded even by Frederic, but the electoral
+votes might surely be now so manipulated as to prevent a slave of Spain
+and a tool of the Jesuits from wielding any longer the sceptre of
+Charlemagne.
+
+On the other hand the purpose of the House of Austria was to do away with
+the elective principle and the prescriptive rights of the Estates in
+Bohemia first, and afterwards perhaps to send the Golden Bull itself to
+the limbo of wornout constitutional devices. At present however their
+object was to secure their hereditary sovereignty in Prague first, and
+then to make sure of the next Imperial election at Frankfurt. Time
+afterwards might fight still more in their favour, and fix them in
+hereditary possession of the German throne.
+
+The Elector-Palatine had lost no time. His counsellors even before the
+coronation of Ferdinand at Prague had done their best to excite alarm
+throughout Germany at the document by which Archdukes Maximilian and
+Albert had resigned all their hereditary claims in favour of Ferdinand
+and his male children. Should there be no such issue, the King of Spain
+claimed the succession for his own sons as great-grandchildren of Emperor
+Maximilian, considering himself nearer in the line than the Styrian
+branch, but being willing to waive his own rights in favour of so ardent
+a Catholic as Ferdinand. There was even a secret negotiation going on a
+long time between the new king of Bohemia and Philip to arrange for the
+precedence of the Spanish males over the Styrian females to the
+hereditary Austrian states, and to cede the province of Alsace to Spain.
+
+It was not wonderful that Protestant Germany should be alarmed. After a
+century of Protestantism, that Spain should by any possibility come to be
+enthroned again over Germany was enough to raise both Luther and Calvin
+from their graves. It was certainly enough to set the lively young
+palatine in motion. So soon as the election of Frederic was proclaimed,
+he had taken up the business in person. Fond of amusement, young, married
+to a beautiful bride of the royal house of England, he had hitherto left
+politics to his counsellors.
+
+Finding himself frustrated in his ambition by the election of another to
+the seat he had fondly deemed his own, he resolved to unseat him if he
+could, and, at any rate, to prevent the ulterior consequences of his
+elevation. He made a pilgrimage to Sedan, to confer with that
+irrepressible intriguer and Huguenot chieftain, the Duc de Bouillon. He
+felt sure of the countenance of the States-General, and, of course, of
+his near relative the great stadholder. He was resolved to invite the
+Duke of Lorraine to head the anti-Austrian party, and to stand for the
+kingship of the Romans and the Empire in opposition to Ferdinand. An
+emissary sent to Nancy came back with a discouraging reply. The Duke not
+only flatly refused the candidacy, but warned the Palatine that if it
+really came to a struggle he could reckon on small support anywhere, not
+even from those who now seemed warmest for the scheme. Then Frederic
+resolved to try his cousin, the great Maximilian of Bavaria, to whom all
+Catholics looked with veneration and whom all German Protestants
+respected. Had the two branches of the illustrious house of Wittelsbach
+been combined in one purpose, the opposition to the House of Austria
+might indeed have been formidable. But what were ties of blood compared
+to the iron bands of religious love and hatred? How could Maximilian,
+sternest of Papists, and Frederick V., flightiest of Calvinists, act
+harmoniously in an Imperial election? Moreover, Maximilian was united by
+ties of youthful and tender friendship as well as by kindred and perfect
+religious sympathy to his other cousin, King Ferdinand himself. The case
+seemed hopeless, but the Elector went to Munich, and held conferences
+with his cousin. Not willing to take No for an answer so long as it was
+veiled under evasive or ornamental phraseology, he continued to negotiate
+with Maximilian through his envoys Camerarius and Secretary Neu, who held
+long debates with the Duke's chief councillor, Doctor Jocher. Camerarius
+assured Jocher that his master was the Hercules to untie the Gordian
+knot, and the lion of the tribe of Judah. How either the lion of Judah or
+Hercules were to untie the knot which was popularly supposed to have been
+cut by the sword of Alexander did not appear, but Maximilian at any rate
+was moved neither by entreaties nor tropes. Being entirely averse from
+entering himself for the German crown, he grew weary at last of the
+importunity with which the scheme was urged. So he wrote a short billet
+to his councillor, to be shown to Secretary Neu.
+
+"Dear Jocher," he said, "I am convinced one must let these people
+understand the matter in a little plainer German. I am once for all
+determined not to let myself into any misunderstanding or even
+amplifications with the House of Austria in regard to the succession. I
+think also that it would rather be harmful than useful to my house to
+take upon myself so heavy a burthen as the German crown."
+
+This time the German was plain enough and produced its effect. Maximilian
+was too able a statesman and too conscientious a friend to wish to
+exchange his own proud position as chief of the League, acknowledged head
+of the great Catholic party, for the slippery, comfortless, and unmeaning
+throne of the Holy Empire, which he considered Ferdinand's right.
+
+The chiefs of the anti-Austrian party, especially the Prince of Anhalt
+and the Margrave of Anspach, in unison with the Heidelberg cabinet, were
+forced to look for another candidate. Accordingly the Margrave and the
+Elector-Palatine solemnly agreed that it was indispensable to choose an
+emperor who should not be of the House of Austria nor a slave of Spain.
+It was, to be sure, not possible to think of a Protestant prince. Bavaria
+would not oppose Austria, would also allow too much influence to the
+Jesuits. So there remained no one but the Duke of Savoy. He was a prince
+of the Empire. He was of German descent, of Saxon race, a great general,
+father of his soldiers, who would protect Europe against a Turkish
+invasion better than the bastions of Vienna could do. He would be
+agreeable to the Catholics, while the Protestants could live under him
+without anxiety because the Jesuits would be powerless with him. It would
+be a master-stroke if the princes would unite upon him. The King of
+France would necessarily be pleased with it, the King of Great Britain
+delighted.
+
+At last the model candidate had been found. The Duke of Savoy having just
+finished for a second time his chronic war with Spain, in which the
+United Provinces, notwithstanding the heavy drain on their resources, had
+allowed him 50,000 florins a month besides the soldiers under Count
+Ernest of Nassau, had sent Mansfeld with 4000 men to aid the revolted
+estates in Bohemia. Geographically, hereditarily, necessarily the deadly
+enemy of the House of Austria, he listened favourably to the overtures
+made to him by the princes of the Union, expressed undying hatred for the
+Imperial race, and thought the Bohemian revolt a priceless occasion for
+expelling them from power. He was informed by the first envoy sent to
+him, Christopher van Dohna, that the object of the great movement now
+contemplated was to raise him to the Imperial throne at the next
+election, to assist the Bohemian estates, to secure the crown of Bohemia
+for the Elector-Palatine, to protect the Protestants of Germany, and to
+break down the overweening power of the Austrian house.
+
+The Duke displayed no eagerness for the crown of Germany, while approving
+the election of Frederic, but expressed entire sympathy with the
+enterprise. It was indispensable however to form a general federation in
+Europe of England, the Netherlands, Venice, together with Protestant
+Germany and himself, before undertaking so mighty a task. While the
+negotiations were going on, both Anspach and Anhalt were in great
+spirits. The Margrave cried out exultingly, "In a short time the means
+will be in our hands for turning the world upside down." He urged the
+Prince of Anhalt to be expeditious in his decisions and actions. "He who
+wishes to trade," he said, "must come to market early."
+
+There was some disappointment at Heidelberg when the first news from
+Turin arrived, the materials for this vast scheme for an overwhelming and
+universal European war not seeming to be at their disposition. By and by
+the Duke's plans seem to deepen and broaden. He told Mansfeld, who,
+accompanied by Secretary Neu, was glad at a pause in his fighting and
+brandschatzing in Bohemia to be employed on diplomatic business, that on
+the whole he should require the crown of Bohemia for himself. He also
+proposed to accept the Imperial crown, and as for Frederic, he would
+leave him the crown of Hungary, and would recommend him to round himself
+out by adding to his hereditary dominions the province of Alsace, besides
+Upper Austria and other territories in convenient proximity to the
+Palatinate.
+
+Venice, it had been hoped, would aid in the great scheme and might in her
+turn round herself out with Friuli and Istria and other tempting
+possessions of Ferdinand, in reward for the men and money she was
+expected to furnish. That republic had however just concluded a war with
+Ferdinand, caused mainly by the depredations of the piratical Uscoques,
+in which, as we have seen, she had received the assistance of 4000
+Hollanders under command of Count John of Nassau. The Venetians had
+achieved many successes, had taken the city of Gortz, and almost reduced
+the city of Gradiska. A certain colonel Albert Waldstein however, of whom
+more might one day be heard in the history of the war now begun, had
+beaten the Venetians and opened a pathway through their ranks for succour
+to the beleaguered city. Soon afterwards peace was made on an undertaking
+that the Uscoques should be driven from their haunts, their castles
+dismantled, and their ships destroyed.
+
+Venice declined an engagement to begin a fresh war.
+
+She hated Ferdinand and Matthias and the whole Imperial brood, but, as
+old Barbarigo declared in the Senate, the Republic could not afford to
+set her house on fire in order to give Austria the inconvenience of the
+smoke.
+
+Meantime, although the Elector-Palatine had magnanimously agreed to use
+his influence in Bohemia in favour of Charles Emmanuel, the Duke seems at
+last to have declined proposing himself for that throne. He knew, he
+said, that King James wished that station for his son-in-law. The
+Imperial crown belonged to no one as yet after the death of Matthias, and
+was open therefore to his competition.
+
+Anhalt demanded of Savoy 15,000 men for the maintenance of the good
+cause, asserting that "it would be better to have the Turk or the devil
+himself on the German throne than leave it to Ferdinand."
+
+The triumvirate ruling at Prague-Thurn, Ruppa, and Hohenlohe--were
+anxious for a decision from Frederic. That simple-hearted and ingenuous
+young elector had long been troubled both with fears lest after all he
+might lose the crown of Bohemia and with qualms of conscience as to the
+propriety of taking it even if he could get it. He wrestled much in
+prayer and devout meditation whether as anointed prince himself he were
+justified in meddling with the anointment of other princes. Ferdinand had
+been accepted, proclaimed, crowned. He artlessly sent to Prague to
+consult the Estates whether they possessed the right to rebel, to set
+aside the reigning dynasty, and to choose a new king. At the same time,
+with an eye to business, he stipulated that on account of the great
+expense and trouble devolving upon him the crown must be made hereditary
+in his family. The impression made upon the grim Thurn and his colleagues
+by the simplicity of these questions may be imagined. The splendour and
+width of the Savoyard's conceptions fascinated the leaders of the Union.
+It seemed to Anspach and Anhalt that it was as well that Frederic should
+reign in Hungary as in Bohemia, and the Elector was docile. All had
+relied however on the powerful assistance of the great defender of the
+Protestant faith, the father-in-law of the Elector, the King of Great
+Britain. But James had nothing but cold water and Virgilian quotations
+for his son's ardour. He was more under the influence of Gondemar than
+ever before, more eagerly hankering for the Infanta, more completely the
+slave of Spain. He pledged himself to that government that if the
+Protestants in Bohemia continued rebellious, he would do his best to
+frustrate their designs, and would induce his son-in-law to have no
+further connection with them. And Spain delighted his heart not by
+immediately sending over the Infanta, but by proposing that he should
+mediate between the contending parties. It would be difficult to imagine
+a greater farce. All central Europe was now in arms. The deepest and
+gravest questions about which men can fight: the right to worship God
+according to their conscience and to maintain civil franchises which have
+been earned by the people with the blood and treasure of centuries, were
+now to be solved by the sword, and the pupil of Buchanan and the friend
+of Buckingham was to step between hundreds of thousands of men in arms
+with a classical oration. But James was very proud of the proposal and
+accepted it with alacrity.
+
+"You know, my dear son," he wrote to Frederic, "that we are the only king
+in Europe that is sought for by friend and foe for his mediation. It
+would be for this our lofty part very unbecoming if we were capable of
+favouring one of the parties. Your suggestion that we might secretly
+support the Bohemians we must totally reject, as it is not our way to do
+anything that we would not willingly confess to the whole world."
+
+And to do James justice, he had never fed Frederic with false hopes,
+never given a penny for his great enterprise, nor promised him a penny.
+He had contented himself with suggesting from time to time that he might
+borrow money of the States-General. His daughter Elizabeth must take care
+of herself, else what would become of her brother's marriage to the
+daughter of Spain.
+
+And now it was war to the knife, in which it was impossible that Holland,
+as well as all the other great powers should not soon be involved. It was
+disheartening to the cause of freedom and progress, not only that the
+great kingdom on which the world, had learned to rely in all movements
+upward and onward should be neutralized by the sycophancy of its monarch
+to the general oppressor, but that the great republic which so long had
+taken the lead in maintaining the liberties of Europe should now be torn
+by religious discord within itself, and be turning against the great
+statesman who had so wisely guided her councils and so accurately
+foretold the catastrophe which was now upon the world.
+
+Meantime the Emperor Matthias, not less forlorn than through his
+intrigues and rebellions his brother Rudolph had been made, passed his
+days in almost as utter retirement as if he had formally abdicated.
+Ferdinand treated him as if in his dotage. His fair young wife too had
+died of hard eating in the beginning of the winter to his inexpressible
+grief, so that there was nothing left to solace him now but the
+Rudolphian Museum.
+
+He had made but one public appearance since the coronation of Ferdinand
+in Prague. Attended by his brother Maximilian, by King Ferdinand, and by
+Cardinal Khlesl, he had towards the end of the year 1617 paid a visit to
+the Elector John George at Dresden. The Imperial party had been received
+with much enthusiasm by the great leader of Lutheranism. The Cardinal had
+seriously objected to accompanying the Emperor on this occasion. Since
+the Reformation no cardinal had been seen at the court of Saxony. He
+cared not personally for the pomps and glories of his rank, but still as
+prince of the Church he had settled right of precedence over electors. To
+waive it would be disrespectful to the Pope, to claim it would lead to
+squabbles. But Ferdinand had need of his skill to secure the vote of
+Saxony at the next Imperial election. The Cardinal was afraid of
+Ferdinand with good reason, and complied. By an agreeable fiction he was
+received at court not as cardinal but as minister, and accommodated with
+an humble place at table. Many looking on with astonishment thought he
+would have preferred to dine by himself in retirement. But this was not
+the bitterest of the mortifications that the pastor and guide of Matthias
+was to suffer at the hands of Ferdinand before his career should be
+closed. The visit at Dresden was successful, however. John George, being
+a claimant, as we have seen, for the Duchies of Cleve and Julich, had
+need of the Emperor. The King had need of John George's vote. There was a
+series of splendid balls, hunting parties, carousings.
+
+The Emperor was an invalid, the King was abstemious, but the Elector was
+a mighty drinker. It was not his custom nor that of his councillors to go
+to bed. They were usually carried there. But it was the wish of Ferdinand
+to be conciliatory, and he bore himself as well as he could at the
+banquet. The Elector was also a mighty hunter. Neither of his Imperial
+guests cared for field sports, but they looked out contentedly from the
+window of a hunting-lodge, before which for their entertainment the
+Elector and his courtiers slaughtered eight bears, ten stags, ten pigs,
+and eleven badgers, besides a goodly number of other game; John George
+shooting also three martens from a pole erected for that purpose in the
+courtyard. It seemed proper for him thus to exhibit a specimen of the
+skill for which he was justly famed. The Elector before his life closed,
+so says the chronicle, had killed 28,000 wild boars, 208 bears, 3543
+wolves, 200 badgers, 18,967 foxes, besides stags and roedeer in still
+greater number, making a grand total of 113,629 beasts. The leader of the
+Lutheran party of Germany had not lived in vain.
+
+Thus the great chiefs of Catholicism and of Protestantism amicably
+disported themselves in the last days of the year, while their respective
+forces were marshalling for mortal combat all over Christendom. The
+Elector certainly loved neither Matthias nor Ferdinand, but he hated the
+Palatine. The chief of the German Calvinists disputed that Protestant
+hegemony which John George claimed by right. Indeed the immense advantage
+enjoyed by the Catholics at the outbreak of the religious war from the
+mutual animosities between the two great divisions of the Reformed Church
+was already terribly manifest. What an additional power would it derive
+from the increased weakness of the foe, should there be still other and
+deeper and more deadly schisms within one great division itself!
+
+"The Calvinists and Lutherans," cried the Jesuit Scioppius, "are so
+furiously attacking each other with calumnies and cursings and are
+persecuting each other to such extent as to give good hope that the
+devilish weight and burthen of them will go to perdition and shame of
+itself, and the heretics all do bloody execution upon each other.
+Certainly if ever a golden time existed for exterminating the heretics,
+it is the present time."
+
+The Imperial party took their leave of Dresden, believing themselves to
+have secured the electoral vote of Saxony; the Elector hoping for
+protection to his interests in the duchies through that sequestration to
+which Barneveld had opposed such vigorous resistance. There had been much
+slavish cringing before these Catholic potentates by the courtiers of
+Dresden, somewhat amazing to the ruder churls of Saxony, the common
+people, who really believed in the religion which their prince had
+selected for them and himself.
+
+And to complete the glaring contrast, Ferdinand and Matthias had scarcely
+turned their backs before tremendous fulminations upon the ancient church
+came from the Elector and from all the doctors of theology in Saxony.
+
+For the jubilee of the hundredth anniversary of the Reformation was
+celebrated all over Germany in the autumn of this very year, and nearly
+at the exact moment of all this dancing, and fuddling, and pig shooting
+at Dresden in honour of emperors and cardinals. And Pope Paul V. had
+likewise ordained a jubilee for true believers at almost the same time.
+
+The Elector did not mince matters in his proclamation from any regard to
+the feelings of his late guests. He called on all Protestants to rejoice,
+"because the light of the Holy Gospel had now shone brightly in the
+electoral dominions for a hundred years, the Omnipotent keeping it
+burning notwithstanding the raging and roaring of the hellish enemy and
+all his scaly servants."
+
+The doctors of divinity were still more emphatic in their phraseology.
+They called on all professors and teachers of the true Evangelical
+churches, not only in Germany but throughout Christendom, to keep the
+great jubilee. They did this in terms not calculated certainly to smother
+the flames of religious and party hatred, even if it had been possible at
+that moment to suppress the fire. "The great God of Heaven," they said,
+"had caused the undertaking of His holy instrument Mr. Doctor Martin
+Luther to prosper. Through His unspeakable mercy he has driven away the
+Papal darkness and caused the sun of righteousness once more to beam upon
+the world. The old idolatries, blasphemies, errors, and horrors of the
+benighted Popedom have been exterminated in many kingdoms and countries.
+Innumerable sheep of the Lord Christ have been fed on the wholesome
+pasture of the Divine Word in spite of those monstrous, tearing, ravenous
+wolves, the Pope and his followers. The enemy of God and man, the ancient
+serpent, may hiss and rage. Yes, the Roman antichrist in his frantic
+blusterings may bite off his own tongue, may fulminate all kinds of
+evils, bans, excommunications, wars, desolations, and burnings, as long
+and as much as he likes. But if we take refuge with the Lord God, what
+can this inane, worn-out man and water-bubble do to us?" With more in the
+same taste.
+
+The Pope's bull for the Catholic jubilee was far more decorous and lofty
+in tone, for it bewailed the general sin in Christendom, and called on
+all believers to flee from the wrath about to descend upon the earth, in
+terms that were almost prophetic. He ordered all to pray that the Lord
+might lift up His Church, protect it from the wiles of the enemy,
+extirpate heresies, grant peace and true unity among Christian princes,
+and mercifully avert disasters already coming near.
+
+But if the language of Paul V. was measured and decent, the swarm of
+Jesuit pamphleteers that forthwith began to buzz and to sting all over
+Christendom were sufficiently venomous. Scioppius, in his Alarm Trumpet
+to the Holy War, and a hundred others declared that all heresies and
+heretics were now to be extirpated, the one true church to be united and
+re-established, and that the only road to such a consummation was a path
+of blood.
+
+The Lutheran preachers, on the other hand, obedient to the summons from
+Dresden, vied with each other in every town and village in heaping
+denunciations, foul names, and odious imputations on the Catholics; while
+the Calvinists, not to be behindhand with their fellow Reformers,
+celebrated the jubilee, especially at Heidelberg, by excluding Papists
+from hope of salvation, and bewailing the fate of all churches sighing
+under the yoke of Rome.
+
+And not only were the Papists and the Reformers exchanging these blasts
+and counterblasts of hatred, not less deadly in their effects than the
+artillery of many armies, but as if to make a thorough exhibition of
+human fatuity when drunk with religious passion, the Lutherans were
+making fierce paper and pulpit war upon the Calvinists. Especially Hoe,
+court preacher of John George, ceaselessly hurled savage libels against
+them. In the name of the theological faculty of Wittenberg, he addressed
+a "truehearted warning to all Lutheran Christians in Bohemia, Moravia,
+Silesia, and other provinces, to beware of the erroneous Calvinistic
+religion." He wrote a letter to Count Schlick, foremost leader in the
+Bohemian movement, asking whether "the unquiet Calvinist spirit, should
+it gain ascendency, would be any more endurable than the Papists. Oh what
+woe, what infinite woe," he cried, "for those noble countries if they
+should all be thrust into the jaws of Calvinism!"
+
+Did not preacher Hoe's master aspire to the crown of Bohemia himself? Was
+he not furious at the start which Heidelberg had got of him in the race
+for that golden prize? Was he not mad with jealousy of the Palatine, of
+the Palatine's religion, and of the Palatine's claim to "hegemony" in
+Germany?
+
+Thus embittered and bloodthirsty towards each other were the two great
+sections of the Reformed religion on the first centennial jubilee of the
+Reformation. Such was the divided front which the anti-Catholic party
+presented at the outbreak of the war with Catholicism.
+
+Ferdinand, on the other hand, was at the head of a comparatively united
+party. He could hardly hope for more than benevolent neutrality from the
+French government, which, in spite of the Spanish marriages, dared not
+wholly desert the Netherlands and throw itself into the hands of Spain;
+but Spanish diplomacy had enslaved the British king, and converted what
+should have been an active and most powerful enemy into an efficient if
+concealed ally. The Spanish and archiducal armies were enveloping the
+Dutch republic, from whence the most powerful support could be expected
+for the Protestant cause. Had it not been for the steadiness of
+Barneveld, Spain would have been at that moment established in full
+panoply over the whole surface of those inestimable positions, the
+disputed duchies. Venice was lukewarm, if not frigid; and Savoy, although
+deeply pledged by passion and interest to the downfall of the House of
+Austria, was too dangerously situated herself, too distant, too poor, and
+too Catholic to be very formidable.
+
+Ferdinand was safe from the Turkish side. A twenty years' peace,
+renewable by agreement, between the Holy Empire and the Sultan had been
+negotiated by those two sons of bakers, Cardinal Khlesl and the Vizier
+Etmekdschifade. It was destined to endure through all the horrors of the
+great war, a stronger protection to Vienna than all the fortifications
+which the engineering art could invent. He was safe too from Poland, King
+Sigmund being not only a devoted Catholic but doubly his brother-in-law.
+
+Spain, therefore, the Spanish Netherlands, the Pope, and the German
+League headed by Maximilian of Bavaria, the ablest prince on the
+continent of Europe, presented a square, magnificent phalanx on which
+Ferdinand might rely. The States-General, on the other hand, were a most
+dangerous foe. With a centennial hatred of Spain, splendidly disciplined
+armies and foremost navy of the world, with an admirable financial system
+and vast commercial resources, with a great stadholder, first captain of
+the age, thirsting for war, and allied in blood as well as religion to
+the standard-bearer of the Bohemian revolt; with councils directed by the
+wisest and most experienced of living statesman, and with the very life
+blood of her being derived from the fountain of civil and religious
+liberty, the great Republic of the United Netherlands--her Truce with the
+hereditary foe just expiring was, if indeed united, strong enough at the
+head of the Protestant forces of Europe to dictate to a world in arms.
+
+Alas! was it united?
+
+As regarded internal affairs of most pressing interest, the electoral
+vote at the next election at Frankfurt had been calculated as being
+likely to yield a majority of one for the opposition candidate, should
+the Savoyard or any other opposition candidate be found. But the
+calculation was a close one and might easily be fallacious. Supposing the
+Palatine elected King of Bohemia by the rebellious estates, as was
+probable, he could of course give the vote of that electorate and his own
+against Ferdinand, and the vote of Brandenburg at that time seemed safe.
+But Ferdinand by his visit to Dresden had secured the vote of Saxony,
+while of the three ecclesiastical electors, Cologne and Mayence were sure
+for him. Thus it would be three and three, and the seventh and decisive
+vote would be that of the Elector-Bishop of Treves. The sanguine Frederic
+thought that with French influence and a round sum of money this
+ecclesiastic might be got to vote for the opposition candidate. The
+ingenious combination was not destined to be successful, and as there has
+been no intention in the present volume to do more than slightly indicate
+the most prominent movements and mainsprings of the great struggle so far
+as Germany is concerned, without entering into detail, it may be as well
+to remind the reader that it proved wonderfully wrong. Matthias died on
+the 20th March, 1619, the election of a new emperor took place at
+Frankfurt On the 28th of the following August, and not only did Saxony
+and all three ecclesiastical electors vote for Ferdinand, but Brandenburg
+likewise, as well as the Elector-Palatine himself, while Ferdinand,
+personally present in the assembly as Elector of Bohemia, might according
+to the Golden Bull have given the seventh vote for himself had he chosen
+to do so. Thus the election was unanimous.
+
+Strange to say, as the electors proceeded through the crowd from the hall
+of election to accompany the new emperor to the church where he was to
+receive the popular acclaim, the news reached them from Prague that the
+Elector-Palatine had been elected King of Bohemia.
+
+Thus Frederic, by voting for Ferdinand, had made himself voluntarily a
+rebel should he accept the crown now offered him. Had the news arrived
+sooner, a different result and even a different history might have been
+possible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+Barneveld connected with the East India Company, but opposed to the West
+India Company--Carleton comes from Venice inimical to Barneveld--Maurice
+openly the Chieftain of the Contra-Remonstrants--Tumults about the
+Churches--"Orange or Spain" the Cry of Prince Maurice and his Party--They
+take possession of the Cloister Church--"The Sharp Resolve"--Carleton's
+Orations before the States-General.
+
+King James never forgave Barneveld for drawing from him those famous
+letters to the States in which he was made to approve the Five Points and
+to admit the possibility of salvation under them. These epistles had
+brought much ridicule upon James, who was not amused by finding his
+theological discussions a laughing-stock. He was still more incensed by
+the biting criticisms made upon the cheap surrender of the cautionary
+towns, and he hated more than ever the statesman who, as he believed, had
+twice outwitted him.
+
+On the other hand, Maurice, inspired by his brother-in-law the Duke of
+Bouillon and by the infuriated Francis Aerssens, abhorred Barneveld's
+French policy, which was freely denounced by the French Calvinists and by
+the whole orthodox church. In Holland he was still warmly sustained
+except in the Contra-Remonstrant Amsterdam and a few other cities of less
+importance. But there were perhaps deeper reasons for the Advocate's
+unpopularity in the great commercial metropolis than theological
+pretexts. Barneveld's name and interests were identified with the great
+East India Company, which was now powerful and prosperous beyond anything
+ever dreamt of before in the annals of commerce. That trading company had
+already founded an empire in the East. Fifty ships of war, fortresses
+guarded by 4000 pieces of artillery and 10,000 soldiers and sailors,
+obeyed the orders of a dozen private gentlemen at home seated in a back
+parlour around a green table. The profits of each trading voyage were
+enormous, and the shareholders were growing rich beyond their wildest
+imaginings. To no individual so much as to Holland's Advocate was this
+unexampled success to be ascribed. The vast prosperity of the East India
+Company had inspired others with the ambition to found a similar
+enterprise in the West. But to the West India Company then projected and
+especially favoured in Amsterdam, Barneveld was firmly opposed. He
+considered it as bound up with the spirit of military adventure and
+conquest, and as likely to bring on prematurely and unwisely a renewed
+conflict with Spain. The same reasons which had caused him to urge the
+Truce now influenced his position in regard to the West India Company.
+
+Thus the clouds were gathering every day more darkly over the head of the
+Advocate. The powerful mercantile interest in the great seat of traffic
+in the Republic, the personal animosity of the Stadholder, the
+execrations of the orthodox party in France, England, and all the
+Netherlands, the anger of the French princes and all those of the old
+Huguenot party who had been foolish enough to act with the princes in
+their purely selfish schemes against the government, and the overflowing
+hatred of King James, whose darling schemes of Spanish marriages and a
+Spanish alliance had been foiled by the Advocate's masterly policy in
+France and in the duchies, and whose resentment at having been so
+completely worsted and disarmed in the predestination matter and in the
+redemption of the great mortgage had deepened into as terrible wrath as
+outraged bigotry and vanity could engender; all these elements made up a
+stormy atmosphere in which the strongest heart might have quailed. But
+Barneveld did not quail. Doubtless he loved power, and the more danger he
+found on every side the less inclined he was to succumb. But he honestly
+believed that the safety and prosperity of the country he had so long and
+faithfully served were identified with the policy which he was pursuing.
+Arrogant, overbearing, self-concentrated, accustomed to lead senates and
+to guide the councils and share the secrets of kings, familiar with and
+almost an actor in every event in the political history not only of his
+own country but of every important state in Christendom during nearly two
+generations of mankind, of unmatched industry, full of years and
+experience, yet feeling within him the youthful strength of a thousand
+intellects compared to most of those by which he was calumniated,
+confronted, and harassed; he accepted the great fight which was forced
+upon him. Irascible, courageous, austere, contemptuous, he looked around
+and saw the Republic whose cradle he had rocked grown to be one of the
+most powerful and prosperous among the states of the world, and could
+with difficulty imagine that in this supreme hour of her strength and her
+felicity she was ready to turn and rend the man whom she was bound by
+every tie of duty to cherish and to revere.
+
+Sir Dudley Carleton, the new English ambassador to the States, had
+arrived during the past year red-hot from Venice. There he had perhaps
+not learned especially to love the new republic which had arisen among
+the northern lagunes, and whose admission among the nations had been at
+last accorded by the proud Queen of the Adriatic, notwithstanding the
+objections and the intrigues both of French and English representatives.
+He had come charged to the brim with the political spite of James against
+the Advocate, and provided too with more than seven vials of theological
+wrath. Such was the King's revenge for Barneveld's recent successes. The
+supporters in the Netherlands of the civil authority over the Church were
+moreover to be instructed by the political head of the English Church
+that such supremacy, although highly proper for a king, was "thoroughly
+unsuitable for a many-headed republic." So much for church government. As
+for doctrine, Arminianism and Vorstianism were to be blasted with one
+thunderstroke from the British throne.
+
+"In Holland," said James to his envoy, "there have been violent and sharp
+contestations amongst the towns in the cause of religion . . . . . If
+they shall be unhappily revived during your time, you shall not forget
+that you are the minister of that master whom God hath made the sole
+protector of His religion."
+
+There was to be no misunderstanding in future as to the dogmas which the
+royal pope of Great Britain meant to prescribe to his Netherland
+subjects. Three years before, at the dictation of the Advocate, he had
+informed the States that he was convinced of their ability to settle the
+deplorable dissensions as to religion according to their wisdom and the
+power which belonged to them over churches and church servants. He had
+informed them of his having learned by experience that such questions
+could hardly be decided by the wranglings of theological professors, and
+that it was better to settle them by public authority and to forbid their
+being brought into the pulpit or among common people. He had recommended
+mutual toleration of religious difference until otherwise ordained by the
+public civil authority, and had declared that neither of the two opinions
+in regard to predestination was in his opinion far from the truth or
+inconsistent with Christian faith or the salvation of souls.
+
+It was no wonder that these utterances were quite after the Advocate's
+heart, as James had faithfully copied them from the Advocate's draft.
+
+But now in the exercise of his infallibility the King issued other
+decrees. His minister was instructed to support the extreme views of the
+orthodox both as to government and dogma, and to urge the National Synod,
+as it were, at push of pike. "Besides the assistance," said he to
+Carleton, "which we would have you give to the true professors of the
+Gospel in your discourse and conferences, you may let fall how hateful
+the maintenance of these erroneous opinions is to the majesty of God, how
+displeasing unto us their dearest friends, and how disgraceful to the
+honour and government of that state."
+
+And faithfully did the Ambassador act up to his instructions. Most
+sympathetically did he embody the hatred of the King. An able,
+experienced, highly accomplished diplomatist and scholar, ready with
+tongue and pen, caustic, censorious, prejudiced, and partial, he was soon
+foremost among the foes of the Advocate in the little court of the Hague,
+and prepared at any moment to flourish the political and theological goad
+when his master gave the word.
+
+Nothing in diplomatic history is more eccentric than the long sermons
+upon abstruse points of divinity and ecclesiastical history which the
+English ambassador delivered from time to time before the States-General
+in accordance with elaborate instructions drawn up by his sovereign with
+his own hand. Rarely has a king been more tedious, and he bestowed all
+his tediousness upon My Lords the States-General. Nothing could be more
+dismal than these discourses, except perhaps the contemporaneous and
+interminable orations of Grotius to the states of Holland, to the
+magistrates of Amsterdam, to the states of Utrecht; yet Carleton was a
+man of the world, a good debater, a ready writer, while Hugo Grotius was
+one of the great lights of that age and which shone for all time.
+
+Among the diplomatic controversies of history, rarely refreshing at best,
+few have been more drouthy than those once famous disquisitions, and they
+shall be left to shrivel into the nothingness of the past, so far as is
+consistent with the absolute necessities of this narrative.
+
+The contest to which the Advocate was called had become mainly a personal
+and a political one, although the weapons with which it was fought were
+taken from ecclesiastical arsenals. It was now an unequal contest.
+
+For the great captain of the country and of his time, the son of William
+the Silent, the martial stadholder, in the fulness of his fame and vigour
+of his years, had now openly taken his place as the chieftain of the
+Contra-Remonstrants. The conflict between the civil and the military
+element for supremacy in a free commonwealth has never been more vividly
+typified than in this death-grapple between Maurice and Barneveld.
+
+The aged but still vigorous statesman, ripe with half a century of
+political lore, and the high-born, brilliant, and scientific soldier,
+with the laurels of Turnhout and Nieuwpoort and of a hundred famous
+sieges upon his helmet, reformer of military science, and no mean
+proficient in the art of politics and government, were the
+representatives and leaders of the two great parties into which the
+Commonwealth had now unhappily divided itself. But all history shows that
+the brilliant soldier of a republic is apt to have the advantage, in a
+struggle for popular affection and popular applause, over the statesman,
+however consummate. The general imagination is more excited by the
+triumphs of the field than by those of the tribune, and the man who has
+passed many years of life in commanding multitudes with necessarily
+despotic sway is often supposed to have gained in the process the
+attributes likely to render him most valuable as chief citizen of a flee
+commonwealth. Yet national enthusiasm is so universally excited by
+splendid military service as to forbid a doubt that the sentiment is
+rooted deeply in our nature, while both in antiquity and in modern times
+there are noble although rare examples of the successful soldier
+converting himself into a valuable and exemplary magistrate.
+
+In the rivalry of Maurice and Barneveld however for the national
+affection the chances were singularly against the Advocate. The great
+battles and sieges of the Prince had been on a world's theatre, had
+enchained the attention of Christendom, and on their issue had frequently
+depended, or seemed to depend, the very existence of the nation. The
+labours of the statesman, on the contrary, had been comparatively secret.
+His noble orations and arguments had been spoken with closed doors to
+assemblies of colleagues--rather envoys than senators--were never printed
+or even reported, and could be judged of only by their effects; while his
+vast labours in directing both the internal administration and especially
+the foreign affairs of the Commonwealth had been by their very nature as
+secret as they were perpetual and enormous.
+
+Moreover, there was little of what we now understand as the democratic
+sentiment in the Netherlands. There was deep and sturdy attachment to
+ancient traditions, privileges, special constitutions extorted from a
+power acknowledged to be superior to the people. When partly to save
+those chartered rights, and partly to overthrow the horrible
+ecclesiastical tyranny of the sixteenth century, the people had
+accomplished a successful revolt, they never dreamt of popular
+sovereignty, but allowed the municipal corporations, by which their local
+affairs had been for centuries transacted, to unite in offering to
+foreign princes, one after another, the crown which they had torn from
+the head of the Spanish king. When none was found to accept the dangerous
+honour, they had acquiesced in the practical sovereignty of the States;
+but whether the States-General or the States-Provincial were the supreme
+authority had certainly not been definitely and categorically settled. So
+long as the States of Holland, led by the Advocate, had controlled in
+great matters the political action of the States-General, while the
+Stadholder stood without a rival at the head of their military affairs,
+and so long as there were no fierce disputes as to government and dogma
+within the bosom of the Reformed Church, the questions which were now
+inflaming the whole population had been allowed to slumber.
+
+The termination of the war and the rise of Arminianism were almost
+contemporaneous. The Stadholder, who so unwillingly had seen the
+occupation in which he had won so much glory taken from him by the Truce,
+might perhaps find less congenial but sufficiently engrossing business as
+champion of the Church and of the Union.
+
+The new church--not freedom of worship for different denominations of
+Christians, but supremacy of the Church of Heidelberg and Geneva--seemed
+likely to be the result of the overthrow of the ancient church. It is the
+essence of the Catholic Church to claim supremacy over and immunity from
+the civil authority, and to this claim for the Reformed Church, by which
+that of Rome had been supplanted, Barneveld was strenuously opposed.
+
+The Stadholder was backed, therefore, by the Church in its purity, by the
+majority of the humbler classes--who found in membership of the oligarchy
+of Heaven a substitute for those democratic aspirations on earth which
+were effectually suppressed between the two millstones of burgher
+aristocracy and military discipline--and by the States-General, a
+majority of which were Contra-Remonstrant in their faith.
+
+If the sword is usually an overmatch for the long robe in political
+struggles, the cassock has often proved superior to both combined. But in
+the case now occupying our attention the cassock was in alliance with the
+sword. Clearly the contest was becoming a desperate one for the
+statesman.
+
+And while the controversy between the chiefs waged hotter and hotter, the
+tumults around the churches on Sundays in every town and village grew
+more and more furious, ending generally in open fights with knives,
+bludgeons, and brickbats; preachers and magistrates being often too glad
+to escape with a whole skin. One can hardly be ingenuous enough to
+consider all this dirking, battering, and fisticuffing as the legitimate
+and healthy outcome of a difference as to the knotty point whether all
+men might or might not be saved by repentance and faith in Christ.
+
+The Greens and Blues of the Byzantine circus had not been more typical of
+fierce party warfare in the Lower Empire than the greens and blues of
+predestination in the rising commonwealth, according to the real or
+imagined epigram of Prince Maurice.
+
+"Your divisions in religion," wrote Secretary Lake to Carleton, "have, I
+doubt not, a deeper root than is discerned by every one, and I doubt not
+that the Prince Maurice's carriage doth make a jealousy of affecting a
+party under the pretence of supporting one side, and that the States fear
+his ends and aims, knowing his power with the men of war; and that
+howsoever all be shadowed under the name of religion there is on either
+part a civil end, of the one seeking a step of higher authority, of the
+other a preservation of liberty."
+
+And in addition to other advantages the Contra-Remonstrants had now got a
+good cry--an inestimable privilege in party contests.
+
+"There are two factions in the land," said Maurice, "that of Orange and
+that of Spain, and the two chiefs of the Spanish faction are those
+political and priestly Arminians, Uytenbogaert and Oldenbarneveld."
+
+Orange and Spain! the one name associated with all that was most
+venerated and beloved throughout the country, for William the Silent
+since his death was almost a god; the other ineradicably entwined at that
+moment with, everything execrated throughout the land. The Prince of
+Orange's claim to be head of the Orange faction could hardly be disputed,
+but it was a master stroke of political malice to fix the stigma of
+Spanish partisanship on the Advocate. If the venerable patriot who had
+been fighting Spain, sometimes on the battle-field and always in the
+council, ever since he came to man's estate, could be imagined even in a
+dream capable of being bought with Spanish gold to betray his country,
+who in the ranks of the Remonstrant party could be safe from such
+accusations? Each party accused the other of designs for altering or
+subverting the government. Maurice was suspected of what were called
+Leicestrian projects, "Leycestrana consilia"--for the Earl's plots to
+gain possession of Leyden and Utrecht had never been forgotten--while the
+Prince and those who acted with him asserted distinctly that it was the
+purpose of Barneveld to pave the way for restoring the Spanish
+sovereignty and the Popish religion so soon as the Truce had reached its
+end?
+
+Spain and Orange. Nothing for a faction fight could be neater. Moreover
+the two words rhyme in Netherlandish, which is the case in no other
+language, "Spanje-Oranje." The sword was drawn and the banner unfurled.
+
+The "Mud Beggars" of the Hague, tired of tramping to Ryswyk of a Sunday
+to listen to Henry Rosaeus, determined on a private conventicle in the
+capital. The first barn selected was sealed up by the authorities, but
+Epoch Much, book-keeper of Prince Maurice, then lent them his house. The
+Prince declared that sooner than they should want a place of assembling
+he would give them his own. But he meant that they should have a public
+church to themselves, and that very soon. King James thoroughly approved
+of all these proceedings. At that very instant such of his own subjects
+as had seceded from the Established Church to hold conventicles in barns
+and breweries and backshops in London were hunted by him with bishops'
+pursuivants and other beagles like vilest criminals, thrown into prison
+to rot, or suffered to escape from their Fatherland into the
+trans-Atlantic wilderness, there to battle with wild beasts and savages,
+and to die without knowing themselves the fathers of a more powerful
+United States than the Dutch Republic, where they were fain to seek in
+passing a temporary shelter. He none the less instructed his envoy at the
+Hague to preach the selfsame doctrines for which the New England Puritans
+were persecuted, and importunately and dictatorially to plead the cause
+of those Hollanders who, like Bradford and Robinson, Winthrop and Cotton,
+maintained the independence of the Church over the State.
+
+Logic is rarely the quality on which kings pride themselves, and
+Puritanism in the Netherlands, although under temporary disadvantage at
+the Hague, was evidently the party destined to triumph throughout the
+country. James could safely sympathize therefore in Holland with what he
+most loathed in England, and could at the same time feed fat the grudge
+he owed the Advocate. The calculations of Barneveld as to the respective
+political forces of the Commonwealth seem to have been to a certain
+extent defective.
+
+He allowed probably too much weight to the Catholic party as a motive
+power at that moment, and he was anxious both from that consideration and
+from his honest natural instinct for general toleration; his own broad
+and unbigoted views in religious matters, not to force that party into a
+rebellious attitude dangerous to the state. We have seen how nearly a
+mutiny in the important city of Utrecht, set on foot by certain Romanist
+conspirators in the years immediately succeeding the Truce, had subverted
+the government, had excited much anxiety amongst the firmest allies of
+the Republic, and had been suppressed only by the decision of the
+Advocate and a show of military force.
+
+He had informed Carleton not long after his arrival that in the United
+Provinces, and in Holland in particular, were many sects and religions of
+which, according to his expression, "the healthiest and the richest part
+were the Papists, while the Protestants did not make up one-third part of
+the inhabitants."
+
+Certainly, if these statistics were correct or nearly correct, there
+could be nothing more stupid from a purely political point of view than
+to exasperate so influential a portion of the community to madness and
+rebellion by refusing them all rights of public worship. Yet because the
+Advocate had uniformly recommended indulgence, he had incurred more odium
+at home than from any other cause. Of course he was a Papist in disguise,
+ready to sell his country to Spain, because he was willing that more than
+half the population of the country should be allowed to worship God
+according to their conscience. Surely it would be wrong to judge the
+condition of things at that epoch by the lights of to-day, and perhaps in
+the Netherlands there had before been no conspicuous personage, save
+William the Silent alone, who had risen to the height of toleration on
+which the Advocate essayed to stand. Other leading politicians considered
+that the national liberties could be preserved only by retaining the
+Catholics in complete subjection.
+
+At any rate the Advocate was profoundly convinced of the necessity of
+maintaining harmony and mutual toleration among the Protestants
+themselves, who, as he said, made up but one-third of the whole people.
+In conversing with the English ambassador he divided them into "Puritans
+and double Puritans," as they would be called, he said, in England. If
+these should be at variance with each other, he argued, the Papists would
+be the strongest of all. "To prevent this inconvenience," he said, "the
+States were endeavouring to settle some certain form of government in the
+Church; which being composed of divers persecuted churches such as in the
+beginning of the wars had their refuge here, that which during the wars
+could not be so well done they now thought seasonable for a time of
+truce; and therefore would show their authority in preventing the schism
+of the Church which would follow the separation of those they call
+Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants."
+
+There being no word so offensive to Carleton's sovereign as the word
+Puritan, the Ambassador did his best to persuade the Advocate that a
+Puritan in Holland was a very different thing from a Puritan in England.
+In England he was a noxious vermin, to be hunted with dogs. In the
+Netherlands he was the governing power. But his arguments were vapourous
+enough and made little impression on Barneveld. "He would no ways yield,"
+said Sir Dudley.
+
+Meantime the Contra-Remonstrants of the Hague, not finding sufficient
+accommodation in Enoch Much's house, clamoured loudly for the use of a
+church. It was answered by the city magistrates that two of their
+persuasion, La Motte and La Faille, preached regularly in the Great
+Church, and that Rosaeus had been silenced only because he refused to
+hold communion with Uytenbogaert. Maurice insisted that a separate church
+should be assigned them. "But this is open schism," said Uytenbogaert.
+
+Early in the year there was a meeting of the Holland delegation to the
+States-General, of the state council, and of the magistracy of the Hague,
+of deputies from the tribunals, and of all the nobles resident in the
+capital. They sent for Maurice and asked his opinion as to the alarming
+situation of affairs. He called for the register-books of the States of
+Holland, and turning back to the pages on which was recorded his
+accession to the stadholderate soon after his father's murder, ordered
+the oath then exchanged between himself and the States to be read aloud.
+
+That oath bound them mutually to support the Reformed religion till the
+last drop of blood in their veins.
+
+"That oath I mean to keep," said the Stadholder, "so long as I live."
+
+No one disputed the obligation of all parties to maintain the Reformed
+religion. But the question was whether the Five Points were inconsistent
+with the Reformed religion. The contrary was clamorously maintained by
+most of those present: In the year 1586 this difference in dogma had not
+arisen, and as the large majority of the people at the Hague, including
+nearly all those of rank and substance, were of the Remonstrant
+persuasion, they naturally found it not agreeable to be sent out of the
+church by a small minority. But Maurice chose to settle the question very
+summarily. His father had been raised to power by the strict Calvinists,
+and he meant to stand by those who had always sustained William the
+Silent. "For this religion my father lost his life, and this religion
+will I defend," said he.
+
+"You hold then," said Barneveld, "that the Almighty has created one child
+for damnation and another for salvation, and you wish this doctrine to be
+publicly preached."
+
+"Did you ever hear any one preach that?" replied the Prince.
+
+"If they don't preach it, it is their inmost conviction," said the other.
+And he proceeded to prove his position by copious citations.
+
+"And suppose our ministers do preach this doctrine, is there anything
+strange in it, any reason why they should not do so?"
+
+The Advocate expressed his amazement and horror at the idea.
+
+"But does not God know from all eternity who is to be saved and who to be
+damned; and does He create men for any other end than that to which He
+from eternity knows they will come?"
+
+And so they enclosed themselves in the eternal circle out of which it was
+not probable that either the soldier or the statesman would soon find an
+issue.
+
+"I am no theologian," said Barneveld at last, breaking off the
+discussion.
+
+"Neither am I," said the Stadholder. "So let the parsons come together.
+Let the Synod assemble and decide the question. Thus we shall get out of
+all this."
+
+Next day a deputation of the secessionists waited by appointment on
+Prince Maurice. They found him in the ancient mediaeval hall of the
+sovereign counts of Holland, and seated on their old chair of state. He
+recommended them to use caution and moderation for the present, and to go
+next Sunday once more to Ryswyk. Afterwards he pledged himself that they
+should have a church at the Hague, and, if necessary, the Great Church
+itself.
+
+But the Great Church, although a very considerable Catholic cathedral
+before the Reformation, was not big enough now to hold both Henry Rosaeus
+and John Uytenbogaert. Those two eloquent, learned, and most pugnacious
+divines were the respective champions in the pulpit of the opposing
+parties, as were the Advocate and the Stadholder in the council. And
+there was as bitter personal rivalry between the two as between the
+soldier and statesman.
+
+"The factions begin to divide themselves," said Carleton, "betwixt his
+Excellency and Monsieur Barneveld as heads who join to this present
+difference their ancient quarrels. And the schism rests actually between
+Uytenbogaert and Rosaeus, whose private emulation and envy (both being
+much applauded and followed) doth no good towards the public
+pacification." Uytenbogaert repeatedly offered, however, to resign his
+functions and to leave the Hague. "He was always ready to play the
+Jonah," he said.
+
+A temporary arrangement was made soon afterwards by which Rosaeus and his
+congregation should have the use of what was called the Gasthuis Kerk,
+then appropriated to the English embassy.
+
+Carleton of course gave his consent most willingly. The Prince declared
+that the States of Holland and the city magistracy had personally
+affronted him by the obstacles they had interposed to the public worship
+of the Contra-Remonstrants. With their cause he had now thoroughly
+identified himself.
+
+The hostility between the representatives of the civil and military
+authority waxed fiercer every hour. The tumults were more terrible than
+ever. Plainly there was no room in the Commonwealth for the Advocate and
+the Stadholder. Some impartial persons believed that there would be no
+peace until both were got rid of. "There are many words among this
+free-spoken people," said Carleton, "that to end these differences they
+must follow the example of France in Marshal d'Ancre's case, and take off
+the heads of both chiefs."
+
+But these decided persons were in a small minority. Meantime the States
+of Holland met in full assembly; sixty delegates being present.
+
+It was proposed to invite his Excellency to take part in the
+deliberations. A committee which had waited upon him the day before had
+reported him as in favour of moderate rather than harsh measures in the
+church affair, while maintaining his plighted word to the seceders.
+
+Barneveld stoutly opposed the motion.
+
+"What need had the sovereign states of Holland of advice from a
+stadholder, from their servant, their functionary?" he cried.
+
+But the majority for once thought otherwise. The Prince was invited to
+come. The deliberations were moderate but inconclusive. He appeared again
+at an adjourned meeting when the councils were not so harmonious.
+
+Barneveld, Grotius, and other eloquent speakers endeavoured to point out
+that the refusal of the seceders to hold communion with the Remonstrant
+preachers and to insist on a separation was fast driving the state to
+perdition. They warmly recommended mutual toleration and harmony. Grotius
+exhausted learning and rhetoric to prove that the Five Points were not
+inconsistent with salvation nor with the constitution of the United
+Provinces.
+
+The Stadholder grew impatient at last and clapped his hand on his rapier.
+
+"No need here," he said, "of flowery orations and learned arguments. With
+this good sword I will defend the religion which my father planted in
+these Provinces, and I should like to see the man who is going to prevent
+me!"
+
+The words had an heroic ring in the ears of such as are ever ready to
+applaud brute force, especially when wielded by a prince. The argumentum
+ad ensem, however, was the last plea that William the Silent would have
+been likely to employ on such an occasion, nor would it have been easy to
+prove that the Reformed religion had been "planted" by one who had drawn
+the sword against the foreign tyrant, and had made vast sacrifices for
+his country's independence years before abjuring communion with the Roman
+Catholic Church.
+
+When swords are handled by the executive in presence of civil assemblies
+there is usually but one issue to be expected.
+
+Moreover, three whales had recently been stranded at Scheveningen, one of
+them more than sixty feet long, and men wagged their beards gravely as
+they spoke of the event, deeming it a certain presage of civil
+commotions. It was remembered that at the outbreak of the great war two
+whales had been washed ashore in the Scheldt. Although some free-thinking
+people were inclined to ascribe the phenomenon to a prevalence of strong
+westerly gales, while others found proof in it of a superabundance of
+those creatures in the Polar seas, which should rather give encouragement
+to the Dutch and Zealand fisheries, it is probable that quite as dark
+forebodings of coming disaster were caused by this accident as by the
+trumpet-like defiance which the Stadholder had just delivered to the
+States of Holland.
+
+Meantime the seceding congregation of the Hague had become wearied of the
+English or Gasthuis Church, and another and larger one had been promised
+them. This was an ancient convent on one of the principal streets of the
+town, now used as a cannon-foundry. The Prince personally superintended
+the preparations for getting ready this place of worship, which was
+thenceforth called the Cloister Church. But delays were, as the
+Contra-Remonstrants believed, purposely interposed, so that it was nearly
+Midsummer before there were any signs of the church being fit for use.
+
+They hastened accordingly to carry it, as it were, by assault. Not
+wishing peaceably to accept as a boon from the civil authority what they
+claimed as an indefeasible right, they suddenly took possession one
+Sunday night of the Cloister Church.
+
+It was in a state of utter confusion--part monastery, part foundry, part
+conventicle. There were few seats, no altar, no communion-table, hardly
+any sacramental furniture, but a pulpit was extemporized. Rosaeus
+preached in triumph to an enthusiastic congregation, and three children
+were baptized with the significant names of William, Maurice, and Henry.
+
+On the following Monday there was a striking scene on the Voorhout. This
+most beautiful street of a beautiful city was a broad avenue, shaded by a
+quadruple row of limetrees, reaching out into the thick forest of secular
+oaks and beeches--swarming with fallow-deer and alive with the notes of
+singing birds--by which the Hague, almost from time immemorial, has been
+embowered. The ancient cloisterhouse and church now reconverted to
+religious uses--was a plain, rather insipid structure of red brick picked
+out with white stone, presenting three symmetrical gables to the street,
+with a slender belfry and spire rising in the rear.
+
+Nearly adjoining it on the north-western side was the elegant and
+commodious mansion of Barneveld, purchased by him from the
+representatives of the Arenberg family, surrounded by shrubberies and
+flower-gardens; not a palace, but a dignified and becoming abode for the
+first citizen of a powerful republic.
+
+On that midsummer's morning it might well seem that, in rescuing the old
+cloister from the military purposes to which it had for years been
+devoted, men had given an even more belligerent aspect to the scene than
+if it had been left as a foundry. The miscellaneous pieces of artillery
+and other fire-arms lying about, with piles of cannon-ball which there
+had not been time to remove, were hardly less belligerent and threatening
+of aspect than the stern faces of the crowd occupied in thoroughly
+preparing the house for its solemn destination. It was determined that
+there should be accommodation on the next Sunday for all who came to the
+service. An army of carpenters, joiners, glaziers, and other
+workmen-assisted by a mob of citizens of all ranks and ages, men and
+women, gentle and simple were busily engaged in bringing planks and
+benches; working with plane, adze, hammer and saw, trowel and shovel, to
+complete the work.
+
+On the next Sunday the Prince attended public worship for the last time
+at the Great Church under the ministration of Uytenbogaert. He was
+infuriated with the sermon, in which the bold Remonstrant bitterly
+inveighed against the proposition for a National Synod. To oppose that
+measure publicly in the very face of the Stadholder, who now considered
+himself as the Synod personified, seemed to him flat blasphemy. Coming
+out of the church with his step-mother, the widowed Louise de Coligny,
+Princess of Orange, he denounced the man in unmeasured terms. "He is the
+enemy of God," said Maurice. At least from that time forth, and indeed
+for a year before, Maurice was the enemy of the preacher.
+
+On the following Sunday, July 23, Maurice went in solemn state to the
+divine service at the Cloister Church now thoroughly organized. He was
+accompanied by his cousin, the famous Count William Lewis of Nassau,
+Stadholder of Friesland, who had never concealed his warm sympathy with
+the Contra-Remonstrants, and by all the chief officers of his household
+and members of his staff. It was an imposing demonstration and meant for
+one. As the martial stadholder at the head of his brilliant cavalcade
+rode forth across the drawbridge from the Inner Court of the old moated
+palace--where the ancient sovereign Dirks and Florences of Holland had so
+long ruled their stout little principality--along the shady and stately
+Kneuterdyk and so through the Voorhout, an immense crowd thronged around
+his path and accompanied him to the church. It was as if the great
+soldier were marching to siege or battle-field where fresher glories than
+those of Sluys or Geertruidenberg were awaiting him.
+
+The train passed by Barneveld's house and entered the cloister. More than
+four thousand persons were present at the service or crowded around the
+doors vainly attempting to gain admission into the overflowing aisles;
+while the Great Church was left comparatively empty, a few hundred only
+worshipping there. The Cloister Church was thenceforth called the
+Prince's Church, and a great revolution was beginning even in the Hague.
+
+The Advocate was wroth as he saw the procession graced by the two
+stadholders and their military attendants. He knew that he was now to bow
+his head to the Church thus championed by the chief personage and
+captain-general of the state, to renounce his dreams of religious
+toleration, to sink from his post of supreme civic ruler, or to accept an
+unequal struggle in which he might utterly succumb. But his iron nature
+would break sooner than bend. In the first transports of his indignation
+he is said to have vowed vengeance against the immediate instruments by
+which the Cloister Church had, as he conceived, been surreptitiously and
+feloniously seized. He meant to strike a blow which should startle the
+whole population of the Hague, send a thrill of horror through the
+country, and teach men to beware how they trifled with the sovereign
+states of Holland, whose authority had so long been undisputed, and with
+him their chief functionary.
+
+He resolved--so ran the tale of the preacher Trigland, who told it to
+Prince Maurice, and has preserved it in his chronicle--to cause to be
+seized at midnight from their beds four men whom he considered the
+ringleaders in this mutiny, to have them taken to the place of execution
+on the square in the midst of the city, to have their heads cut off at
+once by warrant from the chief tribunal without any previous warning, and
+then to summon all the citizens at dawn of day, by ringing of bells and
+firing of cannon, to gaze on the ghastly spectacle, and teach them to
+what fate this pestilential schism and revolt against authority had
+brought its humble tools. The victims were to be Enoch Much, the Prince's
+book-keeper, and three others, an attorney, an engraver, and an
+apothecary, all of course of the Contra-Remonstrant persuasion. It was
+necessary, said the Advocate, to make once for all an example, and show
+that there was a government in the land.
+
+He had reckoned on a ready adhesion to this measure and a sentence from
+the tribunal through the influence of his son-in-law, the Seignior van
+Veenhuyzen, who was president of the chief court. His attempt was foiled
+however by the stern opposition of two Zealand members of the court, who
+managed to bring up from a bed of sickness, where he had long been lying,
+a Holland councillor whom they knew to be likewise opposed to the fierce
+measure, and thus defeated it by a majority of one.
+
+Such is the story as told by contemporaries and repeated from that day to
+this. It is hardly necessary to say that Barneveld calmly denied having
+conceived or even heard of the scheme. That men could go about looking
+each other in the face and rehearsing such gibberish would seem
+sufficiently dispiriting did we not know to what depths of credulity men
+in all ages can sink when possessed by the demon of party malice.
+
+If it had been narrated on the Exchange at Amsterdam or Flushing during
+that portentous midsummer that Barneveld had not only beheaded but
+roasted alive, and fed the dogs and cats upon the attorney, the
+apothecary, and the engraver, there would have been citizens in plenty to
+devour the news with avidity.
+
+But although the Advocate had never imagined such extravagances as these,
+it is certain that he had now resolved upon very bold measures, and that
+too without an instant's delay. He suspected the Prince of aiming at
+sovereignty not only over Holland but over all the provinces and to be
+using the Synod as a principal part of his machinery. The gauntlet was
+thrown down by the Stadholder, and the Advocate lifted it at once. The
+issue of the struggle would depend upon the political colour of the town
+magistracies. Barneveld instinctively felt that Maurice, being now
+resolved that the Synod should be held, would lose no time in making a
+revolution in all the towns through the power he held or could plausibly
+usurp. Such a course would, in his opinion, lead directly to an
+unconstitutional and violent subversion of the sovereign rights of each
+province, to the advantage of the central government. A religious creed
+would be forced upon Holland and perhaps upon two other provinces which
+was repugnant to a considerable majority of the people. And this would be
+done by a majority vote of the States-General, on a matter over which, by
+the 13th Article of the fundamental compact--the Union of Utrecht--the
+States-General had no control, each province having reserved the
+disposition of religious affairs to itself. For let it never be forgotten
+that the Union of the Netherlands was a compact, a treaty, an agreement
+between sovereign states. There was no pretence that it was an
+incorporation, that the people had laid down a constitution, an organic
+law. The people were never consulted, did not exist, had not for
+political purposes been invented. It was the great primal defect of their
+institutions, but the Netherlanders would have been centuries before
+their age had they been able to remedy that defect. Yet the Netherlanders
+would have been much behind even that age of bigotry had they admitted
+the possibility in a free commonwealth, of that most sacred and important
+of all subjects that concern humanity, religious creed--the relation of
+man to his Maker--to be regulated by the party vote of a political board.
+
+It was with no thought of treason in his heart or his head therefore that
+the Advocate now resolved that the States of Holland and the cities of
+which that college was composed should protect their liberties and
+privileges, the sum of which in his opinion made up the sovereignty of
+the province he served, and that they should protect them, if necessary,
+by force. Force was apprehended. It should be met by force. To be
+forewarned was to be forearmed. Barneveld forewarned the States of
+Holland.
+
+On the 4th August 1617, he proposed to that assembly a resolution which
+was destined to become famous. A majority accepted it after brief debate.
+It was to this effect.
+
+The States having seen what had befallen in many cities, and especially
+in the Hague, against the order, liberties, and laws of the land, and
+having in vain attempted to bring into harmony with the States certain
+cities which refused to co-operate with the majority, had at last
+resolved to refuse the National Synod, as conflicting with the
+sovereignty and laws of Holland. They had thought good to set forth in
+public print their views as to religious worship, and to take measures to
+prevent all deeds of violence against persons and property. To this end
+the regents of cities were authorized in case of need, until otherwise
+ordained, to enrol men-at-arms for their security and prevention of
+violence. Furthermore, every one that might complain of what the regents
+of cities by strength of this resolution might do was ordered to have
+recourse to no one else than the States of Holland, as no account would
+be made of anything that might be done or undertaken by the tribunals.
+
+Finally, it was resolved to send a deputation to Prince Maurice, the
+Princess-Widow, and Prince Henry, requesting them to aid in carrying out
+this resolution.
+
+Thus the deed was done. The sword was drawn. It was drawn in self-defence
+and in deliberate answer to the Stadholder's defiance when he rapped his
+sword hilt in face of the assembly, but still it was drawn. The States of
+Holland were declared sovereign and supreme. The National Synod was
+peremptorily rejected. Any decision of the supreme courts of the Union in
+regard to the subject of this resolution was nullified in advance.
+Thenceforth this measure of the 4th August was called the "Sharp
+Resolve." It might prove perhaps to be double-edged.
+
+It was a stroke of grim sarcasm on the part of the Advocate thus solemnly
+to invite the Stadholder's aid in carrying out a law which was aimed
+directly at his head; to request his help for those who meant to defeat
+with the armed hand that National Synod which he had pledged himself to
+bring about.
+
+The question now arose what sort of men-at-arms it would be well for the
+city governments to enlist. The officers of the regular garrisons had
+received distinct orders from Prince Maurice as their military superior
+to refuse any summons to act in matters proceeding from the religious
+question. The Prince, who had chief authority over all the regular
+troops, had given notice that he would permit nothing to be done against
+"those of the Reformed religion," by which he meant the
+Contra-Remonstrants and them only.
+
+In some cities there were no garrisons, but only train-bands. But the
+train bands (Schutters) could not be relied on to carry out the Sharp
+Resolve, for they were almost to a man Contra-Remonstrants. It was
+therefore determined to enlist what were called "Waartgelders;" soldiers,
+inhabitants of the place, who held themselves ready to serve in time of
+need in consideration of a certain wage; mercenaries in short.
+
+This resolution was followed as a matter of course by a solemn protest
+from Amsterdam and the five cities who acted with her.
+
+On the same day Maurice was duly notified of the passage of the law. His
+wrath was great. High words passed between him and the deputies. It could
+hardly have been otherwise expected. Next-day he came before the Assembly
+to express his sentiments, to complain of the rudeness with which the
+resolution of 4th August had been communicated to him, and to demand
+further explanations. Forthwith the Advocate proceeded to set forth the
+intentions of the States, and demanded that the Prince should assist the
+magistrates in carrying out the policy decided upon. Reinier Pauw,
+burgomaster of Amsterdam, fiercely interrupted the oration of Barneveld,
+saying that although these might be his views, they were not to be held
+by his Excellency as the opinions of all. The Advocate, angry at the
+interruption, answered him sternly, and a violent altercation, not
+unmixed with personalities, arose. Maurice, who kept his temper admirably
+on this occasion, interfered between the two and had much difficulty in
+quieting the dispute. He then observed that when he took the oath as
+stadholder these unfortunate differences had not arisen, but all had been
+good friends together. This was perfectly true, but he could have added
+that they might all continue good friends unless the plan of imposing a
+religious creed upon the minority by a clerical decision were persisted
+in. He concluded that for love of one of the two great parties he would
+not violate the oath he had taken to maintain the Reformed religion to
+the last drop of his blood. Still, with the same 'petitio principii' that
+the Reformed religion and the dogmas of the Contra-Remonstrants were one
+and the same thing, he assured the Assembly that the authority of the
+magistrates would be sustained by him so long as it did not lead to the
+subversion of religion.
+
+Clearly the time for argument had passed. As Dudley Carleton observed,
+men had been disputing 'pro aris' long enough. They would soon be
+fighting 'pro focis.'
+
+In pursuance of the policy laid down by the Sharp Resolution, the States
+proceeded to assure themselves of the various cities of the province by
+means of Waartgelders. They sent to the important seaport of Brielle and
+demanded a new oath from the garrison. It was intimated that the Prince
+would be soon coming there in person to make himself master of the place,
+and advice was given to the magistrates to be beforehand with him. These
+statements angered Maurice, and angered him the more because they
+happened to be true. It was also charged that he was pursuing his
+Leicestrian designs and meant to make himself, by such steps, sovereign
+of the country. The name of Leicester being a byword of reproach ever
+since that baffled noble had a generation before left the Provinces in
+disgrace, it was a matter of course that such comparisons were
+excessively exasperating. It was fresh enough too in men's memory that
+the Earl in his Netherland career had affected sympathy with the
+strictest denomination of religious reformers, and that the profligate
+worldling and arrogant self-seeker had used the mask of religion to cover
+flagitious ends. As it had indeed been the object of the party at the
+head of which the Advocate had all his life acted to raise the youthful
+Maurice to the stadholderate expressly to foil the plots of Leicester, it
+could hardly fail to be unpalatable to Maurice to be now accused of
+acting the part of Leicester.
+
+He inveighed bitterly on the subject before the state council: The state
+council, in a body, followed him to a meeting of the States-General. Here
+the Stadholder made a vehement speech and demanded that the States of
+Holland should rescind the "Sharp Resolution," and should desist from the
+new oaths required from the soldiery. Barneveld, firm as a rock, met
+these bitter denunciations. Speaking in the name of Holland, he repelled
+the idea that the sovereign States of that province were responsible to
+the state council or to the States-General either. He regretted, as all
+regretted, the calumnies uttered against the Prince, but in times of such
+intense excitement every conspicuous man was the mark of calumny.
+
+The Stadholder warmly repudiated Leicestrian designs, and declared that
+he had been always influenced by a desire to serve his country and
+maintain the Reformed religion. If he had made mistakes, he desired to be
+permitted to improve in the future.
+
+Thus having spoken, the soldier retired from the Assembly with the state
+council at his heels.
+
+The Advocate lost no time in directing the military occupation of the
+principal towns of Holland, such as Leyden, Gouda, Rotterdam,
+Schoonhoven, Hoorn, and other cities.
+
+At Leyden especially, where a strong Orange party was with difficulty
+kept in obedience by the Remonstrant magistracy, it was found necessary
+to erect a stockade about the town-hall and to plant caltrops and other
+obstructions in the squares and streets.
+
+The broad space in front; of the beautiful medieval seat of the municipal
+government, once so sacred for the sublime and pathetic scenes enacted
+there during the famous siege and in the magistracy of Peter van der
+Werff, was accordingly enclosed by a solid palisade of oaken planks,
+strengthened by rows of iron bars with barbed prongs: The entrenchment
+was called by the populace the Arminian Fort, and the iron spear heads
+were baptized Barneveld's teeth. Cannon were planted at intervals along
+the works, and a company or two of the Waartgelders, armed from head to
+foot, with snaphances on their shoulders, stood ever ready to issue forth
+to quell any disturbances. Occasionally a life or two was lost of citizen
+or soldier, and many doughty blows were interchanged.
+
+It was a melancholy spectacle. No commonwealth could be more fortunate
+than this republic in possessing two such great leading minds. No two men
+could be more patriotic than both Stadholder and Advocate. No two men
+could be prouder, more overbearing, less conciliatory.
+
+"I know Mons. Barneveld well," said Sir Ralph Winwood, "and know that he
+hath great powers and abilities, and malice itself must confess that man
+never hath done more faithful and powerful service to his country than
+he. But 'finis coronat opus' and 'il di lodi lacera; oportet imperatorem
+stantem mori.'"
+
+The cities of Holland were now thoroughly "waartgeldered," and Barneveld
+having sufficiently shown his "teeth" in that province departed for
+change of air to Utrecht. His failing health was assigned as the pretext
+for the visit, although the atmosphere of that city has never been
+considered especially salubrious in the dog-days.
+
+Meantime the Stadholder remained quiet, but biding his time. He did not
+choose to provoke a premature conflict in the strongholds of the
+Arminians as he called them, but with a true military instinct preferred
+making sure of the ports. Amsterdam, Enkhuyzen, Flushing, being without
+any effort of his own within his control, he quietly slipped down the
+river Meuse on the night of the 29th September, accompanied by his
+brother Frederic Henrys and before six o'clock next morning had
+introduced a couple of companies of trustworthy troops into Brielle, had
+summoned the magistrates before him, and compelled them to desist from
+all further intention of levying mercenaries. Thus all the fortresses
+which Barneveld had so recently and in such masterly fashion rescued from
+the grasp of England were now quietly reposing in the hands of the
+Stadholder.
+
+Maurice thought it not worth his while for the present to quell the
+mutiny--as he considered it the legal and constitutional defence of
+vested right--as great jurists like Barneveld and Hugo Grotius accounted
+the movement--at its "fountain head Leyden or its chief stream Utrecht;"
+to use the expression of Carleton. There had already been bloodshed in
+Leyden, a burgher or two having been shot and a soldier stoned to death
+in the streets, but the Stadholder deemed it unwise to precipitate
+matters. Feeling himself, with his surpassing military knowledge and with
+a large majority of the nation at his back, so completely master of the
+situation, he preferred waiting on events. And there is no doubt that he
+was proving himself a consummate politician and a perfect master of
+fence. "He is much beloved and followed both of soldiers and people,"
+said the English ambassador, "he is a man 'innoxiae popularitatis' so as
+this jealousy cannot well be fastened upon him; and in this cause of
+religion he stirred not until within these few months he saw he must
+declare himself or suffer the better party to be overborne."
+
+The chief tribunal-high council so called-of the country soon gave
+evidence that the "Sharp Resolution" had judged rightly in reckoning on
+its hostility and in nullifying its decisions in advance.
+
+They decided by a majority vote that the Resolution ought not to be
+obeyed, but set aside. Amsterdam, and the three or four cities usually
+acting with her, refused to enlist troops.
+
+Rombout Hoogerbeets, a member of the tribunal, informed Prince Maurice
+that he "would no longer be present on a bench where men disputed the
+authority of the States of Holland, which he held to be the supreme
+sovereignty over him."
+
+This was plain speaking; a distinct enunciation of what the States' right
+party deemed to be constitutional law.
+
+And what said Maurice in reply?
+
+"I, too, recognize the States of Holland as sovereign; but we might at
+least listen to each other occasionally."
+
+Hoogerbeets, however, deeming that listening had been carried far enough,
+decided to leave the tribunal altogether, and to resume the post which he
+had formerly occupied as Pensionary or chief magistrate of Leyden.
+
+Here he was soon to find himself in the thick of the conflict. Meantime
+the States-General, in full assembly, on 11th November 1617, voted that
+the National Synod should be held in the course of the following year.
+The measure was carried by a strict party vote and by a majority of one.
+The representatives of each province voting as one, there were four in
+favour of to three against the Synod. The minority, consisting of
+Holland, Utrecht, and Overyssel, protested against the vote as an
+outrageous invasion of the rights of each province, as an act of flagrant
+tyranny and usurpation.
+
+The minority in the States of Holland, the five cities often named,
+protested against the protest.
+
+The defective part of the Netherland constitutions could not be better
+illustrated. The minority of the States of Holland refused to be bound by
+a majority of the provincial assembly. The minority of the States-General
+refused to be bound by the majority of the united assembly.
+
+This was reducing politics to an absurdity and making all government
+impossible. It is however quite certain that in the municipal governments
+a majority had always governed, and that a majority vote in the
+provincial assemblies had always prevailed. The present innovation was to
+govern the States-General by a majority.
+
+Yet viewed by the light of experience and of common sense, it would be
+difficult to conceive of a more preposterous proceeding than thus to cram
+a religious creed down the throats of half the population of a country by
+the vote of a political assembly. But it was the seventeenth and not the
+nineteenth century.
+
+Moreover, if there were any meaning in words, the 13th Article of Union,
+reserving especially the disposition over religious matters to each
+province, had been wisely intended to prevent the possibility of such
+tyranny.
+
+When the letters of invitation to the separate states and to others were
+drawing up in the general assembly, the representatives of the three
+states left the chamber. A solitary individual from Holland remained
+however, a burgomaster of Amsterdam.
+
+Uytenbogaert, conversing with Barneveld directly afterwards, advised him
+to accept the vote. Yielding to the decision of the majority, it would be
+possible, so thought the clergyman, for the great statesman so to handle
+matters as to mould the Synod to his will, even as he had so long
+controlled the States-Provincial and the States-General.
+
+"If you are willing to give away the rights of the land," said the
+Advocate very sharply, "I am not."
+
+Probably the priest's tactics might have proved more adroit than the
+stony opposition on which Barneveld was resolved.
+
+But it was with the aged statesman a matter of principle, not of policy.
+His character and his personal pride, the dignity of opinion and office,
+his respect for constitutional law, were all at stake.
+
+Shallow observers considered the struggle now taking place as a personal
+one. Lovers of personal government chose to look upon the Advocate's
+party as a faction inspired with an envious resolve to clip the wings of
+the Stadholder, who was at last flying above their heads.
+
+There could be no doubt of the bitter animosity between the two men.
+There could be no doubt that jealousy was playing the part which that
+master passion will ever play in all the affairs of life. But there could
+be no doubt either that a difference of principle as wide as the world
+separated the two antagonists.
+
+Even so keen an observer as Dudley Carleton, while admitting the man's
+intellectual power and unequalled services, could see nothing in the
+Advocate's present course but prejudice, obstinacy, and the insanity of
+pride. "He doth no whit spare himself in pains nor faint in his
+resolution," said the Envoy, "wherein notwithstanding he will in all
+appearance succumb ere afore long, having the disadvantages of a weak
+body, a weak party, and a weak cause." But Carleton hated Barneveld, and
+considered it the chief object of his mission to destroy him, if he
+could. In so doing he would best carry out the wishes of his sovereign.
+
+The King of Britain had addressed a somewhat equivocal letter to the
+States-General on the subject of religion in the spring of 1617. It
+certainly was far from being as satisfactory as, the epistles of 1613
+prepared under the Advocate's instructions, had been, while the exuberant
+commentary upon the royal text, delivered in full assembly by his
+ambassador soon after the reception of the letter, was more than usually
+didactic, offensive, and ignorant. Sir Dudley never omitted an
+opportunity of imparting instruction to the States-General as to the
+nature of their constitution and the essential dogmas on which their
+Church was founded. It is true that the great lawyers and the great
+theologians of the country were apt to hold very different opinions from
+his upon those important subjects, but this was so much the worse for the
+lawyers and theologians, as time perhaps might prove.
+
+The King in this last missive had proceeded to unsay the advice which he
+had formerly bestowed upon the States, by complaining that his earlier
+letters had been misinterpreted. They had been made use of, he said, to
+authorize the very error against which they had been directed. They had
+been held to intend the very contrary of what they did mean. He felt
+himself bound in conscience therefore, finding these differences ready to
+be "hatched into schisms," to warn the States once more against pests so
+pernicious.
+
+Although the royal language was somewhat vague so far as enunciation of
+doctrine, a point on which he had once confessed himself fallible, was
+concerned, there was nothing vague in his recommendation of a National
+Synod. To this the opposition of Barneveld was determined not upon
+religious but upon constitutional grounds. The confederacy did not
+constitute a nation, and therefore there could not be a national synod
+nor a national religion.
+
+Carleton came before the States-General soon afterwards with a prepared
+oration, wearisome as a fast-day sermon after the third turn of the
+hour-glass, pragmatical as a schoolmaster's harangue to fractious little
+boys.
+
+He divided his lecture into two heads--the peace of the Church, and the
+peace of the Provinces--starting with the first. "A Jove principium," he
+said, "I will begin with that which is both beginning and end. It is the
+truth of God's word and its maintenance that is the bond of our common
+cause. Reasons of state invite us as friends and neighbours by the
+preservation of our lives and property, but the interest of religion
+binds us as Christians and brethren to the mutual defence of the liberty
+of our consciences."
+
+He then proceeded to point out the only means by which liberty of
+conscience could be preserved. It was by suppressing all forms of
+religion but one, and by silencing all religious discussion. Peter
+Titelman and Philip II. could not have devised a more pithy formula. All
+that was wanting was the axe and faggot to reduce uniformity to practice.
+Then liberty of conscience would be complete.
+
+"One must distinguish," said the Ambassador, "between just liberty and
+unbridled license, and conclude that there is but one truth single and
+unique. Those who go about turning their brains into limbecks for
+distilling new notions in religious matters only distract the union of
+the Church which makes profession of this unique truth. If it be
+permitted to one man to publish the writings and fantasies of a sick
+spirit and for another moved by Christian zeal to reduce this wanderer
+'ad sanam mentem;' why then 'patet locus adversus utrumque,' and the
+common enemy (the Devil) slips into the fortress." He then proceeded to
+illustrate this theory on liberty of conscience by allusions to Conrad
+Vorstius.
+
+This infamous sectary had in fact reached such a pitch of audacity, said
+the Ambassador, as not only to inveigh against the eternal power of God
+but to indulge in irony against the honour of his Majesty King James.
+
+And in what way had he scandalized the government of the Republic? He had
+dared to say that within its borders there was religious toleration. He
+had distinctly averred that in the United Provinces heretics were not
+punished with death or with corporal chastisement.
+
+"He declares openly," said Carleton, "that contra haereticos etiam vere
+dictos (ne dum falso et calumniose sic traductos) there is neither
+sentence of death nor other corporal punishment, so that in order to
+attract to himself a great following of birds of the name feather he
+publishes to all the world that here in this country one can live and die
+a heretic, unpunished, without being arrested and without danger."
+
+In order to suppress this reproach upon the Republic at which the
+Ambassador stood aghast, and to prevent the Vorstian doctrines of
+religious toleration and impunity of heresy from spreading among "the
+common people, so subject by their natures to embrace new opinions," he
+advised of course that "the serpent be sent back to the nest where he was
+born before the venom had spread through the whole body of the Republic."
+
+A week afterwards a long reply was delivered on part of the
+States-General to the Ambassador's oration. It is needless to say that it
+was the work of the Advocate, and that it was in conformity with the
+opinions so often exhibited in the letters to Caron and others of which
+the reader has seen many samples.
+
+That religious matters were under the control of the civil government,
+and that supreme civil authority belonged to each one of the seven
+sovereign provinces, each recognizing no superior within its own sphere,
+were maxims of state always enforced in the Netherlands and on which the
+whole religious controversy turned.
+
+"The States-General have always cherished the true Christian Apostolic
+religion," they said, "and wished it to be taught under the authority and
+protection of the legal government of these Provinces in all purity, and
+in conformity with the Holy Scriptures, to the good people of these
+Provinces. And My Lords the States and magistrates of the respective
+provinces, each within their own limits, desire the same."
+
+They had therefore given express orders to the preachers "to keep the
+peace by mutual and benign toleration of the different opinions on the
+one side and the other at least until with full knowledge of the subject
+the States might otherwise ordain. They had been the more moved to this
+because his Majesty having carefully examined the opinions of the learned
+hereon each side had found both consistent with Christian belief and the
+salvation of souls."
+
+It was certainly not the highest expression of religious toleration for
+the civil authority to forbid the clergymen of the country from
+discussing in their pulpits the knottiest and most mysterious points of
+the schoolmen lest the "common people" should be puzzled. Nevertheless,
+where the close union of Church and State and the necessity of one church
+were deemed matters of course, it was much to secure subordination of the
+priesthood to the magistracy, while to enjoin on preachers abstention
+from a single exciting cause of quarrel, on the ground that there was
+more than one path to salvation, and that mutual toleration was better
+than mutual persecution, was; in that age, a stride towards religious
+equality. It was at least an advance on Carleton's dogma, that there was
+but one unique and solitary truth, and that to declare heretics not
+punishable with death was an insult to the government of the Republic.
+
+The States-General answered the Ambassador's plea, made in the name of
+his master, for immediate and unguaranteed evacuation of the debatable
+land by the arguments already so often stated in the Advocate's
+instructions to Caron. They had been put to great trouble and expense
+already in their campaigning and subsequent fortification of important
+places in the duchies. They had seen the bitter spirit manifested by the
+Spaniards in the demolition of the churches and houses of Mulheim and
+other places. "While the affair remained in its present terms of utter
+uncertainty their Mightinesses," said the States-General, "find it most
+objectionable to forsake the places which they have been fortifying and
+to leave the duchies and all their fellow-religionists, besides the
+rights of the possessory princes a prey to those who have been hankering
+for the territories for long years, and who would unquestionably be able
+to make themselves absolute masters of all within a very few days."
+
+A few months later Carleton came before the States-General again and
+delivered another elaborate oration, duly furnished to him by the King,
+upon the necessity of the National Synod, the comparative merits of
+Arminianism and Contra-Remonstrantism, together with a full exposition of
+the constitutions of the Netherlands.
+
+It might be supposed that Barneveld and Grotius and Hoogerbeets knew
+something of the law and history of their country.
+
+But James knew much better, and so his envoy endeavoured to convince his
+audience.
+
+He received on the spot a temperate but conclusive reply from the
+delegates of Holland. They informed him that the war with Spain--the
+cause of the Utrecht Union--was not begun about religion but on account
+of the violation of liberties, chartered rights and privileges, not the
+least of which rights was that of each province to regulate religious
+matters within its borders.
+
+A little later a more vehement reply was published anonymously in the
+shape of a pamphlet called 'The Balance,' which much angered the
+Ambassador and goaded his master almost to frenzy. It was deemed so
+blasphemous, so insulting to the Majesty of England, so entirely
+seditious, that James, not satisfied with inditing a rejoinder, insisted
+through Carleton that a reward should be offered by the States for the
+detection of the author, in order that he might be condignly punished.
+This was done by a majority vote, 1000 florins being offered for the
+discovery of the author and 600 for that of the printer.
+
+Naturally the step was opposed in the States-General; two deputies in
+particular making themselves conspicuous. One of them was an audacious
+old gentleman named Brinius of Gelderland, "much corrupted with
+Arminianism," so Carleton informed his sovereign. He appears to have
+inherited his audacity through his pedigree, descending, as it was
+ludicrously enough asserted he did, from a chief of the Caninefates, the
+ancient inhabitants of Gelderland, called Brinio. And Brinio the
+Caninefat had been as famous for his stolid audacity as for his
+illustrious birth; "Erat in Caninefatibus stolidae audaciae Brinio
+claritate natalium insigni."
+
+The patronizing manner in which the Ambassador alluded to the other
+member of the States-General who opposed the decree was still more
+diverting. It was "Grotius, the Pensioner of Rotterdam, a young petulant
+brain, not unknown to your Majesty," said Carleton.
+
+Two centuries and a half have rolled away, and there are few majesties,
+few nations, and few individuals to whom the name of that petulant youth
+is unknown; but how many are familiar with the achievements of the able
+representative of King James?
+
+Nothing came of the measure, however, and the offer of course helped the
+circulation of the pamphlet.
+
+It is amusing to see the ferocity thus exhibited by the royal pamphleteer
+against a rival; especially when one can find no crime in 'The Balance'
+save a stinging and well-merited criticism of a very stupid oration.
+
+Gillis van Ledenberg was generally supposed to be the author of it.
+Carleton inclined, however, to suspect Grotius, "because," said he,
+"having always before been a stranger to my house, he has made me the day
+before the publication thereof a complimentary visit, although it was
+Sunday and church time; whereby the Italian proverb, 'Chi ti caresse piu
+che suole,' &c.,' is added to other likelihoods."
+
+It was subsequently understood however that the pamphlet was written by a
+Remonstrant preacher of Utrecht, named Jacobus Taurinus; one of those who
+had been doomed to death by the mutinous government in that city seven
+years before.
+
+It was now sufficiently obvious that either the governments in the three
+opposition provinces must be changed or that the National Synod must be
+imposed by a strict majority vote in the teeth of the constitution and of
+vigorous and eloquent protests drawn up by the best lawyers in the
+country. The Advocate and Grotius recommended a provincial synod first
+and, should that not succeed in adjusting the differences of church
+government, then the convocation of a general or oecumenical synod. They
+resisted the National Synod because, in their view, the Provinces were
+not a nation. A league of seven sovereign and independent Mates was all
+that legally existed in the Netherlands. It was accordingly determined
+that the governments should be changed, and the Stadholder set himself to
+prepare the way for a thorough and, if possible, a bloodless revolution.
+He departed on the 27th November for a tour through the chief cities, and
+before leaving the Hague addressed an earnest circular letter to the
+various municipalities of Holland.
+
+A more truly dignified, reasonable, right royal letter, from the
+Stadholder's point of view, could not have been indited. The Imperial
+"we" breathing like a morning breeze through the whole of it blew away
+all legal and historical mistiness.
+
+But the clouds returned again nevertheless. Unfortunately for Maurice it
+could not be argued by the pen, however it might be proved by the sword,
+that the Netherlands constituted a nation, and that a convocation of
+doctors of divinity summoned by a body of envoys had the right to dictate
+a creed to seven republics.
+
+All parties were agreed on one point. There must be unity of divine
+worship. The territory of the Netherlands was not big enough to hold two
+systems of religion, two forms of Christianity, two sects of
+Protestantism. It was big enough to hold seven independent and sovereign
+states, but would be split into fragments--resolved into chaos--should
+there be more than one Church or if once a schism were permitted in that
+Church. Grotius was as much convinced of this as Gomarus. And yet the
+13th Article of the Union stared them all in the face, forbidding the
+hideous assumptions now made by the general government. Perhaps no man
+living fully felt its import save Barneveld alone. For groping however
+dimly and hesitatingly towards the idea of religious liberty, of general
+toleration, he was denounced as a Papist, an atheist, a traitor, a
+miscreant, by the fanatics for the sacerdotal and personal power. Yet it
+was a pity that he could never contemplate the possibility of his
+country's throwing off the swaddling clothes of provincialism which had
+wrapped its infancy. Doubtless history, law, tradition, and usage pointed
+to the independent sovereignty of each province. Yet the period of the
+Truce was precisely the time when a more generous constitution, a
+national incorporation might have been constructed to take the place of
+the loose confederacy by which the gigantic war had been fought out.
+After all, foreign powers had no connection with the States, and knew
+only the Union with which and with which alone they made treaties, and
+the reality of sovereignty in each province was as ridiculous as in
+theory it was impregnable. But Barneveld, under the modest title of
+Advocate of one province, had been in reality president and prime
+minister of the whole commonwealth. He had himself been the union and the
+sovereignty. It was not wonderful that so imperious a nature objected to
+transfer its powers to the Church, to the States-General, or to Maurice.
+
+Moreover, when nationality assumed the unlovely form of rigid religious
+uniformity; when Union meant an exclusive self-governed Church enthroned
+above the State, responsible to no civic authority and no human law, the
+boldest patriot might shiver at emerging from provincialism.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+   The Commonwealth bent on Self-destruction--Evils of a Confederate
+   System of Government--Rem Bischop's House sacked--Aerssens'
+   unceasing Efforts against Barneveld--The Advocate's Interview with
+   Maurice--The States of Utrecht raise the Troops--The Advocate at
+   Utrecht--Barneveld urges mutual Toleration--Barneveld accused of
+   being Partisan of Spain--Carleton takes his Departure.
+
+It is not cheerful after widely contemplating the aspect of Christendom
+in the year of supreme preparation to examine with the minuteness
+absolutely necessary the narrow theatre to which the political affairs of
+the great republic had been reduced.
+
+That powerful commonwealth, to which the great party of the Reformation
+naturally looked for guidance in the coming conflict, seemed bent on
+self-destruction. The microcosm of the Netherlands now represented, alas!
+the war of elements going on without on a world-wide scale. As the
+Calvinists and Lutherans of Germany were hotly attacking each other even
+in sight of the embattled front of Spain and the League, so the Gomarites
+and the Arminians by their mutual rancour were tearing the political
+power of the Dutch Republic to shreds and preventing her from assuming a
+great part in the crisis. The consummate soldier, the unrivalled
+statesman, each superior in his sphere to any contemporary rival, each
+supplementing the other, and making up together, could they have been
+harmonized, a double head such as no political organism then existing
+could boast, were now in hopeless antagonism to each other. A mass of
+hatred had been accumulated against the Advocate with which he found it
+daily more and more difficult to struggle. The imperious, rugged, and
+suspicious nature of the Stadholder had been steadily wrought upon by the
+almost devilish acts of Francis Aerssens until he had come to look upon
+his father's most faithful adherent, his own early preceptor in
+statesmanship and political supporter, as an antagonist, a conspirator,
+and a tyrant.
+
+The soldier whose unrivalled ability, experience, and courage in the
+field should have placed him at the very head of the great European army
+of defence against the general crusade upon Protestantism, so constantly
+foretold by Barneveld, was now to be engaged in making bloodless but
+mischievous warfare against an imaginary conspiracy and a patriot foe.
+
+The Advocate, keeping steadily in view the great principles by which his
+political life had been guided, the supremacy of the civil authority in
+any properly organized commonwealth over the sacerdotal and military,
+found himself gradually forced into mortal combat with both. To the
+individual sovereignty of each province he held with the tenacity of a
+lawyer and historian. In that he found the only clue through the
+labyrinth which ecclesiastical and political affairs presented. So close
+was the tangle, so confused the medley, that without this slender guide
+all hope of legal issue seemed lost.
+
+No doubt the difficulty of the doctrine of individual sovereignty was
+great, some of the provinces being such slender morsels of territory,
+with resources so trivial, as to make the name of sovereignty ludicrous.
+Yet there could be as little doubt that no other theory was tenable. If
+so powerful a mind as that of the Advocate was inclined to strain the
+theory to its extreme limits, it was because in the overshadowing
+superiority of the one province Holland had been found the practical
+remedy for the imbecility otherwise sure to result from such provincial
+and meagre federalism.
+
+Moreover, to obtain Union by stretching all the ancient historical
+privileges and liberties of the separate provinces upon the Procrustean
+bed of a single dogma, to look for nationality only in common subjection
+to an infallible priesthood, to accept a Catechism as the palladium upon
+which the safety of the State was to depend for all time, and beyond
+which there was to be no further message from Heaven--such was not
+healthy constitutionalism in the eyes of a great statesman. No doubt that
+without the fervent spirit of Calvinism it would have been difficult to
+wage war with such immortal hate as the Netherlands had waged it, no
+doubt the spirit of republican and even democratic liberty lay hidden
+within that rigid husk, but it was dishonour to the martyrs who had died
+by thousands at the stake and on the battle field for the rights of
+conscience if the only result of their mighty warfare against wrong had
+been to substitute a new dogma for an old one, to stifle for ever the
+right of free enquiry, theological criticism, and the hope of further
+light from on high, and to proclaim it a libel on the Republic that
+within its borders all heretics, whether Arminian or Papist, were safe
+from the death penalty or even from bodily punishment. A theological
+union instead of a national one and obtained too at the sacrifice of
+written law and immemorial tradition, a congress in which clerical
+deputations from all the provinces and from foreign nations should
+prescribe to all Netherlanders an immutable creed and a shadowy
+constitution, were not the true remedies for the evils of confederacy,
+nor, if they had been, was the time an appropriate one for their
+application.
+
+It was far too early in the world's history to hope for such
+redistribution of powers and such a modification of the social compact as
+would place in separate spheres the Church and the State, double the
+sanctions and the consolations of religion by removing it from the
+pollutions of political warfare, and give freedom to individual
+conscience by securing it from the interference of government.
+
+It is melancholy to see the Republic thus perversely occupying its
+energies. It is melancholy to see the great soldier becoming gradually
+more ardent for battle with Barneveld and Uytenbogaert than with Spinola
+and Bucquoy, against whom he had won so many imperishable laurels. It is
+still sadder to see the man who had been selected by Henry IV. as the one
+statesman of Europe to whom he could confide his great projects for the
+pacification of Christendom, and on whom he could depend for counsel and
+support in schemes which, however fantastic in some of their details, had
+for their object to prevent the very European war of religion against
+which Barneveld had been struggling, now reduced to defend himself
+against suspicion hourly darkening and hatred growing daily more insane.
+
+The eagle glance and restless wing, which had swept the whole political
+atmosphere, now caged within the stifling limits of theological casuistry
+and personal rivalry were afflicting to contemplate.
+
+The evils resulting from a confederate system of government, from a
+league of petty sovereignties which dared not become a nation, were as
+woefully exemplified in the United Provinces as they were destined to be
+more than a century and a half later, and in another hemisphere, before
+that most fortunate and sagacious of written political instruments, the
+American Constitution of 1787, came to remedy the weakness of the old
+articles of Union.
+
+Meantime the Netherlands were a confederacy, not a nation. Their general
+government was but a committee.
+
+It could ask of, but not command, the separate provinces. It had no
+dealings with nor power over the inhabitants of the country; it could say
+"Thou shalt" neither to state nor citizen; it could consult only with
+corporations--fictitious and many-headed personages--itself incorporate.
+There was no first magistrate, no supreme court, no commander-in-chief,
+no exclusive mint nor power of credit, no national taxation, no central
+house of representation and legislation, no senate. Unfortunately it had
+one church, and out of this single matrix of centralism was born more
+discord than had been produced by all the centrifugal forces of
+provincialism combined.
+
+There had been working substitutes found, as we well know, for the
+deficiencies of this constitution, but the Advocate felt himself bound to
+obey and enforce obedience to the laws and privileges of his country so
+long as they remained without authorized change. His country was the
+Province of Holland, to which his allegiance was due and whose servant he
+was. That there was but one church paid and sanctioned by law, he
+admitted, but his efforts were directed to prevent discord within that
+church, by counselling moderation, conciliation, mutual forbearance, and
+abstention from irritating discussion of dogmas deemed by many thinkers
+and better theologians than himself not essential to salvation. In this
+he was much behind his age or before it. He certainly was not with the
+majority.
+
+And thus, while the election of Ferdinand had given the signal of war all
+over Christendom, while from the demolished churches in Bohemia the
+tocsin was still sounding, whose vibrations were destined to be heard a
+generation long through the world, there was less sympathy felt with the
+call within the territory of the great republic of Protestantism than
+would have seemed imaginable a few short years before. The capture of the
+Cloister Church at the Hague in the summer of 1617 seemed to minds
+excited by personal rivalries and minute theological controversy a more
+momentous event than the destruction of the churches in the Klostergrab
+in the following December. The triumph of Gomarism in a single Dutch city
+inspired more enthusiasm for the moment than the deadly buffet to
+European Protestantism could inspire dismay.
+
+The church had been carried and occupied, as it were, by force, as if an
+enemy's citadel. It seemed necessary to associate the idea of practical
+warfare with a movement which might have been a pacific clerical success.
+Barneveld and those who acted with him, while deploring the intolerance
+out of which the schism had now grown to maturity, had still hoped for
+possible accommodation of the quarrel. They dreaded popular tumults
+leading to oppression of the magistracy by the mob or the soldiery and
+ending in civil war. But what was wanted by the extreme partisans on
+either side was not accommodation but victory.
+
+"Religious differences are causing much trouble and discontents in many
+cities," he said. "At Amsterdam there were in the past week two
+assemblages of boys and rabble which did not disperse without violence,
+crime, and robbery. The brother of Professor Episcopius (Rem Bischop) was
+damaged to the amount of several thousands. We are still hoping that some
+better means of accommodation may be found."
+
+The calmness with which the Advocate spoke of these exciting and painful
+events is remarkable. It was exactly a week before the date of his letter
+that this riot had taken place at Amsterdam; very significant in its
+nature and nearly tragical in its results. There were no Remonstrant
+preachers left in the city, and the people of that persuasion were
+excluded from the Communion service. On Sunday morning, 17th February
+(1617), a furious mob set upon the house of Rem Bischop, a highly
+respectable and wealthy citizen, brother of the Remonstrant professor
+Episcopius, of Leyden. The house, an elegant mansion in one of the
+principal streets, was besieged and after an hour's resistance carried by
+storm. The pretext of the assault was that Arminian preaching was going
+on within its walls, which was not the fact. The mistress of the house,
+half clad, attempted to make her escape by the rear of the building, was
+pursued by the rabble with sticks and stones, and shrieks of "Kill the
+Arminian harlot, strike her dead," until she fortunately found refuge in
+the house of a neighbouring carpenter. There the hunted creature fell
+insensible on the ground, the master of the house refusing to give her
+up, though the maddened mob surged around it, swearing that if the
+"Arminian harlot"--as respectable a matron as lived in the city--were not
+delivered over to them, they would tear the house to pieces. The hope of
+plunder and of killing Rem Bischop himself drew them at last back to his
+mansion. It was thoroughly sacked; every portable article of value,
+linen, plate, money, furniture, was carried off, the pictures and objects
+of art destroyed, the house gutted from top to bottom. A thousand
+spectators were looking on placidly at the work of destruction as they
+returned from church, many of them with Bible and Psalm-book in their
+hands. The master effected his escape over the roof into an adjoining
+building. One of the ringleaders, a carpenter by trade, was arrested
+carrying an armful of valuable plunder. He was asked by the magistrate
+why he had entered the house. "Out of good zeal," he replied; "to help
+beat and kill the Arminians who were holding conventicle there." He was
+further asked why he hated the Arminians so much. "Are we to suffer such
+folk here," he replied, "who preach the vile doctrine that God has
+created one man for damnation and another for salvation?"--thus ascribing
+the doctrine of the church of which he supposed himself a member to the
+Arminians whom he had been plundering and wished to kill.
+
+Rem Bischop received no compensation for the damage and danger; the
+general cry in the town being that the money he was receiving from
+Barneveld and the King of Spain would make him good even if not a stone
+of the house had been left standing. On the following Thursday two elders
+of the church council waited upon and informed him that he must in future
+abstain from the Communion service.
+
+It may well be supposed that the virtual head of the government liked not
+the triumph of mob law, in the name of religion, over the civil
+authority. The Advocate was neither democrat nor demagogue. A lawyer, a
+magistrate, and a noble, he had but little sympathy with the humbler
+classes, which he was far too much in the habit of designating as rabble
+and populace. Yet his anger was less against them than against the
+priests, the foreigners, the military and diplomatic mischief-makers, by
+whom they were set upon to dangerous demonstrations. The old patrician
+scorned the arts by which highborn demagogues in that as in every age
+affect adulation for inferiors whom they despise. It was his instinct to
+protect, and guide the people, in whom he recognized no chartered nor
+inherent right to govern. It was his resolve, so long as breath was in
+him, to prevent them from destroying life and property and subverting the
+government under the leadership of an inflamed priesthood.
+
+It was with this intention, as we have just seen, and in order to avoid
+bloodshed, anarchy, and civil war in the streets of every town and
+village, that a decisive but in the Advocate's opinion a perfectly legal
+step had been taken by the States of Holland. It had become necessary to
+empower the magistracies of towns to defend themselves by enrolled troops
+against mob violence and against an enforced synod considered by great
+lawyers as unconstitutional.
+
+Aerssens resided in Zealand, and the efforts of that ex-ambassador were
+unceasing to excite popular animosity against the man he hated and to
+trouble the political waters in which no man knew better than he how to
+cast the net.
+
+"The States of Zealand," said the Advocate to the ambassador in London,
+"have a deputation here about the religious differences, urging the
+holding of a National Synod according to the King's letters, to which
+some other provinces and some of the cities of Holland incline. The
+questions have not yet been defined by a common synod, so that a national
+one could make no definition, while the particular synods and clerical
+personages are so filled with prejudices and so bound by mutual
+engagements of long date as to make one fear an unfruitful issue. We are
+occupied upon this point in our assembly of Holland to devise some
+compromise and to discover by what means these difficulties may be
+brought into a state of tranquillity."
+
+It will be observed that in all these most private and confidential
+utterances of the Advocate a tone of extreme moderation, an anxious wish
+to save the Provinces from dissensions, dangers, and bloodshed, is
+distinctly visible. Never is he betrayed into vindictive, ambitious, or
+self-seeking expressions, while sometimes, although rarely, despondent in
+mind. Nor was his opposition to a general synod absolute. He was probably
+persuaded however, as we have just seen, that it should of necessity be
+preceded by provincial ones, both in due regard to the laws of the land
+and to the true definition of the points to be submitted to its decision.
+He had small hope of a successful result from it.
+
+The British king gave him infinite distress. As towards France so towards
+England the Advocate kept steadily before him the necessity of deferring
+to powerful sovereigns whose friendship was necessary to the republic he
+served, however misguided, perverse, or incompetent those monarchs might
+be.
+
+"I had always hoped," he said, "that his Majesty would have adhered to
+his original written advice, that such questions as these ought to be
+quietly settled by authority of law and not by ecclesiastical persons,
+and I still hope that his Majesty's intention is really to that effect,
+although he speaks of synods."
+
+A month later he felt even more encouraged. "The last letter of his
+Majesty concerning our religious questions," he said, "has given rise to
+various constructions, but the best advised, who have peace and unity at
+heart, understand the King's intention to be to conserve the state of
+these Provinces and the religion in its purity. My hope is that his
+Majesty's good opinion will be followed and adopted according to the most
+appropriate methods."
+
+Can it be believed that the statesman whose upright patriotism,
+moderation, and nobleness of purpose thus breathed through every word
+spoken by him in public or whispered to friends was already held up by a
+herd of ravening slanderers to obloquy as a traitor and a tyrant?
+
+He was growing old and had suffered much from illness during this
+eventful summer, but his anxiety for the Commonwealth, caused by these
+distressing and superfluous squabbles, were wearing into him more deeply
+than years or disease could do.
+
+"Owing to my weakness and old age I can't go up-stairs as well as I
+used," he said,--[Barneveld to Caron 31 July and 21 Aug. 1617. (H. Arch.
+MS.)]--"and these religious dissensions cause me sometimes such
+disturbance of mind as will ere long become intolerable, because of my
+indisposition and because of the cry of my heart at the course people are
+pursuing here. I reflect that at the time of Duke Casimir and the Prince
+of Chimay exactly such a course was held in Flanders and in Lord
+Leicester's time in the city of Utrecht, as is best known to yourself. My
+hope is fixed on the Lord God Almighty, and that He will make those well
+ashamed who are laying anything to heart save his honour and glory and
+the welfare of our country with maintenance of its freedom and laws. I
+mean unchangeably to live and die for them . . . . Believe firmly that
+all representations to the contrary are vile calumnies."
+
+Before leaving for Vianen in the middle of August of this year (1617) the
+Advocate had an interview with the Prince. There had been no open rupture
+between them, and Barneveld was most anxious to avoid a quarrel with one
+to whose interests and honour he had always been devoted. He did not
+cling to power nor office. On the contrary, he had repeatedly importuned
+the States to accept his resignation, hoping that perhaps these unhappy
+dissensions might be quieted by his removal from the scene. He now told
+the Prince that the misunderstanding between them arising from these
+religious disputes was so painful to his heart that he would make and had
+made every possible effort towards conciliation and amicable settlement
+of the controversy. He saw no means now, he said, of bringing about
+unity, unless his Excellency were willing to make some proposition for
+arrangement. This he earnestly implored the Prince to do, assuring him of
+his sincere and upright affection for him and his wish to support such
+measures to the best of his ability and to do everything for the
+furtherance of his reputation and necessary authority. He was so desirous
+of this result, he said, that he would propose now as he did at the time
+of the Truce negotiations to lay down all his offices, leaving his
+Excellency to guide the whole course of affairs according to his best
+judgment. He had already taken a resolution, if no means of accommodation
+were possible, to retire to his Gunterstein estate and there remain till
+the next meeting of the assembly; when he would ask leave to retire for
+at least a year; in order to occupy himself with a revision and collation
+of the charters, laws, and other state papers of the country which were
+in his keeping, and which it was needful to bring into an orderly
+condition. Meantime some scheme might be found for arranging the
+religious differences, more effective than any he had been able to
+devise.
+
+His appeal seems to have glanced powerlessly upon the iron reticence of
+Maurice, and the Advocate took his departure disheartened. Later in the
+autumn, so warm a remonstrance was made to him by the leading nobles and
+deputies of Holland against his contemplated withdrawal from his post
+that it seemed a dereliction of duty on his part to retire. He remained
+to battle with the storm and to see "with anguish of heart," as he
+expressed it, the course religious affairs were taking.
+
+The States of Utrecht on the 26th August resolved that on account of the
+gathering of large masses of troops in the countries immediately
+adjoining their borders, especially in the Episcopate of Cologne, by aid
+of Spanish money, it was expedient for them to enlist a protective force
+of six companies of regular soldiers in order to save the city from
+sudden and overwhelming attack by foreign troops.
+
+Even if the danger from without were magnified in this preamble, which is
+by no means certain, there seemed to be no doubt on the subject in the
+minds of the magistrates. They believed that they had the right to
+protect and that they were bound to protect their ancient city from
+sudden assault, whether by Spanish soldiers or by organized mobs
+attempting, as had been done in Rotterdam, Oudewater, and other towns, to
+overawe the civil authority in the interest of the Contra-Remonstrants.
+
+Six nobles of Utrecht were accordingly commissioned to raise the troops.
+A week later they had been enlisted, sworn to obey in all things the
+States of Utrecht, and to take orders from no one else. Three days later
+the States of Utrecht addressed a letter to their Mightinesses the
+States-General and to his Excellency the Prince, notifying them that for
+the reasons stated in the resolution cited the six companies had been
+levied. There seemed in these proceedings to be no thought of mutiny or
+rebellion, the province considering itself as acting within its
+unquestionable rights as a sovereign state and without any exaggeration
+of the imperious circumstances of the case.
+
+Nor did the States-General and the Stadholder at that moment affect to
+dispute the rights of Utrecht, nor raise a doubt as to the legality of
+the proceedings. The committee sent thither by the States-General, the
+Prince, and the council of state in their written answer to the letter of
+the Utrecht government declared the reasons given for the enrolment of
+the six companies to be insufficient and the measure itself highly
+dangerous. They complained, but in very courteous language, that the
+soldiers had been levied without giving the least notice thereof to the
+general government, without asking its advice, or waiting for any
+communication from it, and they reminded the States of Utrecht that they
+might always rely upon the States-General and his Excellency, who were
+still ready, as they had been seven years before (1610), to protect them
+against every enemy and any danger.
+
+The conflict between a single province of the confederacy and the
+authority of the general government had thus been brought to a direct
+issue; to the test of arms. For, notwithstanding the preamble to the
+resolution of the Utrecht Assembly just cited, there could be little
+question that the resolve itself was a natural corollary of the famous
+"Sharp Resolution," passed by the States of Holland three weeks before.
+Utrecht was in arms to prevent, among other things at least, the forcing
+upon them by a majority of the States-General of the National Synod to
+which they were opposed, the seizure of churches by the
+Contra-Remonstrants, and the destruction of life and property by inflamed
+mobs.
+
+There is no doubt that Barneveld deeply deplored the issue, but that he
+felt himself bound to accept it. The innate absurdity of a constitutional
+system under which each of the seven members was sovereign and
+independent and the head was at the mercy of the members could not be
+more flagrantly illustrated. In the bloody battles which seemed impending
+in the streets of Utrecht and in all the principal cities of the
+Netherlands between the soldiers of sovereign states and soldiers of a
+general government which was not sovereign, the letter of the law and the
+records of history were unquestionably on the aide of the provincial and
+against the general authority. Yet to nullify the authority of the
+States-General by force of arms at this supreme moment was to stultify
+all government whatever. It was an awful dilemma, and it is difficult
+here fully to sympathize with the Advocate, for he it was who inspired,
+without dictating, the course of the Utrecht proceedings.
+
+With him patriotism seemed at this moment to dwindle into provincialism,
+the statesman to shrink into the lawyer.
+
+Certainly there was no guilt in the proceedings. There was no crime in
+the heart of the Advocate. He had exhausted himself with appeals in
+favour of moderation, conciliation, compromise. He had worked night and
+day with all the energy of a pure soul and a great mind to assuage
+religious hatreds and avert civil dissensions. He was overpowered. He had
+frequently desired to be released from all his functions, but as dangers
+thickened over the Provinces, he felt it his duty so long as he remained
+at his post to abide by the law as the only anchor in the storm. Not
+rising in his mind to the height of a national idea, and especially
+averse from it when embodied in the repulsive form of religious
+uniformity, he did not shrink from a contest which he had not provoked,
+but had done his utmost to avert. But even then he did not anticipate
+civil war. The enrolling of the Waartgelders was an armed protest, a
+symbol of legal conviction rather than a serious effort to resist the
+general government. And this is the chief justification of his course
+from a political point of view. It was ridiculous to suppose that with a
+few hundred soldiers hastily enlisted--and there were less than 1800
+Waartgelders levied throughout the Provinces and under the orders of
+civil magistrates--a serious contest was intended against a splendidly
+disciplined army of veteran troops, commanded by the first general of the
+age.
+
+From a legal point of view Barneveld considered his position impregnable.
+
+The controversy is curious, especially for Americans, and for all who are
+interested in the analysis of federal institutions and of republican
+principles, whether aristocratic or democratic. The States of Utrecht
+replied in decorous but firm language to the committee of the
+States-General that they had raised the six companies in accordance with
+their sovereign right so to do, and that they were resolved to maintain
+them. They could not wait as they had been obliged to do in the time of
+the Earl of Leicester and more recently in 1610 until they had been
+surprised and overwhelmed by the enemy before the States-General and his
+Excellency the Prince could come to their rescue. They could not suffer
+all the evils of tumults, conspiracies, and foreign invasion, without
+defending themselves.
+
+Making use, they said, of the right of sovereignty which in their
+province belonged to them alone, they thought it better to prevent in
+time and by convenient means such fire and mischief than to look on while
+it kindled and spread into a conflagration, and to go about imploring aid
+from their fellow confederates who, God better it, had enough in these
+times to do at home. This would only be to bring them as well as this
+province into trouble, disquiet, and expense. "My Lords the States of
+Utrecht have conserved and continually exercised this right of
+sovereignty in its entireness ever since renouncing the King of Spain.
+Every contract, ordinance, and instruction of the States-General has been
+in conformity with it, and the States of Utrecht are convinced that the
+States of not one of their confederate provinces would yield an atom of
+its sovereignty."
+
+They reminded the general government that by the 1st article of the
+"Closer Union" of Utrecht, on which that assembly was founded, it was
+bound to support the States of the respective provinces and strengthen
+them with counsel, treasure, and blood if their respective rights, more
+especially their individual sovereignty, the most precious of all, should
+be assailed. To refrain from so doing would be to violate a solemn
+contract. They further reminded the council of state that by its
+institution the States-Provincial had not abdicated their respective
+sovereignties, but had reserved it in all matters not specifically
+mentioned in the original instruction by which it was created.
+
+Two days afterwards Arnold van Randwyck and three other commissioners
+were instructed by the general government to confer with the States of
+Utrecht, to tell them that their reply was deemed unsatisfactory, that
+their reasons for levying soldiers in times when all good people should
+be seeking to restore harmony and mitigate dissension were insufficient,
+and to request them to disband those levies without prejudice in so doing
+to the laws and liberties of the province and city of Utrecht.
+
+Here was perhaps an opening for a compromise, the instruction being not
+without ingenuity, and the word sovereignty in regard either to the
+general government or the separate provinces being carefully omitted.
+Soon afterwards, too, the States-General went many steps farther in the
+path of concession, for they made another appeal to the government of
+Utrecht to disband the Waartgelders on the ground of expediency, and in
+so doing almost expressly admitted the doctrine of provincial
+sovereignty. It is important in regard to subsequent events to observe
+this virtual admission.
+
+"Your Honours lay especial stress upon the right of sovereignty as
+belonging to you alone in your province," they said, "and dispute
+therefore at great length upon the power and authority of the Generality,
+of his Excellency, and of the state council. But you will please to
+consider that there is here no question of this, as our commissioners had
+no instructions to bring this into dispute in the least, and most
+certainly have not done so. We have only in effect questioned whether
+that which one has an undoubted right to do can at all times be
+appropriately and becomingly done, whether it was fitting that your
+Honours, contrary to custom, should undertake these new levies upon a
+special oath and commission, and effectively complete the measure without
+giving the slightest notice thereof to the Generality."
+
+It may fairly be said that the question in debate was entirely conceded
+in this remarkable paper, which was addressed by the States-General, the
+Prince-Stadholder, and the council of state to the government of Utrecht.
+It should be observed, too, that while distinctly repudiating the
+intention of disputing the sovereignty of that province, they carefully
+abstain from using the word in relation to themselves, speaking only of
+the might and authority of the Generality, the Prince, and the council.
+
+There was now a pause in the public discussion. The soldiers were not
+disbanded, as the States of Utrecht were less occupied with establishing
+the soundness of their theory than with securing its practical results.
+They knew very well, and the Advocate knew very well, that the intention
+to force a national synod by a majority vote of the Assembly of the
+States-General existed more strongly than ever, and they meant to resist
+it to the last. The attempt was in their opinion an audacious violation
+of the fundamental pact on which the Confederacy was founded. Its success
+would be to establish the sacerdotal power in triumph over the civil
+authority.
+
+During this period the Advocate was resident in Utrecht. For change of
+air, ostensibly at least, he had absented himself from the seat of
+government, and was during several weeks under the hands of his old
+friend and physician Dr. Saul. He was strictly advised to abstain
+altogether from political business, but he might as well have attempted
+to abstain from food and drink. Gillis van Ledenberg, secretary of the
+States of Utrecht, visited him frequently. The proposition to enlist the
+Waartgelders had been originally made in the Assembly by its president,
+and warmly seconded by van Ledenberg, who doubtless conferred afterwards
+with Barneveld in person, but informally and at his lodgings.
+
+It was almost inevitable that this should be the case, nor did the
+Advocate make much mystery as to the course of action which he deemed
+indispensable at this period. Believing it possible that some sudden and
+desperate attempt might be made by evil disposed people, he agreed with
+the States of Utrecht in the propriety of taking measures of precaution.
+They were resolved not to look quietly on while soldiers and rabble under
+guidance perhaps of violent Contra-Remonstrant preachers took possession
+of the churches and even of the city itself, as had already been done in
+several towns.
+
+The chief practical object of enlisting the six companies was that the
+city might be armed against popular tumults, and they feared that the
+ordinary military force might be withdrawn.
+
+When Captain Hartvelt, in his own name and that of the other officers of
+those companies, said that they were all resolved never to use their
+weapons against the Stadholder or the States-General, he was answered
+that they would never be required to do so. They, however, made oath to
+serve against those who should seek to trouble the peace of the Province
+of Utrecht in ecclesiastical or political matters, and further against
+all enemies of the common country. At the same time it was deemed
+expedient to guard against a surprise of any kind and to keep watch and
+ward.
+
+"I cannot quite believe in the French companies," said the Advocate in a
+private billet to Ledenberg. "It would be extremely well that not only
+good watch should be kept at the city gates, but also that one might from
+above and below the river Lek be assuredly advised from the nearest
+cities if any soldiers are coming up or down, and that the same might be
+done in regard to Amersfoort." At the bottom of this letter, which was
+destined to become historical and will be afterwards referred to, the
+Advocate wrote, as he not unfrequently did, upon his private notes, "When
+read, burn, and send me back the two enclosed letters."
+
+The letter lies in the Archives unburned to this day, but, harmless as it
+looked, it was to serve as a nail in more than one coffin.
+
+In his confidential letters to trusted friends he complained of "great
+physical debility growing out of heavy sorrow," and described himself as
+entering upon his seventy-first year and no longer fit for hard political
+labour. The sincere grief, profound love of country, and desire that some
+remedy might be found for impending disaster, is stamped upon all his
+utterances whether official or secret.
+
+"The troubles growing out of the religious differences," he said, "are
+running into all sorts of extremities. It is feared that an attempt will
+be made against the laws of the land through extraordinary ways, and by
+popular tumults to take from the supreme authority of the respective
+provinces the right to govern clerical persons and regulate clerical
+disputes, and to place it at the disposition of ecclesiastics and of a
+National Synod.
+
+"It is thought too that the soldiers will be forbidden to assist the
+civil supreme power and the government of cities in defending themselves
+from acts of violence which under pretext of religion will be attempted
+against the law and the commands of the magistrates.
+
+"This seems to conflict with the common law of the respective provinces,
+each of which from all times had right of sovereignty and supreme
+authority within its territory and specifically reserved it in all
+treaties and especially in that of the Nearer Union . . . . The provinces
+have always regulated clerical matters each for itself. The Province of
+Utrecht, which under the pretext of religion is now most troubled, made
+stipulations to this effect, when it took his Excellency for governor,
+even more stringent than any others. As for Holland, she never imagined
+that one could ever raise a question on the subject . . . . All good men
+ought to do their best to prevent the enemies to the welfare of these
+Provinces from making profit out of our troubles."
+
+The whole matter he regarded as a struggle between the clergy and the
+civil power for mastery over the state, as an attempt to subject
+provincial autonomy to the central government purely in the interest of
+the priesthood of a particular sect. The remedy he fondly hoped for was
+moderation and union within the Church itself. He could never imagine the
+necessity for this ferocious animosity not only between Christians but
+between two branches of the Reformed Church. He could never be made to
+believe that the Five Points of the Remonstrance had dug an abyss too
+deep and wide ever to be bridged between brethren lately of one faith as
+of one fatherland. He was unceasing in his prayers and appeals for
+"mutual toleration on the subject of predestination." Perhaps the
+bitterness, almost amounting to frenzy, with which abstruse points of
+casuistry were then debated, and which converted differences of opinion
+upon metaphysical divinity into deadly hatred and thirst for blood, is
+already obsolete or on the road to become so. If so, then was Barneveld
+in advance of his age, and it would have been better for the peace of the
+world and the progress of Christianity if more of his contemporaries had
+placed themselves on his level.
+
+He was no theologian, but he believed himself to be a Christian, and he
+certainly was a thoughtful and a humble one. He had not the arrogance to
+pierce behind the veil and assume to read the inscrutable thoughts of the
+Omnipotent. It was a cruel fate that his humility upon subjects which he
+believed to be beyond the scope of human reason should have been tortured
+by his enemies into a crime, and that because he hoped for religious
+toleration he should be accused of treason to the Commonwealth.
+
+"Believe and cause others to believe," he said, "that I am and with the
+grace of God hope to continue an upright patriot as I have proved myself
+to be in these last forty-two years spent in the public service. In the
+matter of differential religious points I remain of the opinions which I
+have held for more than fifty years, and in which I hope to live and die,
+to wit, that a good Christian man ought to believe that he is predestined
+to eternal salvation through God's grace, giving for reasons that he
+through God's grace has a firm belief that his salvation is founded
+purely on God's grace and the expiation of our sins through our Saviour
+Jesus Christ, and that if he should fall into any sins his firm trust is
+that God will not let him perish in them, but mercifully turn him to
+repentance, so that he may continue in the same belief to the last."
+
+These expressions were contained in a letter to Caron with the intention
+doubtless that they should be communicated to the King of Great Britain,
+and it is a curious illustration of the spirit of the age, this picture
+of the leading statesman of a great republic unfolding his religious
+convictions for private inspection by the monarch of an allied nation.
+More than anything else it exemplifies the close commixture of theology,
+politics, and diplomacy in that age, and especially in those two
+countries.
+
+Formerly, as we have seen, the King considered a too curious fathoming of
+divine mysteries as highly reprehensible, particularly for the common
+people. Although he knew more about them than any one else, he avowed
+that even his knowledge in this respect was not perfect. It was matter of
+deep regret with the Advocate that his Majesty had not held to his former
+positions, and that he had disowned his original letters.
+
+"I believe my sentiments thus expressed," he said, "to be in accordance
+with Scripture, and I have always held to them without teasing my brains
+with the precise decrees of reprobation, foreknowledge, or the like, as
+matters above my comprehension. I have always counselled Christian
+moderation. The States of Holland have followed the spirit of his
+Majesty's letters, but our antagonists have rejected them and with
+seditious talk, sermons, and the spreading of infamous libels have
+brought matters to their present condition. There have been excesses on
+the other side as well."
+
+He then made a slight, somewhat shadowy allusion to schemes known to be
+afloat for conferring the sovereignty upon Maurice. We have seen that at
+former periods he had entertained this subject and discussed it privately
+with those who were not only friendly but devoted to the Stadholder, and
+that he had arrived at the conclusion that it would not be for the
+interest of the Prince to encourage the project. Above all he was sternly
+opposed to the idea of attempting to compass it by secret intrigue.
+Should such an arrangement be publicly discussed and legally completed,
+it would not meet with his unconditional opposition.
+
+"The Lord God knows," he said, "whether underneath all these movements
+does not lie the design of the year 1600, well known to you. As for me,
+believe that I am and by God's grace hope to remain, what I always was,
+an upright patriot, a defender of the true Christian religion, of the
+public authority, and of all the power that has been and in future may be
+legally conferred upon his Excellency. Believe that all things said,
+written, or spread to the contrary are falsehoods and calumnies."
+
+He was still in Utrecht, but about to leave for the Hague, with health
+somewhat improved and in better spirits in regard to public matters.
+
+"Although I have entered my seventy-first year," he said, "I trust still
+to be of some service to the Commonwealth and to my friends . . . . Don't
+consider an arrangement of our affairs desperate. I hope for better
+things."
+
+Soon after his return he was waited upon one Sunday evening, late in
+October--being obliged to keep his house on account of continued
+indisposition--by a certain solicitor named Nordlingen and informed that
+the Prince was about to make a sudden visit to Leyden at four o'clock
+next morning.
+
+Barneveld knew that the burgomasters and regents were holding a great
+banquet that night, and that many of them would probably have been
+indulging in potations too deep to leave them fit for serious business.
+The agitation of people's minds at that moment made the visit seem rather
+a critical one, as there would probably be a mob collected to see the
+Stadholder, and he was anxious both in the interest of the Prince and the
+regents and of both religious denominations that no painful incidents
+should occur if it was in his power to prevent them.
+
+He was aware that his son-in-law, Cornelis van der Myle, had been invited
+to the banquet, and that he was wont to carry his wine discreetly. He
+therefore requested Nordlingen to proceed to Leyden that night and seek
+an interview with van der Myle without delay. By thus communicating the
+intelligence of the expected visit to one who, he felt sure, would do his
+best to provide for a respectful and suitable reception of the Prince,
+notwithstanding the exhilarated condition in which the magistrates would
+probably find themselves, the Advocate hoped to prevent any riot or
+tumultuous demonstration of any kind. At least he would act conformably
+to his duty and keep his conscience clear should disasters ensue.
+
+Later in the night he learned that Maurice was going not to Leyden but to
+Delft, and he accordingly despatched a special messenger to arrive before
+dawn at Leyden in order to inform van der Myle of this change in the
+Prince's movements. Nothing seemed simpler or more judicious than these
+precautions on the part of Barneveld. They could not fail, however, to be
+tortured into sedition, conspiracy, and treason.
+
+Towards the end of the year a meeting of the nobles and knights of
+Holland under the leadership of Barneveld was held to discuss the famous
+Sharp Resolution of 4th August and the letters and arguments advanced
+against it by the Stadholder and the council of state. It was unanimously
+resolved by this body, in which they were subsequently followed by a
+large majority of the States of Holland, to maintain that resolution and
+its consequences and to oppose the National Synod. They further resolved
+that a legal provincial synod should be convoked by the States of Holland
+and under their authority and supervision. The object of such synod
+should be to devise "some means of accommodation, mutual toleration, and
+Christian settlement of differences in regard to the Five Points in
+question."
+
+In case such compromise should unfortunately not be arranged, then it was
+resolved to invite to the assembly two or three persons from France, as
+many from England, from Germany, and from Switzerland, to aid in the
+consultations. Should a method of reconciliation and mutual toleration
+still remain undiscovered, then, in consideration that the whole
+Christian world was interested in composing these dissensions, it was
+proposed that a "synodal assembly of all Christendom," a Protestant
+oecumenical council, should in some solemn manner be convoked.
+
+These resolutions and propositions were all brought forward by the
+Advocate, and the draughts of them in his handwriting remain. They are
+the unimpeachable evidences of his earnest desire to put an end to these
+unhappy disputes and disorders in the only way which he considered
+constitutional.
+
+Before the close of the year the States of Holland, in accordance with
+the foregoing advice of the nobles, passed a resolution, the minutes of
+which were drawn up by the hand of the Advocate, and in which they
+persisted in their opposition to the National Synod. They declared by a
+large majority of votes that the Assembly of the States-General without
+the unanimous consent of the Provincial States were not competent
+according to the Union of Utrecht--the fundamental law of the General
+Assembly--to regulate religious affairs, but that this right belonged to
+the separate provinces, each within its own domain.
+
+They further resolved that as they were bound by solemn oath to maintain
+the laws and liberties of Holland, they could not surrender this right to
+the Generality, nor allow it to be usurped by any one, but in order to
+settle the question of the Five Points, the only cause known to them of
+the present disturbances, they were content under: their own authority to
+convoke a provincial synod within three months, at their own cost, and to
+invite the respective provinces, as many of them as thought good, to send
+to this meeting a certain number of pious and learned theologians.
+
+It is difficult to see why the course thus unanimously proposed by the
+nobles of Holland, under guidance of Barneveld, and subsequently by a
+majority of the States of that province, would not have been as expedient
+as it was legal. But we are less concerned with that point now than with
+the illustrations afforded by these long buried documents of the
+patriotism and sagacity of a man than whom no human creature was ever
+more foully slandered.
+
+It will be constantly borne in mind that he regarded this religious
+controversy purely from a political, legal, and constitutional--and not
+from a theological-point of view. He believed that grave danger to the
+Fatherland was lurking under this attempt, by the general government, to
+usurp the power of dictating the religious creed of all the provinces.
+Especially he deplored the evil influence exerted by the King of England
+since his abandonment of the principles announced in his famous letter to
+the States in the year 1613. All that the Advocate struggled for was
+moderation and mutual toleration within the Reformed Church. He felt that
+a wider scheme of forbearance was impracticable. If a dream of general
+religious equality had ever floated before him or before any one in that
+age, he would have felt it to be a dream which would be a reality nowhere
+until centuries should have passed away. Yet that moderation, patience,
+tolerance, and respect for written law paved the road to that wider and
+loftier region can scarcely be doubted.
+
+Carleton, subservient to every changing theological whim of his master,
+was as vehement and as insolent now in enforcing the intolerant views of
+James as he had previously been in supporting the counsels to tolerance
+contained in the original letters of that monarch.
+
+The Ambassador was often at the Advocate's bed-side during his illness
+that summer, enforcing, instructing, denouncing, contradicting. He was
+never weary of fulfilling his duties of tuition, but the patient
+Barneveld; haughty and overbearing as he was often described to be,
+rarely used a harsh or vindictive word regarding him in his letters.
+
+"The ambassador of France," he said, "has been heard before the Assembly
+of the States-General, and has made warm appeals in favour of union and
+mutual toleration as his Majesty of Great Britain so wisely did in his
+letters of 1613 . . . . If his Majesty could only be induced to write
+fresh letters in similar tone, I should venture to hope better fruits
+from them than from this attempt to thrust a national synod upon our
+necks, which many of us hold to be contrary to law, reason, and the Act
+of Union."
+
+So long as it was possible to hope that the action of the States of
+Holland would prevent such a catastrophe, he worked hard to direct them
+in what he deemed the right course.
+
+"Our political and religious differences," he said, "stand between hope
+and fear."
+
+The hope was in the acceptance of the Provincial Synod--the fear lest the
+National Synod should be carried by a minority of the cities of Holland
+combining with a majority of the other Provincial States.
+
+"This would be in violation," he said, "of the so-called Religious Peace,
+the Act of Union, the treaty with the Duke of Anjou, the negotiations of
+the States of Utrecht, and with Prince Maurice in 1590 with cognizance of
+the States-General and those of Holland for, the governorship of that
+province, the custom of the Generality for the last thirty years
+according to which religious matters have always been left to the
+disposition of the States of each province . . . . Carleton is
+strenuously urging this course in his Majesty's name, and I fear that in
+the present state of our humours great troubles will be the result."
+
+The expulsion by an armed mob, in the past year, of a Remonstrant
+preacher at Oudewater, the overpowering of the magistracy and the forcing
+on of illegal elections in that and other cities, had given him and all
+earnest patriots grave cause for apprehension. They were dreading, said
+Barneveld, a course of crimes similar to those which under the Earl of
+Leicester's government had afflicted Leyden and Utrecht.
+
+"Efforts are incessant to make the Remonstrants hateful," he said to
+Caron, "but go forward resolutely and firmly in the conviction that our
+friends here are as animated in their opposition to the Spanish dominion
+now and by God's grace will so remain as they have ever proved themselves
+to be, not only by words, but works. I fear that Mr. Carleton gives too
+much belief to the enviers of our peace and tranquillity under pretext of
+religion, but it is more from ignorance than malice."
+
+Those who have followed the course of the Advocate's correspondence,
+conversation, and actions, as thus far detailed, can judge of the
+gigantic nature of the calumny by which he was now assailed. That this
+man, into every fibre of whose nature was woven undying hostility to
+Spain, as the great foe to national independence and religious liberty
+throughout the continent of Europe, whose every effort, as we have seen,
+during all these years of nominal peace had been to organize a system of
+general European defence against the war now actually begun upon
+Protestantism, should be accused of being a partisan of Spain, a creature
+of Spain, a pensioner of Spain, was enough to make honest men pray that
+the earth might be swallowed up. If such idiotic calumnies could be
+believed, what patriot in the world could not be doubted? Yet they were
+believed. Barneveld was bought by Spanish gold. He had received whole
+boxes full of Spanish pistoles, straight from Brussels! For his part in
+the truce negotiations he had received 120,000 ducats in one lump.
+
+"It was plain," said the greatest man in the country to another great
+man, "that Barneveld and his party are on the road to Spain."
+
+"Then it were well to have proof of it," said the great man.
+
+"Not yet time," was the reply. "We must flatten out a few of them first."
+
+Prince Maurice had told the Princess-Dowager the winter before (8th
+December 1616) that those dissensions would never be decided except by
+use of weapons; and he now mentioned to her that he had received
+information from Brussels, which he in part believed, that the Advocate
+was a stipendiary of Spain. Yet he had once said, to the same Princess
+Louise, of this stipendiary that "the services which the Advocate had
+rendered to the House of Nassau were so great that all the members of
+that house might well look upon him not as their friend but their
+father." Councillor van Maldere, President of the States of Zealand, and
+a confidential friend of Maurice, was going about the Hague saying that
+"one must string up seven or eight Remonstrants on the gallows; then
+there might be some improvement."
+
+As for Arminius and Uytenbogaert, people had long told each other and
+firmly believed it, and were amazed when any incredulity was expressed in
+regard to it, that they were in regular and intimate correspondence with
+the Jesuits, that they had received large sums from Rome, and that both
+had been promised cardinals' hats. That Barneveld and his friend
+Uytenbogaert were regular pensioners of Spain admitted of no dispute
+whatever. "It was as true as the Holy Evangel." The ludicrous chatter had
+been passed over with absolute disdain by the persons attacked, but
+calumny is often a stronger and more lasting power than disdain. It
+proved to be in these cases.
+
+"You have the plague mark on your flesh, oh pope, oh pensioner," said one
+libeller. "There are letters safely preserved to make your process for
+you. Look out for your head. Many have sworn your death, for it is more
+than time that you were out of the world. We shall prove, oh great bribed
+one, that you had the 120,000 little ducats." The preacher Uytenbogaert
+was also said to have had 80,000 ducats for his share. "Go to Brussels,"
+said the pamphleteer; "it all stands clearly written out on the register
+with the names and surnames of all you great bribe-takers."
+
+These were choice morsels from the lampoon of the notary Danckaerts.
+
+"We are tortured more and more with religious differences," wrote
+Barneveld; "with acts of popular violence growing out of them the more
+continuously as they remain unpunished, and with ever increasing
+jealousies and suspicions. The factious libels become daily more numerous
+and more impudent, and no man comes undamaged from the field. I, as a
+reward for all my troubles, labours, and sorrows, have three double
+portions of them. I hope however to overcome all by God's grace and to
+defend my actions with all honourable men so long as right and reason
+have place in the world, as to which many begin to doubt. If his Majesty
+had been pleased to stick to the letters of 1613, we should never have
+got into these difficulties . . . . It were better in my opinion that
+Carleton should be instructed to negotiate in the spirit of those
+epistles rather than to torment us with the National Synod, which will do
+more harm than good."
+
+It is impossible not to notice the simplicity and patience with which the
+Advocate, in the discharge of his duty as minister of foreign affairs,
+kept the leading envoys of the Republic privately informed of events
+which were becoming day by day more dangerous to the public interests and
+his own safety. If ever a perfectly quiet conscience was revealed in the
+correspondence of a statesman, it was to be found in these letters.
+
+Calmly writing to thank Caron for some very satisfactory English beer
+which the Ambassador had been sending him from London, he proceeded to
+speak again of the religious dissensions and their consequences. He sent
+him the letter and remonstrance which he had felt himself obliged to
+make, and which he had been urged by his ever warm and constant friend
+the widow of William the Silent to make on the subject of "the seditious
+libels, full of lies and calumnies got up by conspiracy against him."
+These letters were never published, however, until years after he had
+been in his grave.
+
+"I know that you are displeased with the injustice done me," he said,
+"but I see no improvement. People are determined to force through the
+National Synod. The two last ones did much harm. This will do ten times
+more, so intensely embittered are men's tempers against each other."
+Again he deplored the King's departure from his letters of 1613, by
+adherence to which almost all the troubles would have been spared.
+
+It is curious too to observe the contrast between public opinion in Great
+Britain, including its government, in regard to the constitution of the
+United Provinces at that period of domestic dissensions and incipient
+civil war and the general impressions manifested in the same nation two
+centuries and a half later, on the outbreak of the slavery rebellion, as
+to the constitution of the United States.
+
+The States in arms against the general government on the other side of
+the Atlantic were strangely but not disingenuously assumed to be
+sovereign and independent, and many statesmen and a leading portion of
+the public justified them in their attempt to shake off the central
+government as if it were but a board of agency established by treaty and
+terminable at pleasure of any one of among sovereigns and terminable at
+pleasure of any one of them.
+
+Yet even a superficial glance at the written constitution of the Republic
+showed that its main object was to convert what had been a confederacy
+into an Incorporation; and that the very essence of its renewed political
+existence was an organic law laid down by a whole people in their
+primitive capacity in place of a league banding together a group of
+independent little corporations. The chief attributes of sovereignty--the
+rights of war and peace, of coinage, of holding armies and navies, of
+issuing bills of credit, of foreign relations, of regulating and taxing
+foreign commerce--having been taken from the separate States by the
+united people thereof and bestowed upon a government provided with a
+single executive head, with a supreme tribunal, with a popular house of
+representatives and a senate, and with power to deal directly with the
+life and property of every individual in the land, it was strange indeed
+that the feudal, and in America utterly unmeaning, word Sovereign should
+have been thought an appropriate term for the different States which had
+fused themselves three-quarters of a century before into a Union.
+
+When it is remembered too that the only dissolvent of this Union was the
+intention to perpetuate human slavery, the logic seemed somewhat perverse
+by which the separate sovereignty of the States was deduced from the
+constitution of 1787.
+
+On the other hand, the Union of Utrecht of 1579 was a league of petty
+sovereignties; a compact less binding and more fragile than the Articles
+of Union made almost exactly two hundred years later in America, and the
+worthlessness of which, after the strain of war was over, had been
+demonstrated in the dreary years immediately following the peace of 1783.
+One after another certain Netherland provinces had abjured their
+allegiance to Spain, some of them afterwards relapsing under it, some
+having been conquered by the others, while one of them, Holland, had for
+a long time borne the greater part of the expense and burthen of the war.
+
+"Holland," said the Advocate, "has brought almost all the provinces to
+their liberty. To receive laws from them or from their clerical people
+now is what our State cannot endure. It is against her laws and customs,
+in the enjoyment of which the other provinces and his Excellency as
+Governor of Holland are bound to protect us."
+
+And as the preservation of chattel slavery in the one case seemed a
+legitimate ground for destroying a government which had as definite an
+existence as any government known to mankind, so the resolve to impose a
+single religious creed upon many millions of individuals was held by the
+King and government of Great Britain to be a substantial reason for
+imagining a central sovereignty which had never existed at all. This was
+still more surprising as the right to dispose of ecclesiastical affairs
+and persons had been expressly reserved by the separate provinces in
+perfectly plain language in the Treaty of Union.
+
+"If the King were better informed," said Barneveld, "of our system and
+laws, we should have better hope than now. But one supposes through
+notorious error in foreign countries that the sovereignty stands with the
+States-General which is not the case, except in things which by the
+Articles of Closer Union have been made common to all the provinces,
+while in other matters, as religion, justice, and polity, the sovereignty
+remains with each province, which foreigners seem unable to comprehend."
+
+Early in June, Carleton took his departure for England on leave of
+absence. He received a present from the States of 3000 florins, and went
+over in very ill-humour with Barneveld. "Mr. Ambassador is much offended
+and prejudiced," said the Advocate, "but I know that he will religiously
+carry out the orders of his Majesty. I trust that his Majesty can admit
+different sentiments on predestination and its consequences, and that in
+a kingdom where the supreme civil authority defends religion the system
+of the Puritans will have no foothold."
+
+Certainly James could not be accused of allowing the system of the
+Puritans much foothold in England, but he had made the ingenious
+discovery that Puritanism in Holland was a very different thing from
+Puritanism in the Netherlands.
+
+     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+     Acts of violence which under pretext of religion
+     Adulation for inferiors whom they despise
+     Calumny is often a stronger and more lasting power than disdain
+     Created one child for damnation and another for salvation
+     Depths of credulity men in all ages can sink
+     Devote himself to his gout and to his fair young wife
+     Furious mob set upon the house of Rem Bischop
+     Highborn demagogues in that as in every age affect adulation
+     In this he was much behind his age or before it
+     Logic is rarely the quality on which kings pride themselves
+     Necessity of deferring to powerful sovereigns
+     Not his custom nor that of his councillors to go to bed
+     Partisans wanted not accommodation but victory
+     Puritanism in Holland was a very different thing from England
+     Seemed bent on self-destruction
+     Stand between hope and fear
+     The evils resulting from a confederate system of government
+     To stifle for ever the right of free enquiry
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND
+
+WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR
+
+By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+Life and Death of John of Barneveld, v9, 1618
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+   Maurice revolutionizes the Provinces--Danckaert's libellous Pamphlet
+   --Barneveld's Appeal to the Prince--Barneveld'a Remonstrance to the
+   States--The Stadholder at Amsterdam--The Treaty of Truce nearly
+   expired--King of Spain and Archduke Albert--Scheme for recovering
+   the Provinces--Secret Plot to make Maurice Sovereign.
+
+Early in the year (1618) Maurice set himself about revolutionizing the
+provinces on which he could not yet thoroughly rely. The town of Nymegen
+since its recovery from the Spaniards near the close of the preceding
+century had held its municipal government, as it were, at the option of
+the Prince. During the war he had been, by the terms of surrender,
+empowered to appoint and to change its magistracy at will. No change had
+occurred for many years, but as the government had of late fallen into
+the hands of the Barneveldians, and as Maurice considered the Truce to be
+a continuance of the war, he appeared suddenly, in the city at the head
+of a body of troops and surrounded by his lifeguard. Summoning the whole
+board of magistrates into the townhouse, he gave them all notice to quit,
+disbanding them like a company of mutinous soldiery, and immediately
+afterwards appointed a fresh list of functionaries in their stead.
+
+This done, he proceeded to Arnhem, where the States of Gelderland were in
+session, appeared before that body, and made a brief announcement of the
+revolution which he had so succinctly effected in the most considerable
+town of their province. The Assembly, which seems, like many other
+assemblies at precisely this epoch, to have had an extraordinary capacity
+for yielding to gentle violence, made but little resistance to the
+extreme measures now undertaken by the Stadholder, and not only highly
+applauded the subjugation of Nymegen, but listened with sympathy to his
+arguments against the Waartgelders and in favour of the Synod.
+
+Having accomplished so much by a very brief visit to Gelderland, the
+Prince proceeded, to Overyssel, and had as little difficulty in bringing
+over the wavering minds of that province into orthodoxy and obedience.
+Thus there remained but two provinces out of seven that were still
+"waartgeldered" and refused to be "synodized."
+
+It was rebellion against rebellion. Maurice and his adherents accused the
+States' right party of mutiny against himself and the States-General. The
+States' right party accused the Contra-Remonstrants in the cities of
+mutiny against the lawful sovereignty of each province.
+
+The oath of the soldiery, since the foundation of the Republic, had been
+to maintain obedience and fidelity to the States-General, the Stadholder,
+and the province in which they were garrisoned, and at whose expense they
+were paid. It was impossible to harmonize such conflicting duties and
+doctrines. Theory had done its best and its worst. The time was fast
+approaching, as it always must approach, when fact with its violent besom
+would brush away the fine-spun cobwebs which had been so long
+undisturbed.
+
+"I will grind the Advocate and all his party into fine meal," said the
+Prince on one occasion.
+
+A clever caricature of the time represented a pair of scales hung up in a
+great hall. In the one was a heap of parchments, gold chains, and
+magisterial robes; the whole bundle being marked the "holy right of each
+city." In the other lay a big square, solid, ironclasped volume, marked
+"Institutes of Calvin." Each scale was respectively watched by Gomarus
+and by Arminius. The judges, gowned, furred, and ruffed, were looking
+decorously on, when suddenly the Stadholder, in full military attire, was
+seen rushing into the apartment and flinging his sword into the scale
+with the Institutes.
+
+The civic and legal trumpery was of course made to kick the beam.
+
+Maurice had organized his campaign this year against the Advocate and his
+party as deliberately as he had ever arranged the details of a series of
+battles and sieges against the Spaniard. And he was proving himself as
+consummate master in political strife as in the great science of war.
+
+He no longer made any secret of his conviction that Barneveld was a
+traitor to his country, bought with Spanish gold. There was not the
+slightest proof for these suspicions, but he asserted them roundly. "The
+Advocate is travelling straight to Spain," he said to Count Cuylenborg.
+"But we will see who has got the longest purse."
+
+And as if it had been a part of the campaign, a prearranged diversion to
+the more direct and general assault on the entrenchments of the States'
+right party, a horrible personal onslaught was now made from many
+quarters upon the Advocate. It was an age of pamphleteering, of venomous,
+virulent, unscrupulous libels. And never even in that age had there been
+anything to equal the savage attacks upon this great statesman. It moves
+the gall of an honest man, even after the lapse of two centuries and a
+half, to turn over those long forgotten pages and mark the depths to
+which political and theological party spirit could descend. That human
+creatures can assimilate themselves so closely to the reptile, and to the
+subtle devil within the reptile, when a party end is to be gained is
+enough to make the very name of man a term of reproach.
+
+Day by day appeared pamphlets, each one more poisonous than its
+predecessor. There was hardly a crime that was not laid at the door of
+Barneveld and all his kindred. The man who had borne a matchlock in early
+youth against the foreign tyrant in days when unsuccessful rebellion
+meant martyrdom and torture; who had successfully guided the councils of
+the infant commonwealth at a period when most of his accusers were in
+their cradles, and when mistake was ruin to the republic; he on whose
+strong arm the father of his country had leaned for support; the man who
+had organized a political system out of chaos; who had laid down the
+internal laws, negotiated the great indispensable alliances, directed the
+complicated foreign policy, established the system of national defence,
+presided over the successful financial administration of a state
+struggling out of mutiny into national existence; who had rocked the
+Republic in its cradle and ever borne her in his heart; who had made her
+name beloved at home and honoured and dreaded abroad; who had been the
+first, when the great Taciturn had at last fallen a victim to the
+murderous tyrant of Spain, to place the youthful Maurice in his father's
+place, and to inspire the whole country with sublime courage to persist
+rather than falter in purpose after so deadly a blow; who was as truly
+the founder of the Republic as William had been the author of its
+independence,--was now denounced as a traitor, a pope, a tyrant, a venal
+hucksterer of his country's liberties. His family name, which had long
+been an ancient and knightly one, was defiled and its nobility disputed;
+his father and mother, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, accused
+of every imaginable and unimaginable crime, of murder, incest, robbery,
+bastardy, fraud, forgery, blasphemy. He had received waggon-loads of
+Spanish pistoles; he had been paid 120,000 ducats by Spain for
+negotiating the Truce; he was in secret treaty with Archduke Albert to
+bring 18,000 Spanish mercenaries across the border to defeat the
+machinations of Prince Maurice, destroy his life, or drive him from the
+country; all these foul and bitter charges and a thousand similar ones
+were rained almost daily upon that grey head.
+
+One day the loose sheets of a more than commonly libellous pamphlet were
+picked up in the streets of the Hague and placed in the Advocate's hands.
+It was the work of the drunken notary Danckaerts already mentioned, then
+resident in Amsterdam, and among the papers thus found was a list of
+wealthy merchants of that city who had contributed to the expense of its
+publication. The opposition of Barneveld to the West India Corporation
+could never be forgiven. The Advocate was notified in this production
+that he was soon to be summoned to answer for his crimes. The country was
+weary of him, he was told, and his life was forfeited.
+
+Stung at last beyond endurance by the persistent malice of his enemies,
+he came before the States of Holland for redress. Upon his remonstrance
+the author of this vile libel was summoned to answer before the upper
+tribunal at the Hague for his crime. The city of Amsterdam covered him
+with the shield 'de non evocando,' which had so often in cases of less
+consequence proved of no protective value, and the notary was never
+punished, but on the contrary after a brief lapse of time rewarded as for
+a meritorious action.
+
+Meantime, the States of Holland, by formal act, took the name and honour
+of Barneveld under their immediate protection as a treasure belonging
+specially to themselves. Heavy penalties were denounced upon the authors
+and printers of these libellous attacks, and large rewards offered for
+their detection. Nothing came, however, of such measures.
+
+On the 24th April the Advocate addressed a frank, dignified, and
+conciliatory letter to the Prince. The rapid progress of calumny against
+him had at last alarmed even his steadfast soul, and he thought it best
+to make a last appeal to the justice and to the clear intellect of
+William the Silent's son.
+
+"Gracious Prince," he said, "I observe to my greatest sorrow an entire
+estrangement of your Excellency from me, and I fear lest what was said
+six months since by certain clerical persons and afterwards by some
+politicians concerning your dissatisfaction with me, which until now I
+have not been able to believe, must be true. I declare nevertheless with
+a sincere heart to have never willingly given cause for any such feeling;
+having always been your very faithful servant and with God's help hoping
+as such to die. Ten years ago during the negotiations for the Truce I
+clearly observed the beginning of this estrangement, but your Excellency
+will be graciously pleased to remember that I declared to you at that
+time my upright and sincere intention in these negotiations to promote
+the service of the country and the interests of your Excellency, and that
+I nevertheless offered at the time not only to resign all my functions
+but to leave the country rather than remain in office and in the country
+to the dissatisfaction of your Excellency."
+
+He then rapidly reviewed the causes which had produced the alienation of
+which he complained and the melancholy divisions caused by the want of
+mutual religious toleration in the Provinces; spoke of his efforts to
+foster a spirit of conciliation on the dread subject of predestination,
+and referred to the letter of the King of Great Britain deprecating
+discussion and schism on this subject, and urging that those favourable
+to the views of the Remonstrants ought not to be persecuted. Referring to
+the intimate relations which Uytenbogaert had so long enjoyed with the
+Prince, the Advocate alluded to the difficulty he had in believing that
+his Excellency intended to act in opposition to the efforts of the States
+of Holland in the cause of mutual toleration, to the manifest detriment
+of the country and of many of its best and truest patriots and the
+greater number of the magistrates in all the cities.
+
+He reminded the Prince that all attempts to accommodate these fearful
+quarrels had been frustrated, and that on his departure the previous year
+to Utrecht on account of his health he had again offered to resign all
+his offices and to leave Holland altogether rather than find himself in
+perpetual opposition to his Excellency.
+
+"I begged you in such case," he said, "to lend your hand to the procuring
+for me an honourable discharge from My Lords the States, but your
+Excellency declared that you could in no wise approve such a step and
+gave me hope that some means of accommodating the dissensions would yet
+be proposed."
+
+"I went then to Vianen, being much indisposed; thence I repaired to
+Utrecht to consult my old friend Doctor Saulo Saul, in whose hands I
+remained six weeks, not being able, as I hoped, to pass my seventieth
+birthday on the 24th September last in my birthplace, the city of
+Amersfoort. All this time I heard not one single word or proposal of
+accommodation. On the contrary it was determined that by a majority vote,
+a thing never heard of before, it was intended against the solemn
+resolves of the States of Holland, of Utrecht, and of Overyssel to bring
+these religious differences before the Assembly of My Lords the
+States-General, a proceeding directly in the teeth of the Act of Union
+and other treaties, and before a Synod which people called National, and
+that meantime every effort was making to discredit all those who stood up
+for the laws of these Provinces and to make them odious and despicable in
+the eyes of the common people.
+
+"Especially it was I that was thus made the object of hatred and contempt
+in their eyes. Hundreds of lies and calumnies, circulated in the form of
+libels, seditious pamphlets, and lampoons, compelled me to return from
+Utrecht to the Hague. Since that time I have repeatedly offered my
+services to your Excellency for the promotion of mutual accommodation and
+reconciliation of differences, but without success."
+
+He then alluded to the publication with which the country was ringing,
+'The Necessary and Living Discourse of a Spanish Counsellor', and which
+was attributed to his former confidential friend, now become his
+deadliest foe, ex-Ambassador Francis Aerssens, and warned the Prince that
+if he chose, which God forbid, to follow the advice of that seditious
+libel, nothing but ruin to the beloved Fatherland and its lovers, to the
+princely house of Orange-Nassau and to the Christian religion could be
+the issue. "The Spanish government could desire no better counsel," he
+said, "than this which these fellows give you; to encourage distrust and
+estrangement between your Excellency and the nobles, the cities, and the
+magistrates of the land and to propose high and haughty imaginings which
+are easy enough to write, but most difficult to practise, and which can
+only enure to the advantage of Spain. Therefore most respectfully I beg
+your Excellency not to believe these fellows, but to reject their
+counsels . . . . Among them are many malignant hypocrites and ambitious
+men who are seeking their own profit in these changes of government--many
+utterly ragged and beggarly fellows and many infamous traitors coming
+from the provinces which have remained under the dominion of the
+Spaniard, and who are filled with revenge, envy, and jealousy at the
+greater prosperity and bloom of these independent States than they find
+at home.
+
+"I fear," he said in conclusion, "that I have troubled your Excellency
+too long, but to the fulfilment of my duty and discharge of my conscience
+I could not be more brief. It saddens me deeply that in recompense for my
+long and manifold services I am attacked by so many calumnious, lying,
+seditious, and fraudulent libels, and that these indecencies find their
+pretext and their food in the evil disposition of your Excellency towards
+me. And although for one-and-thirty years long I have been able to live
+down such things with silence, well-doing, and truth, still do I now find
+myself compelled in this my advanced old age and infirmity to make some
+utterances in defence of myself and those belonging to me, however much
+against my heart and inclinations."
+
+He ended by enclosing a copy of the solemn state paper which he was about
+to lay before the States of Holland in defence of his honour, and
+subscribed himself the lifelong and faithful servant of the Prince.
+
+The Remonstrance to the States contained a summary review of the
+political events of his life, which was indeed nothing more nor less than
+the history of his country and almost of Europe itself during that
+period, broadly and vividly sketched with the hand of a master. It was
+published at once and strengthened the affection of his friends and the
+wrath of his enemies. It is not necessary to our purpose to reproduce or
+even analyse the document, the main facts and opinions contained in it
+being already familiar to the reader. The frankness however with which,
+in reply to the charges so profusely brought against him of having grown
+rich by extortion, treason, and corruption, of having gorged himself with
+plunder at home and bribery from the enemy, of being the great pensioner
+of Europe and the Marshal d'Ancre of the Netherlands--he alluded to the
+exact condition of his private affairs and the growth and sources of his
+revenue, giving, as it were, a kind of schedule of his property, has in
+it something half humorous, half touching in its simplicity.
+
+He set forth the very slender salaries attached to his high offices of
+Advocate of Holland, Keeper of the Seals, and other functions. He
+answered the charge that he always had at his disposition 120,000 florins
+to bribe foreign agents withal by saying that his whole allowance for
+extraordinary expenses and trouble in maintaining his diplomatic and
+internal correspondence was exactly 500 florins yearly. He alluded to the
+slanders circulated as to his wealth and its sources by those who envied
+him for his position and hated him for his services.
+
+"But I beg you to believe, My Lords," he continued, "that my property is
+neither so great nor so small as some people represent it to be.
+
+"In the year '75 I married my wife," he said. "I was pleased with her
+person. I was likewise pleased with the dowry which was promptly paid
+over to me, with firm expectation of increase and betterment . . . . I ac
+knowledge that forty-three years ago my wife and myself had got together
+so much of real and personal property that we could live honourably upon
+it. I had at that time as good pay and practice as any advocate in the
+courts which brought me in a good 4000 florins a year; there being but
+eight advocates practising at the time, of whom I was certainly not the
+one least employed. In the beginning of the year '77 I came into the
+service of the city of Rotterdam as 'Pensionary. Upon my salary from that
+town I was enabled to support my family, having then but two children.
+Now I can clearly prove that between the years 1577 and 1616 inclusive I
+have inherited in my own right or that of my wife, from our relatives,
+for ourselves and our children by lawful succession, more than 400
+Holland morgens of land (about 800 acres), more than 2000 florins yearly
+of redeemable rents, a good house in the city of Delft, some houses in
+the open country, and several thousand florins in ready money. I have
+likewise reclaimed in the course of the past forty years out of the water
+and swamps by dyking more than an equal number of acres to those
+inherited, and have bought and sold property during the same period to
+the value of 800,000 florins; having sometimes bought 100,000 florins'
+worth and sold 60,000 of it for 160,000, and so on."
+
+It was evident that the thrifty Advocate during his long life had
+understood how to turn over his money, and it was not necessary to
+imagine "waggon-loads of Spanish pistoles" and bribes on a gigantic scale
+from the hereditary enemy in order to account for a reasonable opulence
+on his part.
+
+"I have had nothing to do with trade," he continued, "it having been the
+custom of my ancestors to risk no money except where the plough goes. In
+the great East India Company however, which with four years of hard work,
+public and private, I have helped establish, in order to inflict damage
+on the Spaniards and Portuguese, I have adventured somewhat more than
+5000 florins . . . . Now even if my condition be reasonably good, I think
+no one has reason to envy me. Nevertheless I have said it in your
+Lordships' Assembly, and I repeat it solemnly on this occasion, that I
+have pondered the state of my affairs during my recent illness and found
+that in order to leave my children unencumbered estates I must sell
+property to the value of 60,000 or 70,000 florins. This I would rather do
+than leave the charge to my children. That I should have got thus
+behindhand through bad management, I beg your Highnesses not to believe.
+But I have inherited, with the succession of four persons whose only heir
+I was and with that of others to whom I was co-heir, many burthens as
+well. I have bought property with encumbrances, and I have dyked and
+bettered several estates with borrowed money. Now should it please your
+Lordships to institute a census and valuation of the property of your
+subjects, I for one should be very well pleased. For I know full well
+that those who in the estimates of capital in the year 1599 rated
+themselves at 50,000 or 60,000 florins now may boast of having twice as
+much property as I have. Yet in that year out of patriotism I placed
+myself on the list of those liable for the very highest contributions,
+being assessed on a property of 200,000 florins."
+
+The Advocate alluded with haughty contempt to the notorious lies
+circulated by his libellers in regard to his lineage, as if the vast
+services and unquestioned abilities of such a statesman would not have
+illustrated the obscurest origin. But as he happened to be of ancient and
+honourable descent, he chose to vindicate his position in that regard.
+
+"I was born in the city of Amersfoort," he said, "by the father's side an
+Oldenbarneveld; an old and noble race, from generation to generation
+steadfast and true; who have been duly summoned for many hundred years to
+the assembly of the nobles of their province as they are to this day. By
+my mother's side I am sprung from the ancient and knightly family of
+Amersfoort, which for three or four hundred years has been known as
+foremost among the nobles of Utrecht in all state affairs and as landed
+proprietors."
+
+It is only for the sake of opening these domestic and private lights upon
+an historical character whose life was so pre-eminently and almost
+exclusively a public one that we have drawn some attention to this
+stately defence made by the Advocate of his birth, life, and services to
+the State. The public portions of the state paper belong exclusively to
+history, and have already been sufficiently detailed.
+
+The letter to Prince Maurice was delivered into his hands by Cornelis van
+der Myle, son-in-law of Barneveld.
+
+No reply to it was ever sent, but several days afterwards the Stadholder
+called from his open window to van der Myle, who happened to be passing
+by. He then informed him that he neither admitted the premises nor the
+conclusion of the Advocate's letter, saying that many things set down in
+it were false. He furthermore told him a story of a certain old man who,
+having in his youth invented many things and told them often for truth,
+believed them when he came to old age to be actually true and was ever
+ready to stake his salvation upon them. Whereupon he shut the window and
+left van der Myle to make such application of the parable as he thought
+proper, vouchsafing no further answer to Barneveld's communication.
+
+Dudley Carleton related the anecdote to his government with much glee,
+but it may be doubted whether this bold way of giving the lie to a
+venerable statesman through his son-in-law would have been accounted as
+triumphant argumentation anywhere out of a barrack.
+
+As for the Remonstrance to the States of Holland, although most
+respectfully received in that assembly except by the five opposition
+cities, its immediate effect on the public was to bring down a fresh
+"snow storm"--to use the expression of a contemporary--of pamphlets,
+libels, caricatures, and broadsheets upon the head of the Advocate. In
+every bookseller's and print shop window in all the cities of the
+country, the fallen statesman was represented in all possible ludicrous,
+contemptible, and hateful shapes, while hags and blind beggars about the
+streets screeched filthy and cursing ballads against him, even at his
+very doors.
+
+The effect of energetic, uncompromising calumny has rarely been more
+strikingly illustrated than in the case of this statesman. Blackened
+daily all over by a thousand trowels, the purest and noblest character
+must have been defiled, and it is no wonder that the incrustation upon
+the Advocate's fame should have lasted for two centuries and a half. It
+may perhaps endure for as many more: Not even the vile Marshal d'Ancre,
+who had so recently perished, was more the mark of obloquy in a country
+which he had dishonoured, flouted, and picked to the bone than was
+Barneveld in a commonwealth which he had almost created and had served
+faithfully from youth to old age. It was even the fashion to compare him
+with Concini in order to heighten the wrath of the public, as if any
+parallel between the ignoble, foreign paramour of a stupid and sensual
+queen, and the great statesman, patriot, and jurist of whom civilization
+will be always proud, could ever enter any but an idiot's brain.
+
+Meantime the Stadholder, who had so successfully handled the Assembly of
+Gelderland and Overyssel, now sailed across the Zuiderzee from Kampen to
+Amsterdam. On his approach to the stately northern Venice, standing full
+of life and commercial bustle upon its vast submerged forest of Norwegian
+pines, he was met by a fleet of yachts and escorted through the water
+gates of the into the city.
+
+Here an immense assemblage of vessels of every class, from the humble
+gondola to the bulky East Indianian and the first-rate ship of war, gaily
+bannered with the Orange colours and thronged from deck to topmast by
+enthusiastic multitudes, was waiting to receive their beloved stadholder.
+A deafening cannonade saluted him on his approach. The Prince was
+escorted to the Square or Dam, where on a high scaffolding covered with
+blue velvet in front of the stately mediaeval town-hall the burgomasters
+and board of magistrates in their robes of office were waiting to receive
+him. The strains of that most inspiriting and suggestive of national
+melodies, the 'Wilhelmus van Nassouwen,' rang through the air, and when
+they were silent, the chief magistrate poured forth a very eloquent and
+tedious oration, and concluded by presenting him with a large orange in
+solid gold; Maurice having succeeded to the principality a few months
+before on the death of his half-brother Philip William.
+
+The "Blooming in Love," as one of the Chambers of "Rhetoric" in which
+the hard-handed but half-artistic mechanics and shopkeepers of the
+Netherlands loved to disport themselves was called, then exhibited upon
+an opposite scaffold a magnificent representation of Jupiter astride upon
+an eagle and banding down to the Stadholder as if from the clouds that
+same principality. Nothing could be neater or more mythological.
+
+The Prince and his escort, sitting in the windows of the town-hall, the
+square beneath being covered with 3000 or 4000 burgher militia in full
+uniform, with orange plumes in their hats and orange scarves on their
+breasts, saw still other sights. A gorgeous procession set forth by the
+"Netherlandish Academy," another chamber of rhetoric, and filled with
+those emblematic impersonations so dear to the hearts of Netherlanders,
+had been sweeping through all the canals and along the splendid quays of
+the city. The Maid of Holland, twenty feet high, led the van, followed by
+the counterfeit presentment of each of her six sisters. An orange tree
+full of flowers and fruit was conspicuous in one barge, while in another,
+strangely and lugubriously enough, lay the murdered William the Silent in
+the arms of his wife and surrounded by his weeping sons and daughters all
+attired in white satin.
+
+In the evening the Netherland Academy, to improve the general hilarity,
+and as if believing exhibitions of murder the most appropriate means of
+welcoming the Prince, invited him to a scenic representation of the
+assassination of Count Florence V. of Holland by Gerrit van Velsen and
+other nobles. There seemed no especial reason for the selection, unless
+perhaps the local one; one of the perpetrators of this crime against an
+ancient predecessor of William the Silent in the sovereignty of Holland
+having been a former lord proprietor of Amsterdam and the adjacent
+territories, Gysbrecht van Amatel.
+
+Maurice returned to the Hague. Five of the seven provinces were entirely
+his own. Utrecht too was already wavering, while there could be no doubt
+of the warm allegiance to himself of the important commercial metropolis
+of Holland, the only province in which Barneveld's influence was still
+paramount.
+
+Owing to the watchfulness and distrust of Barneveld, which had never
+faltered, Spain had not secured the entire control of the disputed
+duchies, but she had at least secured the head of a venerated saint. "The
+bargain is completed for the head of the glorious Saint Lawrence, which
+you know I so much desire," wrote Philip triumphantly to the Archduke
+Albert. He had, however, not got it for nothing.
+
+The Abbot of Glamart in Julich, then in possession of that treasure, had
+stipulated before delivering it that if at any time the heretics or other
+enemies should destroy the monastery his Majesty would establish them in
+Spanish Flanders and give them the same revenues as they now enjoyed in
+Julich. Count Herman van den Berg was to give a guarantee to that effect.
+
+Meantime the long controversy in the duchies having tacitly come to a
+standstill upon the basis of 'uti possidetis,' the Spanish government had
+leisure in the midst of their preparation for the general crusade upon
+European heresy to observe and enjoy the internal religious dissensions
+in their revolted provinces. Although they had concluded the convention
+with them as with countries over which they had no pretensions, they had
+never at heart allowed more virtue to the conjunction "as," which really
+contained the essence of the treaty, than grammatically belonged to it.
+Spain still chose to regard the independence of the Seven Provinces as a
+pleasant fiction to be dispelled when, the truce having expired by its
+own limitation, she should resume, as she fully meant to do, her
+sovereignty over all the seventeen Netherlands, the United as well as the
+obedient. Thus at any rate the question of state rights or central
+sovereignty would be settled by a very summary process. The Spanish
+ambassador was wroth, as may well be supposed, when the agent of the
+rebel provinces received in London the rank, title, and recognition of
+ambassador. Gondemar at least refused to acknowledge Noel de Caron as his
+diplomatic equal or even as his colleague, and was vehement in his
+protestations on the subject. But James, much as he dreaded the Spanish
+envoy and fawned upon his master, was not besotted enough to comply with
+these demands at the expense of his most powerful ally, the Republic of
+the Netherlands. The Spanish king however declared his ambassador's
+proceedings to be in exact accordance with his instructions. He was
+sorry, he said, if the affair had caused discontent to the King of Great
+Britain; he intended in all respects to maintain the Treaty of Truce of
+which his Majesty had been one of the guarantors, but as that treaty had
+but a few more years to run, after which he should be reinstated in his
+former right of sovereignty over all the Netherlands, he entirely
+justified the conduct of Count Gondemar.
+
+It may well be conceived that, as the years passed by, as the period of
+the Truce grew nearer and the religious disputes became every day more
+envenomed, the government at Madrid should look on the tumultuous scene
+with saturnine satisfaction. There was little doubt now, they thought,
+that the Provinces, sick of their rebellion and that fancied independence
+which had led them into a whirlpool of political and religious misery,
+and convinced of their incompetence to govern themselves, would be only
+too happy to seek the forgiving arms of their lawful sovereign. Above all
+they must have learned that their great heresy had carried its
+chastisement with it, that within something they called a Reformed Church
+other heresies had been developed which demanded condign punishment at
+the hands of that new Church, and that there could be neither rest for
+them in this world nor salvation in the next except by returning to the
+bosom of their ancient mother.
+
+Now was the time, so it was thought, to throw forward a strong force of
+Jesuits as skirmishers into the Provinces by whom the way would be opened
+for the reconquest of the whole territory.
+
+"By the advices coming to us continually from thence," wrote the King of
+Spain to Archduke Albert, "we understand that the disquiets and
+differences continue in Holland on matters relating to their sects, and
+that from this has resulted the conversion of many to the Catholic
+religion. So it has been taken into consideration whether it would not be
+expedient that some fathers of the company of Jesuits be sent secretly
+from Rome to Holland, who should negotiate concerning the conversion of
+that people. Before taking a resolution, I have thought best to give an
+account of this matter to your Highness. I should be glad if you would
+inform me what priests are going to Holland, what fruits they yield, and
+what can be done for the continuance of their labours. Please to advise
+me very particularly together with any suggestions that may occur to you
+in this matter."
+
+The Archduke, who was nearer the scene, was not so sure that the old
+religion was making such progress as his royal nephew or those who spoke
+in his name believed. At any rate, if it were not rapidly gaining ground,
+it would be neither for want of discord among the Protestants nor for
+lack of Jesuits to profit by it.
+
+"I do not understand," said he in reply, "nor is it generally considered
+certain that from the differences and disturbances that the Hollanders
+are having among themselves there has resulted the conversion of any of
+them to our blessed Catholic faith, because their disputes are of certain
+points concerning which there are different opinions within their sect.
+There has always been a goodly number of priests here, the greater part
+of whom belong to the Company. They are very diligent and fervent, and
+the Catholics derive much comfort from them. To send more of them would
+do more harm than good. It might be found out, and then they would
+perhaps be driven out of Holland or even chastised. So it seems better to
+leave things as they are for the present."
+
+The Spanish government was not discouraged however, but was pricking up
+its ears anew at strange communications it was receiving from the very
+bosom of the council of state in the Netherlands. This body, as will be
+remembered, had been much opposed to Barneveld and to the policy pursued
+under his leadership by the States of Holland. Some of its members were
+secretly Catholic and still more secretly disposed to effect a revolution
+in the government, the object of which should be to fuse the United
+Provinces with the obedient Netherlands in a single independent monarchy
+to be placed under the sceptre of the son of Philip III.
+
+A paper containing the outlines of this scheme had been sent to Spain,
+and the King at once forwarded it in cipher to the Archduke at Brussels
+for his opinion and co-operation.
+
+"You will see," he said, "the plan which a certain person zealous for the
+public good has proposed for reducing the Netherlanders to my obedience.
+. . . . You will please advise with Count Frederic van den Berg and let
+me know with much particularity and profound secrecy what is thought,
+what is occurring, and the form in which this matter ought to be
+negotiated, and the proper way to make it march."
+
+Unquestionably the paper was of grave importance. It informed the King of
+Spain that some principal personages in the United Netherlands, members
+of the council of state, were of opinion that if his Majesty or Archduke
+Albert should propose peace, it could be accomplished at that moment more
+easily than ever before. They had arrived at the conviction that no
+assistance was to be obtained from the King of France, who was too much
+weakened by tumults and sedition at home, while nothing good could be
+expected from the King of England. The greater part of the Province of
+Gelderland, they said, with all Friesland, Utrecht, Groningen, and
+Overyssel were inclined to a permanent peace. Being all of them frontier
+provinces, they were constantly exposed to the brunt of hostilities.
+Besides this, the war expenses alone would now be more than 3,000,000
+florins a year. Thus the people were kept perpetually harassed, and
+although evil-intentioned persons approved these burthens under the
+pretence that such heavy taxation served to free them from the tyranny of
+Spain, those of sense and quality reproved them and knew the contrary to
+be true. "Many here know," continued these traitors in the heart of the
+state council, "how good it would be for the people of the Netherlands to
+have a prince, and those having this desire being on the frontier are
+determined to accept the son of your Majesty for their ruler." The
+conditions of the proposed arrangement were to be that the Prince with
+his successors who were thus to possess all the Netherlands were to be
+independent sovereigns not subject in any way to the crown of Spain, and
+that the great governments and dignities of the country were to remain in
+the hands then holding them.
+
+This last condition was obviously inserted in the plan for the special
+benefit of Prince Maurice and Count Lewis, although there is not an atom
+of evidence that they had ever heard of the intrigue or doubt that, if
+they had, they would have signally chastised its guilty authors.
+
+It was further stated that the Catholics having in each town a church and
+free exercise of their religion would soon be in a great majority. Thus
+the political and religious counter-revolution would be triumphantly
+accomplished.
+
+It was proposed that the management of the business should be entrusted
+to some gentleman of the country possessing property there who "under
+pretext of the public good should make people comprehend what a great
+thing it would be if they could obtain this favour from the Spanish King,
+thus extricating themselves from so many calamities and miseries, and
+obtaining free traffic and a prince of their own." It would be necessary
+for the King and Archduke to write many letters and promise great rewards
+to persons who might otherwise embarrass the good work.
+
+The plot was an ingenious one. There seemed in the opinion of these
+conspirators in the state council but one great obstacle to its success.
+It should be kept absolutely concealed from the States of Holland. The
+great stipendiary of Spain, John of Barneveld, whose coffers were filled
+with Spanish pistoles, whose name and surname might be read by all men in
+the account-books at Brussels heading the register of mighty
+bribe-takers, the man who was howled at in a thousand lampoons as a
+traitor ever ready to sell his country, whom even Prince Maurice "partly
+believed" to be the pensionary of Philip, must not hear a whisper of this
+scheme to restore the Republic to Spanish control and place it under the
+sceptre of a Spanish prince.
+
+The States of Holland at that moment and so long as he was a member of
+the body were Barneveld and Barneveld only; thinking his thoughts,
+speaking with his tongue, writing with his pen. Of this neither friend
+nor foe ever expressed a doubt. Indeed it was one of the staple
+accusations against him.
+
+Yet this paper in which the Spanish king in confidential cipher and
+profound secrecy communicated to Archduke Albert his hopes and his
+schemes for recovering the revolted provinces as a kingdom for his son
+contained these words of caution.
+
+"The States of Holland and Zealand will be opposed to the plan," it said.
+"If the treaty come to the knowledge of the States and Council of Holland
+before it has been acted upon by the five frontier provinces the whole
+plan will be demolished."
+
+Such was the opinion entertained by Philip himself of the man who was
+supposed to be his stipendiary. I am not aware that this paper has ever
+been alluded to in any document or treatise private or public from the
+day of its date to this hour. It certainly has never been published, but
+it lies deciphered in the Archives of the Kingdom at Brussels, and is
+alone sufficient to put to shame the slanderers of the Advocate's
+loyalty.
+
+Yet let it be remembered that in this very summer exactly at the moment
+when these intrigues were going on between the King of Spain and the
+class of men most opposed to Barneveld, the accusations against his
+fidelity were loudest and rifest.
+
+Before the Stadholder had so suddenly slipped down to Brielle in order to
+secure that important stronghold for the Contra-Remonstrant party,
+reports had been carefully strewn among the people that the Advocate was
+about to deliver that place and other fortresses to Spain.
+
+Brielle, Flushing, Rammekens, the very cautionary towns and keys to the
+country which he had so recently and in such masterly manner delivered
+from the grasp of the hereditary ally he was now about to surrender to
+the ancient enemy.
+
+The Spaniards were already on the sea, it was said. Had it not been for
+his Excellency's watchfulness and promptitude, they would already under
+guidance of Barneveld and his crew have mastered the city of Brielle.
+Flushing too through Barneveld's advice and connivance was open at a
+particular point, in order that the Spaniards, who had their eye upon it,
+might conveniently enter and take possession of the place. The air was
+full of wild rumours to this effect, and already the humbler classes who
+sided with the Stadholder saw in him the saviour of the country from the
+treason of the Advocate and the renewed tyranny of Spain.
+
+The Prince made no such pretence, but simply took possession of the
+fortress in order to be beforehand with the Waartgelders. The
+Contra-Remonstrants in Brielle had desired that "men should see who had
+the hardest fists," and it would certainly have been difficult to find
+harder ones than those of the hero of Nieuwpoort.
+
+Besides the Jesuits coming in so skilfully to triumph over the warring
+sects of Calvinists, there were other engineers on whom the Spanish
+government relied to effect the reconquest of the Netherlands. Especially
+it was an object to wreak vengeance on Holland, that head and front of
+the revolt, both for its persistence in rebellion and for the immense
+prosperity and progress by which that rebellion had been rewarded.
+Holland had grown fat and strong, while the obedient Netherlands were
+withered to the marrow of their bones. But there was a practical person
+then resident in Spain to whom the Netherlands were well known, to whom
+indeed everything was well known, who had laid before the King a
+magnificent scheme for destroying the commerce and with it the very
+existence of Holland to the great advantage of the Spanish finances and
+of the Spanish Netherlands. Philip of course laid it before the Archduke
+as usual, that he might ponder it well and afterwards, if approved,
+direct its execution.
+
+The practical person set forth in an elaborate memoir that the Hollanders
+were making rapid progress in commerce, arts, and manufactures, while the
+obedient provinces were sinking as swiftly into decay. The Spanish
+Netherlands were almost entirely shut off from the sea, the rivers
+Scheldt and Meuse being hardly navigable for them on account of the
+control of those waters by Holland. The Dutch were attracting to their
+dominions all artisans, navigators, and traders. Despising all other
+nations and giving them the law, they had ruined the obedient provinces.
+Ostend, Nieuwpoort, Dunkerk were wasting away, and ought to be restored.
+
+"I have profoundly studied forty years long the subjects of commerce and
+navigation," said the practical person, "and I have succeeded in
+penetrating the secrets and acquiring, as it were, universal
+knowledge--let me not be suspected of boasting--of the whole discovered
+world and of the ocean. I have been assisted by study of the best works
+of geography and history, by my own labours, and by those of my late
+father, a man of illustrious genius and heroical conceptions and very
+zealous in the Catholic faith."
+
+The modest and practical son of an illustrious but anonymous father, then
+coming to the point, said it would be the easiest thing in the world to
+direct the course of the Scheldt into an entirely new channel through
+Spanish Flanders to the sea. Thus the Dutch ports and forts which had
+been constructed with such magnificence and at such vast expense would be
+left high and dry; the Spaniards would build new ones in Flanders, and
+thus control the whole navigation and deprive the Hollanders of that
+empire of the sea which they now so proudly arrogated. This scheme was
+much simpler to carry out than the vulgar might suppose, and, when
+accomplished, it would destroy the commerce, navigation, and fisheries of
+the Hollanders, throwing it all into the hands of the Archdukes. This
+would cause such ruin, poverty, and tumults everywhere that all would be
+changed. The Republic of the United States would annihilate itself and
+fall to pieces; the religious dissensions, the war of one sect with
+another, and the jealousy of the House of Nassau, suspected of plans
+hostile to popular liberties, finishing the work of destruction. "Then
+the Republic," said the man of universal science, warming at sight of the
+picture he was painting, "laden with debt and steeped in poverty, will
+fall to the ground of its own weight, and thus debilitated will crawl
+humbly to place itself in the paternal hands of the illustrious house of
+Austria."
+
+It would be better, he thought, to set about the work, before the
+expiration of the Truce. At any rate, the preparation for it, or the mere
+threat of it, would ensure a renewal of that treaty on juster terms. It
+was most important too to begin at once the construction of a port on the
+coast of Flanders, looking to the north.
+
+There was a position, he said, without naming it, in which whole navies
+could ride in safety, secure from all tempests, beyond the reach of the
+Hollanders, open at all times to traffic to and from England, France,
+Spain, Norway, Sweden, Russia--a perfectly free commerce, beyond the
+reach of any rights or duties claimed or levied by the insolent republic.
+In this port would assemble all the navigators of the country, and it
+would become in time of war a terror to the Hollanders, English, and all
+northern peoples. In order to attract, protect, and preserve these
+navigators and this commerce, many great public edifices must be built,
+together with splendid streets of houses and impregnable fortifications.
+It should be a walled and stately city, and its name should be
+Philipopolis. If these simple projects, so easy of execution, pleased his
+Majesty, the practical person was ready to explain them in all their
+details.
+
+His Majesty was enchanted with the glowing picture, but before quite
+deciding on carrying the scheme into execution thought it best to consult
+the Archduke.
+
+The reply of Albert has not been preserved. It was probably not
+enthusiastic, and the man who without boasting had declared himself to
+know everything was never commissioned to convert his schemes into
+realities. That magnificent walled city, Philipopolis, with its gorgeous
+streets and bristling fortresses, remained unbuilt, the Scheldt has
+placidly flowed through its old channel to the sea from that day to this,
+and the Republic remained in possession of the unexampled foreign trade
+with which rebellion had enriched it.
+
+These various intrigues and projects show plainly enough however the
+encouragement given to the enemies of the United Provinces and of
+Protestantism everywhere by these disastrous internal dissensions. But
+yesterday and the Republic led by Barneveld in council and Maurice of
+Nassau in the field stood at the head of the great army of resistance to
+the general crusade organized by Spain and Rome against all unbelievers.
+And now that the war was absolutely beginning in Bohemia, the Republic
+was falling upon its own sword instead of smiting with it the universal
+foe.
+
+It was not the King of Spain alone that cast longing eyes on the fair
+territory of that commonwealth which the unparalleled tyranny of his
+father had driven to renounce his sceptre. Both in the Netherlands and
+France, among the extreme orthodox party, there were secret schemes, to
+which Maurice was not privy, to raise Maurice to the sovereignty of the
+Provinces. Other conspirators with a wider scope and more treasonable
+design were disposed to surrender their country to the dominion of
+France, stipulating of course large rewards and offices for themselves
+and the vice-royalty of what should then be the French Netherlands to
+Maurice.
+
+The schemes were wild enough perhaps, but their very existence, which is
+undoubted, is another proof, if more proof were wanted, of the lamentable
+tendency, in times of civil and religious dissension, of political
+passion to burn out the very first principles of patriotism.
+
+It is also important, on account of the direct influence exerted by these
+intrigues upon subsequent events of the gravest character, to throw a
+beam of light on matters which were thought to have been shrouded for
+ever in impenetrable darkness.
+
+Langerac, the States' Ambassador in Paris, was the very reverse of his
+predecessor, the wily, unscrupulous, and accomplished Francis Aerssens.
+The envoys of the Republic were rarely dull, but Langerac was a
+simpleton. They were renowned for political experience, skill,
+familiarity with foreign languages, knowledge of literature, history, and
+public law; but he was ignorant, spoke French very imperfectly, at a
+court where not a human being could address him in his own tongue, had
+never been employed in diplomacy or in high office of any kind, and could
+carry but small personal weight at a post where of all others the
+representative of the great republic should have commanded deference both
+for his own qualities and for the majesty of his government. At a period
+when France was left without a master or a guide the Dutch ambassador,
+under a becoming show of profound respect, might really have governed the
+country so far as regarded at least the all important relations which
+bound the two nations together. But Langerac was a mere picker-up of
+trifles, a newsmonger who wrote a despatch to-day with information which
+a despatch was written on the morrow to contradict, while in itself
+conveying additional intelligence absolutely certain to be falsified soon
+afterwards. The Emperor of Germany had gone mad; Prince Maurice had been
+assassinated in the Hague, a fact which his correspondents, the
+States-General, might be supposed already to know, if it were one; there
+had been a revolution in the royal bed-chamber; the Spanish cook of the
+young queen had arrived from Madrid; the Duke of Nevers was behaving very
+oddly at Vienna; such communications, and others equally startling, were
+the staple of his correspondence.
+
+Still he was honest enough, very mild, perfectly docile to Barneveld,
+dependent upon his guidance, and fervently attached to that statesman so
+long as his wheel was going up the hill. Moreover, his industry in
+obtaining information and his passion for imparting it made it probable
+that nothing very momentous would be neglected should it be laid before
+him, but that his masters, and especially the Advocate, would be enabled
+to judge for themselves as to the attention due to it.
+
+"With this you will be apprised of some very high and weighty matters,"
+he wrote privately and in cipher to Barneveld, "which you will make use
+of according to your great wisdom and forethought for the country's
+service."
+
+He requested that the matter might also be confided to M. van der Myle,
+that he might assist his father-in-law, so overburdened with business, in
+the task of deciphering the communication. He then stated that he had
+been "very earnestly informed three days before by M. du Agean"--member
+of the privy council of France--"that it had recently come to the King's
+ears, and his Majesty knew it to be authentic, that there was a secret
+and very dangerous conspiracy in Holland of persons belonging to the
+Reformed religion in which others were also mixed. This party held very
+earnest and very secret correspondence with the factious portion of the
+Contra-Remonstrants both in the Netherlands and France, seeking under
+pretext of the religious dissensions or by means of them to confer the
+sovereignty upon Prince Maurice by general consent of the
+Contra-Remonstrants. Their object was also to strengthen and augment the
+force of the same religious party in France, to which end the Duc de
+Bouillon and M. de Chatillon were very earnestly co-operating. Langerac
+had already been informed by Chatillon that the Contra-Remonstrants had
+determined to make a public declaration against the Remonstrants, and
+come to an open separation from them.
+
+"Others propose however," said the Ambassador, "that the King himself
+should use the occasion to seize the sovereignty of the United Provinces
+for himself and to appoint Prince Maurice viceroy, giving him in marriage
+Madame Henriette of France." The object of this movement would be to
+frustrate the plots of the Contra-Remonstrants, who were known to be
+passionately hostile to the King and to France, and who had been
+constantly traversing the negotiations of M. du Maurier. There was a
+disposition to send a special and solemn embassy to the States, but it
+was feared that the British king would at once do the same, to the
+immense disadvantage of the Remonstrants. "M. de Barneveld," said the
+envoy, "is deeply sympathized with here and commiserated. The Chancellor
+has repeatedly requested me to present to you his very sincere and very
+hearty respects, exhorting you to continue in your manly steadfastness
+and courage." He also assured the Advocate that the French ambassador, M.
+du Maurier, enjoyed the entire confidence of his government, and of the
+principal members of the council, and that the King, although
+contemplating, as we have seen, the seizure of the sovereignty of the
+country, was most amicably disposed towards it, and so soon as the peace
+of Savoy was settled "had something very good for it in his mind."
+Whether the something very good was this very design to deprive it of
+independence, the Ambassador did not state. He however recommended the
+use of sundry small presents at the French court--especially to Madame de
+Luynes, wife of the new favourite of Lewis since the death of Concini, in
+which he had aided, now rising rapidly to consideration, and to Madame du
+Agean--and asked to be supplied with funds accordingly. By these means he
+thought it probable that at least the payment to the States of the long
+arrears of the French subsidy might be secured.
+
+Three weeks later, returning to the subject, the Ambassador reported
+another conversation with M. du Agean. That politician assured him, "with
+high protestations," as a perfectly certain fact that a Frenchman duly
+qualified had arrived in Paris from Holland who had been in communication
+not only with him but with several of the most confidential members of
+the privy council of France. This duly qualified gentleman had been
+secretly commissioned to say that in opinion of the conspirators already
+indicated the occasion was exactly offered by these religious dissensions
+in the Netherlands for bringing the whole country under the obedience of
+the King. This would be done with perfect ease if he would
+only be willing to favour a little the one party, that of the
+Contra-Remonstrants, and promise his Excellency "perfect and perpetual
+authority in the government with other compensations."
+
+The proposition, said du Agean, had been rejected by the privy
+councillors with a declaration that they would not mix themselves up with
+any factions, nor assist any party, but that they would gladly work with
+the government for the accommodation of these difficulties and
+differences in the Provinces.
+
+"I send you all this nakedly," concluded Langerac, "exactly as it has
+been communicated to me, having always answered according to my duty and
+with a view by negotiating with these persons to discover the intentions
+as well of one side as the other."
+
+The Advocate was not profoundly impressed by these revelations. He was
+too experienced a statesman to doubt that in times when civil and
+religious passion was running high there was never lack of fishers in
+troubled waters, and that if a body of conspirators could secure a
+handsome compensation by selling their country to a foreign prince, they
+would always be ready to do it.
+
+But although believed by Maurice to be himself a stipendiary of Spain, he
+was above suspecting the Prince of any share in the low and stupid
+intrigue which du Agean had imagined or disclosed. That the Stadholder
+was ambitious of greater power, he hardly doubted, but that he was
+seeking to acquire it by such corrupt and circuitous means, he did not
+dream. He confidentially communicated the plot as in duty bound to some
+members of the States, and had the Prince been accused in any
+conversation or statement of being privy to the scheme, he would have
+thought himself bound to mention it to him. The story came to the ears of
+Maurice however, and helped to feed his wrath against the Advocate, as if
+he were responsible for a plot, if plot it were, which had been concocted
+by his own deadliest enemies. The Prince wrote a letter alluding to this
+communication of Langerac and giving much alarm to that functionary. He
+thought his despatches must have been intercepted and proposed in future
+to write always by special courier. Barneveld thought that unnecessary
+except when there were more important matters than those appeared to him
+to be and requiring more haste.
+
+"The letter of his Excellency," said he to the Ambassador, "is caused in
+my opinion by the fact that some of the deputies to this assembly to whom
+I secretly imparted your letter or its substance did not rightly
+comprehend or report it. You did not say that his Excellency had any such
+design or project, but that it had been said that the Contra-Remonstrants
+were entertaining such a scheme. I would have shown the letter to him
+myself, but I thought it not fair, for good reasons, to make M. du Agean
+known as the informant. I do not think it amiss for you to write yourself
+to his Excellency and tell him what is said, but whether it would be
+proper to give up the name of your author, I think doubtful. At all
+events one must consult about it. We live in a strange world, and one
+knows not whom to trust."
+
+He instructed the Ambassador to enquire into the foundation of these
+statements of du Agean and send advices by every occasion of this affair
+and others of equal interest. He was however much more occupied with
+securing the goodwill of the French government, which he no more
+suspected of tampering in these schemes against the independence of the
+Republic than he did Maurice himself. He relied and he had reason to rely
+on their steady good offices in the cause of moderation and
+reconciliation. "We are not yet brought to the necessary and much desired
+unity," he said, "but we do not despair, hoping that his Majesty's
+efforts through M. du Maurier, both privately and publicly, will do much
+good. Be assured that they are very agreeable to all rightly disposed
+people . . . . My trust is that God the Lord will give us a happy issue
+and save this country from perdition." He approved of the presents to the
+two ladies as suggested by Langerac if by so doing the payment of the
+arrearages could be furthered. He was still hopeful and confident in the
+justice of his cause and the purity of his conscience. "Aerssens is
+crowing like a cock," he said, "but the truth will surely prevail."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+   A Deputation from Utrecht to Maurice--The Fair at Utrecht--Maurice
+   and the States' Deputies at Utrecht--Ogle refuses to act in
+   Opposition to the States--The Stadholder disbands the Waartgelders--
+   The Prince appoints forty Magistrates--The States formally disband
+   the Waartgelders.
+
+The eventful midsummer had arrived. The lime-tree blossoms were fragrant
+in the leafy bowers overshadowing the beautiful little rural capital of
+the Commonwealth. The anniversary of the Nieuwpoort victory, July 2, had
+come and gone, and the Stadholder was known to be resolved that his
+political campaign this year should be as victorious as that memorable
+military one of eighteen years before.
+
+Before the dog-days should begin to rage, the fierce heats of theological
+and political passion were to wax daily more and more intense.
+
+The party at Utrecht in favour of a compromise and in awe of the
+Stadholder sent a deputation to the Hague with the express but secret
+purpose of conferring with Maurice. They were eight in number, three of
+whom, including Gillis van Ledenberg, lodged at the house of Daniel
+Tressel, first clerk of the States-General.
+
+The leaders of the Barneveld party, aware of the purport of this mission
+and determined to frustrate it, contrived a meeting between the Utrecht
+commissioners and Grotius, Hoogerbeets, de Haan, and de Lange at
+Tressel's house.
+
+Grotius was spokesman. Maurice had accused the States of Holland of
+mutiny and rebellion, and the distinguished Pensionary of Rotterdam now
+retorted the charges of mutiny, disobedience, and mischief-making upon
+those who, under the mask of religion, were attempting to violate the
+sovereignty of the States, the privileges and laws of the province, the
+authority of the magistrates, and to subject them to the power of
+others. To prevent such a catastrophe many cities had enlisted
+Waartgelders. By this means they had held such mutineers to their duty,
+as had been seen at Leyden, Haarlem, and other places. The States of
+Utrecht had secured themselves in the same way. But the mischiefmakers
+and the ill-disposed had been seeking everywhere to counteract these
+wholesome measures and to bring about a general disbanding of these
+troops. This it was necessary to resist with spirit. It was the very
+foundation of the provinces' sovereignty, to maintain which the public
+means must be employed. It was in vain to drive the foe out of the
+country if one could not remain in safety within one's own doors. They
+had heard with sorrow that Utrecht was thinking of cashiering its troops,
+and the speaker proceeded therefore to urge with all the eloquence he was
+master of the necessity of pausing before taking so fatal a step.
+
+The deputies of Utrecht answered by pleading the great pecuniary burthen
+which the maintenance of the mercenaries imposed upon that province, and
+complained that there was no one to come to their assistance, exposed as
+they were to a sudden and overwhelming attack from many quarters. The
+States-General had not only written but sent commissioners to Utrecht
+insisting on the disbandment. They could plainly see the displeasure of
+the Prince. It was a very different affair in Holland, but the States of
+Utrecht found it necessary of two evils to choose the least.
+
+They had therefore instructed their commissioners to request the Prince
+to remove the foreign garrison from their capital and to send the old
+companies of native militia in their place, to be in the pay of the
+episcopate. In this case the States would agree to disband the new
+levies.
+
+Grotius in reply again warned the commissioners against communicating
+with Maurice according to their instructions, intimated that the native
+militia on which they were proposing to rely might have been debauched,
+and he held out hopes that perhaps the States of Utrecht might derive
+some relief from certain financial measures now contemplated in Holland.
+
+The Utrechters resolved to wait at least several days before opening the
+subject of their mission to the Prince. Meantime Ledenberg made a rough
+draft of a report of what had occurred between them and Grotius and his
+colleagues which it was resolved to lay secretly before the States of
+Utrecht. The Hollanders hoped that they had at last persuaded the
+commissioners to maintain the Waartgelders.
+
+The States of Holland now passed a solemn resolution to the effect that
+these new levies had been made to secure municipal order and maintain the
+laws from subversion by civil tumults. If this object could be obtained
+by other means, if the Stadholder were willing to remove garrisons of
+foreign mercenaries on whom there could be no reliance, and supply their
+place with native troops both in Holland and Utrecht, an arrangement
+could be made for disbanding the Waartgelders.
+
+Barneveld, at the head of thirty deputies from the nobles and cities,
+waited upon Maurice and verbally communicated to him this resolution. He
+made a cold and unsatisfactory reply, although it seems to have been
+understood that by according twenty companies of native troops he might
+have contented both Holland and Utrecht.
+
+Ledenberg and his colleagues took their departure from the Hague without
+communicating their message to Maurice. Soon afterwards the
+States-General appointed a commission to Utrecht with the Stadholder at
+the head of it.
+
+The States of Holland appointed another with Grotius as its chairman.
+
+On the 25th July Grotius and Pensionary Hoogerbeets with two colleagues
+arrived in Utrecht.
+
+Gillis van Ledenberg was there to receive them. A tall, handsome,
+bald-headed, well-featured, mild, gentlemanlike man was this secretary of
+the Utrecht assembly, and certainly not aware, while passing to and fro
+on such half diplomatic missions between two sovereign assemblies, that
+he was committing high-treason. He might well imagine however, should
+Maurice discover that it was he who had prevented the commissioners from
+conferring with him as instructed, that it would go hard with him.
+
+Ledenberg forthwith introduced Grotius and his committee to the Assembly
+at Utrecht.
+
+While these great personages were thus holding solemn and secret council,
+another and still greater personage came upon the scene.
+
+The Stadholder with the deputation from the States-General arrived at
+Utrecht.
+
+Evidently the threads of this political drama were converging to a
+catastrophe, and it might prove a tragical one.
+
+Meantime all looked merry enough in the old episcopal city. There were
+few towns in Lower or in Upper Germany more elegant and imposing than
+Utrecht. Situate on the slender and feeble channel of the ancient Rhine
+as it falters languidly to the sea, surrounded by trim gardens and
+orchards, and embowered in groves of beeches and limetrees, with busy
+canals fringed with poplars, lined with solid quays, and crossed by
+innumerable bridges; with the stately brick tower of St. Martin's rising
+to a daring height above one of the most magnificent Gothic cathedrals in
+the Netherlands; this seat of the Anglo-Saxon Willebrord, who eight
+hundred years before had preached Christianity to the Frisians, and had
+founded that long line of hard-fighting, indomitable bishops, obstinately
+contesting for centuries the possession of the swamps and pastures about
+them with counts, kings, and emperors, was still worthy of its history
+and its position.
+
+It was here too that sixty-one years before the famous Articles of Union
+were signed. By that fundamental treaty of the Confederacy, the Provinces
+agreed to remain eternally united as if they were but one province, to
+make no war nor peace save by unanimous consent, while on lesser matters
+a majority should rule; to admit both Catholics and Protestants to the
+Union provided they obeyed its Articles and conducted themselves as good
+patriots, and expressly declared that no province or city should
+interfere with another in the matter of divine worship.
+
+From this memorable compact, so enduring a landmark in the history of
+human freedom, and distinguished by such breadth of view for the times
+both in religion and politics, the city had gained the title of cradle of
+liberty: 'Cunabula libertatis'.
+
+Was it still to deserve the name? At that particular moment the mass of
+the population was comparatively indifferent to the terrible questions
+pending. It was the kermis or annual fair, and all the world was keeping
+holiday in Utrecht. The pedlars and itinerant merchants from all the
+cities and provinces had brought their wares jewellery and crockery,
+ribbons and laces, ploughs and harrows, carriages and horses, cows and
+sheep, cheeses and butter firkins, doublets and petticoats, guns and
+pistols, everything that could serve the city and country-side for months
+to come--and displayed them in temporary booths or on the ground, in
+every street and along every canal. The town was one vast bazaar. The
+peasant-women from the country, with their gold and silver tiaras and the
+year's rent of a comfortable farm in their earrings and necklaces, and
+the sturdy Frisian peasants, many of whom had borne their matchlocks in
+the great wars which had lasted through their own and their fathers'
+lifetime, trudged through the city, enjoying the blessings of peace.
+Bands of music and merry-go-rounds in all the open places and squares;
+open-air bakeries of pancakes and waffles; theatrical exhibitions,
+raree-shows, jugglers, and mountebanks at every corner--all these
+phenomena which had been at every kermis for centuries, and were to
+repeat themselves for centuries afterwards, now enlivened the atmosphere
+of the grey, episcopal city. Pasted against the walls of public edifices
+were the most recent placards and counter-placards of the States-General
+and the States of Utrecht on the great subject of religious schisms and
+popular tumults. In the shop-windows and on the bookstalls of
+Contra-Remonstrant tradesmen, now becoming more and more defiant as the
+last allies of Holland, the States of Utrecht, were gradually losing
+courage, were seen the freshest ballads and caricatures against the
+Advocate. Here an engraving represented him seated at table with Grotius,
+Hoogerbeets, and others, discussing the National Synod, while a flap of
+the picture being lifted put the head of the Duke of Alva on the legs of
+Barneveld, his companions being transformed in similar manner into
+Spanish priests and cardinals assembled at the terrible Council of
+Blood-with rows of Protestant martyrs burning and hanging in the
+distance. Another print showed Prince Maurice and the States-General
+shaking the leading statesmen of the Commonwealth in a mighty sieve
+through which came tumbling head foremost to perdition the hated Advocate
+and his abettors. Another showed the Arminians as a row of crest-fallen
+cocks rained upon by the wrath of the Stadholder--Arminians by a
+detestable pun being converted into "Arme haenen" or "Poor cocks." One
+represented the Pope and King of Spain blowing thousands of ducats out of
+a golden bellows into the lap of the Advocate, who was holding up his
+official robes to receive them, or whole carriage-loads of Arminians
+starting off bag and baggage on the road to Rome, with Lucifer in the
+perspective waiting to give them a warm welcome in his own dominions; and
+so on, and so on. Moving through the throng, with iron calque on their
+heads and halberd in hand, were groups of Waartgelders scowling fiercely
+at many popular demonstrations such as they had been enlisted to
+suppress, but while off duty concealing outward symptoms of wrath which
+in many instances perhaps would have been far from genuine.
+
+For although these mercenaries knew that the States of Holland, who were
+responsible for the pay of the regular troops then in Utrecht, authorized
+them to obey no orders save from the local authorities, yet it was
+becoming a grave question for the Waartgelders whether their own wages
+were perfectly safe, a circumstance which made them susceptible to the
+atmosphere of Contra-Remonstrantism which was steadily enwrapping the
+whole country. A still graver question was whether such resistance as
+they could offer to the renowned Stadholder, whose name was magic to
+every soldier's heart not only in his own land but throughout
+Christendom, would not be like parrying a lance's thrust with a bulrush.
+In truth the senior captain of the Waartgelders, Harteveld by name, had
+privately informed the leaders of the Barneveld party in Utrecht that he
+would not draw his sword against Prince Maurice and the States-General.
+"Who asks you to do so?" said some of the deputies, while Ledenberg on
+the other hand flatly accused him of cowardice. For this affront the
+Captain had vowed revenge.
+
+And in the midst of this scene of jollity and confusion, that midsummer
+night, entered the stern Stadholder with his fellow commissioners; the
+feeble plans for shutting the gates upon him not having been carried into
+effect.
+
+"You hardly expected such a guest at your fair," said he to the
+magistrates, with a grim smile on his face as who should say, "And what
+do you think of me now I have came?"
+
+Meantime the secret conference of Grotius and colleagues with the States
+of Utrecht proceeded. As a provisional measure, Sir John Ogle, commander
+of the forces paid by Holland, had been warned as to where his obedience
+was due. It had likewise been intimated that the guard should be doubled
+at the Amersfoort gate, and a watch set on the river Lek above and below
+the city in order to prevent fresh troops of the States-General from
+being introduced by surprise.
+
+These precautions had been suggested a year before, as we have seen, in a
+private autograph letter from Barneveld to Secretary Ledenberg.
+
+Sir John Ogle had flatly refused to act in opposition to the Stadholder
+and the States-General, whom he recognized as his lawful superiors and
+masters, and he warned Ledenberg and his companions as to the perilous
+nature of the course which they were pursuing. Great was the indignation
+of the Utrechters and the Holland commissioners in consequence.
+
+Grotius in his speech enlarged on the possibility of violence being used
+by the Stadholder, while some of the members of the Assembly likewise
+thought it likely that he would smite the gates open by force. Grotius,
+when reproved afterwards for such strong language towards Prince Maurice,
+said that true Hollanders were no courtiers, but were wont to call
+everything by its right name.
+
+He stated in strong language the regret felt by Holland that a majority
+of the States of Utrecht had determined to disband the Waartgelders which
+had been constitutionally enlisted according to the right of each
+province under the 1st Article of the Union of Utrecht to protect itself
+and its laws.
+
+Next day there were conferences between Maurice and the States of Utrecht
+and between him and the Holland deputies. The Stadholder calmly demanded
+the disbandment and the Synod. The Hollanders spoke of securing first the
+persons and rights of the magistracy.
+
+"The magistrates are to be protected," said Maurice, "but we must first
+know how they are going to govern. People have tried to introduce five
+false points into the Divine worship. People have tried to turn me out of
+the stadholdership and to drive me from the country. But I have taken my
+measures. I know well what I am about. I have got five provinces on my
+side, and six cities of Holland will send deputies to Utrecht to sustain
+me here."
+
+The Hollanders protested that there was no design whatever, so far as
+they knew, against his princely dignity or person. All were ready to
+recognize his rank and services by every means in their power. But it was
+desirable by conciliation and compromise, not by stern decree, to arrange
+these religious and political differences.
+
+The Stadholder replied by again insisting on the Synod. "As for the
+Waartgelders," he continued, "they are worse than Spanish fortresses.
+They must away."
+
+After a little further conversation in this vein the Prince grew more
+excited.
+
+"Everything is the fault of the Advocate," he cried.
+
+"If Barneveld were dead," replied Grotius, "all the rest of us would
+still deem ourselves bound to maintain the laws. People seem to despise
+Holland and to wish to subject it to the other provinces."
+
+"On the contrary," cried the Prince, "it is the Advocate who wishes to
+make Holland the States-General."
+
+Maurice was tired of argument. There had been much ale-house talk some
+three months before by a certain blusterous gentleman called van Ostrum
+about the necessity of keeping the Stadholder in check. "If the Prince
+should undertake," said this pot-valiant hero, "to attack any of the
+cities of Utrecht or Holland with the hard hand, it is settled to station
+8000 or 10,000 soldiers in convenient places. Then we shall say to the
+Prince, if you don't leave us alone, we shall make an arrangement with
+the Archduke of Austria and resume obedience to him. We can make such a
+treaty with him as will give us religious freedom and save us from
+tyranny of any kind. I don't say this for myself, but have heard it on
+good authority from very eminent persons."
+
+This talk had floated through the air to the Stadholder.
+
+What evidence could be more conclusive of a deep design on the part of
+Barneveld to sell the Republic to the Archduke and drive Maurice into
+exile? Had not Esquire van Ostrum solemnly declared it at a tavern table?
+And although he had mentioned no names, could the "eminent personages"
+thus cited at second hand be anybody but the Advocate?
+
+Three nights after his last conference with the Hollanders, Maurice
+quietly ordered a force of regular troops in Utrecht to be under arms at
+half past three o'clock next morning. About 1000 infantry, including
+companies of Ernest of Nassau's command at Arnhem and of Brederode's from
+Vianen, besides a portion of the regular garrison of the place, had
+accordingly been assembled without beat of drum, before half past three
+in the morning, and were now drawn up on the market-place or Neu. At
+break of day the Prince himself appeared on horseback surrounded by his
+staff on the Neu or Neude, a large, long, irregular square into which the
+seven or eight principal streets and thoroughfares of the town emptied
+themselves. It was adorned by public buildings and other handsome
+edifices, and the tall steeple of St. Martin's with its beautiful
+open-work spire, lighted with the first rays of the midsummer sun, looked
+tranquilly down upon the scene.
+
+Each of the entrances to the square had been securely guarded by
+Maurice's orders, and cannon planted to command all the streets. A single
+company of the famous Waartgelders was stationed in the Neu or near it.
+The Prince rode calmly towards them and ordered them to lay down their
+arms. They obeyed without a murmur. He then sent through the city to
+summon all the other companies of Waartgelders to the Neu. This was done
+with perfect promptness, and in a short space of time the whole body of
+mercenaries, nearly 1000 in number, had laid down their arms at the feet
+of the Prince.
+
+The snaphances and halberds being then neatly stacked in the square, the
+Stadholder went home to his early breakfast. There was an end to those
+mercenaries thenceforth and for ever. The faint and sickly resistance to
+the authority of Maurice offered at Utrecht was attempted nowhere else.
+
+For days there had been vague but fearful expectations of a "blood bath,"
+of street battles, rioting, and plunder. Yet the Stadholder with the
+consummate art which characterized all his military manoeuvres had so
+admirably carried out his measure that not a shot was fired, not a blow
+given, not a single burgher disturbed in his peaceful slumbers. When the
+population had taken off their nightcaps, they woke to find the awful
+bugbear removed which had so long been appalling them. The Waartgelders
+were numbered with the terrors of the past, and not a cat had mewed at
+their disappearance.
+
+Charter-books, parchments, 13th Articles, Barneveld's teeth, Arminian
+forts, flowery orations of Grotius, tavern talk of van Ostrum, city
+immunities, States' rights, provincial laws, Waartgelders and all--the
+martial Stadholder, with the orange plume in his hat and the sword of
+Nieuwpoort on his thigh, strode through them as easily as through the
+whirligigs and mountebanks, the wades and fritters, encumbering the
+streets of Utrecht on the night of his arrival.
+
+Secretary Ledenberg and other leading members of the States had escaped
+the night before. Grotius and his colleagues also took a precipitate
+departure. As they drove out of town in the twilight, they met the
+deputies of the six opposition cities of Holland just arriving in their
+coach from the Hague. Had they tarried an hour longer, they would have
+found themselves safely in prison.
+
+Four days afterwards the Stadholder at the head of his body-guard
+appeared at the town-house. His halberdmen tramped up the broad
+staircase, heralding his arrival to the assembled magistracy. He
+announced his intention of changing the whole board then and there. The
+process was summary. The forty members were required to supply forty
+other names, and the Prince added twenty more. From the hundred
+candidates thus furnished the Prince appointed forty magistrates such as
+suited himself. It is needless to say that but few of the old bench
+remained, and that those few were devoted to the Synod, the
+States-General, and the Stadholder. He furthermore announced that these
+new magistrates were to hold office for life, whereas the board had
+previously been changed every year. The cathedral church was at once
+assigned for the use of the Contra-Remonstrants.
+
+This process was soon to be repeated throughout the two insubordinate
+provinces Utrecht and Holland.
+
+The Prince was accused of aiming at the sovereignty of the whole country,
+and one of his grief's against the Advocate was that he had begged the
+Princess-Widow, Louise de Coligny, to warn her son-in-law of the dangers
+of such ambition. But so long as an individual, sword in hand, could
+exercise such unlimited sway over the whole municipal, and provincial
+organization of the Commonwealth, it mattered but little whether he was
+called King or Kaiser, Doge or Stadholder. Sovereign he was for the time
+being at least, while courteously acknowledging the States-General as his
+sovereign.
+
+Less than three weeks afterwards the States-General issued a decree
+formally disbanding the Waartgelders; an almost superfluous edict, as
+they had almost ceased to exist, and there were none to resist the
+measure. Grotius recommended complete acquiescence. Barneveld's soul
+could no longer animate with courage a whole people.
+
+The invitations which had already in the month of June been prepared for
+the Synod to meet in the city of Dortor Dordtrecht-were now issued. The
+States of Holland sent back the notification unopened, deeming it an
+unwarrantable invasion of their rights that an assembly resisted by a
+large majority of their body should be convoked in a city on their own
+territory. But this was before the disbandment of the Waartgelders and
+the general change of magistracies had been effected.
+
+Earnest consultations were now held as to the possibility of devising
+some means of compromise; of providing that the decisions of the Synod
+should not be considered binding until after having been ratified by the
+separate states. In the opinion of Barneveld they were within a few
+hours' work of a favourable result when their deliberations were
+interrupted by a startling event.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+   Fruitless Interview between Barneveld and Maurice--The Advocate,
+   warned of his Danger, resolves to remain at the Hague--Arrest of
+   Barneveld, of Qrotius, and of Hoogerbeets--The States-General assume
+   the Responsibility in a "Billet"--The States of Holland protest--
+   The Advocate's Letter to his Family--Audience of Boississe--
+   Mischief-making of Aerssens--The French Ambassadors intercede for
+   Barneveld--The King of England opposes their Efforts--Langerac's
+   Treachery to the Advocate--Maurice continues his Changes in the
+   Magistracy throughout the Country--Vote of Thanks by the States of
+   Holland.
+
+The Advocate, having done what he believed to be his duty, and exhausted
+himself in efforts to defend ancient law and to procure moderation and
+mutual toleration in religion, was disposed to acquiesce in the
+inevitable. His letters giving official and private information of those
+grave events were neither vindictive nor vehement.
+
+"I send you the last declaration of My Lords of Holland," he said to
+Caron, "in regard to the National Synod, with the counter-declaration of
+Dordtrecht and the other five cities. Yesterday was begun the debate
+about cashiering the enrolled soldiers called Waartgelders. To-day the
+late M. van Kereburg was buried."
+
+Nothing could be calmer than his tone. After the Waartgelders had been
+disbanded, Utrecht revolutionized by main force, the National Synod
+decided upon, and the process of changing the municipal magistracies
+everywhere in the interest of Contra-Remonstrants begun, he continued to
+urge moderation and respect for law. Even now, although discouraged, he
+was not despondent, and was disposed to make the best even of the Synod.
+
+He wished at this supreme moment to have a personal interview with the
+Prince in order to devise some means for calming the universal agitation
+and effecting, if possible, a reconciliation among conflicting passions
+and warring sects. He had stood at the side of Maurice and of Maurice's
+great father in darker hours even than these. They had turned to him on
+all trying and tragical occasions and had never found his courage
+wavering or his judgment at fault. "Not a friend to the House of Nassau,
+but a father," thus had Maurice with his own lips described the Advocate
+to the widow of William the Silent. Incapable of an unpatriotic thought,
+animated by sincere desire to avert evil and procure moderate action,
+Barneveld saw no reason whatever why, despite all that had been said and
+done, he should not once more hold council with the Prince. He had a
+conversation accordingly with Count Lewis, who had always honoured the
+Advocate while differing with him on the religious question. The
+Stadholder of Friesland, one of the foremost men of his day in military
+and scientific affairs, in administrative ability and philanthropic
+instincts, and, in a family perhaps the most renowned in Europe for
+heroic qualities and achievements, hardly second to any who had borne the
+name, was in favour of the proposed interview, spoke immediately to
+Prince Maurice about it, but was not hopeful as to its results. He knew
+his cousin well and felt that he was at that moment resentful, perhaps
+implacably so, against the whole Remonstrant party and especially against
+their great leader.
+
+Count Lewis was small of stature, but dignified, not to say pompous, in
+demeanour. His style of writing to one of lower social rank than himself
+was lofty, almost regal, and full of old world formality.
+
+"Noble, severe, right worshipful, highly learned and discreet, special
+good friend," he wrote to Barneveld; "we have spoken to his Excellency
+concerning the expediency of what you requested of us this forenoon. We
+find however that his Excellency is not to be moved to entertain any
+other measure than the National Synod which he has himself proposed in
+person to all the provinces, to the furtherance of which he has made so
+many exertions, and which has already been announced by the
+States-General.
+
+"We will see by what opportunity his Excellency will appoint the
+interview, and so far as lies in us you may rely on our good offices. We
+could not answer sooner as the French ambassadors had audience of us this
+forenoon and we were visiting his Excellency in the afternoon. Wishing
+your worship good evening, we are your very good friend."
+
+Next day Count William wrote again. "We have taken occasion," he said,
+"to inform his Excellency that you were inclined to enter into
+communication with him in regard to an accommodation of the religious
+difficulties and to the cashiering of the Waartgelders. He answered that
+he could accept no change in the matter of the National Synod, but
+nevertheless would be at your disposal whenever your worship should be
+pleased to come to him."
+
+Two days afterwards Barneveld made his appearance at the apartments of
+the Stadholder. The two great men on whom the fabric of the Republic had
+so long rested stood face to face once more.
+
+The Advocate, with long grey beard and stern blue eye, haggard with
+illness and anxiety, tall but bent with age, leaning on his staff and
+wrapped in black velvet cloak--an imposing magisterial figure; the
+florid, plethoric Prince in brown doublet, big russet boots, narrow ruff,
+and shabby felt hat with its string of diamonds, with hand clutched on
+swordhilt, and eyes full of angry menace, the very type of the high-born,
+imperious soldier--thus they surveyed each other as men, once friends,
+between whom a gulf had opened.
+
+Barneveld sought to convince the Prince that in the proceedings at
+Utrecht, founded as they were on strict adherence to the laws and
+traditions of the Provinces, no disrespect had been intended to him, no
+invasion of his constitutional rights, and that on his part his lifelong
+devotion to the House of Nassau had suffered no change. He repeated his
+usual incontrovertible arguments against the Synod, as illegal and
+directly tending to subject the magistracy to the priesthood, a course of
+things which eight-and-twenty years before had nearly brought destruction
+on the country and led both the Prince and himself to captivity in a
+foreign land.
+
+The Prince sternly replied in very few words that the National Synod was
+a settled matter, that he would never draw back from his position, and
+could not do so without singular disservice to the country and to his own
+disreputation. He expressed his displeasure at the particular oath
+exacted from the Waartgelders. It diminished his lawful authority and the
+respect due to him, and might be used per indirectum to the oppression of
+those of the religion which he had sworn to maintain. His brow grew black
+when he spoke of the proceedings at Utrecht, which he denounced as a
+conspiracy against his own person and the constitution of the country.
+
+Barneveld used in vain the powers of argument by which he had guided
+kings and republics, cabinets and assemblies, during so many years. His
+eloquence fell powerless upon the iron taciturnity of the Stadholder.
+Maurice had expressed his determination and had no other argument to
+sustain it but his usual exasperating silence.
+
+The interview ended as hopelessly as Count Lewis William had anticipated,
+and the Prince and the Advocate separated to meet no more on earth.
+
+"You have doubtless heard already," wrote Barneveld to the ambassador in
+London, "of all that has been passing here and in Utrecht. One must pray
+to God that everything may prosper to his honour and the welfare of the
+country. They are resolved to go through with the National Synod, the
+government of Utrecht after the change made in it having consented with
+the rest. I hope that his Majesty, according to your statement, will send
+some good, learned, and peace-loving personages here, giving them
+wholesome instructions to help bring our affairs into Christian unity,
+accommodation, and love, by which his Majesty and these Provinces would
+be best served."
+
+Were these the words of a baffled conspirator and traitor? Were they
+uttered to produce an effect upon public opinion and avert a merited
+condemnation by all good men? There is not in them a syllable of
+reproach, of anger, of despair. And let it be remembered that they were
+not written for the public at all. They were never known to the public,
+hardly heard of either by the Advocate's enemies or friends, save the one
+to whom they were addressed and the monarch to whom that friend was
+accredited. They were not contained in official despatches, but in
+private, confidential outpourings to a trusted political and personal
+associate of many years. From the day they were written until this hour
+they have never been printed, and for centuries perhaps not read.
+
+He proceeded to explain what he considered to be the law in the
+Netherlands with regard to military allegiance. It is not probable that
+there was in the country a more competent expounder of it; and defective
+and even absurd as such a system was, it had carried the Provinces
+successfully through a great war, and a better method for changing it
+might have been found among so law-loving and conservative a people as
+the Netherlanders than brute force.
+
+"Information has apparently been sent to England," he said, "that My
+Lords of Holland through their commissioners in Utrecht dictated to the
+soldiery standing at their charges something that was unreasonable. The
+truth is that the States of Holland, as many of them as were assembled,
+understanding that great haste was made to send his Excellency and some
+deputies from the other provinces to Utrecht, while the members of the
+Utrecht assembly were gone to report these difficulties to their
+constituents and get fresh instructions from them, wishing that the
+return of those members should be waited for and that the Assembly of
+Holland might also be complete--a request which was refused--sent a
+committee to Utrecht, as the matter brooked no delay, to give information
+to the States of that province of what was passing here and to offer
+their good offices.
+
+"They sent letters also to his Excellency to move him to reasonable
+accommodation without taking extreme measures in opposition to those
+resolutions of the States of Utrecht which his Excellency had promised to
+conform with and to cause to be maintained by all officers and soldiers.
+Should his Excellency make difficulty in this, the commissioners were
+instructed to declare to him that they were ordered to warn the colonels
+and captains standing in the payment of Holland, by letter and word of
+mouth, that they were bound by oath to obey the States of Holland as
+their paymasters and likewise to carry out the orders of the provincial
+and municipal magistrates in the places where they were employed. The
+soldiery was not to act or permit anything to be done against those
+resolutions, but help to carry them out, his Excellency himself and the
+troops paid by the States of Holland being indisputably bound by oath and
+duty so to do."
+
+Doubtless a more convenient arrangement from a military point of view
+might be imagined than a system of quotas by which each province in a
+confederacy claimed allegiance and exacted obedience from the troops paid
+by itself in what was after all a general army. Still this was the
+logical and inevitable result of State rights pushed to the extreme and
+indeed had been the indisputable theory and practice in the Netherlands
+ever since their revolt from Spain. To pretend that the proceedings and
+the oath were new because they were embarrassing was absurd. It was only
+because the dominant party saw the extreme inconvenience of the system,
+now that it was turned against itself, that individuals contemptuous of
+law and ignorant of history denounced it as a novelty.
+
+But the strong and beneficent principle that lay at the bottom of the
+Advocate's conduct was his unflagging resolve to maintain the civil
+authority over the military in time of peace. What liberal or healthy
+government would be possible otherwise? Exactly as he opposed the
+subjection of the magistracy by the priesthood or the mob, so he now
+defended it against the power of the sword. There was no justification
+whatever for a claim on the part of Maurice to exact obedience from all
+the armies of the Republic, especially in time of peace. He was himself
+by oath sworn to obey the States of Holland, of Utrecht, and of the three
+other provinces of which he was governor. He was not commander-in-chief.
+In two of the seven provinces he had no functions whatever, military or
+civil. They had another governor.
+
+Yet the exposition of the law, as it stood, by the Advocate and his claim
+that both troops and Stadholder should be held to their oaths was
+accounted a crime. He had invented a new oath--it was said--and sought to
+diminish the power of the Prince. These were charges, unjust as they
+were, which might one day be used with deadly effect.
+
+"We live in a world where everything is interpreted to the worst," he
+said. "My physical weakness continues and is increased by this
+affliction. I place my trust in God the Lord and in my upright and
+conscientious determination to serve the country, his Excellency, and the
+religion in which through God's grace I hope to continue to the end."
+
+On the 28th August of a warm afternoon, Barneveld was seated on a
+porcelain seat in an arbor in his garden. Councillor Berkhout,
+accompanied by a friend, called to see him, and after a brief
+conversation gave him solemn warning that danger was impending, that
+there was even a rumour of an intention to arrest him.
+
+The Advocate answered gravely, "Yes, there are wicked men about."
+
+Presently he lifted his hat courteously and said, "I thank you,
+gentlemen, for the warning."
+
+It seems scarcely to have occurred to him that he had been engaged in
+anything beyond a constitutional party struggle in which he had defended
+what in his view was the side of law and order. He never dreamt of
+seeking safety in flight. Some weeks before, he had been warmly advised
+to do as both he and Maurice had done in former times in order to escape
+the stratagems of Leicester, to take refuge in some strong city devoted
+to his interests rather than remain at the Hague. But he had declined the
+counsel. "I will await the issue of this business," he said, "in the
+Hague, where my home is, and where I have faithfully served my masters. I
+had rather for the sake of the Fatherland suffer what God chooses to send
+me for having served well than that through me and on my account any city
+should fall into trouble and difficulties."
+
+Next morning, Wednesday, at seven o'clock, Uytenbogaert paid him a visit.
+He wished to consult him concerning a certain statement in regard to the
+Synod which he desired him to lay before the States of Holland. The
+preacher did not find his friend busily occupied at his desk, as usual,
+with writing and other work. The Advocate had pushed his chair away from
+the table encumbered with books and papers, and sat with his back leaning
+against it, lost in thought. His stern, stoical face was like that of a
+lion at bay.
+
+Uytenbogaert tried to arouse him from his gloom, consoling him by
+reflections on the innumerable instances, in all countries and ages, of
+patriotic statesmen who for faithful service had reaped nothing but
+ingratitude.
+
+Soon afterwards he took his leave, feeling a presentiment of evil within
+him which it was impossible for him to shake off as he pressed
+Barneveld's hand at parting.
+
+Two hours later, the Advocate went in his coach to the session of the
+States of Holland. The place of the Assembly as well as that of the
+States-General was within what was called the Binnenhof or Inner Court;
+the large quadrangle enclosing the ancient hall once the residence of the
+sovereign Counts of Holland. The apartments of the Stadholder composed
+the south-western portion of the large series of buildings surrounding
+this court. Passing by these lodgings on his way to the Assembly, he was
+accosted by a chamberlain of the Prince and informed that his Highness
+desired to speak with him. He followed him towards the room where such
+interviews were usually held, but in the antechamber was met by
+Lieutenant Nythof, of the Prince's bodyguard. This officer told him that
+he had been ordered to arrest him in the name of the States-General. The
+Advocate demanded an interview with the Prince. It was absolutely
+refused. Physical resistance on the part of a man of seventy-two,
+stooping with age and leaning on a staff, to military force, of which
+Nythof was the representative, was impossible. Barneveld put a cheerful
+face on the matter, and was even inclined to converse. He was at once
+carried off a prisoner and locked up in a room belonging to Maurice's
+apartments.
+
+Soon afterwards, Grotius on his way to the States-General was invited in
+precisely the same manner to go to the Prince, with whom, as he was
+informed, the Advocate was at that moment conferring. As soon as he had
+ascended the stairs however, he was arrested by Captain van der Meulen in
+the name of the States-General, and taken to a chamber in the same
+apartments, where he was guarded by two halberdmen. In the evening he was
+removed to another chamber where the window shutters were barred, and
+where he remained three days and nights. He was much cast down and
+silent. Pensionary Hoogerbeets was made prisoner in precisely the same
+manner. Thus the three statesmen--culprits as they were considered by
+their enemies--were secured without noise or disturbance, each without
+knowing the fate that had befallen the other. Nothing could have been
+more neatly done. In the same quiet way orders were sent to secure
+Secretary Ledenberg, who had returned to Utrecht, and who now after a
+short confinement in that city was brought to the Hague and imprisoned in
+the Hof.
+
+At the very moment of the Advocate's arrest his son-in-law van der Myle
+happened to be paying a visit to Sir Dudley Carleton, who had arrived
+very late the night before from England. It was some hours before he or
+any other member of the family learned what had befallen.
+
+The Ambassador reported to his sovereign that the deed was highly
+applauded by the well disposed as the only means left for the security of
+the state. "The Arminians," he said, "condemn it as violent and
+insufferable in a free republic."
+
+Impartial persons, he thought, considered it a superfluous proceeding now
+that the Synod had been voted and the Waartgelders disbanded.
+
+While he was writing his despatch, the Stadholder came to call upon him,
+attended by his cousin Count Lewis William. The crowd of citizens
+following at a little distance, excited by the news with which the city
+was now ringing, mingled with Maurice's gentlemen and bodyguards and
+surged up almost into the Ambassador's doors.
+
+Carleton informed his guests, in the course of conversation, as to the
+general opinion of indifferent judges of these events. Maurice replied
+that he had disbanded the Waartgelders, but it had now become necessary
+to deal with their colonel and the chief captains, meaning thereby
+Barneveld and the two other prisoners.
+
+The news of this arrest was soon carried to the house of Barneveld, and
+filled his aged wife, his son, and sons-in-law with grief and
+indignation. His eldest son William, commonly called the Seignior van
+Groeneveld, accompanied by his two brothers-in-law, Veenhuyzen, President
+of the Upper Council, and van der Myle, obtained an interview with the
+Stadholder that same afternoon.
+
+They earnestly requested that the Advocate, in consideration of his
+advanced age, might on giving proper bail be kept prisoner in his own
+house.
+
+The Prince received them at first with courtesy. "It is the work of the
+States-General," he said, "no harm shall come to your father any more
+than to myself."
+
+Veenhuyzen sought to excuse the opposition which the Advocate had made to
+the Cloister Church.
+
+The word was scarcely out of his mouth when the Prince fiercely
+interrupted him--"Any man who says a word against the Cloister Church,"
+he cried in a rage, "his feet shall not carry him from this place."
+
+The interview gave them on the whole but little satisfaction. Very soon
+afterwards two gentlemen, Asperen and Schagen, belonging to the Chamber
+of Nobles, and great adherents of Barneveld, who had procured their
+enrolment in that branch, forced their way into the Stadholder's
+apartments and penetrated to the door of the room where the Advocate was
+imprisoned. According to Carleton they were filled with wine as well as
+rage, and made a great disturbance, loudly demanding their patron's
+liberation. Maurice came out of his own cabinet on hearing the noise in
+the corridor, and ordered them to be disarmed and placed under arrest. In
+the evening however they were released.
+
+Soon afterwards van der Myle fled to Paris, where he endeavoured to make
+influence with the government in favour of the Advocate. His departure
+without leave, being, as he was, a member of the Chamber of Nobles and of
+the council of state, was accounted a great offence. Uytenbogaert also
+made his escape, as did Taurinus, author of The Balance, van Moersbergen
+of Utrecht, and many others more or less implicated in these commotions.
+
+There was profound silence in the States of Holland when the arrest of
+Barneveld was announced. The majority sat like men distraught. At last
+Matenesse said, "You have taken from us our head, our tongue, and our
+hand, henceforth we can only sit still and look on."
+
+The States-General now took the responsibility of the arrest, which eight
+individuals calling themselves the States-General had authorized by
+secret resolution the day before (28th August). On the 29th accordingly,
+the following "Billet," as it was entitled, was read to the Assembly and
+ordered to be printed and circulated among the community. It was without
+date or signature.
+
+"Whereas in the course of the changes within the city of Utrecht and in
+other places brought about by the high and mighty Lords the
+States-General of the United Netherlands, through his Excellency and
+their Lordships' committee to him adjoined, sundry things have been
+discovered of which previously there had been great suspicion, tending to
+the great prejudice of the Provinces in general and of each province in
+particular, not without apparent danger to the state of the country, and
+that thereby not only the city of Utrecht, but various other cities of
+the United Provinces would have fallen into a blood bath; and whereas the
+chief ringleaders in these things are considered to be John van
+Barneveld, Advocate of Holland, Rombout Hoogerbeets, and Hugo Grotius,
+whereof hereafter shall declaration and announcement be made, therefore
+their High Mightinesses, in order to prevent these and similar
+inconveniences, to place the country in security, and to bring the good
+burghers of all the cities into friendly unity again, have resolved to
+arrest those three persons, in order that out of their imprisonment they
+may be held to answer duly for their actions and offences."
+
+The deputies of Holland in the States-General protested on the same day
+against the arrest, declaring themselves extraordinarily amazed at such
+proceedings, without their knowledge, with usurpation of their
+jurisdiction, and that they should refer to their principals for
+instructions in the matter.
+
+They reported accordingly at once to the States of Holland in session in
+the same building. Soon afterwards however a committee of five from the
+States-General appeared before the Assembly to justify the proceeding. On
+their departure there arose a great debate, the six cities of course
+taking part with Maurice and the general government. It was finally
+resolved by the majority to send a committee to the Stadholder to
+remonstrate with, and by the six opposition cities another committee to
+congratulate him, on his recent performances.
+
+His answer was to this effect:
+
+"What had happened was not by his order, but had been done by the
+States-General, who must be supposed not to have acted without good
+cause. Touching the laws and jurisdiction of Holland he would not himself
+dispute, but the States of Holland would know how to settle that matter
+with the States-General."
+
+Next day it was resolved in the Holland assembly to let the affair remain
+as it was for the time being. Rapid changes were soon to be expected in
+that body, hitherto so staunch for the cause of municipal laws and State
+rights.
+
+Meantime Barneveld sat closely guarded in the apartments of the
+Stadholder, while the country and very soon all Europe were ringing with
+the news of his downfall, imprisonment, and disgrace. The news was a
+thunder-bolt to the lovers of religious liberty, a ray of dazzling
+sunlight after a storm to the orthodox.
+
+The showers of pamphlets, villanous lampoons, and libels began afresh.
+The relatives of the fallen statesman could not appear in the streets
+without being exposed to insult, and without hearing scurrilous and
+obscene verses against their father and themselves, in which neither sex
+nor age was spared, howled in their ears by all the ballad-mongers and
+broadsheet vendors of the town. The unsigned publication of the
+States-General, with its dark allusions to horrible discoveries and
+promised revelations which were never made, but which reduced themselves
+at last to the gibberish of a pot-house bully, the ingenious libels, the
+powerfully concocted and poisonous calumnies, caricatures, and lampoons,
+had done their work. People stared at each other in the streets with open
+mouths as they heard how the Advocate had for years and years been the
+hireling of Spain, whose government had bribed him largely to bring about
+the Truce and kill the West India Company; how his pockets and his
+coffers were running over with Spanish ducats; how his plot to sell the
+whole country to the ancient tyrant, drive the Prince of Orange into
+exile, and bring every city of the Netherlands into a "blood-bath," had,
+just in time, been discovered.
+
+And the people believed it and hated the man they had so lately honoured,
+and were ready to tear him to pieces in the streets. Men feared to defend
+him lest they too should be accused of being stipendiaries of Spain. It
+was a piteous spectacle; not for the venerable statesman sitting alone
+there in his prison, but for the Republic in its lunacy, for human nature
+in its meanness and shame. He whom Count Lewis, although opposed to his
+politics, had so lately called one of the two columns on which the whole
+fabric of the States reposed, Prince Maurice being the other, now lay
+prostrate in the dust and reviled of all men.
+
+"Many who had been promoted by him to high places," said a contemporary,
+"and were wont to worship him as a god, in hope that he would lift them
+up still higher, now deserted him, and ridiculed him, and joined the rest
+of the world in heaping dirt upon him."
+
+On the third day of his imprisonment the Advocate wrote this letter to
+his family:--
+
+"My very dear wife, children, children-in-law, and grandchildren,--I know
+that you are sorrowful for the troubles which have come upon me, but I
+beg you to seek consolation from God the Almighty and to comfort each
+other. I know before the Lord God of having given no single lawful reason
+for the misfortunes which have come upon me, and I will with patience
+await from His Divine hand and from my lawful superiors a happy issue,
+knowing well that you and my other well-wishers will with your prayers
+and good offices do all that you can to that end.
+
+"And so, very dear wife, children, children-in-law, and grandchildren, I
+commend you to God's holy keeping.
+
+"I have been thus far well and honourably treated and accommodated, for
+which I thank his princely Excellency.
+
+"From my chamber of arrest, last of August, anno 1618.
+
+"Your dear husband, father, father-in-law, and grand father,
+
+                  "JOHN OF BARNEVELD."
+
+On the margin was written:
+
+"From the first I have requested and have at last obtained materials for
+writing."
+
+A fortnight before the arrest, but while great troubles were known to be
+impending, the French ambassador extraordinary, de Boississe, had
+audience before the Assembly of the States-General. He entreated them to
+maintain the cause of unity and peace as the foundation of their state;
+"that state," he said, "which lifts its head so high that it equals or
+surpasses the mightiest republics that ever existed, and which could not
+have risen to such a height of honour and grandeur in so short a time,
+but through harmony and union of all the provinces, through the valour of
+his Excellency, and through your own wise counsels, both sustained by our
+great king, whose aid is continued by his son."--"The King my master," he
+continued, "knows not the cause of your disturbances. You have not
+communicated them to him, but their most apparent cause is a difference
+of opinion, born in the schools, thence brought before the public, upon a
+point of theology. That point has long been deemed by many to be so hard
+and so high that the best advice to give about it is to follow what God's
+Word teaches touching God's secrets; to wit, that one should use
+moderation and modesty therein and should not rashly press too far into
+that which he wishes to be covered with the veil of reverence and wonder.
+That is a wise ignorance to keep one's eyes from that which God chooses
+to conceal. He calls us not to eternal life through subtle and perplexing
+questions."
+
+And further exhorting them to conciliation and compromise, he enlarged on
+the effect of their internal dissensions on their exterior relations.
+"What joy, what rapture you are preparing for your neighbours by your
+quarrels! How they will scorn you! How they will laugh! What a hope do
+you give them of revenging themselves upon you without danger to
+themselves! Let me implore you to baffle their malice, to turn their joy
+into mourning, to unite yourselves to confound them."
+
+He spoke much more in the same vein, expressing wise and moderate
+sentiments. He might as well have gone down to the neighbouring beach
+when a south-west gale was blowing and talked of moderation to the waves
+of the German Ocean. The tempest of passion and prejudice had risen in
+its might and was sweeping all before it. Yet the speech, like other
+speeches and intercessions made at this epoch by de Boississe and by the
+regular French ambassador, du Maurier, was statesmanlike and reasonable.
+It is superfluous to say that it was in unison with the opinions of
+Barneveld, for Barneveld had probably furnished the text of the oration.
+Even as he had a few years before supplied the letters which King James
+had signed and subsequently had struggled so desperately to disavow, so
+now the Advocate's imperious intellect had swayed the docile and amiable
+minds of the royal envoys into complete sympathy with his policy. He
+usually dictated their general instructions. But an end had come to such
+triumphs. Dudley Carleton had returned from his leave of absence in
+England, where he had found his sovereign hating the Advocate as doctors
+hate who have been worsted in theological arguments and despots who have
+been baffled in their imperious designs. Who shall measure the influence
+on the destiny of this statesman caused by the French-Spanish marriages,
+the sermons of James through the mouth of Carleton, and the mutual
+jealousy of France and England?
+
+But the Advocate was in prison, and the earth seemed to have closed over
+him. Hardly a ripple of indignation was perceptible on the calm surface
+of affairs, although in the States-General as in the States of Holland
+his absence seemed to have reduced both bodies to paralysis.
+
+They were the more easily handled by the prudent, skilful, and determined
+Maurice.
+
+The arrest of the four gentlemen had been communicated to the kings of
+France and Great Britain and the Elector-Palatine in an identical letter
+from the States-General. It is noticeable that on this occasion the
+central government spoke of giving orders to the Prince of Orange, over
+whom they would seem to have had no legitimate authority, while on the
+other hand he had expressed indignation on more than one occasion that
+the respective states of the five provinces where he was governor and to
+whom he had sworn obedience should presume to issue commands to him.
+
+In France, where the Advocate was honoured and beloved, the intelligence
+excited profound sorrow. A few weeks previously the government of that
+country had, as we have seen, sent a special ambassador to the States, M.
+de Boississe, to aid the resident envoy, du Maurier, in his efforts to
+bring about a reconciliation of parties and a termination of the
+religious feud. Their exertions were sincere and unceasing. They were as
+steadily countermined by Francis Aerssens, for the aim of that
+diplomatist was to bring about a state of bad feeling, even at cost of
+rupture, between the Republic and France, because France was friendly to
+the man he most hated and whose ruin he had sworn.
+
+During the summer a bitter personal controversy had been going on,
+sufficiently vulgar in tone, between Aerssens and another diplomatist,
+Barneveld's son-in-law, Cornelis van der Myle. It related to the recall
+of Aerssens from the French embassy of which enough has already been laid
+before the reader. Van der Myle by the production of the secret letters
+of the Queen-Dowager and her counsellors had proved beyond dispute that
+it was at the express wish of the French government that the Ambassador
+had retired, and that indeed they had distinctly refused to receive him,
+should he return. Foul words resulting in propositions for a hostile
+meeting on the frontier, which however came to nothing, were interchanged
+and Aerssens in the course of his altercation with the son-inlaw had
+found ample opportunity for venting his spleen upon his former patron the
+now fallen statesman.
+
+Four days after the arrest of Barneveld he brought the whole matter
+before the States-General, and the intention with which he thus raked up
+the old quarrel with France after the death of Henry, and his charges in
+regard to the Spanish marriages, was as obvious as it was deliberate.
+
+The French ambassadors were furious. Boississe had arrived not simply as
+friend of the Advocate, but to assure the States of the strong desire
+entertained by the French government to cultivate warmest relations with
+them. It had been desired by the Contra-Remonstrant party that deputies
+from the Protestant churches of France should participate in the Synod,
+and the French king had been much assailed by the Catholic powers for
+listening to those suggestions. The Papal nuncius, the Spanish
+ambassador, the envoy of the Archduke, had made a great disturbance at
+court concerning the mission of Boississe. They urged with earnestness
+that his Majesty was acting against the sentiments of Spain, Rome, and
+the whole Catholic Church, and that he ought not to assist with his
+counsel those heretics who were quarrelling among themselves over points
+in their heretical religion and wishing to destroy each other.
+
+Notwithstanding this outcry the weather was smooth enough until the
+proceedings of Aerssens came to stir up a tempest at the French court. A
+special courier came from Boississe, a meeting of the whole council,
+although it was Sunday, was instantly called, and the reply of the
+States-General to the remonstrance of the Ambassador in the Aerssens
+affair was pronounced to be so great an affront to the King that, but for
+overpowering reasons, diplomatic intercourse would have at once been
+suspended. "Now instead of friendship there is great anger here," said
+Langerac. The king forbade under vigorous penalties the departure of any
+French theologians to take part in the Synod, although the royal consent
+had nearly been given. The government complained that no justice was done
+in the Netherlands to the French nation, that leading personages there
+openly expressed contempt for the French alliance, denouncing the country
+as "Hispaniolized," and declaring that all the council were regularly
+pensioned by Spain for the express purpose of keeping up the civil
+dissensions in the United Provinces.
+
+Aerssens had publicly and officially declared that a majority of the
+French council since the death of Henry had declared the crown in its
+temporal as well as spiritual essence to be dependent on the Pope, and
+that the Spanish marriages had been made under express condition of the
+renunciation of the friendship and alliance of the States.
+
+Such were among the first-fruits of the fall of Barneveld and the triumph
+of Aerssens, for it was he in reality who had won the victory, and he had
+gained it over both Stadholder and Advocate. Who was to profit by the
+estrangement between the Republic and its powerful ally at a moment too
+when that great kingdom was at last beginning to emerge from the darkness
+and nothingness of many years, with the faint glimmering dawn of a new
+great policy?
+
+Barneveld, whose masterful statesmanship, following out the traditions of
+William the Silent, had ever maintained through good and ill report
+cordial and beneficent relations between the two countries, had always
+comprehended, even as a great cardinal-minister was ere long to teach the
+world, that the permanent identification of France with Spain and the
+Roman League was unnatural and impossible.
+
+Meantime Barneveld sat in his solitary prison, knowing not what was
+passing on that great stage where he had so long been the chief actor,
+while small intriguers now attempted to control events.
+
+It was the intention of Aerssens to return to the embassy in Paris whence
+he had been driven, in his own opinion, so unjustly. To render himself
+indispensable, he had begun by making himself provisionally formidable to
+the King's government. Later, there would be other deeds to do before the
+prize was within his grasp.
+
+Thus the very moment when France was disposed to cultivate the most
+earnest friendship with the Republic had been seized for fastening an
+insult upon her. The Twelve Years' Truce with Spain was running to its
+close, the relations between France and Spain were unusually cold, and
+her friendship therefore more valuable than ever.
+
+On the other hand the British king was drawing closer his relations with
+Spain, and his alliance was demonstrably of small account. The phantom of
+the Spanish bride had become more real to his excited vision than ever,
+so that early in the year, in order to please Gondemar, he had been
+willing to offer an affront to the French ambassador.
+
+The Prince of Wales had given a splendid masquerade at court, to which
+the envoy of his Most Catholic Majesty was bidden. Much to his amazement
+the representative of the Most Christian King received no invitation,
+notwithstanding that he had taken great pains to procure one. M. de la
+Boderie was very angry, and went about complaining to the States'
+ambassador and his other colleagues of the slight, and darkened the lives
+of the court functionaries having charge of such matters with his
+vengeance and despair. It was represented to him that he had himself been
+asked to a festival the year before when Count Gondemar was left out. It
+was hinted to him that the King had good reasons for what he did, as the
+marriage with the daughter of Spain was now in train, and it was
+desirable that the Spanish ambassador should be able to observe the
+Prince's disposition and make a more correct report of it to his
+government. It was in vain. M. de la Boderie refused to be comforted, and
+asserted that one had no right to leave the French ambassador uninvited
+to any "festival or triumph" at court. There was an endless disturbance.
+De la Boderie sent his secretary off to Paris to complain to the King
+that his ambassador was of no account in London, while much favour was
+heaped upon the Spaniard. The Secretary returned with instructions from
+Lewis that the Ambassador was to come home immediately, and he went off
+accordingly in dudgeon. "I could see that he was in the highest degree
+indignant," said Caron, who saw him before he left, "and I doubt not that
+his departure will increase and keep up the former jealousy between the
+governments."
+
+The ill-humor created by this event lasted a long time, serving to
+neutralize or at least perceptibly diminish the Spanish influence
+produced in France by the Spanish marriages. In the autumn, Secretary de
+Puysieux by command of the King ordered every Spaniard to leave the
+French court. All the "Spanish ladies and gentlemen, great and small,"
+who had accompanied the Queen from Madrid were included in this expulsion
+with the exception of four individuals, her Majesty's father confessor,
+physician, apothecary, and cook.
+
+The fair young queen was much vexed and shed bitter tears at this
+calamity, which, as she spoke nothing but Spanish, left her isolated at
+the court, but she was a little consoled by the promise that thenceforth
+the King would share her couch. It had not yet occurred to him that he
+was married.
+
+The French envoys at the Hague exhausted themselves in efforts, both
+private and public, in favour of the prisoners, but it was a thankless
+task. Now that the great man and his chief pupils and adherents were out
+of sight, a war of shameless calumny was began upon him, such as has
+scarcely a parallel in political history.
+
+It was as if a whole tribe of noxious and obscene reptiles were swarming
+out of the earth which had suddenly swallowed him. But it was not alone
+the obscure or the anonymous who now triumphantly vilified him. Men in
+high places who had partaken of his patronage, who had caressed him and
+grovelled before him, who had grown great through his tuition and rich
+through his bounty, now rejoiced in his ruin or hastened at least to save
+themselves from being involved in it. Not a man of them all but fell away
+from him like water. Even the great soldier forgot whose respectful but
+powerful hand it was which, at the most tragical moment, had lifted him
+from the high school at Leyden into the post of greatest power and
+responsibility, and had guided his first faltering footsteps by the light
+of his genius and experience. Francis Aerssens, master of the field, had
+now become the political tutor of the mature Stadholder. Step by step we
+have been studying the inmost thoughts of the Advocate as revealed in his
+secret and confidential correspondence, and the reader has been enabled
+to judge of the wantonness of the calumny which converted the determined
+antagonist into the secret friend of Spain. Yet it had produced its
+effect upon Maurice.
+
+He told the French ambassadors a month after the arrest that Barneveld
+had been endeavouring, during and since the Truce negotiations, to bring
+back the Provinces, especially Holland, if not under the dominion of, at
+least under some kind of vassalage to Spain. Persons had been feeling the
+public pulse as to the possibility of securing permanent peace by paying
+tribute to Spain, and this secret plan of Barneveld had so alienated him
+from the Prince as to cause him to attempt every possible means of
+diminishing or destroying altogether his authority. He had spread through
+many cities that Maurice wished to make himself master of the state by
+using the religious dissensions to keep the people weakened and divided.
+
+There is not a particle of evidence, and no attempt was ever made to
+produce any, that the Advocate had such plan, but certainly, if ever, man
+had made himself master of a state, that man was Maurice. He continued
+however to place himself before the world as the servant of the
+States-General, which he never was, either theoretically or in fact.
+
+The French ambassadors became every day more indignant and more
+discouraged. It was obvious that Aerssens, their avowed enemy, was
+controlling the public policy of the government. Not only was there no
+satisfaction to be had for the offensive manner in which he had filled
+the country with his ancient grievances and his nearly forgotten charges
+against the Queen-Dowager and those who had assisted her in the regency,
+but they were repulsed at every turn when by order of their sovereign
+they attempted to use his good offices in favour of the man who had ever
+been the steady friend of France.
+
+The Stadholder also professed friendship for that country, and referred
+to Colonel-General Chatillon, who had for a long time commanded the
+French regiments in the Netherlands, for confirmation of his uniform
+affection for those troops and attachment to their sovereign.
+
+He would do wonders, he said, if Lewis would declare war upon Spain by
+land and sea.
+
+"Such fruits are not ripe," said Boississe, "nor has your love for France
+been very manifest in recent events."
+
+"Barneveld," replied the Prince, "has personally offended me, and has
+boasted that he would drive me out of the country like Leicester. He is
+accused of having wished to trouble the country in order to bring it back
+under the yoke of Spain. Justice will decide. The States only are
+sovereign to judge this question. You must address yourself to them."
+
+"The States," replied the ambassadors, "will require to be aided by your
+counsels."
+
+The Prince made no reply and remained chill and "impregnable." The
+ambassadors continued their intercessions in behalf of the prisoners both
+by public address to the Assembly and by private appeals to the
+Stadholder and his influential friends. In virtue of the intimate
+alliance and mutual guarantees existing between their government and the
+Republic they claimed the acceptance of their good offices. They insisted
+upon a regular trial of the prisoners according to the laws of the land,
+that is to say, by the high court of Holland, which alone had
+jurisdiction in the premises. If they had been guilty of high-treason,
+they should be duly arraigned. In the name of the signal services of
+Barneveld and of the constant friendship of that great magistrate for
+France, the King demanded clemency or proof of his crimes. His Majesty
+complained through his ambassadors of the little respect shown for his
+counsels and for his friendship. "In times past you found ever prompt and
+favourable action in your time of need."
+
+"This discourse," said Maurice to Chatillon, "proceeds from evil
+intention."
+
+Thus the prisoners had disappeared from human sight, and their enemies
+ran riot in slandering them. Yet thus far no public charges had been
+made.
+
+"Nothing appears against them," said du Maurier, "and people are
+beginning to open their mouths with incredible freedom. While waiting for
+the condemnation of the prisoners, one is determined to dishonour them."
+
+The French ambassadors were instructed to intercede to the last, but they
+were steadily repulsed--while the King of Great Britain, anxious to gain
+favour with Spain by aiding in the ruin of one whom he knew and Spain
+knew to be her determined foe, did all he could through his ambassador to
+frustrate their efforts and bring on a catastrophe. The States-General
+and Maurice were now on as confidential terms with Carleton as they were
+cold and repellent to Boississe and du Maurier.
+
+"To recall to them the benefits of the King," said du Maurier, "is to
+beat the air. And then Aerssens bewitches them, and they imagine that
+after having played runaway horses his Majesty will be only too happy to
+receive them back, caress them, and, in order to have their friendship,
+approve everything they have been doing right or wrong."
+
+Aerssens had it all his own way, and the States-General had just paid him
+12,000 francs in cash on the ground that Langerac's salary was larger
+than his had been when at the head of the same embassy many years before.
+
+His elevation into the body of nobles, which Maurice had just stocked
+with five other of his partisans, was accounted an additional affront to
+France, while on the other hand the Queen-Mother, having through
+Epernon's assistance made her escape from Blois, where she had been kept
+in durance since the death of Concini, now enumerated among other
+grievances for which she was willing to take up arms against her son that
+the King's government had favoured Barneveld.
+
+It was strange that all the devotees of Spain--Mary de' Medici, and
+Epernon, as well as James I. and his courtiers--should be thus embittered
+against the man who had sold the Netherlands to Spain.
+
+At last the Prince told the French ambassadors that the "people of the
+Provinces considered their persistent intercessions an invasion of their
+sovereignty." Few would have anything to say to them. "No one listens to
+us, no one replies to us," said du Maurier, "everyone visiting us is
+observed, and it is conceived a reproach here to speak to the ambassadors
+of France."
+
+Certainly the days were changed since Henry IV. leaned on the arm of
+Barneveld, and consulted with him, and with him only, among all the
+statesmen of Europe on his great schemes for regenerating Christendom and
+averting that general war which, now that the great king had been
+murdered and the Advocate imprisoned, had already begun to ravage Europe.
+
+Van der Myle had gone to Paris to make such exertions as he could among
+the leading members of the council in favour of his father-in-law.
+Langerac, the States' ambassador there, who but yesterday had been
+turning at every moment to the Advocate for light and warmth as to the
+sun, now hastened to disavow all respect or regard for him. He scoffed at
+the slender sympathy van der Myle was finding in the bleak political
+atmosphere. He had done his best to find out what he had been negotiating
+with the members of the council and was glad to say that it was so
+inconsiderable as to be not worth reporting. He had not spoken with or
+seen the King. Jeannin, his own and his father-in-law's principal and
+most confidential friend, had only spoken with him half an hour and then
+departed for Burgundy, although promising to confer with him
+sympathetically on his return. "I am very displeased at his coming here,"
+said Langerac, ". . . . but he has found little friendship or
+confidence, and is full of woe and apprehension."
+
+The Ambassador's labours were now confined to personally soliciting the
+King's permission for deputations from the Reformed churches of France to
+go to the Synod, now opened (13th November) at Dordtrecht, and to
+clearing his own skirts with the Prince and States-General of any
+suspicion of sympathy with Barneveld.
+
+In the first object he was unsuccessful, the King telling him at last
+"with clear and significant words that this was impossible, on account of
+his conscience, his respect for the Catholic religion, and many other
+reasons."
+
+In regard to the second point he acted with great promptness.
+
+He received a summons in January 1619 from the States-General and the
+Prince to send them all letters that he had ever received from Barneveld.
+He crawled at once to Maurice on his knees, with the letters in his hand.
+
+"Most illustrious, high-born Prince, most gracious Lord," he said;
+"obeying the commands which it has pleased the States and your princely
+Grace to give me, I send back the letters of Advocate Barneveld. If your
+princely Grace should find anything in them showing that the said
+Advocate had any confidence in me, I most humbly beg your princely Grace
+to believe that I never entertained any affection for, him, except only
+in respect to and so far as he was in credit and good authority with the
+government, and according to the upright zeal which I thought I could see
+in him for the service of My high and puissant Lords the States-General
+and of your princely Grace."
+
+Greater humbleness could be expected of no ambassador. Most nobly did the
+devoted friend and pupil of the great statesman remember his duty to the
+illustrious Prince and their High Mightinesses. Most promptly did he
+abjure his patron now that he had fallen into the abyss.
+
+"Nor will it be found," he continued, "that I have had any sympathy or
+communication with the said Advocate except alone in things concerning my
+service. The great trust I had in him as the foremost and oldest
+counsellor of the state, as the one who so confidentially instructed me
+on my departure for France, and who had obtained for himself so great
+authority that all the most important affairs of the country were
+entrusted to him, was the cause that I simply and sincerely wrote to him
+all that people were in the habit of saying at this court.
+
+"If I had known in the least or suspected that he was not what he ought
+to be in the service of My Lords the States and of your princely Grace
+and for the welfare and tranquillity of the land, I should have been well
+on my guard against letting myself in the least into any kind of
+communication with him whatever."
+
+The reader has seen how steadily and frankly the Advocate had kept
+Langerac as well as Caron informed of passing events, and how little
+concealment he made of his views in regard to the Synod, the
+Waartgelders, and the respective authority of the States-General and
+States-Provincial. Not only had Langerac no reason to suspect that
+Barneveld was not what he ought to be, but he absolutely knew the
+contrary from that most confidential correspondence with him which he was
+now so abjectly repudiating. The Advocate, in a protracted constitutional
+controversy, had made no secret of his views either officially or
+privately. Whether his positions were tenable or flimsy, they had been
+openly taken.
+
+"What is more," proceeded the Ambassador, "had I thought that any account
+ought to be made of what I wrote to him concerning the sovereignty of the
+Provinces, I should for a certainty not have failed to advise your Grace
+of it above all."
+
+He then, after profuse and maudlin protestations of his most dutiful zeal
+all the days of his life for "the service, honour, reputation, and
+contentment of your princely Grace," observed that he had not thought it
+necessary to give him notice of such idle and unfounded matters, as being
+likely to give the Prince annoyance and displeasure. He had however
+always kept within himself the resolution duly to notify him in case he
+found that any belief was attached to the reports in Paris. "But the
+reports," he said, "were popular and calumnious inventions of which no
+man had ever been willing or able to name to him the authors."
+
+The Ambassador's memory was treacherous, and he had doubtless neglected
+to read over the minutes, if he had kept them, of his wonderful
+disclosures on the subject of the sovereignty before thus exculpating
+himself. It will be remembered that he had narrated the story of the plot
+for conferring sovereignty upon Maurice not as a popular calumny flying
+about Paris with no man to father it, but he had given it to Barneveld on
+the authority of a privy councillor of France and of the King himself.
+"His Majesty knows it to be authentic," he had said in his letter. That
+letter was a pompous one, full of mystery and so secretly ciphered that
+he had desired that his friend van der Myle, whom he was now deriding for
+his efforts in Paris to save his father-inlaw from his fate, might assist
+the Advocate in unravelling its contents. He had now discovered that it
+had been idle gossip not worthy of a moment's attention.
+
+The reader will remember too that Barneveld, without attaching much
+importance to the tale, had distinctly pointed out to Langerac that the
+Prince himself was not implicated in the plot and had instructed the
+Ambassador to communicate the story to Maurice. This advice had not been
+taken, but he had kept the perilous stuff upon his breast. He now sought
+to lay the blame, if it were possible to do so, upon the man to whom he
+had communicated it and who had not believed it.
+
+The business of the States-General, led by the Advocate's enemies this
+winter, was to accumulate all kind of tales, reports, and accusations to
+his discredit on which to form something like a bill of indictment. They
+had demanded all his private and confidential correspondence with Caron
+and Langerae. The ambassador in Paris had been served, moreover, with a
+string of nine interrogatories which he was ordered to answer on oath and
+honour. This he did and appended the reply to his letter.
+
+The nine questions had simply for their object to discover what Barneveld
+had been secretly writing to the Ambassador concerning the Synod, the
+enlisted troops, and the supposed projects of Maurice concerning the
+sovereignty. Langerac was obliged to admit in his replies that nothing
+had been written except the regular correspondence which he endorsed, and
+of which the reader has been able to see the sum and substance in the
+copious extracts which have been given.
+
+He stated also that he had never received any secret instructions save
+the marginal notes to the list of questions addressed by him, when about
+leaving for Paris in 1614, to Barneveld. Most of these were of a trivial
+and commonplace nature.
+
+They had however a direct bearing on the process to be instituted against
+the Advocate, and the letter too which we have been examining will prove
+to be of much importance. Certainly pains enough were taken to detect the
+least trace of treason in a very loyal correspondence. Langerac concluded
+by enclosing the Barneveld correspondence since the beginning of the year
+1614, protesting that not a single letter had been kept back or
+destroyed. "Once more I recommend myself to mercy, if not to favour," he
+added, "as the most faithful, most obedient, most zealous servant of
+their High Mightinesses and your princely Grace, to whom I have devoted
+and sacrificed my honour and life in most humble service; and am now and
+forever the most humble, most obedient, most faithful servant of my most
+serene, most illustrious, most highly born Prince, most gracious Lord and
+princeliest Grace."
+
+The former adherent of plain Advocate Barneveld could hardly find
+superlatives enough to bestow upon the man whose displeasure that
+prisoner had incurred.
+
+Directly after the arrest the Stadholder had resumed his tour through the
+Provinces in order to change the governments. Sliding over any opposition
+which recent events had rendered idle, his course in every city was
+nearly the same. A regiment or two and a train of eighty or a hundred
+waggons coming through the city-gate preceded by the Prince and his
+body-guard of 300, a tramp of halberdmen up the great staircase of the
+town-hall, a jingle of spurs in the assembly-room, and the whole board of
+magistrates were summoned into the presence of the Stadholder. They were
+then informed that the world had no further need of their services, and
+were allowed to bow themselves out of the presence. A new list was then
+announced, prepared beforehand by Maurice on the suggestion of those on
+whom he could rely. A faint resistance was here and there attempted by
+magistrates and burghers who could not forget in a moment the rights of
+self-government and the code of laws which had been enjoyed for
+centuries. At Hoorn, for instance, there was deep indignation among the
+citizens. An imprudent word or two from the authorities might have
+brought about a "blood-bath."
+
+The burgomaster ventured indeed to expostulate. They requested the Prince
+not to change the magistracy. "This is against our privileges," they
+said, "which it is our duty to uphold. You will see what deep displeasure
+will seize the burghers, and how much disturbance and tumult will follow.
+If any faults have been committed by any member of the government, let
+him be accused and let him answer for them. Let your Excellency not only
+dismiss but punish such as cannot properly justify themselves."
+
+But his Excellency summoned them all to the town-house and as usual
+deposed them all. A regiment was drawn up in half-moon on the square
+beneath the windows. To the magistrates asking why they were deposed, he
+briefly replied, "The quiet of the land requires it. It is necessary to
+have unanimous resolutions in the States-General at the Hague. This
+cannot be accomplished without these preliminary changes. I believe that
+you had good intentions and have been faithful servants of the
+Fatherland. But this time it must be so."
+
+And so the faithful servants of the Fatherland were dismissed into space.
+Otherwise how could there be unanimous voting in parliament? It must be
+regarded perhaps as fortunate that the force of character, undaunted
+courage, and quiet decision of Maurice enabled him to effect this violent
+series of revolutions with such masterly simplicity. It is questionable
+whether the Stadholder's commission technically empowered him thus to
+trample on municipal law; it is certain that, if it did, the boasted
+liberties of the Netherlands were a dream; but it is equally true that,
+in the circumstances then existing, a vulgar, cowardly, or incompetent
+personage might have marked his pathway with massacres without restoring
+tranquillity.
+
+Sometimes there was even a comic aspect to these strokes of state. The
+lists of new magistrates being hurriedly furnished by the Prince's
+adherents to supply the place of those evicted, it often happened that
+men not quahified by property, residence, or other attributes were
+appointed to the government, so that many became magistrates before they
+were citizens.
+
+On being respectfully asked sometimes who such a magistrate might be
+whose face and name were equally unknown to his colleagues and to the
+townsmen in general; "Do I know the fellows?" he would say with a
+cheerful laugh. And indeed they might have all been dead men, those new
+functionaries, for aught he did know. And so on through Medemblik and
+Alkmaar, Brielle, Delft, Monnikendam, and many other cities progressed
+the Prince, sowing new municipalities broadcast as he passed along. At
+the Hague on his return a vote of thanks to the Prince was passed by the
+nobles and most of the cities for the trouble he had taken in this
+reforming process. But the unanimous vote had not yet been secured, the
+strongholds of Arminianism, as it was the fashion to call them, not being
+yet reduced.
+
+The Prince, in reply to the vote of thanks, said that "in what he had
+done and was going to do his intention sincerely and uprightly had been
+no other than to promote the interests and tranquillity of the country,
+without admixture of anything personal and without prejudice to the
+general commonwealth or the laws and privileges of the cities." He
+desired further that "note might be taken of this declaration as record
+of his good and upright intentions."
+
+But the sincerest and most upright intentions may be refracted by party
+atmosphere from their aim, and the purest gold from the mint elude the
+direct grasp through the clearest fluid in existence. At any rate it
+would have been difficult to convince the host of deposed magistrates
+hurled from office, although recognized as faithful servants of the
+Fatherland, that such violent removal had taken place without detriment
+to the laws and privileges.
+
+And the Stadholder went to the few cities where some of the leaven still
+lingered.
+
+He arrived at Leyden on the 22nd October, "accompanied by a great suite
+of colonels, ritmeesters, and captains," having sent on his body-guard to
+the town strengthened by other troops. He was received by the magistrates
+at the "Prince's Court" with great reverence and entertained by them in
+the evening at a magnificent banquet.
+
+Next morning he summoned the whole forty of them to the town-house,
+disbanded them all, and appointed new ones in their stead; some of the
+old members however who could be relied upon being admitted to the
+revolutionized board.
+
+The populace, mainly of the Stadholder's party, made themselves merry
+over the discomfited "Arminians". They hung wisps of straw as derisive
+wreaths of triumph over the dismantled palisade lately encircling the
+town-hall, disposed of the famous "Oldenbarneveld's teeth" at auction in
+the public square, and chased many a poor cock and hen, with their
+feathers completely plucked from their bodies, about the street, crying
+"Arme haenen, arme haenen"--Arminians or poor fowls--according to the
+practical witticism much esteemed at that period. Certainly the
+unfortunate Barneveldians or Arminians, or however the Remonstrants might
+be designated, had been sufficiently stripped of their plumes.
+
+The Prince, after having made proclamation from the town-house enjoining
+"modesty upon the mob" and a general abstention from "perverseness and
+petulance," went his way to Haarlem, where he dismissed the magistrates
+and appointed new ones, and then proceeded to Rotterdam, to Gouda, and to
+Amsterdam.
+
+It seemed scarcely necessary to carry, out the process in the commercial
+capital, the abode of Peter Plancius, the seat of the West India Company,
+the head-quarters of all most opposed to the Advocate, most devoted to
+the Stadholder. But although the majority of the city government was an
+overwhelming one, there was still a respectable minority who, it was
+thought possible, might under a change of circumstances effect much
+mischief and even grow into a majority.
+
+The Prince therefore summoned the board before him according to his usual
+style of proceeding and dismissed them all. They submitted without a word
+of remonstrance.
+
+Ex-Burgomaster Hooft, a man of seventy-two-father of the illustrious
+Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft, one of the greatest historians of the
+Netherlands or of any country, then a man of thirty-seven-shocked at the
+humiliating silence, asked his colleagues if they had none of them a word
+to say in defence of their laws and privileges.
+
+They answered with one accord "No."
+
+The old man, a personal friend of Barneveld and born the same year, then
+got on his feet and addressed the Stadholder. He spoke manfully and well,
+characterizing the summary deposition of the magistracy as illegal and
+unnecessary, recalling to the memory of those who heard him that he had
+been thirty-six years long a member of the government and always a warm
+friend of the House of Nassau, and respectfully submitting that the small
+minority in the municipal government, while differing from their
+colleagues and from the greater number of the States-General, had limited
+their opposition to strictly constitutional means, never resorting to
+acts of violence or to secret conspiracy.
+
+Nothing could be more truly respectable than the appearance of this
+ancient magistrate, in long black robe with fur edgings, high ruff around
+his thin, pointed face, and decent skull-cap covering his bald old head,
+quavering forth to unsympathetic ears a temperate and unanswerable
+defence of things which in all ages the noblest minds have deemed most
+valuable.
+
+His harangue was not very long. Maurice's reply was very short.
+
+"Grandpapa," he said, "it must be so this time. Necessity and the service
+of the country require it."
+
+With that he dismissed the thirty-six magistrates and next day appointed
+a new board, who were duly sworn to fidelity to the States-General. Of
+course a large proportion of the old members were renominated.
+
+Scarcely had the echo of the Prince's footsteps ceased to resound through
+the country as he tramped from one city to another, moulding each to his
+will, when the States of Holland, now thoroughly reorganized, passed a
+solemn vote of thanks to him for all that he had done. The six cities of
+the minority had now become the majority, and there was unanimity at the
+Hague. The Seven Provinces, States-General and States-Provincial, were as
+one, and the Synod was secured. Whether the prize was worth the
+sacrifices which it had cost and was still to cost might at least be
+considered doubtful.
+
+     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+     Affection of his friends and the wrath of his enemies
+     Depths theological party spirit could descend
+     Extraordinary capacity for yielding to gentle violence
+     Human nature in its meanness and shame
+     It had not yet occurred to him that he was married
+     Make the very name of man a term of reproach
+     Never lack of fishers in troubled waters
+     Opposed the subjection of the magistracy by the priesthood
+     Pot-valiant hero
+     Resolve to maintain the civil authority over the military
+     Tempest of passion and prejudice
+     The effect of energetic, uncompromising calumny
+     Yes, there are wicked men about
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND
+
+WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR
+
+By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+Life and Death of John of Barneveld, v10, 1618-19
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+   Rancour between the Politico-Religious Parties--Spanish Intrigues
+   Inconsistency of James--Brewster and Robinson's Congregation at
+   Leyden--They decide to leave for America--Robinson's Farewell Sermon
+   and Prayer at Parting.
+
+During this dark and mournful winter the internal dissensions and, as a
+matter of course, the foreign intrigues had become more dangerous than
+ever. While the man who for a whole generation had guided the policy of
+the Republic and had been its virtual chief magistrate lay hidden from
+all men's sight, the troubles which he had sought to avert were not
+diminished by his removal from the scene. The extreme or Gomarist party
+which had taken a pride in secret conventicles where they were in a
+minority, determined, as they said, to separate Christ from Belial and,
+meditating the triumph which they had at last secured, now drove the
+Arminians from the great churches. Very soon it was impossible for these
+heretics to enjoy the rights of public worship anywhere. But they were
+not dismayed. The canons of Dordtrecht had not yet been fulminated. They
+avowed themselves ready to sacrifice worldly goods and life itself in
+defence of the Five Points. In Rotterdam, notwithstanding a garrison of
+fifteen companies, more than a thousand Remonstrants assembled on
+Christmas-day in the Exchange for want of a more appropriate place of
+meeting and sang the 112th Psalm in mighty chorus. A clergyman of their
+persuasion accidentally passing through the street was forcibly laid
+hands upon and obliged to preach to them, which he did with great
+unction. The magistracy, where now the Contra-Remonstrants had the
+control, forbade, under severe penalties, a repetition of such scenes. It
+was impossible not to be reminded of the days half a century before, when
+the early Reformers had met in the open fields or among the dunes, armed
+to the teeth, and with outlying pickets to warn the congregation of the
+approach of Red Rod and the functionaries of the Holy Inquisition.
+
+In Schoonhoven the authorities attempted one Sunday by main force to
+induct a Contra-Remonstrant into the pulpit from which a Remonstrant had
+just been expelled. The women of the place turned out with their distaffs
+and beat them from the field. The garrison was called out, and there was
+a pitched battle in the streets between soldiers, police officers, and
+women, not much to the edification certainly of the Sabbath-loving
+community on either side, the victory remaining with the ladies.
+
+In short it would be impossible to exaggerate the rancour felt between
+the different politico-religious parties. All heed for the great war now
+raging in the outside world between the hostile elements of Catholicism
+and Protestantism, embattled over an enormous space, was lost in the din
+of conflict among the respective supporters of conditional and
+unconditional damnation within the pale of the Reformed Church. The
+earthquake shaking Europe rolled unheeded, as it was of old said to have
+done at Cannae, amid the fierce shock of mortal foes in that narrow
+field.
+
+The respect for authority which had so long been the distinguishing
+characteristic of the Netherlanders seemed to have disappeared. It was
+difficult--now that the time-honoured laws and privileges in defence of
+which, and of liberty of worship included in them, the Provinces had made
+war forty years long had been trampled upon by military force--for those
+not warmed by the fire of Gomarus to feel their ancient respect for the
+magistracy. The magistracy at that moment seemed to mean the sword.
+
+The Spanish government was inevitably encouraged by the spectacle thus
+presented. We have seen the strong hopes entertained by the council at
+Madrid, two years before the crisis now existing had occurred. We have
+witnessed the eagerness with which the King indulged the dream of
+recovering the sovereignty which his father had lost, and the vast
+schemes which he nourished towards that purpose, founded on the internal
+divisions which were reducing the Republic to impotence. Subsequent
+events had naturally made him more sanguine than ever. There was now a
+web of intrigue stretching through the Provinces to bring them all back
+under the sceptre of Spain. The imprisonment of the great stipendiary,
+the great conspirator, the man who had sold himself and was on the point
+of selling his country, had not terminated those plots. Where was the
+supposed centre of that intrigue? In the council of state of the
+Netherlands, ever fiercely opposed to Barneveld and stuffed full of his
+mortal enemies. Whose name was most familiar on the lips of the Spanish
+partisans engaged in these secret schemes? That of Adrian Manmaker,
+President of the Council, representative of Prince Maurice as first noble
+of Zealand in the States-General, chairman of the committee sent by that
+body to Utrecht to frustrate the designs of the Advocate, and one of the
+twenty-four commissioners soon to be appointed to sit in judgment upon
+him.
+
+The tale seems too monstrous for belief, nor is it to be admitted with
+certainty, that Manmaker and the other councillors implicated had
+actually given their adhesion to the plot, because the Spanish emissaries
+in their correspondence with the King assured him of the fact. But if
+such a foundation for suspicion could have been found against Barneveld
+and his friends, the world would not have heard the last of it from that
+hour to this.
+
+It is superfluous to say that the Prince was entirely foreign to these
+plans. He had never been mentioned as privy to the little arrangements of
+Councillor du Agean and others, although he was to benefit by them. In
+the Spanish schemes he seems to have been considered as an impediment,
+although indirectly they might tend to advance him.
+
+"We have managed now, I hope, that his Majesty will be recognized as
+sovereign of the country," wrote the confidential agent of the King of
+Spain in the Netherlands, Emmanuel Sueyro, to the government of Madrid.
+"The English will oppose it with all their strength. But they can do
+nothing except by making Count Maurice sovereign of Holland and duke of
+Julich and Cleve. Maurice will also contrive to make himself master of
+Wesel, so it is necessary for the Archduke to be beforehand with him and
+make sure of the place. It is also needful that his Majesty should induce
+the French government to talk with the Netherlanders and convince them
+that it is time to prolong the Truce."
+
+This was soon afterwards accomplished. The French minister at Brussels
+informed Archduke Albert that du Maurier had been instructed to propose
+the prolongation, and that he had been conferring with the Prince of
+Orange and the States-General on the subject. At first the Prince had
+expressed disinclination, but at the last interview both he and the
+States had shown a desire for it, and the French King had requested from
+the Archduke a declaration whether the Spanish government would be
+willing to treat for it. In such case Lewis would offer himself as
+mediator and do his best to bring about a successful result.
+
+But it was not the intention of the conspirators in the Netherlands that
+the Truce should be prolonged. On the contrary the negotiation for it was
+merely to furnish the occasion for fully developing their plot. "The
+States and especially those of Zealand will reply that they no longer
+wish the Truce," continued Sueyro, "and that they would prefer war to
+such a truce. They desire to put ships on the coast of Flanders, to which
+the Hollanders are opposed because it would be disagreeable to the
+French. So the Zealanders will be the first to say that the Netherlanders
+must come back to his Majesty. This their President Hanmaker has sworn.
+The States of Overyssel will likewise give their hand to this because
+they say they will be the first to feel the shock of the war. Thus we
+shall very easily carry out our design, and as we shall concede to the
+Zealanders their demands in regard to the navigation they at least will
+place themselves under the dominion of his Majesty as will be the case
+with Friesland as well as Overyssel."
+
+It will be observed that in this secret arrangement for selling the
+Republic to its ancient master it was precisely the Provinces and the
+politicians most steadily opposed to Barneveld that took the lead.
+Zealand, Friesland, Overyssel were in the plot, but not a word was said
+of Utrecht. As for Holland itself, hopes were founded on the places where
+hatred to the Advocate was fiercest.
+
+"Between ourselves," continued the agent, "we are ten here in the
+government of Holland to support the plan, but we must not discover
+ourselves for fear of suffering what has happened to Barneveld."
+
+He added that the time for action had not yet come, and that if movements
+were made before the Synod had finished its labours, "The Gomarists would
+say that they were all sold." He implored the government at Madrid to
+keep the whole matter for the present profoundly secret because "Prince
+Maurice and the Gomarists had the forces of the country at their
+disposition." In case the plot was sprung too suddenly therefore, he
+feared that with the assistance of England Maurice might, at the head of
+the Gomarists and the army, make himself sovereign of Holland and Duke of
+Cleve, while he and the rest of the Spanish partisans might be in prison
+with Barneveld for trying to accomplish what Barneveld had been trying to
+prevent.
+
+The opinions and utterances of such a man as James I. would be of little
+worth to our history had he not happened to occupy the place he did. But
+he was a leading actor in the mournful drama which filled up the whole
+period of the Twelve Years' Truce. His words had a direct influence on
+great events. He was a man of unquestionable erudition, of powers of mind
+above the average, while the absolute deformity of his moral constitution
+made him incapable of thinking, feeling, or acting rightly on any vital
+subject, by any accident or on any occasion. If there were one thing that
+he thoroughly hated in the world, it was the Reformed religion. If in his
+thought there were one term of reproach more loathsome than another to be
+applied to a human creature, it was the word Puritan. In the word was
+subversion of all established authority in Church and State--revolution,
+republicanism, anarchy. "There are degrees in Heaven," he was wont to
+say, "there are degrees in Hell, there must be degrees on earth."
+
+He forbade the Calvinist Churches of Scotland to hold their customary
+Synod in 1610, passionately reviling them and their belief, and declaring
+"their aim to be nothing else than to deprive kings and princes of their
+sovereignty, and to reduce the whole world to a popular form of
+government where everybody would be master."
+
+When the Prince of Neuburg embraced Catholicism, thus complicating
+matters in the duchies and strengthening the hand of Spain and the
+Emperor in the debateable land, he seized the occasion to assure the
+agent of the Archduke in London, Councillor Boissetot, of his warm
+Catholic sympathies. "They say that I am the greatest heretic in the
+world!" he exclaimed; "but I will never deny that the true religion is
+that of Rome even if corrupted." He expressed his belief in the real
+presence, and his surprise that the Roman Catholics did not take the
+chalice for the blood of Christ. The English bishops, he averred, drew
+their consecration through the bishops in Mary Tudor's time from the
+Pope.
+
+As Philip II., and Ferdinand II. echoing the sentiments of his
+illustrious uncle, had both sworn they would rather reign in a wilderness
+than tolerate a single heretic in their dominions, so James had said "he
+would rather be a hermit in a forest than a king over such people as the
+pack of Puritans were who overruled the lower house."
+
+For the Netherlanders he had an especial hatred, both as rebels and
+Puritans. Soon after coming to the English throne he declared that their
+revolt, which had been going on all his lifetime and of which he never
+expected to see the end, had begun by petition for matters of religion.
+"His mother and he from their cradles," he said, "had been haunted with a
+Puritan devil, which he feared would not leave him to his grave. And he
+would hazard his crown but he would suppress those malicious spirits." It
+seemed a strange caprice of Destiny that assigned to this hater of
+Netherlanders, of Puritans, and of the Reformed religion, the decision of
+disputed points between Puritans and anti-Puritans in the Reformed Church
+of the Netherlands.
+
+It seemed stranger that his opinions should be hotly on the side of the
+Puritans.
+
+Barneveld, who often used the expression in later years, as we have seen
+in his correspondence, was opposed to the Dutch Puritans because they had
+more than once attempted subversion of the government on pretext of
+religion, especially at the memorable epoch of Leicester's government.
+
+The business of stirring up these religious conspiracies against the
+magistracy he was apt to call "Flanderizing," in allusion to those
+disastrous days and to the origin of the ringleaders in those tumults.
+But his main object, as we have seen, was to effect compromises and
+restore good feeling between members of the one church, reserving the
+right of disposing over religious matters to the government of the
+respective provinces.
+
+But James had remedied his audacious inconsistency by discovering that
+Puritanism in England and in the Netherlands resembled each other no more
+than certain letters transposed into totally different words meant one
+and the same thing. The anagrammatic argument had been neatly put by Sir
+Dudley Carleton, convincing no man. Puritanism in England "denied the
+right of human invention or imposition in religious matters." Puritanism
+in the Netherlands denied the right of the legal government to impose its
+authority in religious matters. This was the great matter of debate in
+the Provinces. In England the argument had been settled very summarily
+against the Puritans by sheriffs' officers, bishops' pursuivants, and
+county jails.
+
+As the political tendencies, so too the religious creed and observances
+of the English Puritans were identical with that of the
+Contra-Remonstrants, whom King James had helped to their great triumph.
+This was not very difficult to prove. It so happened that there were some
+English Puritans living at that moment in Leyden. They formed an
+independent society by themselves, which they called a Congregational
+Church, and in which were some three hundred communicants. The length of
+their residence there was almost exactly coeval with the Twelve Years'
+Truce. They knew before leaving England that many relics of the Roman
+ceremonial, with which they were dissatisfied, and for the discontinuance
+of which they had in vain petitioned the crown--the ring, the sign of the
+cross, white surplices, and the like--besides the whole hierarchical
+system, had been disused in the Reformed Churches of France, Switzerland,
+and the United Provinces, where the forms of worship in their view had
+been brought more nearly to the early apostolic model. They admitted for
+truth the doctrinal articles of the Dutch Reformed Churches. They had not
+come to the Netherlands without cause. At an early period of King James's
+reign this congregation of seceders from the establishment had been wont
+to hold meetings at Scrooby in Nottinghamshire, once a manor of the
+Archbishop of York, but then the residence of one William Brewster. This
+was a gentleman of some fortune, educated at Cambridge, a good scholar,
+who in Queen Elizabeth's time had been in the service of William Davison
+when Secretary of State. He seemed to have been a confidential private
+secretary of that excellent and unlucky statesman, who found him so
+discreet and faithful as to deserve employment before all others in
+matters of trust and secrecy. He was esteemed by Davison "rather as a son
+than a servant," and he repaid his confidence by doing him many faithful
+offices in the time of his troubles. He had however long since retired
+from connection with public affairs, living a retired life, devoted to
+study, meditation, and practical exertion to promote the cause of
+religion, and in acts of benevolence sometimes beyond his means.
+
+The pastor of the Scrooby Church, one John Robinson, a graduate of
+Cambridge, who had been a benefited clergyman in Norfolk, was a man of
+learning, eloquence, and lofty intellect. But what were such good gifts
+in the possession of rebels, seceders, and Puritans? It is needless to
+say that Brewster and Robinson were baited, persecuted, watched day and
+night, some of the congregation often clapped into prison, others into
+the stocks, deprived of the means of livelihood, outlawed, famished,
+banned. Plainly their country was no place for them. After a few years of
+such work they resolved to establish themselves in Holland, where at
+least they hoped to find refuge and toleration.
+
+But it proved as difficult for them to quit the country as to remain in
+it. Watched and hunted like gangs of coiners, forgers, or other felons
+attempting to flee from justice, set upon by troopers armed with "bills
+and guns and other weapons," seized when about to embark, pillaged and
+stripped by catchpoles, exhibited as a show to grinning country folk, the
+women and children dealt with like drunken tramps, led before
+magistrates, committed to jail; Mr. Brewster and six other of the
+principal ones being kept in prison and bound over to the assizes; they
+were only able after attempts lasting through two years' time to effect
+their escape to Amsterdam. After remaining there a year they had removed
+to Leyden, which they thought "a fair and beautiful city, and of a sweet
+situation."
+
+They settled in Leyden in the very year in which Arminius was buried
+beneath the pavement of St. Peter's Church in that town. It was the year
+too in which the Truce was signed. They were a singularly tranquil and
+brotherly community. Their pastor, who was endowed with remarkable
+gentleness and tact in dealing with his congregation, settled amicably
+all their occasional disputes. The authorities of the place held them up
+as a model. To a Walloon congregation in which there were many
+troublesome and litigious members they said: "These English have lived
+among us ten years, and yet we never had any suit or accusation against
+any of them, but your quarrels are continual."
+
+Although many of them were poor, finding it difficult to earn their
+living in a foreign land among people speaking a strange tongue, and with
+manners and habits differing from their own, and where they were obliged
+to learn new trades, having most of them come out of an agricultural
+population, yet they enjoyed a singular reputation for probity. Bakers
+and butchers and the like willingly gave credit to the poorest of these
+English, and sought their custom if known to be of the congregation. Mr.
+Brewster, who had been reduced almost to poverty by his charities and
+munificent aid to his struggling brethren, earned his living by giving
+lessons in English, having first composed a grammar according to the
+Latin model for the use of his pupils. He also set up a printing
+establishment, publishing many controversial works prohibited in England,
+a proceeding which roused the wrath of Carleton, impelling him to do his
+best to have him thrown into prison.
+
+It was not the first time that this plain, mechanical, devout Englishman,
+now past middle age, had visited the Netherlands. More than twenty-five
+years before he had accompanied William Davison on his famous embassy to
+the States, as private secretary.
+
+When the keys of Flushing, one of the cautionary towns, were committed to
+the Ambassador, he confided them to the care of Brewster, who slept with
+them under his pillow. The gold chain which Davison received as a present
+from the provincial government on leaving the country was likewise placed
+in his keeping, with orders to wear it around his neck until they should
+appear before the Queen. To a youth of ease and affluence, familiar with
+ambassadors and statesmen and not unknown at courts, had succeeded a
+mature age of obscurity, deep study, and poverty. No human creature would
+have heard of him had his career ended with his official life. Two
+centuries and a half have passed away and the name of the outlawed
+Puritan of Scrooby and Leyden is still familiar to millions of the
+English race.
+
+All these Englishmen were not poor. Many of them occupied houses of fair
+value, and were admitted to the freedom of the city. The pastor with
+three of his congregation lived in a comfortable mansion, which they had
+purchased for the considerable sum of 8000 florins, and on the garden of
+which they subsequently erected twenty-one lesser tenements for the use
+of the poorer brethren.
+
+Mr. Robinson was himself chosen a member of the famous university and
+admitted to its privileges. During his long residence in Leyden, besides
+the daily care of his congregation, spiritual and temporal, he wrote many
+learned works.
+
+Thus the little community, which grew gradually larger by emigration from
+England, passed many years of tranquillity. Their footsteps were not
+dogged by constables and pursuivants, they were not dragged daily before
+the magistrates, they were not thrown into the town jails, they were not
+hunted from place to place with bows and bills and mounted musketeers.
+They gave offence to none, and were respected by all. "Such was their
+singleheartedness and sincere affection one towards another," says their
+historian and magistrate, "that they came as near the primitive pattern
+of the first churches as any other church of these later times has done,
+according to their rank and quality."
+
+Here certainly were English Puritans more competent than any men else in
+the world to judge if it were a slander upon the English government to
+identify them with Dutch Puritans. Did they sympathize with the party in
+Holland which the King, who had so scourged and trampled upon themselves
+in England, was so anxious to crush, the hated Arminians? Did they abhor
+the Contra-Remonstrants whom James and his ambassador Carleton doted upon
+and whom Barneveld called "Double Puritans" and "Flanderizers?"
+
+Their pastor may answer for himself and his brethren.
+
+"We profess before God and men," said Robinson in his Apologia, "that we
+agree so entirely with the Reformed Dutch Churches in the matter of
+religion as to be ready to subscribe to all and each of their articles
+exactly as they are set forth in the Netherland Confession. We
+acknowledge those Reformed Churches as true and genuine, we profess and
+cultivate communion with them as much as in us lies. Those of us who
+understand the Dutch language attend public worship under their pastors.
+We administer the Holy Supper to such of their members as, known to us,
+appear at our meetings." This was the position of the Puritans. Absolute,
+unqualified accordance with the Contra-Remonstrants.
+
+As the controversy grew hot in the university between the Arminians and
+their adversaries, Mr. Robinson, in the language of his friend Bradford,
+became "terrible to the Arminians . . . . who so greatly molested the
+whole state and that city in particular."
+
+When Episcopius, the Arminian professor of theology, set forth sundry
+theses, challenging all the world to the onset, it was thought that "none
+was fitter to buckle with them" than Robinson. The orthodox professor
+Polyander so importuned the English Puritan to enter the lists on behalf
+of the Contra-Remonstrants that at last he consented and overthrew the
+challenger, horse and man, in three successive encounters. Such at least
+was the account given by his friend and admirer the historian. "The Lord
+did so help him to defend the truth and foil this adversary as he put him
+to an apparent nonplus in this great and public audience. And the like he
+did a second or third time upon such like occasions," said Bradford,
+adding that, if it had not been for fear of offending the English
+government, the university would have bestowed preferments and honours
+upon the champion.
+
+We are concerned with this ancient and exhausted controversy only for the
+intense light it threw, when burning, on the history which occupies us.
+
+Of the extinct volcano itself which once caused such devastation, and in
+which a great commonwealth was well-nigh swallowed up, little is left but
+slag and cinders. The past was made black and barren with them. Let us
+disturb them as little as possible.
+
+The little English congregation remained at Leyden till toward the end of
+the Truce, thriving, orderly, respected, happy. They were witnesses to
+the tumultuous, disastrous, and tragical events which darkened the
+Republic in those later years, themselves unobserved and unmolested. Not
+a syllable seems to remain on record of the views or emotions which may
+have been excited by those scenes in their minds, nor is there a trace
+left on the national records of the Netherlands of their protracted
+residence on the soil.
+
+They got their living as best they might by weaving, printing, spinning,
+and other humble trades; they borrowed money on mortgages, they built
+houses, they made wills, and such births, deaths, and marriages as
+occurred among them were registered by the town-clerk.
+
+And at last for a variety of reasons they resolved to leave the
+Netherlands. Perhaps the solution of the problem between Church and State
+in that country by the temporary subjection of State to Church may have
+encouraged them to realize a more complete theocracy, if a sphere of
+action could be found where the experiment might be tried without a
+severe battle against time-hallowed institutions and vested rights.
+Perhaps they were appalled by the excesses into which men of their own
+religious sentiments had been carried by theological and political
+passion. At any rate depart they would; the larger half of the
+congregation remaining behind however till the pioneers should have
+broken the way, and in their own language "laid the stepping-stones."
+
+They had thought of the lands beneath the Equator, Raleigh having
+recently excited enthusiasm by his poetical descriptions of Guiana. But
+the tropical scheme was soon abandoned. They had opened negotiations with
+the Stadholder and the States-General through Amsterdam merchants in
+regard to settling in New Amsterdam, and offered to colonize that country
+if assured of the protection of the United Provinces. Their petition had
+been rejected. They had then turned their faces to their old master and
+their own country, applying to the Virginia Company for a land-patent,
+which they were only too happy to promise, and to the King for liberty of
+religion in the wilderness confirmed under his broad seal, which his
+Majesty of course refused. It was hinted however that James would connive
+at them and not molest them if they carried themselves peaceably. So they
+resolved to go without the seal, for, said their magistrate very wisely,
+"if there should be a purpose or desire to wrong them, a seal would not
+serve their turn though it were as broad as the house-floor."
+
+Before they left Leyden, their pastor preached to them a farewell sermon,
+which for loftiness of spirit and breadth of vision has hardly a parallel
+in that age of intolerance. He laid down the principle that criticism of
+the Scriptures had not been exhausted merely because it had been begun;
+that the human conscience was of too subtle a nature to be imprisoned for
+ever in formulas however ingeniously devised; that the religious
+reformation begun a century ago was not completed; and that the Creator
+had not necessarily concluded all His revelations to mankind.
+
+The words have long been familiar to students of history, but they can
+hardly be too often laid to heart.
+
+Noble words, worthy to have been inscribed over the altar of the first
+church to be erected by the departing brethren, words to bear fruit after
+centuries should go by. Had not the deeply injured and misunderstood
+Grotius already said, "If the trees we plant do not shade us, they will
+yet serve for our descendants?"
+
+Yet it is passing strange that the preacher of that sermon should be the
+recent champion of the Contra-Remonstrants in the great controversy; the
+man who had made himself so terrible to the pupils of the gentle and
+tolerant Arminius.
+
+And thus half of that English congregation went down to Delftshaven,
+attended by the other half who were to follow at a later period with
+their beloved pastor. There was a pathetic leave-taking. Even many of the
+Hollanders, mere casual spectators, were in tears.
+
+Robinson, kneeling on the deck of the little vessel, offered a prayer and
+a farewell. Who could dream that this departure of an almost nameless
+band of emigrants to the wilderness was an epoch in the world's history?
+Yet these were the Pilgrim Fathers of New England, the founders of what
+was to be the mightiest republic of modern history, mighty and stable
+because it had been founded upon an idea.
+
+They were not in search of material comfort and the chances of elevating
+their condition, by removing from an overpeopled country to an organized
+Commonwealth, offering a wide field for pauper labourers. Some of them
+were of good social rank and highest education, most of them in decent
+circumstances, none of them in absolute poverty. And a few years later
+they were to be joined by a far larger company with leaders and many
+brethren of ancient birth and landed possessions, men of "education,
+figure; and estate," all ready to convert property into cash and to place
+it in joint-stock, not as the basis of promising speculation, but as the
+foundation of a church.
+
+It signifies not how much or how little one may sympathize with their
+dogma or their discipline now. To the fact that the early settlement of
+that wilderness was by self-sacrificing men of earnestness and faith, who
+were bent on "advancing the Gospel of Christ in remote parts of the
+world," in the midst of savage beasts, more savage men, and unimaginable
+difficulties and dangers, there can be little doubt that the highest
+forms of Western civilization are due. Through their provisional
+theocracy, the result of the independent church system was to establish
+the true purport of the Reformation, absolute religious equality. Civil
+and political equality followed as a matter of course.
+
+Two centuries and a half have passed away.
+
+There are now some seventy or eighty millions of the English-speaking
+race on both sides the Atlantic, almost equally divided between the
+United Kingdom and the United Republic, and the departure of those
+outcasts of James has interest and significance for them all.
+
+Most fitly then, as a distinguished American statesman has remarked, does
+that scene on board the little English vessel, with the English pastor
+uttering his farewell blessing to a handful of English exiles for
+conscience sake; depicted on canvas by eminent artists, now adorn the
+halls of the American Congress and of the British Parliament. Sympathy
+with one of the many imperishable bonds of union between the two great
+and scarcely divided peoples.
+
+We return to Barneveld in his solitary prison.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+   Barneveld's Imprisonment--Ledenberg's Examination and Death--
+   Remonstrance of De Boississe--Aerssens admitted to the order of
+   Knights--Trial of the Advocate--Barneveld's Defence--The States
+   proclaim a Public Fast--Du Maurier's Speech before the Assembly--
+   Barneveld's Sentence--Barneveld prepares for Death--Goes to
+   Execution.
+
+The Advocate had been removed within a few days after the arrest from the
+chamber in Maurice's apartments, where he had originally been confined,
+and was now in another building.
+
+It was not a dungeon nor a jail. Indeed the commonplace and domestic
+character of the scenery in which these great events were transacted has
+in it something pathetic. There was and still remains a two-storied
+structure, then of modern date, immediately behind the antique hall of
+the old Counts within the Binnenhof. On the first floor was a courtroom
+of considerable extent, the seat of one of the chief tribunals of justice
+The story above was divided into three chambers with a narrow corridor on
+each side. The first chamber, on the north-eastern side, was appropriated
+for the judges when the state prisoners should be tried. In the next Hugo
+Grotius was imprisoned. In the third was Barneveld. There was a tower at
+the north-east angle of the building, within which a winding and narrow
+staircase of stone led up to the corridor and so to the prisoners'
+apartments. Rombout Hoogerbeets was confined in another building.
+
+As the Advocate, bent with age and a life of hard work, and leaning on
+his staff, entered the room appropriated to him, after toiling up the
+steep staircase, he observed--
+
+"This is the Admiral of Arragon's apartment."
+
+It was true. Eighteen years before, the conqueror of Nieuwpoort had
+assigned this lodging to the chief prisoner of war in that memorable
+victory over the Spaniards, and now Maurice's faithful and trusted
+counsellor at that epoch was placed in durance here, as the result of the
+less glorious series of victories which had just been achieved.
+
+It was a room of moderate dimensions, some twenty-five feet square, with
+a high vaulted roof and decently furnished. Below and around him in the
+courtyard were the scenes of the Advocate's life-long and triumphant
+public services. There in the opposite building were the windows of the
+beautiful "Hall of Truce," with its sumptuous carvings and gildings, its
+sculptures and portraits, where he had negotiated with the
+representatives of all the great powers of Christendom the famous Treaty
+which had suspended the war of forty years, and where he was wont almost
+daily to give audience to the envoys of the greatest sovereigns or the
+least significant states of Europe and Asia, all of whom had been ever
+solicitous of his approbation and support.
+
+Farther along in the same building was the assembly room of the
+States-General, where some of the most important affairs of the Republic
+and of Europe had for years been conducted, and where he had been so
+indispensable that, in the words of a contemporary who loved him not,
+"absolutely nothing could be transacted in his absence, all great affairs
+going through him alone."
+
+There were two dull windows, closely barred, looking northward over an
+irregular assemblage of tile-roofed houses and chimney-stacks, while
+within a stone's throw to the west, but unseen, was his own elegant
+mansion on the Voorhout, surrounded by flower gardens and shady pleasure
+grounds, where now sat his aged wife and her children all plunged in deep
+affliction.
+
+He was allowed the attendance of a faithful servant, Jan Franken by name,
+and a sentinel stood constantly before his door. His papers had been
+taken from him, and at first he was deprived of writing materials.
+
+He had small connection with the outward world. The news of the municipal
+revolution which had been effected by the Stadholder had not penetrated
+to his solitude, but his wife was allowed to send him fruit from their
+garden. One day a basket of fine saffron pears was brought to him. On
+slicing one with a knife he found a portion of a quill inside it. Within
+the quill was a letter on thinnest paper, in minutest handwriting in
+Latin. It was to this effect.
+
+"Don't rely upon the States of Holland, for the Prince of Orange has
+changed the magistracies in many cities. Dudley Carleton is not your
+friend."
+
+A sergeant of the guard however, before bringing in these pears, had put
+a couple of them in his pocket to take home to his wife. The letter,
+copies of which perhaps had been inserted for safety in several of them,
+was thus discovered and the use of this ingenious device prevented for
+the future.
+
+Secretary Ledenberg, who had been brought to the Hague in the early days
+of September, was the first of the prisoners subjected to examination. He
+was much depressed at the beginning of it, and is said to have exclaimed
+with many sighs, "Oh Barneveld, Barneveld, what have you brought us to!"
+
+He confessed that the Waartgelders at Utrecht had been enlisted on
+notification by the Utrecht deputies in the Hague with knowledge of
+Barneveld, and in consequence of a resolution of the States in order to
+prevent internal tumults. He said that the Advocate had advised in the
+previous month of March a request to the Prince not to come to Utrecht;
+that the communication of the message, in regard to disbanding the
+Waartgelders, to his Excellency had been postponed after the deputies of
+the States of Holland had proposed a delay in that disbandment; that
+those deputies had come to Utrecht of their own accord; . . . . that they
+had judged it possible to keep everything in proper order in Utrecht if
+the garrison in the city paid by Holland were kept quiet, and if the
+States of Utrecht gave similar orders to the Waartgelders; for they did
+not believe that his Excellency would bring in troops from the outside.
+He said that he knew nothing of a new oath to be demanded of the
+garrison. He stated that the Advocate, when at Utrecht, had exhorted the
+States, according to his wont, to maintain their liberties and
+privileges, representing to them that the right to decide on the Synod
+and the Waartgelders belonged to them. Lastly, he denied knowing who was
+the author of The Balance, except by common report.
+
+Now these statements hardly amounted to a confession of abominable and
+unpardonable crimes by Ledenberg, nor did they establish a charge of
+high-treason and corrupt correspondence with the enemy against Barneveld.
+It is certain that the extent of the revelations seemed far from
+satisfactory to the accusers, and that some pressure would be necessary
+in order to extract anything more conclusive. Lieutenant Nythof told
+Grotius that Ledenberg had accordingly been threatened with torture, and
+that the executioner had even handled him for that purpose. This was
+however denied by the judges of instruction who had been charged with the
+preliminary examination.
+
+That examination took place on the 27th September. After it had been
+concluded, Ledenberg prayed long and earnestly on returning to prison. He
+then entrusted a paper written in French to his son Joost, a boy of
+eighteen, who did not understand that language. The youth had been
+allowed to keep his father company in his confinement, and slept in the
+same room.
+
+The next night but one, at two o'clock, Joost heard his father utter a
+deep groan. He was startled, groped in the darkness towards his bed and
+felt his arm, which was stone cold. He spoke to him and received no
+answer. He gave the alarm, the watch came in with lights, and it was
+found that Ledenberg had given himself two mortal wounds in the abdomen
+with a penknife and then cut his throat with a table-knife which he had
+secreted, some days before, among some papers.
+
+The paper in French given to his son was found to be to this effect.
+
+"I know that there is an inclination to set an example in my person, to
+confront me with my best friends, to torture me, afterwards to convict me
+of contradictions and falsehoods as they say, and then to found an
+ignominious sentence upon points and trifles, for this it will be
+necessary to do in order to justify the arrest and imprisonment. To
+escape all this I am going to God by the shortest road. Against a dead
+man there can be pronounced no sentence of confiscation of property. Done
+17th September (o. s.) 1618."
+
+The family of the unhappy gentleman begged his body for decent burial.
+The request was refused. It was determined to keep the dead secretary
+above ground and in custody until he could be tried, and, if possible,
+convicted and punished. It was to be seen whether it were so easy to
+baffle the power of the States-General, the Synod, and the Stadholder,
+and whether "going to God by the shortest road" was to save a culprit's
+carcass from ignominy, and his property from confiscation.
+
+The French ambassadors, who had been unwearied in their endeavour to
+restore harmony to the distracted Commonwealth before the arrest of the
+prisoners, now exerted themselves to throw the shield of their
+sovereign's friendship around the illustrious statesman and his
+fellow-sufferers.
+
+"It is with deepest sorrow," said de Boississe, "that I have witnessed
+the late hateful commotions. Especially from my heart I grieve for the
+arrest of the Seignior Barneveld, who with his discretion and wise
+administration for the past thirty years has so drawn the hearts of all
+neighbouring princes to himself, especially that of the King my master,
+that on taking up my pen to apprize him of these events I am gravely
+embarrassed, fearing to infringe on the great respect due to your
+Mightinesses or against the honour and merits of the Seignior Barneveld.
+. . . My Lords, take heed to your situation, for a great discontent is
+smouldering among your citizens. Until now, the Union has been the chief
+source of your strength. And I now fear that the King my master, the
+adviser of your renowned Commonwealth, maybe offended that you have taken
+this resolution after consulting with others, and without communicating
+your intention to his ambassador . . . . It is but a few days that an
+open edict was issued testifying to the fidelity of Barneveld, and can it
+be possible that within so short a time you have discovered that you have
+been deceived? I summon you once more in the name of the King to lay
+aside all passion, to judge these affairs without partiality, and to
+inform me what I am to say to the King. Such very conflicting accounts
+are given of these transactions that I must beg you to confide to me the
+secret of the affair. The wisest in the land speak so strongly of these
+proceedings that it will be no wonder if the King my master should give
+me orders to take the Seignior Barneveld under his protection. Should
+this prove to be the case, your Lordships will excuse my course . . . I
+beg you earnestly in your wisdom not to give cause of offence to
+neighbouring princes, especially to my sovereign, who wishes from his
+heart to maintain your dignity and interests and to assure you of his
+friendship."
+
+The language was vigorous and sincere, but the Ambassador forgot that the
+France of to-day was not the France of yesterday; that Louis XIII. was
+not Henry IV.; that it was but a cheerful fiction to call the present
+King the guide and counsellor of the Republic, and that, distraught as
+she was by the present commotions, her condition was strength and
+tranquillity compared with the apparently decomposing and helpless state
+of the once great kingdom of France. De Boississe took little by his
+demonstration.
+
+On the 12th December both de Boississe and du Maurier came before the
+States-General once more, and urged a speedy and impartial trial for the
+illustrious prisoners. If they had committed acts of treason and
+rebellion, they deserved exemplary punishment, but the ambassadors warned
+the States-General with great earnestness against the dangerous doctrine
+of constructive treason, and of confounding acts dictated by violence of
+party spirit at an excited period with the crime of high-treason against
+the sovereignty of the State.
+
+"Barneveld so honourable," they said, "for his immense and long continued
+services has both this Republic and all princes and commonwealths for his
+witnesses. It is most difficult to believe that he has attempted the
+destruction of his fatherland, for which you know that he has toiled so
+faithfully."
+
+They admitted that so grave charges ought now to be investigated. "To
+this end," said the ambassadors, "you ought to give him judges who are
+neither suspected nor impassioned, and who will decide according to the
+laws of the land, and on clear and undeniable evidence . . . . So doing
+you will show to the whole world that you are worthy to possess and to
+administer this Commonwealth to whose government God has called you."
+
+Should they pursue another and a sterner course, the envoys warned the
+Assembly that the King would be deeply offended, deeming it thus proved
+how little value they set upon his advice and his friendship.
+
+The States-General replied on the 19th December, assuring the ambassadors
+that the delay in the trial was in order to make the evidence of the
+great conspiracy complete, and would not tend to the prejudice of the
+prisoners "if they had a good consciousness of their innocence." They
+promised that the sentence upon them when pronounced would give entire
+satisfaction to all their allies and to the King of France in particular,
+of whom they spoke throughout the document in terms of profound respect.
+But they expressed their confidence that "his Majesty would not place the
+importunate and unfounded solicitations of a few particular criminals or
+their supporters before the general interests of the dignity and security
+of the Republic."
+
+On the same day the States-General addressed a letter filled with very
+elaborate and courteous commonplaces to the King, in which they expressed
+a certainty that his Majesty would be entirely satisfied with their
+actions.
+
+The official answer of the States-General to the ambassadors, just cited,
+gave but little comfort to the friends of the imprisoned statesman and
+his companions. Such expressions as "ambitious and factious
+spirits,"--"authors and patrons of the faction,"--"attempts at novelty
+through changes in religion, in justice and in the fundamental laws of
+all orders of polity," and the frequent mention of the word "conspiracy"
+boded little good.
+
+Information of this condition of affairs was conveyed to Hoogerbeets and
+Grotius by means of an ingenious device of the distinguished scholar, who
+was then editing the Latin works of the Hague poet, Janus Secundus.
+
+While the sheets were going through the press, some of the verses were
+left out, and their place supplied by others conveying the intelligence
+which it was desired to send to the prisoners. The pages which contained
+the secret were stitched together in such wise that in cutting the book
+open they were not touched but remained closed. The verses were to this
+effect. "The examination of the Advocate proceeds slowly, but there is
+good hope from the serious indignation of the French king, whose envoys
+are devoted to the cause of the prisoners, and have been informed that
+justice will be soon rendered. The States of Holland are to assemble on
+the 15th January, at which a decision will certainly be taken for
+appointing judges. The preachers here at Leyden are despised, and men are
+speaking strongly of war. The tumult which lately occurred at Rotterdam
+may bring forth some good."
+
+The quick-wited Grotius instantly discovered the device, read the
+intelligence thus communicated in the proofsheets of Secundus, and made
+use of the system to obtain further intelligence.
+
+Hoogerbeets laid the book aside, not taking much interest at that time in
+the works of the Hague poet. Constant efforts made to attract his
+attention to those poems however excited suspicion among his keepers, and
+the scheme was discovered before the Leyden pensionary had found the
+means to profit by it.'
+
+The allusions to the trial of the Advocate referred to the preliminary
+examination which took place, like the first interrogatories of Grotius
+and Hoogerbeets, in the months of November and December.
+
+The thorough manner in which Maurice had reformed the States of Holland
+has been described. There was one department of that body however which
+still required attention. The Order of Knights, small in number but
+potential in influence, which always voted first on great occasions, was
+still through a majority of its members inclined to Barneveld. Both his
+sons-in-law had seats in that college. The Stadholder had long believed
+in a spirit of hostility on the part of those nobles towards himself. He
+knew that a short time before this epoch there had been a scheme for
+introducing his young brother, Frederic Henry, into the Chamber of
+Knights. The Count had become proprietor of the barony of Naaldwyk, a
+property which he had purchased of the Counts of Arenberg, and which
+carried with it the hereditary dignity of Great Equerry of the Counts of
+Holland. As the Counts of Holland had ceased to exist, although their
+sovereignty had nearly been revived and conferred upon William the
+Silent, the office of their chief of the stables might be deemed a
+sinecure. But the jealousy of Maurice was easily awakened, especially by
+any movement made or favoured by the Advocate. He believed that in the
+election of Frederic Henry as a member of the College of Knights a plan
+lay concealed to thrust him into power and to push this elder brother
+from his place. The scheme, if scheme it were, was never accomplished,
+but the Prince's rancour remained.
+
+He now informed the nobles that they must receive into their body Francis
+Aerssens, who had lately purchased the barony of Sommelsdyk, and Daniel
+de Hartaing, Seignior of Marquette. With the presence of this deadly
+enemy of Barneveld and another gentleman equally devoted to the
+Stadholder's interest it seemed probable that the refractory majority of
+the board of nobles would be overcome. But there were grave objections to
+the admission of these new candidates. They were not eligible. The
+constitution of the States and of the college of nobles prescribed that
+Hollanders only of ancient and noble race and possessing estates in the
+province could sit in that body. Neither Aerssens nor Hartaing was born
+in Holland or possessed of the other needful qualifications.
+Nevertheless, the Prince, who had just remodelled all the municipalities
+throughout the Union which offered resistance to his authority, was not
+to be checked by so trifling an impediment as the statutes of the House
+of Nobles. He employed very much the same arguments which he had used to
+"good papa" Hooft. "This time it must be so." Another time it might not
+be necessary. So after a controversy which ended as controversies are apt
+to do when one party has a sword in his hand and the other is seated at a
+green-baize-covered table, Sommelsdyk and Marquette took their seats
+among the knights. Of course there was a spirited protest. Nothing was
+easier for the Stadholder than to concede the principle while trampling
+it with his boot-heels in practice.
+
+"Whereas it is not competent for the said two gentlemen to be admitted to
+our board," said the nobles in brief, "as not being constitutionally
+eligible, nevertheless, considering the strong desire of his Excellency
+the Prince of Orange, we, the nobles and knights of Holland, admit them
+with the firm promise to each other by noble and knightly faith ever in
+future for ourselves and descendants to maintain the privileges of our
+order now violated and never again to let them be directly or indirectly
+infringed."
+
+And so Aerssens, the unscrupulous plotter, and dire foe of the Advocate
+and all his house, burning with bitter revenge for all the favours he had
+received from him during many years, and the author of the venomous
+pamphlets and diatribes which had done so much of late to blacken the
+character of the great statesman before the public, now associated
+himself officially with his other enemies, while the preliminary
+proceedings for the state trials went forward.
+
+Meantime the Synod had met at Dordtrecht. The great John Bogerman, with
+fierce, handsome face, beak and eye of a bird of prey, and a deluge of
+curly brown beard reaching to his waist, took his seat as president.
+Short work was made with the Armenians. They and their five Points were
+soon thrust out into outer darkness.
+
+It was established beyond all gainsaying that two forms of Divine worship
+in one country were forbidden by God's Word, and that thenceforth by
+Netherland law there could be but one religion, namely, the Reformed or
+Calvinistic creed.
+
+It was settled that one portion of the Netherlanders and of the rest of
+the human race had been expressly created by the Deity to be for ever
+damned, and another portion to be eternally blessed. But this history has
+little to do with that infallible council save in the political effect of
+its decrees on the fate of Barneveld. It was said that the canons of
+Dordtrecht were likely to shoot off the head of the Advocate. Their
+sessions and the trial of the Advocate were simultaneous, but not
+technically related to each other.
+
+The conclusions of both courts were preordained, for the issue of the
+great duel between Priesthood and State had been decided when the
+military chieftain threw his sword into the scale of the Church.
+
+There had been purposely a delay, before coming to a decision as to the
+fate of the state prisoners, until the work of the Synod should have
+approached completion.
+
+It was thought good that the condemnation of the opinions of the
+Arminians and the chastisement of their leaders should go hand-in-hand.
+
+On the 23rd April 1619, the canons were signed by all the members of the
+Synod. Arminians were pronounced heretics, schismatics, teachers of false
+doctrines. They were declared incapable of filling any clerical or
+academical post. No man thenceforth was to teach children, lecture to
+adolescents, or preach to the mature, unless a subscriber to the
+doctrines of the unchanged, unchangeable, orthodox church. On the 30th
+April and 1st May the Netherland Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism
+were declared to be infallible. No change was to be possible in either
+formulary.
+
+Schools and pulpits were inexorably bound to the only true religion.
+
+On the 6th May there was a great festival at Dordtrecht in honour of the
+conclusion of the Synod. The canons, the sentence, and long prayers and
+orations in Latin by President Bogerman gladdened the souls of an immense
+multitude, which were further enlivened by the decree that both Creed and
+Catechism had stood the test of several criticisms and come out unchanged
+by a single hair. Nor did the orator of the occasion forget to render
+thanks "to the most magnanimous King James of Great Britain, through
+whose godly zeal, fiery sympathy, and truly royal labour God had so often
+refreshed the weary Synod in the midst of their toil."
+
+The Synod held one hundred and eighty sessions between the 13th November
+1618 and 29th May 1619, all the doings of which have been recorded in
+chronicles innumerable. There need be no further mention of them here.
+
+Barneveld and the companions of his fate remained in prison.
+
+On the 7th March the trial of the great Advocate began. He had sat in
+prison since the 18th of the preceding August. For nearly seven months he
+had been deprived of all communication with the outward world save such
+atoms of intelligence as could be secretly conveyed to him in the inside
+of a quill concealed in a pear and by other devices. The man who had
+governed one of the most important commonwealths of the world for nearly
+a generation long--during the same period almost controlling the politics
+of Europe--had now been kept in ignorance of the most insignificant
+everyday events. During the long summer-heat of the dog-days immediately
+succeeding his arrest, and the long, foggy, snowy, icy winter of Holland
+which ensued, he had been confined in that dreary garret-room to which he
+had been brought when he left his temporary imprisonment in the
+apartments of Prince Maurice.
+
+There was nothing squalid in the chamber, nothing specially cruel or
+repulsive in the arrangements of his captivity. He was not in fetters,
+nor fed upon bread and water. He was not put upon the rack, nor even
+threatened with it as Ledenberg had been. He was kept in a mean,
+commonplace, meagerly furnished, tolerably spacious room, and he was
+allowed the services of his faithful domestic servant John Franken. A
+sentinel paced day and night up the narrow corridor before his door. As
+spring advanced, the notes of the nightingale came through the
+prison-window from the neighbouring thicket. One day John Franken,
+opening the window that his master might the better enjoy its song,
+exchanged greeting with a fellow-servant in the Barneveld mansion who
+happened to be crossing the courtyard. Instantly workmen were sent to
+close and barricade the windows, and it was only after earnest
+remonstrances and pledges that this resolve to consign the Advocate to
+darkness was abandoned.
+
+He was not permitted the help of lawyer, clerk, or man of business. Alone
+and from his chamber of bondage, suffering from bodily infirmities and
+from the weakness of advancing age, he was compelled to prepare his
+defence against a vague, heterogeneous collection of charges, to meet
+which required constant reference, not only to the statutes, privileges,
+and customs of the country and to the Roman law, but to a thousand minute
+incidents out of which the history of the Provinces during the past dozen
+years or more had been compounded.
+
+It is true that no man could be more familiar with the science and
+practice of the law than he was, while of contemporary history he was
+himself the central figure. His biography was the chronicle of his
+country. Nevertheless it was a fearful disadvantage for him day by day to
+confront two dozen hostile judges comfortably seated at a great table
+piled with papers, surrounded by clerks with bags full of documents and
+with a library of authorities and precedents duly marked and dog's-eared
+and ready to their hands, while his only library and chronicle lay in his
+brain. From day to day, with frequent intermissions, he was led down
+through the narrow turret-stairs to a wide chamber on the floor
+immediately below his prison, where a temporary tribunal had been
+arranged for the special commission.
+
+There had been an inclination at first on the part of his judges to treat
+him as a criminal, and to require him to answer, standing, to the
+interrogatories propounded to him. But as the terrible old man advanced
+into the room, leaning on his staff, and surveying them with the air of
+haughty command habitual to him, they shrank before his glance; several
+involuntarily, rising uncovered, to salute him and making way for him to
+the fireplace about which many were standing that wintry morning.
+
+He was thenceforth always accommodated with a seat while he listened to
+and answered 'ex tempore' the elaborate series of interrogatories which
+had been prepared to convict him.
+
+Nearly seven months he had sat with no charges brought against him. This
+was in itself a gross violation of the laws of the land, for according to
+all the ancient charters of Holland it was provided that accusation
+should follow within six weeks of arrest, or that the prisoner should go
+free. But the arrest itself was so gross a violation of law that respect
+for it was hardly to be expected in the subsequent proceedings. He was a
+great officer of the States of Holland. He had been taken under their
+especial protection. He was on his way to the High Council. He was in no
+sense a subject of the States-General. He was in the discharge of his
+official duty. He was doubly and trebly sacred from arrest. The place
+where he stood was on the territory of Holland and in the very sanctuary
+of her courts and House of Assembly. The States-General were only as
+guests on her soil, and had no domain or jurisdiction there whatever. He
+was not apprehended by any warrant or form of law. It was in time of
+peace, and there was no pretence of martial law. The highest civil
+functionary of Holland was invited in the name of its first military
+officer to a conference, and thus entrapped was forcibly imprisoned.
+
+At last a board of twenty-four commissioners was created, twelve from
+Holland and two from each of the other six provinces. This affectation of
+concession to Holland was ridiculous. Either the law 'de non
+evocando'--according to which no citizen of Holland could be taken out of
+the province for trial--was to be respected or it was to be trampled
+upon. If it was to be trampled upon, it signified little whether more
+commissioners were to be taken from Holland than from each of the other
+provinces, or fewer, or none at all. Moreover it was pretended that a
+majority of the whole board was to be assigned to that province. But
+twelve is not a majority of twenty-four. There were three fascals or
+prosecuting officers, Leeuwen of Utrecht, Sylla of Gelderland, and Antony
+Duyck of Holland. Duyck was notoriously the deadly enemy of Barneveld,
+and was destined to succeed to his offices. It would have been as well to
+select Francis Aerssens himself.
+
+It was necessary to appoint a commission because there was no tribunal
+appertaining to the States-General. The general government of the
+confederacy had no power to deal with an individual. It could only
+negotiate with the sovereign province to which the individual was
+responsible, and demand his punishment if proved guilty of an offence.
+There was no supreme court of appeal. Machinery was provided for settling
+or attempting to settle disputes among the members of the confederacy,
+and if there was a culprit in this great process it was Holland itself.
+Neither the Advocate nor any one of his associates had done any act
+except by authority, express or implied, of that sovereign State.
+Supposing them unquestionably guilty of blackest crimes against the
+Generality, the dilemma was there which must always exist by the very
+nature of things in a confederacy. No sovereign can try a fellow
+sovereign. The subject can be tried at home by no sovereign but his own.
+
+The accused in this case were amenable to the laws of Holland only.
+
+It was a packed tribunal. Several of the commissioners, like Pauw and
+Muis for example, were personal enemies of Barneveld. Many of them were
+totally ignorant of law. Some of them knew not a word of any language but
+their mother tongue, although much of the law which they were to
+administer was written in Latin.
+
+Before such a court the foremost citizen of the Netherlands, the first
+living statesman of Europe, was brought day by day during a period of
+nearly three months; coming down stairs from the mean and desolate room
+where he was confined to the comfortable apartment below, which had been
+fitted up for the commission.
+
+There was no bill of indictment, no arraignment, no counsel. There were
+no witnesses and no arguments. The court-room contained, as it were, only
+a prejudiced and partial jury to pronounce both on law and fact without a
+judge to direct them, or advocates to sift testimony and contend for or
+against the prisoner's guilt. The process, for it could not be called a
+trial, consisted of a vast series of rambling and tangled interrogatories
+reaching over a space of forty years without apparent connection or
+relevancy, skipping fantastically about from one period to another, back
+and forthwith apparently no other intent than to puzzle the prisoner,
+throw him off his balance, and lead him into self-contradiction.
+
+The spectacle was not a refreshing one. It was the attempt of a multitude
+of pigmies to overthrow and bind the giant.
+
+Barneveld was served with no articles of impeachment. He asked for a list
+in writing of the charges against him, that he might ponder his answer.
+The demand was refused. He was forbidden the use of pen and ink or any
+writing materials. His papers and books were all taken from him.
+
+He was allowed to consult neither with an advocate nor even with a single
+friend. Alone in his chamber of bondage he was to meditate on his
+defence. Out of his memory and brain, and from these alone, he was to
+supply himself with the array of historical facts stretching over a
+longer period than the lifetime of many of his judges, and with the
+proper legal and historical arguments upon those facts for the
+justification of his course. That memory and brain were capacious and
+powerful enough for the task. It was well for the judges that they had
+bound themselves, at the outset, by an oath never to make known what
+passed in the courtroom, but to bury all the proceedings in profound
+secrecy forever. Had it been otherwise, had that been known to the
+contemporary public which has only been revealed more than two centuries
+later, had a portion only of the calm and austere eloquence been heard in
+which the Advocate set forth his defence, had the frivolous and ignoble
+nature of the attack been comprehended, it might have moved the very
+stones in the streets to mutiny. Hateful as the statesman had been made
+by an organized system of calumny, which was continued with unabated
+vigour and increased venom sine he had been imprisoned, there was enough
+of justice and of gratitude left in the hearts of Netherlanders to resent
+the tyranny practised against their greatest man, and the obloquy thus
+brought against a nation always devoted to their liberties and laws.
+
+That the political system of the country was miserably defective was no
+fault of Barneveld. He was bound by oath and duty to administer, not make
+the laws. A handful of petty feudal sovereignties such as had once
+covered the soil of Europe, a multitude of thriving cities which had
+wrested or purchased a mass of liberties, customs, and laws from their
+little tyrants, all subjected afterwards, without being blended together,
+to a single foreign family, had at last one by one, or two by two, shaken
+off that supremacy, and, resuming their ancient and as it were
+decapitated individualities, had bound themselves by treaty in the midst
+of a war to stand by each other, as if they were but one province, for
+purposes of common defence against the common foe.
+
+There had been no pretence of laying down a constitution, of enacting an
+organic law. The day had not come for even the conception of a popular
+constitution. The people had not been invented. It was not provinces
+only, but cities, that had contracted with each other, according to the
+very first words of the first Article of Union. Some of these cities,
+like Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp, were Catholic by overwhelming majority, and
+had subsequently either fallen away from the confederacy or been
+conquered.
+
+And as if to make assurance doubly sure, the Articles of Union not only
+reserved to each province all powers not absolutely essential for
+carrying on the war in common, but by an express article (the 13th),
+declared that Holland and Zealand should regulate the matter of religion
+according to their own discretion, while the other provinces might
+conform to the provisions of the "Religious Peace" which included mutual
+protection for Catholics and Protestants--or take such other order as
+seemed most conducive to the religious and secular rights of the
+inhabitants. It was stipulated that no province should interfere with
+another in such matters, and that every individual in them all should
+remain free in his religion, no man being molested or examined on account
+of his creed. A farther declaration in regard to this famous article was
+made to the effect that no provinces or cities which held to the Roman
+Catholic religion were to be excluded from the League of Union if they
+were ready to conform to its conditions and comport themselves
+patriotically. Language could not be devised to declare more plainly than
+was done by this treaty that the central government of the League had
+neither wish nor right to concern itself with the religious affairs of
+the separate cities or provinces. If it permitted both Papists and
+Protestants to associate themselves against the common foe, it could
+hardly have been imagined, when the Articles were drawn, that it would
+have claimed the exclusive right to define the minutest points in a
+single Protestant creed.
+
+And if the exclusively secular parts of the polity prevailing in the
+country were clumsy, irregular, and even monstrous, and if its defects
+had been flagrantly demonstrated by recent events, a more reasonable
+method of reforming the laws might have been found than the imprisonment
+of a man who had faithfully administered them forty years long.
+
+A great commonwealth had grown out of a petty feudal organism, like an
+oak from an acorn in a crevice, gnarled and distorted, though
+wide-spreading and vigorous. It seemed perilous to deal radically with
+such a polity, and an almost timid conservatism on the part of its
+guardians in such an age of tempests might be pardonable.
+
+Moreover, as before remarked, the apparent imbecility resulting from
+confederacy and municipalism combined was for a season remedied by the
+actual preponderance of Holland. Two-thirds of the total wealth and
+strength of the seven republics being concentrated in one province, the
+desired union seemed almost gained by the practical solution of all in
+that single republic. But this was one great cause of the general
+disaster.
+
+It would be a thankless and tedious task to wander through the wilderness
+of interrogatories and answers extending over three months of time, which
+stood in the place of a trial. The defence of Barneveld was his own
+history, and that I have attempted to give in the preceding pages. A
+great part of the accusation was deduced from his private and official
+correspondence, and it is for this reason that I have laid such copious
+extracts from it before the reader. No man except the judges and the
+States-General had access to those letters, and it was easy therefore, if
+needful, to give them a false colouring. It is only very recently that
+they have been seen at all, and they have never been published from that
+day to this.
+
+Out of the confused mass of documents appertaining to the trial, a few
+generalizations can be made which show the nature of the attack upon him.
+He was accused of having permitted Arminius to infuse new opinions into
+the University of Leyden, and of having subsequently defended the
+appointment of Vorstius to the same place. He had opposed the National
+Synod. He had made drafts of letters for the King of Great Britain to
+sign, recommending mutual toleration on the five disputed points
+regarding predestination. He was the author of the famous Sharp
+Resolution. He had recommended the enlistment by the provinces and towns
+of Waartgelders or mercenaries. He had maintained that those mercenaries
+as well as the regular troops were bound in time of peace to be obedient
+and faithful, not only to the Generality and the stadholders, but to the
+magistrates of the cities and provinces where they were employed, and to
+the states by whom they were paid. He had sent to Leyden, warning the
+authorities of the approach of the Prince. He had encouraged all the
+proceedings at Utrecht, writing a letter to the secretary of that
+province advising a watch to be kept at the city gates as well as in the
+river, and ordering his letter when read to be burned. He had received
+presents from foreign potentates. He had attempted to damage the
+character of his Excellency the Prince by declaring on various occasions
+that he aspired to the sovereignty of the country. He had held a ciphered
+correspondence on the subject with foreign ministers of the Republic. He
+had given great offence to the King of Great Britain by soliciting from
+him other letters in the sense of those which his Majesty had written in
+1613, advising moderation and mutual toleration. He had not brought to
+condign punishment the author of 'The Balance', a pamphlet in which an
+oration of the English ambassador had been criticised, and aspersions
+made on the Order of the Garter. He had opposed the formation of the West
+India Company. He had said many years before to Nicolas van Berk that the
+Provinces had better return to the dominion of Spain. And in general, all
+his proceedings had tended to put the Provinces into a "blood bath."
+
+There was however no accusation that he had received bribes from the
+enemy or held traitorous communication with him, or that he had committed
+any act of high-treason.
+
+His private letters to Caron and to the ambassadors in Paris, with which
+the reader has been made familiar, had thus been ransacked to find
+treasonable matter, but the result was meagre in spite of the minute and
+microscopic analysis instituted to detect traces of poison in them.
+
+But the most subtle and far-reaching research into past transactions was
+due to the Greffier Cornelis Aerssens, father of the Ambassador Francis,
+and to a certain Nicolas van Berk, Burgomaster of Utrecht.
+
+The process of tale-bearing, hearsay evidence, gossip, and invention went
+back a dozen years, even to the preliminary and secret conferences in
+regard to the Treaty of Truce.
+
+Readers familiar with the history of those memorable negotiations are
+aware that Cornelis van Aerssens had compromised himself by accepting a
+valuable diamond and a bill of exchange drawn by Marquis Spinola on a
+merchant in Amsterdam, Henry Beekman by name, for 80,000 ducats. These
+were handed by Father Neyen, the secret agent of the Spanish government,
+to the Greffier as a prospective reward for his services in furthering
+the Truce. He did not reject them, but he informed Prince Maurice and the
+Advocate of the transaction. Both diamond and bill of exchange were
+subsequently deposited in the hands of the treasurer of the
+States-General, Joris de Bie, the Assembly being made officially
+acquainted with the whole course of the affair.
+
+It is passing strange that this somewhat tortuous business, which
+certainly cast a shade upon the fair fame of the elder Aerssens, and
+required him to publish as good a defence as he could against the
+consequent scandal, should have furnished a weapon wherewith to strike at
+the Advocate of Holland some dozen years later.
+
+But so it was. Krauwels, a relative of Aerssens, through whom Father
+Neyen had first obtained access to the Greffier, had stated, so it
+seemed, that the monk had, in addition to the bill, handed to him another
+draft of Spinola's for 100,000 ducats, to be given to a person of more
+consideration than Aerssens. Krauwels did not know who the person was,
+nor whether he took the money. He expressed his surprise however that
+leading persons in the government "even old and authentic
+beggars"--should allow themselves to be so seduced as to accept presents
+from the enemy. He mentioned two such persons, namely, a burgomaster at
+Delft and a burgomaster at Haarlem. Aerssens now deposed that he had
+informed the Advocate of this story, who had said, "Be quiet about it, I
+will have it investigated," and some days afterwards on being questioned
+stated that he had made enquiry and found there was something in it.
+
+So the fact that Cornelis Aerssens had taken bribes, and that two
+burgomasters were strongly suspected by Aerssens of having taken bribes,
+seems to have been considered as evidence that Barneveld had taken a
+bribe. It is true that Aerssens by advice of Maurice and Barneveld had
+made a clean breast of it to the States-General and had given them over
+the presents. But the States-General could neither wear the diamond nor
+cash the bill of exchange, and it would have been better for the Greffier
+not to contaminate his fingers with them, but to leave the gifts in the
+monk's palm. His revenge against the Advocate for helping him out of his
+dilemma, and for subsequently advancing his son Francis in a brilliant
+diplomatic career, seems to have been--when the clouds were thickening
+and every man's hand was against the fallen statesman--to insinuate that
+he was the anonymous personage who had accepted the apocryphal draft for
+100,000 ducats.
+
+The case is a pregnant example of the proceedings employed to destroy the
+Advocate.
+
+The testimony of Nicolas van Berk was at any rate more direct.
+
+On the 21st December 1618 the burgomaster testified that the Advocate had
+once declared to him that the differences in regard to Divine Worship
+were not so great but that they might be easily composed; asking him at
+the same time "whether it would not be better that we should submit
+ourselves again to the King of Spain." Barneveld had also referred, so
+said van Berk, to the conduct of the Spanish king towards those who had
+helped him to the kingdom of Portugal. The Burgomaster was unable however
+to specify the date, year, or month in which the Advocate had held this
+language. He remembered only that the conversation occurred when
+Barneveld was living on the Spui at the Hague, and that having been let
+into the house through the hall on the side of the vestibule, he had been
+conducted by the Advocate down a small staircase into the office.
+
+The only fact proved by the details seems to be that the story had lodged
+in the tenacious memory of the Burgomaster for eight years, as Barneveld
+had removed from the Spui to Arenberg House in the Voorhout in the year
+1611.
+
+No other offers from the King of Spain or the Archdukes had ever been
+made to him, said van Berk, than those indicated in this deposition
+against the Advocate as coming from that statesman. Nor had Barneveld
+ever spoken to him upon such subjects except on that one occasion.
+
+It is not necessary and would be wearisome to follow the unfortunate
+statesman through the long line of defence which he was obliged to make,
+in fragmentary and irregular form, against these discursive and confused
+assaults upon him. A continuous argument might be built up with the
+isolated parts which should be altogether impregnable. It is superfluous.
+
+Always instructive to his judges as he swept at will through the record
+of nearly half a century of momentous European history, in which he was
+himself a conspicuous figure, or expounding the ancient laws and customs
+of the country with a wealth and accuracy of illustration which testified
+to the strength of his memory, he seemed rather like a sage expounding
+law and history to a class of pupils than a criminal defending himself
+before a bench of commissioners. Moved occasionally from his austere
+simplicity, the majestic old man rose to a strain of indignant eloquence
+which might have shaken the hall of a vast assembly and found echo in the
+hearts of a thousand hearers as he denounced their petty insults or
+ignoble insinuations; glaring like a caged lion at his tormentors, who
+had often shrunk before him when free, and now attempted to drown his
+voice by contradictions, interruptions, threats, and unmeaning howls.
+
+He protested, from the outset and throughout the proceedings, against the
+jurisdiction of the tribunal. The Treaty of Union on which the Assembly
+and States-General were founded gave that assembly no power over him.
+They could take no legal cognizance of his person or his acts. He had
+been deprived of writing materials, or he would have already drawn up his
+solemn protest and argument against the existence of the commission. He
+demanded that they should be provided for him, together with a clerk to
+engross his defence. It is needless to say that the demand was refused.
+
+It was notorious to all men, he said, that on the day when violent hands
+were laid upon him he was not bound to the States-General by oath,
+allegiance, or commission. He was a well-known inhabitant of the Hague, a
+householder there, a vassal of the Commonwealth of Holland, enfeoffed of
+many notable estates in that country, serving many honourable offices by
+commission from its government. By birth, promotion, and conferred
+dignities he was subject to the supreme authority of Holland, which for
+forty years had been a free state possessed of all the attributes of
+sovereignty, political, religious, judicial, and recognizing no superior
+save God Almighty alone.
+
+He was amenable to no tribunal save that of their Mightinesses the States
+of Holland and their ordinary judges. Not only those States but the
+Prince of Orange as their governor and vassal, the nobles of Holland, the
+colleges of justice, the regents of cities, and all other vassals,
+magistrates, and officers were by their respective oaths bound to
+maintain and protect him in these his rights.
+
+After fortifying this position by legal argument and by an array of
+historical facts within his own experience, and alluding to the repeated
+instances in which, sorely against his will, he had been solicited and
+almost compelled to remain in offices of which he was weary, he referred
+with dignity to the record of his past life. From the youthful days when
+he had served as a volunteer at his own expense in the perilous sieges of
+Haarlem and Leyden down to the time of his arrest, through an unbroken
+course of honourable and most arduous political services, embassies, and
+great negotiations, he had ever maintained the laws and liberties of the
+Fatherland and his own honour unstained.
+
+That he should now in his seventy-second year be dragged, in violation of
+every privilege and statute of the country, by extraordinary means,
+before unknown judges, was a grave matter not for himself alone but for
+their Mightinesses the States of Holland and for the other provinces. The
+precious right 'de non evocando' had ever been dear to all the provinces,
+cities, and inhabitants of the Netherlands. It was the most vital
+privilege in their possession as well in civil as criminal, in secular as
+in ecclesiastical affairs.
+
+When the King of Spain in 1567, and afterwards, set up an extraordinary
+tribunal and a course of extraordinary trials, it was an undeniable fact,
+he said, that on the solemn complaint of the States all princes, nobles,
+and citizens not only in the Netherlands but in foreign countries, and
+all foreign kings and sovereigns, held those outrages to be the foremost
+and fundamental reason for taking up arms against that king, and
+declaring him to have forfeited his right of sovereignty.
+
+Yet that monarch was unquestionably the born and accepted sovereign of
+each one of the provinces, while the General Assembly was but a gathering
+of confederates and allies, in no sense sovereign. It was an unimaginable
+thing, he said, that the States of each province should allow their whole
+authority and right of sovereignty to be transferred to a board of
+commissioners like this before which he stood. If, for example, a general
+union of France, England, and the States of the United Netherlands should
+be formed (and the very words of the Act of Union contemplated such
+possibility), what greater absurdity could there be than to suppose that
+a college of administration created for the specific purposes of such
+union would be competent to perform acts of sovereignty within each of
+those countries in matters of justice, polity, and religion?
+
+It was known to mankind, he said, that when negotiations were entered
+into for bestowing the sovereignty of the Provinces on France and on
+England, special and full powers were required from, and furnished by,
+the States of each individual province.
+
+Had the sovereignty been in the assembly of the States-General, they
+might have transferred it of their own motion or kept it for themselves.
+
+Even in the ordinary course of affairs the commissioners from each
+province to the General Assembly always required a special power from
+their constituents before deciding any matter of great importance.
+
+In regard to the defence of the respective provinces and cities, he had
+never heard it doubted, he said, that the states or the magistrates of
+cities had full right to provide for it by arming a portion of their own
+inhabitants or by enlisting paid troops. The sovereign counts of Holland
+and bishops of Utrecht certainly possessed and exercised that right for
+many hundred years, and by necessary tradition it passed to the states
+succeeding to their ancient sovereignty. He then gave from the stores of
+his memory innumerable instances in which soldiers had been enlisted by
+provinces and cities all over the Netherlands from the time of the
+abjuration of Spain down to that moment. Through the whole period of
+independence in the time of Anjou, Matthias, Leicester, as well as under
+the actual government, it had been the invariable custom thus to provide
+both by land and sea and on the rivers against robbers, rebels, pirates,
+mischief-makers, assailing thieves, domestic or foreign. It had been done
+by the immortal William the Silent on many memorable occasions, and in
+fact the custom was so notorious that soldiers so enlisted were known by
+different and peculiar nicknames in the different provinces and towns.
+
+That the central government had no right to meddle with religious matters
+was almost too self-evident an axiom to prove. Indeed the chief
+difficulty under which the Advocate laboured throughout this whole
+process was the monstrous assumption by his judges of a political and
+judicial system which never had any existence even in imagination. The
+profound secrecy which enwrapped the proceedings from that day almost to
+our own and an ignorant acquiescence of a considerable portion of the
+public in accomplished facts offer the only explanation of a mystery
+which must ever excite our wonder. If there were any impeachment at all,
+it was an impeachment of the form of government itself. If language could
+mean anything whatever, a mere perusal of the Articles of Union proved
+that the prisoner had never violated that fundamental pact. How could the
+general government prescribe an especial formulary for the Reformed
+Church, and declare opposition to its decrees treasonable, when it did
+not prohibit, but absolutely admitted and invited, provinces and cities
+exclusively Catholic to enter the Union, guaranteeing to them entire
+liberty of religion?
+
+Barneveld recalled the fact that when the stadholdership of Utrecht
+thirty years before had been conferred on Prince Maurice the States of
+that province had solemnly reserved for themselves the disposition over
+religious matters in conformity with the Union, and that Maurice had
+sworn to support that resolution.
+
+Five years later the Prince had himself assured a deputation from Brabant
+that the States of each province were supreme in religious matters, no
+interference the one with the other being justifiable or possible. In
+1602 the States General in letters addressed to the States of the
+obedient provinces under dominion of the Archdukes had invited them to
+take up arms to help drive the Spaniards from the Provinces and to join
+the Confederacy, assuring them that they should regulate the matter of
+religion at their good pleasure, and that no one else should be allowed
+to interfere therewith.
+
+The Advocate then went into an historical and critical disquisition, into
+which we certainly have no need to follow him, rapidly examining the
+whole subject of predestination and conditional and unconditional
+damnation from the days of St. Augustine downward, showing a thorough
+familiarity with a subject of theology which then made up so much of the
+daily business of life, political and private, and lay at the bottom of
+the terrible convulsion then existing in the Netherlands. We turn from it
+with a shudder, reminding the reader only how persistently the statesman
+then on his trial had advocated conciliation, moderation, and kindness
+between brethren of the Reformed Church who were not able to think alike
+on one of the subtlest and most mysterious problems that casuistry has
+ever propounded.
+
+For fifty years, he said, he had been an enemy of all compulsion of the
+human conscience. He had always opposed rigorous ecclesiastical decrees.
+He had done his best to further, and did not deny having inspired, the
+advice given in the famous letters from the King of Great Britain to the
+States in 1613, that there should be mutual toleration and abstinence
+from discussion of disputed doctrines, neither of them essential to
+salvation. He thought that neither Calvin nor Beza would have opposed
+freedom of opinion on those points. For himself he believed that the
+salvation of mankind would be through God's unmerited grace and the
+redemption of sins though the Saviour, and that the man who so held and
+persevered to the end was predestined to eternal happiness, and that his
+children dying before the age of reason were destined not to Hell but to
+Heaven. He had thought fifty years long that the passion and sacrifice of
+Christ the Saviour were more potent to salvation than God's wrath and the
+sin of Adam and Eve to damnation. He had done his best practically to
+avert personal bickerings among the clergy. He had been, so far as lay in
+his power, as friendly to Remonstrants as to Contra-Remonstrants, to
+Polyander and Festus Hommius as to Uytenbogaert and Episcopius. He had
+almost finished a negotiation with Councillor Kromhout for the peaceable
+delivery of the Cloister Church on the Thursday preceding the Sunday on
+which it had been forcibly seized by the Contra-Remonstrants.
+
+When asked by one of his judges how he presumed to hope for toleration
+between two parties, each of which abhorred the other's opinions, and
+likened each other to Turks and devil-worshippers, he replied that he had
+always detested and rebuked those mutual revilings by every means in his
+power, and would have wished to put down such calumniators of either
+persuasion by the civil authority, but the iniquity of the times and the
+exasperation of men's humours had prevented him.
+
+Being perpetually goaded by one judge after another as to his
+disrespectful conduct towards the King of Great Britain, and asked why
+his Majesty had not as good right to give the advice of 1617 as the
+recommendation of tolerance in 1613, he scrupulously abstained, as he had
+done in all his letters, from saying a disrespectful word as to the
+glaring inconsistency between the two communications, or to the hostility
+manifested towards himself personally by the British ambassador. He had
+always expressed the hope, he said, that the King would adhere to his
+original position, but did not dispute his right to change his mind, nor
+the good faith which had inspired his later letters. It had been his
+object, if possible, to reconcile the two different systems recommended
+by his Majesty into one harmonious whole.
+
+His whole aim had been to preserve the public peace as it was the duty of
+every magistrate, especially in times of such excitement, to do. He could
+never comprehend why the toleration of the Five Points should be a danger
+to the Reformed religion. Rather, he thought, it would strengthen the
+Church and attract many Lutherans, Baptists, Catholics, and other good
+patriots into its pale. He had always opposed the compulsory acceptance
+by the people of the special opinions of scribes and doctors. He did not
+consider, he said, the difference in doctrine on this disputed point
+between the Contra-Remonstrants and Remonstrants as one-tenth the value
+of the civil authority and its right to make laws and ordinances
+regulating ecclesiastical affairs.
+
+He believed the great bulwark of the independence of the country to be
+the Reformed Church, and his efforts had ever been to strengthen that
+bulwark by preventing the unnecessary schism which might prove its ruin.
+Many questions of property, too, were involved in the question--the
+church buildings, lands and pastures belonging to the Counts of Holland
+and their successors--the States having always exercised the right of
+church patronage--'jus patronatus'--a privilege which, as well as
+inherited or purchased advowsons, had been of late flagrantly interfered
+with.
+
+He was asked if he had not said that it had never been the intention of
+the States-General to carry on the war for this or that religion.
+
+He replied that he had told certain clergymen expressing to him their
+opinion that the war had been waged solely for the furtherance of their
+especial shade of belief, that in his view the war had been undertaken
+for the conservation of the liberties and laws of the land, and of its
+good people. Of that freedom the first and foremost point was the true
+Christian religion and liberty of conscience and opinion. There must be
+religion in the Republic, he had said, but that the war was carried on to
+sustain the opinion of one doctor of divinity or another on--differential
+points was something he had never heard of and could never believe. The
+good citizens of the country had as much right to hold by Melancthon as
+by Calvin or Beza. He knew that the first proclamations in regard to the
+war declared it to be undertaken for freedom of conscience, and so to
+his, own knowledge it had been always carried on.
+
+He was asked if he had not promised during the Truce negotiations so to
+direct matters that the Catholics with time might obtain public exercise
+of their religion.
+
+He replied that this was a notorious falsehood and calumny, adding that
+it ill accorded with the proclamation against the Jesuits drawn up by
+himself some years after the Truce. He furthermore stated that it was
+chiefly by his direction that the discourse of President Jeannin--urging
+on part of the French king that liberty of worship might be granted to
+the Papists--was kept secret, copies of it not having been furnished even
+to the commissioners of the Provinces.
+
+His indignant denial of this charge, especially taken in connection with
+his repeated assertions during the trial, that among the most patriotic
+Netherlanders during and since the war were many adherents of the ancient
+church, seems marvellously in contradiction with his frequent and most
+earnest pleas for liberty of conscience. But it did not appear
+contradictory even to his judges nor to any contemporary. His position
+had always been that the civil authority of each province was supreme in
+all matters political or ecclesiastical. The States-General, all the
+provinces uniting in the vote, had invited the Catholic provinces on more
+than one occasion to join the Union, promising that there should be no
+interference on the part of any states or individuals with the internal
+affairs religious or otherwise of the provinces accepting the invitation.
+But it would have been a gross contradiction of his own principle if he
+had promised so to direct matters that the Catholics should have public
+right of worship in Holland where he knew that the civil authority was
+sure to refuse it, or in any of the other six provinces in whose internal
+affairs he had no voice whatever. He was opposed to all tyranny over
+conscience, he would have done his utmost to prevent inquisition into
+opinion, violation of domicile, interference with private worship,
+compulsory attendance in Protestant churches of those professing the
+Roman creed. This was not attempted. No Catholic was persecuted on
+account of his religion. Compared with the practice in other countries
+this was a great step in advance. Religious tolerance lay on the road to
+religious equality, a condition which had hardly been imagined then and
+scarcely exists in Europe even to this day. But among the men in history
+whose life and death contributed to the advancement of that blessing, it
+would be vain to deny that Barneveld occupies a foremost place.
+
+Moreover, it should be remembered that religious equality then would have
+been a most hazardous experiment. So long as Church and State were
+blended, it was absolutely essential at that epoch for the preservation
+of Protestantism to assign the predominance to the State. Should the
+Catholics have obtained religious equality, the probable result would
+before long have been religious inequality, supremacy of the Catholics in
+the Church, and supremacy of the Church over the State. The fruits of the
+forty years' war would have become dust and ashes. It would be mere weak
+sentimentalism to doubt--after the bloody history which had just closed
+and the awful tragedy, then reopening--that every spark of religious
+liberty would have soon been trodden out in the Netherlands. The general
+onslaught of the League with Ferdinand, Maximilian of Bavaria, and Philip
+of Spain at its head against the distracted, irresolute, and wavering
+line of Protestantism across the whole of Europe was just preparing.
+Rather a wilderness to reign over than a single heretic, was the war-cry
+of the Emperor. The King of Spain, as we have just been reading in his
+most secret, ciphered despatches to the Archduke at Brussels, was nursing
+sanguine hopes and weaving elaborate schemes for recovering his dominion
+over the United Netherlands, and proposing to send an army of Jesuits
+thither to break the way to the reconquest. To play into his hands then,
+by granting public right of worship to the Papists, would have been in
+Barneveld's opinion like giving up Julich and other citadels in the
+debatable land to Spain just as the great war between Catholicism and
+Protestantism was breaking out. There had been enough of burning and
+burying alive in the Netherlands during the century which had closed. It
+was not desirable to give a chance for their renewal now.
+
+In regard to the Synod, Barneveld justified his course by a simple
+reference to the 13th Article of the Union. Words could not more plainly
+prohibit the interference by the States-General with the religious
+affairs of any one of the Provinces than had been done by that celebrated
+clause. In 1583 there had been an attempt made to amend that article by
+insertion of a pledge to maintain the Evangelical, Reformed, religion
+solely, but it was never carried out. He disdained to argue so
+self-evident a truth, that a confederacy which had admitted and
+constantly invited Catholic states to membership, under solemn pledge of
+noninterference with their religious affairs, had no right to lay down
+formulas for the Reformed Church throughout all the Netherlands. The oath
+of stadholder and magistrates in Holland to maintain the Reformed
+religion was framed before this unhappy controversy on predestination had
+begun, and it was mere arrogant assumption on the part of the
+Contra-Remonstrants to claim a monopoly of that religion, and to exclude
+the Remonstrants from its folds.
+
+He had steadily done his utmost to assuage those dissensions while
+maintaining the laws which he was sworn to support. He had advocated a
+provincial synod to be amicably assisted by divines from neighbouring
+countries. He had opposed a National Synod unless unanimously voted by
+the Seven Provinces, because it would have been an open violation of the
+fundamental law of the confederacy, of its whole spirit, and of liberty
+of conscience. He admitted that he had himself drawn up a protest on the
+part of three provinces (Holland, Utrecht, and Overyssel) against the
+decree for the National Synod as a breach of the Union, declaring it to
+be therefore null and void and binding upon no man. He had dictated the
+protest as oldest member present, while Grotius as the youngest had acted
+as scribe. He would have supported the Synod if legally voted, but would
+have preferred the convocation, under the authority of all the provinces,
+of a general, not a national, synod, in which, besides clergy and laymen
+from the Netherlands, deputations from all Protestant states and churches
+should take part; a kind of Protestant oecumenical council.
+
+As to the enlistment, by the States of a province, of soldiers to keep
+the peace and suppress tumults in its cities during times of political
+and religious excitement, it was the most ordinary of occurrences. In his
+experience of more than forty years he had never heard the right even
+questioned. It was pure ignorance of law and history to find it a
+novelty.
+
+To hire temporarily a sufficient number of professional soldiers, he
+considered a more wholesome means of keeping the peace than to enlist one
+portion of the citizens of a town against another portion, when party and
+religious spirit was running high. His experience had taught him that the
+mutual hatred of the inhabitants, thus inflamed, became more lasting and
+mischievous than the resentment caused through suppression of disorder by
+an armed and paid police of strangers.
+
+It was not only the right but the most solemn duty of the civil authority
+to preserve the tranquillity, property, and lives of citizens committed
+to their care. "I have said these fifty years," said Barneveld, "that it
+is better to be governed by magistrates than mobs. I have always
+maintained and still maintain that the most disastrous, shameful, and
+ruinous condition into which this land can fall is that in which the
+magistrates are overcome by the rabble of the towns and receive laws from
+them. Nothing but perdition can follow from that."
+
+There had been good reason to believe that the French garrisons as well
+as some of the train bands could not be thoroughly relied upon in
+emergencies like those constantly breaking out, and there had been
+advices of invasion by sympathizers from neighbouring countries. In many
+great cities the civil authority had been trampled upon and mob rule had
+prevailed. Certainly the recent example in the great commercial capital
+of the country--where the house of a foremost citizen had been besieged,
+stormed, and sacked, and a virtuous matron of the higher class hunted
+like a wild beast through the streets by a rabble grossly ignorant of the
+very nature of the religious quibble which had driven them mad, pelted
+with stones, branded with vilest names, and only saved by accident from
+assassination, while a church-going multitude looked calmly on--with
+constantly recurring instances in other important cities were sufficient
+reasons for the authorities to be watchful.
+
+He denied that he had initiated the proceedings at Utrecht in
+conversation with Ledenberg or any one else, but he had not refused, he
+said, his approval of the perfectly legal measures adopted for keeping
+the peace there when submitted to him. He was himself a born citizen of
+that province, and therefore especially interested in its welfare, and
+there was an old and intimate friendship between Utrecht and Holland. It
+would have been painful to him to see that splendid city in the control
+of an ignorant mob, making use of religious problems, which they did not
+comprehend, to plunder the property and take the lives of peaceful
+citizens more comfortably housed than themselves.
+
+He had neither suggested nor controlled the proceedings at Utrecht. On
+the contrary, at an interview with the Prince and Count William on the
+13th July, and in the presence of nearly thirty members of the general
+assembly, he had submitted a plan for cashiering the enlisted soldiery
+and substituting for them other troops, native-born, who should be sworn
+in the usual form to obey the laws of the Union. The deputation from
+Holland to Utrecht, according to his personal knowledge, had received no
+instructions personal or oral to authorize active steps by the troops of
+the Holland quota, but to abstain from them and to request the Prince
+that they should not be used against the will and commands of the States
+of Utrecht, whom they were bound by oath to obey so long as they were in
+garrison there.
+
+No man knew better than he whether the military oath which was called
+new-fangled were a novelty or not, for he had himself, he said, drawn it
+up thirty years before at command of the States-General by whom it was
+then ordained. From that day to this he had never heard a pretence that
+it justified anything not expressly sanctioned by the Articles of Union,
+and neither the States of Holland nor those of Utrecht had made any
+change in the oath. The States of Utrecht were sovereign within their own
+territory, and in the time of peace neither the Prince of Orange without
+their order nor the States-General had the right to command the troops in
+their territory. The governor of a province was sworn to obey the laws of
+the province and conform to the Articles of the General Union.
+
+He was asked why he wrote the warning letter to Ledenberg, and why he was
+so anxious that the letter should be burned; as if that were a deadly
+offence.
+
+He said that he could not comprehend why it should be imputed to him as a
+crime that he wished in such turbulent times to warn so important a city
+as Utrecht, the capital of his native province, against tumults,
+disorders, and sudden assaults such as had often happened to her in times
+past. As for the postscript requesting that the letter might be put in
+the fire, he said that not being a member of, the government of that
+province he was simply unwilling to leave a record that "he had been too
+curious in aliens republics, although that could hardly be considered a
+grave offence."
+
+In regard to the charge that he had accused Prince Maurice of aspiring to
+the sovereignty of the country, he had much to say. He had never brought
+such accusation in public or private. He had reason to believe
+however--he had indeed convincing proofs--that many people, especially
+those belonging to the Contra-Remonstrant party, cherished such schemes.
+He had never sought to cast suspicion on the Prince himself on account of
+those schemes. On the contrary, he had not even formally opposed them.
+What he wished had always been that such projects should be discussed
+formally, legally, and above board. After the lamentable murder of the
+late Prince he had himself recommended to the authorities of some of the
+cities that the transaction for bestowing the sovereignty of Holland upon
+William, interrupted by his death, "should be completed in favour of
+Prince Maurice in despite of the Spaniard." Recently he had requested
+Grotius to look up the documents deposited in Rotterdam belonging to this
+affair, in order that they might be consulted.
+
+He was asked whether according to Buzenval, the former French ambassador,
+Prince Maurice had not declared he would rather fling himself from the
+top of the Hague tower than accept the sovereignty. Barneveld replied
+that the Prince according to the same authority had added "under the
+conditions which had been imposed upon his father;" a clause which
+considerably modified the self-denying statement. It was desirable
+therefore to search the acts for the limitations annexed to the
+sovereignty.
+
+Three years long there had been indications from various sources that a
+party wished to change the form of government. He had not heard nor ever
+intimated that the Prince suggested such intrigues. In anonymous
+pamphlets and common street and tavern conversations the
+Contra-Remonstrants were described by those of their own persuasion as
+"Prince's Beggars" and the like. He had received from foreign countries
+information worthy of attention, that it was the design of the
+Contra-Remonstrants to raise the Prince to the sovereignty. He had
+therefore in 1616 brought the matter before the nobles and cities in a
+communication setting forth to the best of his recollection that under
+these religious disputes something else was intended. He had desired ripe
+conclusions on the matter, such as should most conduce to the service of
+the country. This had been in good faith both to the Prince and the
+Provinces, in order that, should a change in the government be thought
+desirable, proper and peaceful means might be employed to bring it about.
+He had never had any other intention than to sound the inclinations of
+those with whom he spoke, and he had many times since that period, by
+word of mouth and in writing, so lately as the month of April last
+assured the Prince that he had ever been his sincere and faithful servant
+and meant to remain so to the end of his life, desiring therefore that he
+would explain to him his wishes and intentions.
+
+Subsequently he had publicly proposed in full Assembly of Holland that
+the States should ripely deliberate and roundly declare if they were
+discontented with the form of government, and if so, what change they
+would desire. He had assured their Mightinesses that they might rely upon
+him to assist in carrying out their intentions whatever they might be. He
+had inferred however from the Prince's intimations, when he had broached
+the subject to him in 1617, that he was not inclined towards these
+supposed projects, and had heard that opinion distinctly expressed from
+the mouth of Count William.
+
+That the Contra-Remonstrants secretly entertained these schemes, he had
+been advised from many quarters, at home and abroad. In the year 1618 he
+had received information to that effect from France. Certain confidential
+counsellors of the Prince had been with him recently to confer on the
+subject. He had told them that, if his Excellency chose to speak to him
+in regard to it, would listen to his reasoning about it, both as regarded
+the interests of the country and the Prince himself, and then should
+desire him to propose and advocate it before the Assembly, he would do so
+with earnestness, zeal, and affection. He had desired however that, in
+case the attempt failed, the Prince would allow him to be relieved from
+service and to leave the country. What he wished from the bottom of his
+heart was that his Excellency would plainly discover to him the exact
+nature of his sentiments in regard to the business.
+
+He fully admitted receiving a secret letter from Ambassador Langerac,
+apprising him that a man of quality in France had information of the
+intention of the Contra-Remonstrants throughout the Provinces, should
+they come into power, to raise Prince Maurice to the sovereignty. He had
+communicated on the subject with Grotius and other deputies in order
+that, if this should prove to be the general inclination, the affair
+might be handled according to law, without confusion or disorder. This,
+he said, would be serving both the country and the Prince most
+judiciously.
+
+He was asked why he had not communicated directly with Maurice. He
+replied that he had already seen how unwillingly the Prince heard him
+allude to the subject, and that moreover there was another clause in the
+letter of different meaning, and in his view worthy of grave
+consideration by the States.
+
+No question was asked him as to this clause, but we have seen that it
+referred to the communication by du Agean to Langerac of a scheme for
+bestowing the sovereignty of the Provinces on the King of France. The
+reader will also recollect that Barneveld had advised the Ambassador to
+communicate the whole intelligence to the Prince himself.
+
+Barneveld proceeded to inform the judges that he had never said a word to
+cast suspicion upon the Prince, but had been actuated solely by the
+desire to find out the inclination of the States. The communications
+which he had made on the subject were neither for discrediting the Prince
+nor for counteracting the schemes for his advancement. On the contrary,
+he had conferred with deputies from great cities like Dordtrecht,
+Enkhuyzen, and Amsterdam, most devoted to the Contra-Remonstrant party,
+and had told them that, if they chose to propose the subject themselves,
+he would conduct himself to the best of his abilities in accordance with
+the wishes of the Prince.
+
+It would seem almost impossible for a statesman placed in Barneveld's
+position to bear himself with more perfect loyalty both to the country
+and to the Stadholder. His duty was to maintain the constitution and laws
+so long as they remained unchanged. Should it appear that the States,
+which legally represented the country, found the constitution defective,
+he was ready to aid in its amendment by fair public and legal methods.
+
+If Maurice wished to propose himself openly as a candidate for the
+sovereignty, which had a generation before been conferred upon his
+father, Barneveld would not only acquiesce in the scheme, but propose it.
+
+Should it fail, he claimed the light to lay down all his offices and go
+into exile.
+
+He had never said that the Prince was intriguing for, or even desired,
+the sovereignty. That the project existed among the party most opposed to
+himself, he had sufficient proof. To the leaders of that party therefore
+he suggested that the subject should be publicly discussed, guaranteeing
+freedom of debate and his loyal support so far as lay within his power.
+
+This was his answer to the accusation that he had meanly, secretly, and
+falsely circulated statements that the Prince was aspiring to the
+sovereignty.
+
+   [Great pains were taken, in the course of the interrogatories, to
+   elicit proof that the Advocate had concealed important diplomatic
+   information from the Prince. He was asked why, in his secret
+   instructions to Ambassador Langerac, he ordered him by an express
+   article to be very cautious about making communications to the
+   Prince. Searching questions were put in regard to these secret
+   instructions, which I have read in the Archives, and a copy of which
+   now lies before me. They are in the form of questions, some of them
+   almost puerile ones, addressed to Barneveld by the Ambassador then
+   just departing on his mission to France in 1614, with the answers
+   written in the margin by the Advocate. The following is all that
+   has reference to the Prince:
+   "Of what matters may I ordinarily write to his Excellency?"
+   Answer--"Of all great and important matters."
+   It was difficult to find much that was treasonable in that.]
+
+Among the heterogeneous articles of accusation he was asked why he had
+given no attention to those who had so, frequently proposed the formation
+of the West India Company.
+
+He replied that it had from old time been the opinion of the States of
+Holland, and always his own, that special and private licenses for
+traffic, navigation, and foreign commerce, were prejudicial to the
+welfare of the land. He had always been most earnestly opposed to them,
+detesting monopolies which interfered with that free trade and navigation
+which should be common to all mankind. He had taken great pains however
+in the years 1596 and 1597 to study the nature of the navigation and
+trade to the East Indies in regard to the nations to be dealt with in
+those regions, the nature of the wares bought and sold there, the
+opposition to be encountered from the Spaniards and Portuguese against
+the commerce of the Netherlanders, and the necessity of equipping vessels
+both for traffic and defence, and had come to the conclusion that these
+matters could best be directed by a general company. He explained in
+detail the manner in which he had procured the blending of all the
+isolated chambers into one great East India Corporation, the enormous
+pains which it had cost him to bring it about, and the great commercial
+and national success which had been the result. The Admiral of Aragon,
+when a prisoner after the battle of Nieuwpoort, had told him, he said,
+that the union of these petty corporations into one great whole had been
+as disastrous a blow to the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal as the Union
+of the Provinces at Utrecht had been. In regard to the West India
+Company, its sole object, so far as he could comprehend it, had been to
+equip armed vessels, not for trade but to capture and plunder Spanish
+merchantmen and silver fleets in the West Indies and South America. This
+was an advantageous war measure which he had favoured while the war
+lasted. It was in no sense a commercial scheme however, and when the
+Truce had been made--the company not having come into existence--he
+failed to comprehend how its formation could be profitable for the
+Netherlanders. On the contrary it would expressly invite or irritate the
+Spaniards into a resumption of the war, an object which in his humble
+opinion was not at all desirable.
+
+Certainly these ideas were not especially reprehensible, but had they
+been as shallow and despicable as they seem to us enlightened, it is
+passing strange that they should have furnished matter for a criminal
+prosecution.
+
+It was doubtless a disappointment for the promoters of the company, the
+chief of whom was a bankrupt, to fail in obtaining their charter, but it
+was scarcely high-treason to oppose it. There is no doubt however that
+the disapprobation with which Barneveld regarded the West India Company,
+the seat of which was at Amsterdam, was a leading cause of the deadly
+hostility entertained for him by the great commercial metropolis.
+
+It was bad enough for the Advocate to oppose unconditional predestination
+and the damnation of infants, but to frustrate a magnificent system of
+privateering on the Spaniards in time of truce was an unpardonable crime.
+
+The patience with which the venerable statesman submitted to the taunts,
+ignorant and insolent cross-questionings, and noisy interruptions of his
+judges, was not less remarkable than the tenacity of memory which enabled
+him thus day after day, alone, unaided by books, manuscripts, or friendly
+counsel, to reconstruct the record of forty years, and to expound the
+laws of the land by an array of authorities, instances, and illustrations
+in a manner that would be deemed masterly by one who had all the
+resources of libraries, documents, witnesses, and secretaries at command.
+
+Only when insidious questions were put tending to impute to him
+corruption, venality, and treacherous correspondence with the enemy--for
+they never once dared formally to accuse him of treason--did that almost
+superhuman patience desert him.
+
+He was questioned as to certain payments made by him to a certain van der
+Vecken in Spanish coin. He replied briefly at first that his money
+transactions with that man of business extended over a period of twenty
+or thirty years, and amounted to many hundred thousands of florins,
+growing out of purchases and sales of lands, agricultural enterprises on
+his estates, moneys derived from his professional or official business
+and the like. It was impossible for him to remember the details of every
+especial money payment that might have occurred between them.
+
+Then suddenly breaking forth into a storm of indignation; he could mark
+from these questions, he said, that his enemies, not satisfied with
+having wounded his heart with their falsehoods, vile forgeries, and
+honour-robbing libels, were determined to break it. This he prayed that
+God Almighty might avert and righteously judge between him and them.
+
+It was plain that among other things they were alluding to the stale and
+senseless story of the sledge filled with baskets of coin sent by the
+Spanish envoys on their departure from the Hague, on conclusion of the
+Truce, to defray expenses incurred by them for board and lodging of
+servants, forage of horses, and the like-which had accidentally stopped
+at Barneveld's door and was forthwith sent on to John Spronssen,
+superintendent of such affairs. Passing over this wanton bit of calumny
+with disgust, he solemnly asserted that he had never at any period of his
+life received one penny nor the value of one penny from the King of
+Spain, the Archdukes, Spinola, or any other person connected with the
+enemy, saving only the presents publicly and mutually conferred according
+to invariable custom by the high contracting parties, upon the respective
+negotiators at conclusion of the Treaty of Truce. Even these gifts
+Barneveld had moved his colleagues not to accept, but proposed that they
+should all be paid into the public treasury. He had been overruled, he
+said, but that any dispassionate man of tolerable intelligence could
+imagine him, whose whole life had been a perpetual offence to Spain, to
+be in suspicious relations with that power seemed to him impossible. The
+most intense party spirit, yea, envy itself, must confess that he had
+been among the foremost to take up arms for his country's liberties, and
+had through life never faltered in their defence. And once more in that
+mean chamber, and before a row of personal enemies calling themselves
+judges, he burst into an eloquent and most justifiable sketch of the
+career of one whom there was none else to justify and so many to assail.
+
+From his youth, he said, he had made himself by his honourable and
+patriotic deeds hopelessly irreconcilable with the Spaniards. He was one
+of the advocates practising in the Supreme Court of Holland, who in the
+very teeth of the Duke of Alva had proclaimed him a tyrant and had sworn
+obedience to the Prince of Orange as the lawful governor of the land. He
+was one of those who in the same year had promoted and attended private
+gatherings for the advancement of the Reformed religion. He had helped to
+levy, and had contributed to, funds for the national defence in the early
+days of the revolt. These were things which led directly to the Council
+of Blood and the gibbet. He had borne arms himself on various bloody
+fields and had been perpetually a deputy to the rebel camps. He had been
+the original mover of the Treaty of Union which was concluded between the
+Provinces at Utrecht. He had been the first to propose and to draw up the
+declaration of Netherland independence and the abjuration of the King of
+Spain. He had been one of those who had drawn and passed the Act
+establishing the late Prince of Orange as stadholder. Of the sixty
+signers of these memorable declarations none were now living save himself
+and two others. When the Prince had been assassinated, he had done his
+best to secure for his son Maurice the sovereign position of which murder
+had so suddenly deprived the father. He had been member of the memorable
+embassies to France and England by which invaluable support for the
+struggling Provinces had been obtained.
+
+And thus he rapidly sketched the history of the great war of independence
+in which he had ever been conspicuously employed on the patriotic side.
+When the late King of France at the close of the century had made peace
+with Spain, he had been sent as special ambassador to that monarch, and
+had prevailed on him, notwithstanding his treaty with the enemy, to
+continue his secret alliance with the States and to promise them a large
+subsidy, pledges which had been sacredly fulfilled. It was on that
+occasion that Henry, who was his debtor for past services, professional,
+official, and perfectly legitimate, had agreed, when his finances should
+be in better condition, to discharge his obligations; over and above the
+customary diplomatic present which he received publicly in common with
+his colleague Admiral Nassau. This promise, fulfilled a dozen years
+later, had been one of the senseless charges of corruption brought
+against him. He had been one of the negotiators of the Truce in which
+Spain had been compelled to treat with her revolted provinces as with
+free states and her equals. He had promoted the union of the Protestant
+princes and their alliance with France and the United States in
+opposition to the designs of Spain and the League. He had organized and
+directed the policy by which the forces of England, France, and
+Protestant Germany had possessed themselves of the debateable land. He
+had resisted every scheme by which it was hoped to force the States from
+their hold of those important citadels. He had been one of the foremost
+promoters of the East India Company, an organization which the Spaniards
+confessed had been as damaging to them as the Union of the Provinces
+itself had been.
+
+The idiotic and circumstantial statements, that he had conducted
+Burgomaster van Berk through a secret staircase of his house into his
+private study for the purpose of informing him that the only way for the
+States to get out of the war was to submit themselves once more to their
+old masters, so often forced upon him by the judges, he contradicted with
+disdain and disgust. He had ever abhorred and dreaded, he said, the House
+of Spain, Austria, and Burgundy. His life had passed in open hostility to
+that house, as was known to all mankind. His mere personal interests,
+apart from higher considerations, would make an approach to the former
+sovereign impossible, for besides the deeds he had already alluded to, he
+had committed at least twelve distinct and separate acts, each one of
+which would be held high-treason by the House of Austria, and he had
+learned from childhood that these are things which monarchs never forget.
+The tales of van Berk were those of a personal enemy, falsehoods scarcely
+worth contradicting.
+
+He was grossly and enormously aggrieved by the illegal constitution of
+the commission. He had protested and continued to protest against it. If
+that protest were unheeded, he claimed at least that those men should be
+excluded from the board and the right to sit in judgment upon his person
+and his deeds who had proved themselves by words and works to be his
+capital enemies, of which fact he could produce irrefragable evidence. He
+claimed that the Supreme Court of Holland, or the High Council, or both
+together, should decide upon that point. He held as his personal enemies,
+he said, all those who had declared that he, before or since the Truce
+down to the day of his arrest, had held correspondence with the
+Spaniards, the Archdukes, the Marquis Spinola, or any one on that side,
+had received money, money value, or promises of money from them, and in
+consequence had done or omitted to do anything whatever. He denounced
+such tales as notorious, shameful, and villainous falsehoods, the
+utterers and circulators of them as wilful liars, and this he was ready
+to maintain in every appropriate way for the vindication of the truth and
+his own honour. He declared solemnly before God Almighty to the
+States-General and to the States of Holland that his course in the
+religious matter had been solely directed to the strengthening of the
+Reformed religion and to the political security of the provinces and
+cities. He had simply desired that, in the awful and mysterious matter of
+predestination, the consciences of many preachers and many thousands of
+good citizens might be placed in tranquillity, with moderate and
+Christian limitations against all excesses.
+
+From all these reasons, he said, the commissioners, the States-General,
+the Prince, and every man in the land could clearly see, and were bound
+to see, that he was the same man now that he was at the beginning of the
+war, had ever been, and with God's help should ever remain.
+
+The proceedings were kept secret from the public and, as a matter of
+course, there had been conflicting rumours from day to day as to the
+probable result of these great state trials. In general however it was
+thought that the prisoner would be acquitted of the graver charges, or
+that at most he would be permanently displaced from all office and
+declared incapable thenceforth to serve the State. The triumph of the
+Contra-Remonstrants since the Stadholder had placed himself at the head
+of them, and the complete metamorphosis of the city governments even in
+the strongholds of the Arminian party seemed to render the permanent
+political disgrace of the Advocate almost a matter of certainty.
+
+The first step that gave rise to a belief that he might be perhaps more
+severely dealt with than had been anticipated was the proclamation by the
+States-General of a public fast and humiliation for the 17th April.
+
+In this document it was announced that "Church and State--during several
+years past having been brought into great danger of utter destruction
+through certain persons in furtherance of their ambitious designs--had
+been saved by the convocation of a National Synod; that a lawful sentence
+was soon to be expected upon those who had been disturbing the
+Commonwealth; that through this sentence general tranquillity would
+probably be restored; and that men were now to thank God for this result,
+and pray to Him that He would bring the wicked counsels and stratagems of
+the enemy against these Provinces to naught."
+
+All the prisoners were asked if they too would like in their chambers of
+bondage to participate in the solemnity, although the motive for the
+fasting and prayer was not mentioned to them. Each of them in his
+separate prison room, of course without communication together, selected
+the 7th Psalm and sang it with his servant and door-keeper.
+
+From the date of this fast-day Barneveld looked upon the result of his
+trial as likely to be serious.
+
+Many clergymen refused or objected to comply with the terms of this
+declaration. Others conformed with it greedily, and preached lengthy
+thanksgiving sermons, giving praise to God that, He had confounded the
+devices of the ambitious and saved the country from the "blood bath"
+which they had been preparing for it.
+
+The friends of Barneveld became alarmed at the sinister language of this
+proclamation, in which for the first time allusions had been made to a
+forthcoming sentence against the accused.
+
+Especially the staunch and indefatigable du Maurier at once addressed
+himself again to the States-General. De Boississe had returned to France,
+having found that the government of a country torn, weakened, and
+rendered almost impotent by its own internecine factions, was not likely
+to exert any very potent influence on the fate of the illustrious
+prisoner.
+
+The States had given him to understand that they were wearied with his
+perpetual appeals, intercessions, and sermons in behalf of mercy. They
+made him feel in short that Lewis XIII. and Henry IV. were two entirely
+different personages.
+
+Du Maurier however obtained a hearing before the Assembly on the 1st May,
+where he made a powerful and manly speech in presence of the Prince,
+urging that the prisoners ought to be discharged unless they could be
+convicted of treason, and that the States ought to show as much deference
+to his sovereign as they had always done to Elizabeth of England. He made
+a personal appeal to Prince Maurice, urging upon him how much it would
+redound to his glory if he should now in generous and princely fashion
+step forward in behalf of those by whom he deemed himself to have been
+personally offended.
+
+His speech fell upon ears hardened against such eloquence and produced no
+effect.
+
+Meantime the family of Barneveld, not yet reduced to despair, chose to
+take a less gloomy view of the proclamation. Relying on the innocence of
+the great statesman, whose aims, in their firm belief, had ever been for
+the welfare and glory of his fatherland, and in whose heart there had
+never been kindled one spark of treason, they bravely expected his
+triumphant release from his long and, as they deemed it, his iniquitous
+imprisonment.
+
+On this very 1st of May, in accordance with ancient custom, a may-pole
+was erected on the Voorhout before the mansion of the captive statesman,
+and wreaths of spring flowers and garlands of evergreen decorated the
+walls within which were such braised and bleeding hearts. These
+demonstrations of a noble hypocrisy, if such it were, excited the wrath,
+not the compassion, of the Stadholder, who thought that the aged matron
+and her sons and daughters, who dwelt in that house of mourning, should
+rather have sat in sackcloth with ashes on their heads than indulge in
+these insolent marks of hope and joyful expectation.
+
+It is certain however that Count William Lewis, who, although most
+staunch on the Contra-Remonstrant side, had a veneration for the Advocate
+and desired warmly to save him, made a last and strenuous effort for that
+purpose.
+
+It was believed then, and it seems almost certain, that, if the friends
+of the Advocate had been willing to implore pardon for him, the sentence
+would have been remitted or commuted. Their application would have been
+successful, for through it his guilt would seem to be acknowledged.
+
+Count William sent for the Fiscal Duyck. He asked him if there were no
+means of saving the life of a man who was so old and had done the country
+so much service. After long deliberation, it was decided that Prince
+Maurice should be approached on the subject. Duyck wished that the Count
+himself would speak with his cousin, but was convinced by his reasoning
+that it would be better that the Fiscal should do it. Duyck had a long
+interview accordingly with Maurice, which was followed by a very secret
+one between them both and Count William. The three were locked up
+together, three hours long, in the Prince's private cabinet. It was then
+decided that Count William should go, as if of his own accord, to the
+Princess-Dowager Louise, and induce her to send for some one of
+Barneveld's children and urge that the family should ask pardon for him.
+She asked if this was done with the knowledge of the Prince of Orange, or
+whether he would not take it amiss. The Count eluded the question, but
+implored her to follow his advice.
+
+The result was an interview between the Princess and Madame de
+Groeneveld, wife of the eldest son. That lady was besought to apply, with
+the rest of the Advocate's children, for pardon to the Lords States, but
+to act as if it were done of her own impulse, and to keep their interview
+profoundly secret.
+
+Madame de Groeneveld took time to consult the other members of the family
+and some friends. Soon afterwards she came again to the Princess, and
+informed her that she had spoken with the other children, and that they
+could not agree to the suggestion. "They would not move one step in
+it--no, not if it should cost him his head."
+
+The Princess reported the result of this interview to Count William, at
+which both were so distressed that they determined to leave the Hague.
+
+There is something almost superhuman in the sternness of this stoicism.
+Yet it lay in the proud and highly tempered character of the
+Netherlanders. There can be no doubt that the Advocate would have
+expressly dictated this proceeding if he had been consulted. It was
+precisely the course adopted by himself. Death rather than life with a
+false acknowledgment of guilt and therefore with disgrace. The loss of
+his honour would have been an infinitely greater triumph to his enemies
+than the loss of his head.
+
+There was no delay in drawing up the sentence. Previously to this
+interview with the widow of William the Silent, the family of the
+Advocate had presented to the judges three separate documents, rather in
+the way of arguments than petitions, undertaking to prove by elaborate
+reasoning and citations of precedents and texts of the civil law that the
+proceedings against him were wholly illegal, and that he was innocent of
+every crime.
+
+No notice had been taken of those appeals.
+
+Upon the questions and answers as already set forth the sentence soon
+followed, and it may be as well that the reader should be aware, at this
+point in the narrative, of the substance of that sentence so soon to be
+pronounced. There had been no indictment, no specification of crime.
+There had been no testimony or evidence. There had been no argument for
+the prosecution or the defence. There had been no trial whatever. The
+prisoner was convicted on a set of questions to which he had put in
+satisfactory replies. He was sentenced on a preamble. The sentence was a
+string of vague generalities, intolerably long, and as tangled as the
+interrogatories. His proceedings during a long career had on the whole
+tended to something called a "blood bath"--but the blood bath had never
+occurred.
+
+With an effrontery which did not lack ingenuity, Barneveld's defence was
+called by the commissioners his confession, and was formally registered
+as such in the process and the sentence; while the fact that he had not
+been stretched upon the rack during his trial, nor kept in chains for the
+eight months of his imprisonment, were complacently mentioned as proofs
+of exceptionable indulgence.
+
+"Whereas the prisoner John of Barneveld," said the sentence, "without
+being put to the torture and without fetters of iron, has confessed . . .
+to having perturbed religion, greatly afflicted the Church of God, and
+carried into practice exorbitant and pernicious maxims of State . . .
+inculcating by himself and accomplices that each province had the right
+to regulate religious affairs within its own territory, and that other
+provinces were not to concern themselves therewith"--therefore and for
+many other reasons he merited punishment.
+
+He had instigated a protest by vote of three provinces against the
+National Synod. He had despised the salutary advice of many princes and
+notable personages. He had obtained from the King of Great Britain
+certain letters furthering his own opinions, the drafts of which he had
+himself suggested, and corrected and sent over to the States' ambassador
+in London, and when written out, signed, and addressed by the King to the
+States-General, had delivered them without stating how they had been
+procured.
+
+Afterwards he had attempted to get other letters of a similar nature from
+the King, and not succeeding had defamed his Majesty as being a cause of
+the troubles in the Provinces. He had permitted unsound theologians to be
+appointed to church offices, and had employed such functionaries in
+political affairs as were most likely to be the instruments of his own
+purposes. He had not prevented vigorous decrees from being enforced in
+several places against those of the true religion. He had made them
+odious by calling them Puritans, foreigners, and "Flanderizers," although
+the United Provinces had solemnly pledged to each other their lives,
+fortunes, and blood by various conventions, to some of which the prisoner
+was himself a party, to maintain the Reformed, Evangelical, religion
+only, and to, suffer no change in it to be made for evermore.
+
+In order to carry out his design and perturb the political state of the
+Provinces he had drawn up and caused to be enacted the Sharp Resolution
+of 4th August 1617. He had thus nullified the ordinary course of justice.
+He had stimulated the magistrates to disobedience, and advised them to
+strengthen themselves with freshly enlisted military companies. He had
+suggested new-fangled oaths for the soldiers, authorizing them to refuse
+obedience to the States-General and his Excellency. He had especially
+stimulated the proceedings at Utrecht. When it was understood that the
+Prince was to pass through Utrecht, the States of that province not
+without the prisoner's knowledge had addressed a letter to his
+Excellency, requesting him not to pass through their city. He had written
+a letter to Ledenberg suggesting that good watch should be held at the
+town gates and up and down the river Lek. He had desired that Ledenberg
+having read that letter should burn it. He had interfered with the
+cashiering of the mercenaries at Utrecht. He had said that such
+cashiering without the consent of the States of that province was an act
+of force which would justify resistance by force.
+
+Although those States had sent commissioners to concert measures with the
+Prince for that purpose, he had advised them to conceal their
+instructions until his own plan for the disbandment could be carried out.
+At a secret meeting in the house of Tresel, clerk of the States-General,
+between Grotius, Hoogerbeets, and other accomplices, it was decided that
+this advice should be taken. Report accordingly was made to the prisoner.
+He had advised them to continue in their opposition to the National
+Synod.
+
+He had sought to calumniate and blacken his Excellency by saying that he
+aspired to the sovereignty of the Provinces. He had received intelligence
+on that subject from abroad in ciphered letters.
+
+He had of his own accord rejected a certain proposed, notable alliance of
+the utmost importance to this Republic.
+
+   [This refers, I think without doubt, to the conversation between
+   King James and Caron at the end of the year 1815.]
+
+He had received from foreign potentates various large sums of money and
+other presents.
+
+All "these proceedings tended to put the city of Utrecht into a
+blood-bath, and likewise to bring the whole country, and the person of
+his Excellency into the uttermost danger."
+
+This is the substance of the sentence, amplified by repetitions and
+exasperating tautology into thirty or forty pages.
+
+It will have been perceived by our analysis of Barneveld's answers to the
+commissioners that all the graver charges which he was now said to have
+confessed had been indignantly denied by him or triumphantly justified.
+
+It will also be observed that he was condemned for no categorical
+crime--lese-majesty, treason, or rebellion. The commissioners never
+ventured to assert that the States-General were sovereign, or that the
+central government had a right to prescribe a religious formulary for all
+the United Provinces. They never dared to say that the prisoner had been
+in communication with the enemy or had received bribes from him.
+
+Of insinuation and implication there was much, of assertion very little,
+of demonstration nothing whatever.
+
+But supposing that all the charges had been admitted or proved, what
+course would naturally be taken in consequence? How was a statesman who
+adhered to the political, constitutional, and religious opinions on which
+he had acted, with the general acquiescence, during a career of more than
+forty years, but which were said to be no longer in accordance with
+public opinion, to be dealt with? Would the commissioners request him to
+retire honourably from the high functions which he had over and over
+again offered to resign? Would they consider that, having fairly
+impeached and found him guilty of disturbing the public peace by
+continuing to act on his well-known legal theories, they might deprive
+him summarily of power and declare him incapable of holding office again?
+
+The conclusion of the commissioners was somewhat more severe than either
+of these measures. Their long rambling preamble ended with these decisive
+words:
+
+"Therefore the judges, in name of the Lords States-General, condemn the
+prisoner to be taken to the Binnenhof, there to be executed with the
+sword that death may follow, and they declare all his property
+confiscated."
+
+The execution was to take place so soon as the sentence had been read to
+the prisoner.
+
+After the 1st of May Barneveld had not appeared before his judges. He had
+been examined in all about sixty times.
+
+In the beginning of May his servant became impatient. "You must not be
+impatient," said his master. "The time seems much longer because we get
+no news now from the outside. But the end will soon come. This delay
+cannot last for ever."
+
+Intimation reached him on Saturday the 11th May that the sentence was
+ready and would soon be pronounced.
+
+"It is a bitter folk," said Barneveld as he went to bed. "I have nothing
+good to expect of them." Next day was occupied in sewing up and
+concealing his papers, including a long account of his examination, with
+the questions and answers, in his Spanish arm-chair. Next day van der
+Meulen said to the servant, "I will bet you a hundred florins that you'll
+not be here next Thursday."
+
+The faithful John was delighted, not dreaming of the impending result.
+
+It was Sunday afternoon, 12th May, and about half past five o'clock.
+Barneveld sat in his prison chamber, occupied as usual in writing,
+reviewing the history of the past, and doing his best to reduce into
+something like order the rambling and miscellaneous interrogatories, out
+of which his trial had been concocted, while the points dwelt in his
+memory, and to draw up a concluding argument in his own defence. Work
+which according to any equitable, reasonable, or even decent procedure
+should have been entrusted to the first lawyers of the country--preparing
+the case upon the law and the facts with the documents before them, with
+the power of cross-questioning witnesses and sifting evidence, and
+enlightened by constant conferences with the illustrious prisoner
+himself--came entirely upon his own shoulders, enfeebled as he was by
+age, physical illness, and by the exhaustion of along imprisonment.
+Without books, notes of evidence, or even copies of the charges of which
+he stood accused, he was obliged to draw up his counter-arguments against
+the impeachment and then by aid of a faithful valet to conceal his
+manuscript behind the tapestry of the chamber, or cause them to be sewed
+up in the lining of his easy-chair, lest they should be taken from him by
+order of the judges who sat in the chamber below.
+
+While he was thus occupied in preparations for his next encounter with
+the tribunal, the door opened, and three gentlemen entered. Two were the
+prosecuting officers of the government, Fiscal Sylla and Fiscal van
+Leeuwen. The other was the provost-marshal, Carel de Nijs. The servant
+was directed to leave the room.
+
+Barneveld had stepped into his dressing-room on hearing footsteps, but
+came out again with his long furred gown about him as the three entered.
+He greeted them courteously and remained standing, with his hands placed
+on the back of his chair and with one knee resting carelessly against the
+arm of it. Van Leeuwen asked him if he would not rather be seated, as
+they brought a communication from the judges. He answered in the
+negative. Von Leeuwen then informed him that he was summoned to appear
+before the judges the next morning to hear his sentence of death.
+
+"The sentence of death!" he exclaimed, without in the least changing his
+position; "the sentence of death! the sentence of death!" saying the
+words over thrice, with an air of astonishment rather than of horror. "I
+never expected that! I thought they were going to hear my defence again.
+I had intended to make some change in my previous statements, having set
+some things down when beside myself with choler."
+
+He then made reference to his long services. Van Leeuwen expressed
+himself as well acquainted with them. "He was sorry," he said, "that his
+lordship took this message ill of him."
+
+"I do not take it ill of you," said Barneveld, "but let them," meaning
+the judges, "see how they will answer it before God. Are they thus to
+deal with a true patriot? Let me have pen, ink, and paper, that for the
+last time I may write farewell to my wife."
+
+"I will go ask permission of the judges," said van Leenwen, "and I cannot
+think that my lord's request will be refused."
+
+While van Leeuwen was absent, the Advocate exclaimed, looking at the
+other legal officer:
+
+"Oh, Sylla, Sylla, if your father could only have seen to what uses they
+would put you!"
+
+Sylla was silent.
+
+Permission to write the letter was soon received from de Voogt, president
+of the commission. Pen, ink, and paper were brought, and the prisoner
+calmly sat down to write, without the slightest trace of discomposure
+upon his countenance or in any of his movements.
+
+While he was writing, Sylla said with some authority, "Beware, my lord,
+what you write, lest you put down something which may furnish cause for
+not delivering the letter."
+
+Barneveld paused in his writing, took the glasses from his eyes, and
+looked Sylla in the face.
+
+"Well, Sylla," he said very calmly, "will you in these my last moments
+lay down the law to me as to what I shall write to my wife?"
+
+He then added with a half-smile, "Well, what is expected of me?"
+
+"We have no commission whatever to lay down the law," said van Leeuwen.
+"Your worship will write whatever you like."
+
+While he was writing, Anthony Walaeus came in, a preacher and professor
+of Middelburg, a deputy to the Synod of Dordtrecht, a learned and amiable
+man, sent by the States-General to minister to the prisoner on this
+supreme occasion; and not unworthy to be thus selected.
+
+The Advocate, not knowing him, asked him why he came.
+
+"I am not here without commission," said the clergyman. "I come to
+console my lord in his tribulation."
+
+"I am a man," said Barneveld; "have come to my present age, and I know
+how to console myself. I must write, and have now other things to do."
+
+The preacher said that he would withdraw and return when his worship was
+at leisure.
+
+"Do as you like," said the Advocate, calmly going on with his writing.
+
+When the letter was finished, it was sent to the judges for their
+inspection, by whom it was at once forwarded to the family mansion in the
+Voorhout, hardly a stone's throw from the prison chamber.
+
+Thus it ran:
+
+"Very dearly beloved wife, children, sons-in-law, and grandchildren, I
+greet you altogether most affectionately. I receive at this moment the
+very heavy and sorrowful tidings that I, an old man, for all my services
+done well and faithfully to the Fatherland for so many years (after
+having performed all respectful and friendly offices to his Excellency
+the Prince with upright affection so far as my official duty and vocation
+would permit, shown friendship to many people of all sorts, and wittingly
+injured no man), must prepare myself to die to-morrow.
+
+"I console myself in God the Lord, who knows all hearts, and who will
+judge all men. I beg you all together to do the same. I have steadily and
+faithfully served My Lords the States of Holland and their nobles and
+cities. To the States of Utrecht as sovereigns of my own Fatherland I
+have imparted at their request upright and faithful counsel, in order to
+save them from tumults of the populace, and from the bloodshed with which
+they had so long been threatened. I had the same views for the cities of
+Holland in order that every one might be protected and no one injured.
+
+"Live together in love and peace. Pray for me to Almighty God, who will
+graciously hold us all in His holy keeping.
+
+"From my chamber of sorrow, the 12th May 1619.
+
+"Your very dear husband, father, father-in-law, and grandfather,
+
+                  "JOHN OF BARNEVELD."
+
+It was thought strange that the judges should permit so simple and clear
+a statement, an argument in itself, to be forwarded. The theory of his
+condemnation was to rest before the public on his confessions of guilt,
+and here in the instant of learning the nature of the sentence in a few
+hours to be pronounced upon him he had in a few telling periods declared
+his entire innocence. Nevertheless the letter had been sent at once to
+its address.
+
+So soon as this sad business had been disposed of, Anthony Walaeus
+returned. The Advocate apologized to the preacher for his somewhat abrupt
+greeting on his first appearance. He was much occupied and did not know
+him, he said, although he had often heard of him. He begged him, as well
+as the provost-marshal, to join him at supper, which was soon brought.
+
+Barneveld ate with his usual appetite, conversed cheerfully on various
+topics, and pledged the health of each of his guests in a glass of beer.
+Contrary to his wont he drank at that repast no wine. After supper he
+went out into the little ante-chamber and called his servant, asking him
+how he had been faring. Now John Franken had just heard with grief
+unspeakable the melancholy news of his master's condemnation from two
+soldiers of the guard, who had been sent by the judges to keep additional
+watch over the prisoner. He was however as great a stoic as his master,
+and with no outward and superfluous manifestations of woe had simply
+implored the captain-at-arms, van der Meulen, to intercede with the
+judges that he might be allowed to stay with his lord to the last.
+Meantime he had been expressly informed that he was to say nothing to the
+Advocate in secret, and that his master was not to speak to him in a low
+tone nor whisper in his ear.
+
+When the Advocate came out into the ante-chamber and looking over his
+shoulder saw the two soldiers he at once lowered his voice.
+
+"Hush-speak low," he whispered; "this is too cruel." John then informed
+him of van der Meulen's orders, and that the soldiers had also been
+instructed to look to it sharply that no word was exchanged between
+master and man except in a loud voice.
+
+"Is it possible," said the Advocate, "that so close an inspection is held
+over me in these last hours? Can I not speak a word or two in freedom?
+This is a needless mark of disrespect."
+
+The soldiers begged him not to take their conduct amiss as they were
+obliged strictly to obey orders.
+
+He returned to his chamber, sat down in his chair, and begged Walaeus to
+go on his behalf to Prince Maurice.
+
+"Tell his Excellency," said he, "that I have always served him with
+upright affection so far as my office, duties, and principles permitted.
+If I, in the discharge of my oath and official functions, have ever done
+anything contrary to his views, I hope that he will forgive it, and that
+he will hold my children in his gracious favour."
+
+It was then ten o'clock. The preacher went downstairs and crossed the
+courtyard to the Stadholder's apartments, where he at once gained
+admittance.
+
+Maurice heard the message with tears in his eyes, assuring Walaeus that
+he felt deeply for the Advocate's misfortunes. He had always had much
+affection for him, he said, and had often warned him against his mistaken
+courses. Two things, however, had always excited his indignation. One was
+that Barneveld had accused him of aspiring to sovereignty. The other that
+he had placed him in such danger at Utrecht. Yet he forgave him all. As
+regarded his sons, so long as they behaved themselves well they might
+rely on his favour.
+
+As Walaeus was about to leave the apartment, the Prince called him back.
+
+"Did he say anything of a pardon?" he asked, with some eagerness.
+
+"My Lord," answered the clergyman, "I cannot with truth say that I
+understood him to make any allusion to it."
+
+Walaeus returned immediately to the prison chamber and made his report of
+the interview. He was unwilling however to state the particulars of the
+offence which Maurice declared himself to have taken at the acts of the
+Advocate.
+
+But as the prisoner insisted upon knowing, the clergyman repeated the
+whole conversation.
+
+"His Excellency has been deceived in regard to the Utrecht business,"
+said Barneveld, "especially as to one point. But it is true that I had
+fear and apprehension that he aspired to the sovereignty or to more
+authority in the country. Ever since the year 1600 I have felt this fear
+and have tried that these apprehensions might be rightly understood."
+
+While Walaeus had been absent, the Reverend Jean la Motte (or Lamotius)
+and another clergyman of the Hague had come to the prisoner's apartment.
+La Motte could not look upon the Advocate's face without weeping, but the
+others were more collected. Conversation now ensued among the four; the
+preachers wishing to turn the doomed statesman's thought to the
+consolations of religion.
+
+But it was characteristic of the old lawyer's frame of mind that even now
+he looked at the tragical position in which he found himself from a
+constitutional and controversial point of view. He was perfectly calm and
+undaunted at the awful fate so suddenly and unexpectedly opened before
+his eyes, but he was indignant at what he esteemed the ignorance,
+injustice, and stupidity of the sentence to be pronounced against him.
+
+"I am ready enough to die," he said to the three clergymen, "but I cannot
+comprehend why I am to die. I have done nothing except in obedience to
+the laws and privileges of the land and according to my oath, honour, and
+conscience."
+
+"These judges," he continued, "come in a time when other maxims prevail
+in the State than those of my day. They have no right therefore to sit in
+judgment upon me."
+
+The clergymen replied that the twenty-four judges who had tried the case
+were no children and were conscientious men; that it was no small thing
+to condemn a man, and that they would have to answer it before the
+Supreme Judge of all.
+
+"I console myself," he answered, "in the Lord my God, who knows all
+hearts and shall judge all men. God is just.
+
+"They have not dealt with me," he continued, "as according to law and
+justice they were bound to deal. They have taken away from me my own
+sovereign lords and masters and deposed them. To them alone I was
+responsible. In their place they have put many of my enemies who were
+never before in the government, and almost all of whom are young men who
+have not seen much or read much. I have seen and read much, and know that
+from such examples no good can follow. After my death they will learn for
+the first time what governing means."
+
+"The twenty-four judges are nearly all of them my enemies. What they have
+reproached me with, I have been obliged to hear. I have appealed against
+these judges, but it has been of no avail. They have examined me in
+piecemeal, not in statesmanlike fashion. The proceedings against me have
+been much too hard. I have frequently requested to see the notes of my
+examination as it proceeded, and to confer upon it with aid and counsel
+of friends, as would be the case in all lands governed by law. The
+request was refused. During this long and wearisome affliction and misery
+I have not once been allowed to speak to my wife and children. These are
+indecent proceedings against a man seventy-two years of age, who has
+served his country faithfully for three-and-forty years. I bore arms with
+the volunteers at my own charges at the siege of Haarlem and barely
+escaped with life."
+
+It was not unnatural that the aged statesman's thoughts should revert in
+this supreme moment to the heroic scenes in which he had been an actor
+almost a half-century before. He could not but think with bitterness of
+those long past but never forgotten days when he, with other patriotic
+youths, had faced the terrible legions of Alva in defence of the
+Fatherland, at a time when the men who were now dooming him to a
+traitor's death were unborn, and who, but for his labours, courage,
+wisdom, and sacrifices, might have never had a Fatherland to serve, or a
+judgment-seat on which to pronounce his condemnation.
+
+Not in a spirit of fretfulness, but with disdainful calm, he criticised
+and censured the proceedings against himself as a violation of the laws
+of the land and of the first principles of justice, discussing them as
+lucidly and steadily as if they had been against a third person.
+
+The preachers listened, but had nothing to say. They knew not of such
+matters, they said, and had no instructions to speak of them. They had
+been sent to call him to repentance for his open and hidden sins and to
+offer the consolations of religion.
+
+"I know that very well," he said, "but I too have something to say
+notwithstanding." The conversation then turned upon religious topics, and
+the preachers spoke of predestination.
+
+"I have never been able to believe in the matter of high predestination,"
+said the Advocate. "I have left it in the hands of God the Lord. I hold
+that a good Christian man must believe that he through God's grace and by
+the expiation of his sin through our Redeemer Jesus Christ is predestined
+to be saved, and that this belief in his salvation, founded alone on
+God's grace and the merits of our Redeemer Jesus Christ, comes to him
+through the same grace of God. And if he falls into great sins, his firm
+hope and confidence must be that the Lord God will not allow him to
+continue in them, but that, through prayer for grace and repentance, he
+will be converted from evil and remain in the faith to the end of his
+life."
+
+These feelings, he said, he had expressed fifty-two years before to three
+eminent professors of theology in whom he confided, and they had assured
+him that he might tranquilly continue in such belief without examining
+further. "And this has always been my creed," he said.
+
+The preachers replied that faith is a gift of God and not given to all
+men, that it must be given out of heaven to a man before he could be
+saved. Hereupon they began to dispute, and the Advocate spoke so
+earnestly and well that the clergymen were astonished and sat for a time
+listening to him in silence.
+
+He asked afterwards about the Synod, and was informed that its decrees
+had not yet been promulgated, but that the Remonstrants had been
+condemned.
+
+"It is a pity," said he. "One is trying to act on the old Papal system,
+but it will never do. Things have gone too far. As to the Synod, if My
+Lords the States of Holland had been heeded there would have been first a
+provincial synod and then a national one."--"But," he added, looking the
+preachers in the face, "had you been more gentle with each other, matters
+would not have taken so high a turn. But you have been too fierce one
+against the other, too full of bitter party spirit."
+
+They replied that it was impossible for them to act against their
+conscience and the supreme authority. And then they asked him if there
+was nothing that troubled him in, his conscience in the matters for which
+he must die; nothing for which he repented and sorrowed, and for which he
+would call upon God for mercy.
+
+"This I know well," he said, "that I have never willingly done wrong to
+any man. People have been ransacking my letters to Caron--confidential
+ones written several years ago to an old friend when I was troubled and
+seeking for counsel and consolation. It is hard that matter of
+impeachment against me to-day should be sought for thus."
+
+And then he fell into political discourse again on the subject of the
+Waartgelders and the State rights, and the villainous pasquils and libels
+that had circulated so long through the country.
+
+"I have sometimes spoken hastily, I confess," he said; "but that was when
+I was stung by the daily swarm of infamous and loathsome pamphlets,
+especially those directed against my sovereign masters the States of
+Holland. That I could not bear. Old men cannot well brush such things
+aside. All that was directly aimed at me in particular I endeavoured to
+overcome with such patience as I could muster. The disunion and mutual
+enmity in the country have wounded me to the heart. I have made use of
+all means in my power to accommodate matters, to effect with all
+gentleness a mutual reconciliation. I have always felt a fear lest the
+enemy should make use of our internal dissensions to strike a blow
+against us. I can say with perfect truth that ever since the year '77 I
+have been as resolutely and unchangeably opposed to the Spaniards and
+their adherents, and their pretensions over these Provinces, as any man
+in the world, no one excepted, and as ready to sacrifice property and
+shed my blood in defence of the Fatherland. I have been so devoted to the
+service of the country that I have not been able to take the necessary
+care of my own private affairs."
+
+So spoke the great statesman in the seclusion of his prison, in the
+presence of those clergymen whom he respected, at a supreme moment, when,
+if ever, a man might be expected to tell the truth. And his whole life
+which belonged to history, and had been passed on the world's stage
+before the eyes of two generations of spectators, was a demonstration of
+the truth of his words.
+
+But Burgomaster van Berk knew better. Had he not informed the twenty-four
+commissioners that, twelve years before, the Advocate wished to subject
+the country to Spain, and that Spinola had drawn a bill of exchange for
+100,000 ducats as a compensation for his efforts?
+
+It was eleven o'clock. Barneveld requested one of the brethren to say an
+evening prayer. This was done by La Motte, and they were then requested
+to return by three or four o'clock next morning. They had been directed,
+they said, to remain with him all night. "That is unnecessary," said the
+Advocate, and they retired.
+
+His servant then helped his master to undress, and he went to bed as
+usual. Taking off his signet-ring, he gave it to John Franken.
+
+"For my eldest son," he said.
+
+The valet sat down at the head of his bed in order that his master might
+speak to him before he slept. But the soldiers ordered him away and
+compelled him to sit in a distant part of the room.
+
+An hour after midnight, the Advocate having been unable to lose himself,
+his servant observed that Isaac, one of the soldiers, was fast asleep. He
+begged the other, Tilman Schenk by name, to permit him some private words
+with his master. He had probably last messages, he thought, to send to
+his wife and children, and the eldest son, M. de Groeneveld, would no
+doubt reward him well for it. But the soldier was obstinate in obedience
+to the orders of the judges.
+
+Barneveld, finding it impossible to sleep, asked his servant to read to
+him from the Prayer-book. The soldier called in a clergyman however,
+another one named Hugo Bayerus, who had been sent to the prison, and who
+now read to him the Consolations of the Sick. As he read, he made
+exhortations and expositions, which led to animated discussion, in which
+the Advocate expressed himself with so much fervour and eloquence that
+all present were astonished, and the preacher sat mute a half-hour long
+at the bed-side.
+
+"Had there been ten clergymen," said the simple-hearted sentry to the
+valet, "your master would have enough to say to all of them."
+
+Barneveld asked where the place had been prepared in which he was to die.
+
+"In front of the great hall, as I understand," said Bayerus, "but I don't
+know the localities well, having lived here but little."
+
+"Have you heard whether my Grotius is to die, and Hoogerbeets also?" he
+asked?
+
+"I have heard nothing to that effect," replied the clergyman.
+
+"I should most deeply grieve for those two gentlemen," said Barneveld,
+"were that the case. They may yet live to do the land great service. That
+great rising light, de Groot, is still young, but a very wise and learned
+gentleman, devoted to his Fatherland with all zeal, heart, and soul, and
+ready to stand up for her privileges, laws, and rights. As for me, I am
+an old and worn-out man. I can do no more. I have already done more than
+I was really able to do. I have worked so zealously in public matters
+that I have neglected my private business. I had expressly ordered my
+house at Loosduinen" [a villa by the seaside] "to be got ready, that I
+might establish myself there and put my affairs in order. I have
+repeatedly asked the States of Holland for my discharge, but could never
+obtain it. It seems that the Almighty had otherwise disposed of me."
+
+He then said he would try once more if he could sleep. The clergyman and
+the servant withdrew for an hour, but his attempt was unsuccessful. After
+an hour he called for his French Psalm Book and read in it for some time.
+Sometime after two o'clock the clergymen came in again and conversed with
+him. They asked him if he had slept, if he hoped to meet Christ, and if
+there was anything that troubled his conscience.
+
+"I have not slept, but am perfectly tranquil," he replied. "I am ready to
+die, but cannot comprehend why I must die. I wish from my heart that,
+through my death and my blood, all disunion and discord in this land may
+cease."
+
+He bade them carry his last greetings to his fellow prisoners. "Say
+farewell for me to my good Grotius," said he, "and tell him that I must
+die."
+
+The clergymen then left him, intending to return between five and six
+o'clock.
+
+He remained quiet for a little while and then ordered his valet to cut
+open the front of his shirt. When this was done, he said, "John, are you
+to stay by me to the last?"
+
+"Yes," he replied, "if the judges permit it."
+
+"Remind me to send one of the clergymen to the judges with the request,"
+said his master.
+
+The faithful John, than whom no servant or friend could be more devoted,
+seized the occasion, with the thrift and stoicism of a true Hollander, to
+suggest that his lord might at the same time make some testamentary
+disposition in his favour.
+
+"Tell my wife and children," said the Advocate, "that they must console
+each other in mutual love and union. Say that through God's grace I am
+perfectly at ease, and hope that they will be equally tranquil. Tell my
+children that I trust they will be loving and friendly to their mother
+during the short time she has yet to live. Say that I wish to recommend
+you to them that they may help you to a good situation either with
+themselves or with others. Tell them that this was my last request."
+
+He bade him further to communicate to the family the messages sent that
+night through Walaeus by the Stadholder.
+
+The valet begged his master to repeat these instructions in presence of
+the clergyman, or to request one of them to convey them himself to the
+family. He promised to do so.
+
+"As long as I live," said the grateful servant, "I shall remember your
+lordship in my prayers."
+
+"No, John," said the Advocate, "that is Popish. When I am dead, it is all
+over with prayers. Pray for me while I still live. Now is the time to
+pray. When one is dead, one should no longer be prayed for."
+
+La Motte came in. Barneveld repeated his last wishes exactly as he
+desired them to be communicated to his wife and children. The preacher
+made no response. "Will you take the message?" asked the prisoner. La
+Motte nodded, but did not speak, nor did he subsequently fulfil the
+request.
+
+Before five o'clock the servant heard the bell ring in the apartment of
+the judges directly below the prison chamber, and told his master he had
+understood that they were to assemble at five o'clock.
+
+"I may as well get up then," said the Advocate; "they mean to begin
+early, I suppose. Give me my doublet and but one pair of stockings."
+
+He was accustomed to wear two or three pair at a time.
+
+He took off his underwaistcoat, saying that the silver bog which was in
+one of the pockets was to be taken to his wife, and that the servant
+should keep the loose money there for himself. Then he found an
+opportunity to whisper to him, "Take good care of the papers which are in
+the apartment." He meant the elaborate writings which he had prepared
+during his imprisonment and concealed in the tapestry and within the
+linings of the chair.
+
+As his valet handed him the combs and brushes, he said with a smile,
+"John, this is for the last time."
+
+When he was dressed, he tried, in rehearsal of the approaching scene, to
+pull over his eyes the silk skull-cap which he usually wore under his
+hat. Finding it too tight he told the valet to put the nightcap in his
+pocket and give it him when he should call for it. He then swallowed a
+half-glass of wine with a strengthening cordial in it, which he was wont
+to take.
+
+The clergymen then re-entered, and asked if he had been able to sleep. He
+answered no, but that he had been much consoled by many noble things
+which he had been reading in the French Psalm Book. The clergymen said
+that they had been thinking much of the beautiful confession of faith
+which he had made to them that evening. They rejoiced at it, they said,
+on his account, and had never thought it of him. He said that such had
+always been his creed.
+
+At his request Walaeus now offered a morning prayer Barneveld fell on his
+knees and prayed inwardly without uttering a sound. La Motte asked when
+he had concluded, "Did my Lord say Amen?"--"Yes, Lamotius," he replied;
+"Amen."--"Has either of the brethren," he added, "prepared a prayer to be
+offered outside there?"
+
+La Motte informed him that this duty had been confided to him. Some
+passages from Isaiah were now read aloud, and soon afterwards Walaeus was
+sent for to speak with the judges. He came back and said to the prisoner,
+"Has my Lord any desire to speak with his wife or children, or any of his
+friends?" It was then six o'clock, and Barneveld replied:
+
+"No, the time is drawing near. It would excite a new emotion." Walaeus
+went back to the judges with this answer, who thereupon made this
+official report:
+
+"The husband and father of the petitioners, being asked if he desired
+that any of the petitioners should come to him, declared that he did not
+approve of it, saying that it would cause too great an emotion for
+himself as well as for them. This is to serve as an answer to the
+petitioners."
+
+Now the Advocate knew nothing of the petition. Up to the last moment his
+family had been sanguine as to his ultimate acquittal and release. They
+relied on a promise which they had received or imagined that they had
+received from the Stadholder that no harm should come to the prisoner in
+consequence of the arrest made of his person in the Prince's apartments
+on the 8th of August. They had opened this tragical month of May with
+flagstaffs and flower garlands, and were making daily preparations to
+receive back the revered statesman in triumph.
+
+The letter written by him from his "chamber of sorrow," late in the
+evening of 12th May, had at last dispelled every illusion. It would be
+idle to attempt to paint the grief and consternation into which the
+household in the Voorhout was plunged, from the venerable dame at its
+head, surrounded by her sons and daughters and children's children, down
+to the humblest servant in their employment. For all revered and loved
+the austere statesman, but simple and benignant father and master.
+
+No heed had been taken of the three elaborate and argumentative petitions
+which, prepared by learned counsel in name of the relatives, had been
+addressed to the judges. They had not been answered because they were
+difficult to answer, and because it was not intended that the accused
+should have the benefit of counsel.
+
+An urgent and last appeal was now written late at night, and signed by
+each member of the family, to his Excellency the Prince and the judge
+commissioners, to this effect:
+
+"The afflicted wife and children of M. van Barneveld humbly show that
+having heard the sorrowful tidings of his coming execution, they humbly
+beg that it may be granted them to see and speak to him for the last
+time."
+
+The two sons delivered this petition at four o'clock in the morning into
+the hands of de Voogd, one of the judges. It was duly laid before the
+commission, but the prisoner was never informed, when declining a last
+interview with his family, how urgently they had themselves solicited the
+boon.
+
+Louise de Coligny, on hearing late at night the awful news, had been
+struck with grief and horror. She endeavoured, late as it was, to do
+something to avert the doom of one she so much revered, the man on whom
+her illustrious husband had leaned his life long as on a staff of iron.
+She besought an interview of the Stadholder, but it was refused. The wife
+of William the Silent had no influence at that dire moment with her
+stepson. She was informed at first that Maurice was asleep, and at four
+in the morning that all intervention was useless.
+
+The faithful and energetic du Maurier, who had already exhausted himself
+in efforts to save the life of the great prisoner, now made a last
+appeal. He, too, heard at four o'clock in the morning of the 13th that
+sentence of death was to be pronounced. Before five o'clock he made
+urgent application to be heard before the Assembly of the States-General
+as ambassador of a friendly sovereign who took the deepest interest in
+the welfare of the Republic and the fate of its illustrious statesman.
+The appeal was refused. As a last resource he drew up an earnest and
+eloquent letter to the States-General, urging clemency in the name of his
+king. It was of no avail. The letter may still be seen in the Royal
+Archives at the Hague, drawn up entirely in du Maurier's clear and
+beautiful handwriting. Although possibly a first draft, written as it
+was under such a mortal pressure for time, its pages have not one erasure
+or correction.
+
+It was seven o'clock. Barneveld having observed by the preacher (La
+Motte's) manner that he was not likely to convey the last messages which
+he had mentioned to his wife and children, sent a request to the judges
+to be allowed to write one more letter. Captain van der Meulen came back
+with the permission, saying he would wait and take it to the judges for
+their revision.
+
+The letter has been often published.
+
+"Must they see this too? Why, it is only a line in favour of John," said
+the prisoner, sitting quietly down to write this letter:
+
+"Very dear wife and children, it is going to an end with me. I am,
+through the grace of God, very tranquil. I hope that you are equally so,
+and that you may by mutual love, union, and peace help each other to
+overcome all things, which I pray to the Omnipotent as my last request.
+John Franken has served me faithfully for many years and throughout all
+these my afflictions, and is to remain with me to the end. He deserves to
+be recommended to you and to be furthered to good employments with you or
+with others. I request you herewith to see to this.
+
+"I have requested his Princely Excellency to hold my sons and children in
+his favour, to which he has answered that so long as you conduct
+yourselves well this shall be the case. I recommend this to you in the
+best form and give you all into God's holy keeping. Kiss each other and
+all my grandchildren, for the last time in my name, and fare you well.
+Out of the chamber of sorrow, 13th May 1619. Your dear husband and
+father,
+                  JOHN OF BARNEVELD.
+
+"P.S. You will make John Franken a present in memory of me."
+
+Certainly it would be difficult to find a more truly calm, courageous, or
+religious spirit than that manifested by this aged statesman at an hour
+when, if ever, a human soul is tried and is apt to reveal its innermost
+depths or shallows. Whatever Gomarus or Bogerman, or the whole Council of
+Dordtrecht, may have thought of his theology, it had at least taught him
+forgiveness of his enemies, kindness to his friends, and submission to
+the will of the Omnipotent. Every moment of his last days on earth had
+been watched and jealously scrutinized, and his bitterest enemies had
+failed to discover one trace of frailty, one manifestation of any
+vacillating, ignoble, or malignant sentiment.
+
+The drums had been sounding through the quiet but anxiously expectant
+town since four o'clock that morning, and the tramp of soldiers marching
+to the Inner Court had long been audible in the prison chamber.
+
+Walaeus now came back with a message from the judges. "The high
+commissioners," he said, "think it is beginning. Will my Lord please to
+prepare himself?"
+
+"Very well, very well," said the prisoner. "Shall we go at once?"
+
+But Walaeus suggested a prayer. Upon its conclusion, Barneveld gave his
+hand to the provost-marshal and to the two soldiers, bidding them adieu,
+and walked downstairs, attended by them, to the chamber of the judges. As
+soon as he appeared at the door, he was informed that there had been a
+misunderstanding, and he was requested to wait a little. He accordingly
+went upstairs again with perfect calmness, sat down in his chamber again,
+and read in his French Psalm Book. Half an hour later he was once more
+summoned, the provost-marshal and Captain van der Meulen reappearing to
+escort him. "Mr. Provost," said the prisoner, as they went down the
+narrow staircase, "I have always been a good friend to you."--"It is
+true," replied that officer, "and most deeply do I grieve to see you in
+this affliction."
+
+He was about to enter the judges' chamber as usual, but was informed that
+the sentence would be read in the great hall of judicature. They
+descended accordingly to the basement story, and passed down the narrow
+flight of steps which then as now connected the more modern structure,
+where the Advocate had been imprisoned and tried, with what remained of
+the ancient palace of the Counts of Holland. In the centre of the vast
+hall--once the banqueting chamber of those petty sovereigns; with its
+high vaulted roof of cedar which had so often in ancient days rung with
+the sounds of mirth and revelry--was a great table at which the
+twenty-four judges and the three prosecuting officers were seated, in
+their black caps and gowns of office. The room was lined with soldiers
+and crowded with a dark, surging mass of spectators, who had been waiting
+there all night.
+
+A chair was placed for the prisoner. He sat down, and the clerk of the
+commission, Pots by name, proceeded at once to read the sentence. A
+summary of this long, rambling, and tiresome paper has been already laid
+before the reader. If ever a man could have found it tedious to listen to
+his own death sentence, the great statesman might have been in that
+condition as he listened to Secretary Pots.
+
+During the reading of the sentence the Advocate moved uneasily on his
+seat, and seemed about to interrupt the clerk at several passages which
+seemed to him especially preposterous. But he controlled himself by a
+strong effort, and the clerk went steadily on to the conclusion.
+
+Then Barneveld said:
+
+"The judges have put down many things which they have no right to draw
+from my confession. Let this protest be added."
+
+"I thought too," he continued, "that My Lords the States-General would
+have had enough in my life and blood, and that my wife and children might
+keep what belongs to them. Is this my recompense for forty-three years'
+service to these Provinces?"
+
+President de Voogd rose:
+
+"Your sentence has been pronounced," he said. "Away! away!" So saying he
+pointed to the door into which one of the great windows at the
+south-eastern front of the hall had been converted.
+
+Without another word the old man rose from his chair and strode, leaning
+on his staff, across the hall, accompanied by his faithful valet and the
+provost and escorted by a file of soldiers. The mob of spectators flowed
+out after him at every door into the inner courtyard in front of the
+ancient palace.
+
+     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+     Better to be governed by magistrates than mobs
+     Burning with bitter revenge for all the favours he had received
+     Death rather than life with a false acknowledgment of guilt
+     Enemy of all compulsion of the human conscience
+     Heidelberg Catechism were declared to be infallible
+     I know how to console myself
+     Implication there was much, of assertion very little
+     John Robinson
+     Magistracy at that moment seemed to mean the sword
+     Only true religion
+     Rather a wilderness to reign over than a single heretic
+     William Brewster
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND
+
+WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR
+
+By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+Life and Death of John of Barneveld, v11, 1619-23
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+   Barneveld's Execution--The Advocate's Conduct on the Scaffold--The
+   Sentence printed and sent to the Provinces--The Proceedings
+   irregular and inequitable.
+
+In the beautiful village capital of the "Count's Park," commonly called
+the Hague, the most striking and picturesque spot then as now was that
+where the transformed remains of the old moated castle of those feudal
+sovereigns were still to be seen. A three-storied range of simple,
+substantial buildings in brown brickwork, picked out with white stone in
+a style since made familiar both in England and America, and associated
+with a somewhat later epoch in the history of the House of Orange,
+surrounded three sides of a spacious inner paved quadrangle called the
+Inner Court, the fourth or eastern side being overshadowed by a beechen
+grove. A square tower flanked each angle, and on both sides of the
+south-western turret extended the commodious apartments of the
+Stadholder. The great gateway on the south-west opened into a wide open
+space called the Outer Courtyard. Along the north-west side a broad and
+beautiful sheet of water, in which the walls, turrets, and chapel-spires
+of the enclosed castle mirrored themselves, was spread between the mass
+of buildings and an umbrageous promenade called the Vyverberg, consisting
+of a sextuple alley of lime-trees and embowering here and there a stately
+villa. A small island, fringed with weeping willows and tufted all over
+with lilacs, laburnums, and other shrubs then in full flower, lay in the
+centre of the miniature lake, and the tall solid tower of the Great
+Church, surmounted by a light openwork spire, looked down from a little
+distance over the scene.
+
+It was a bright morning in May. The white swans were sailing tranquilly
+to and fro over the silver basin, and the mavis, blackbird, and
+nightingale, which haunted the groves surrounding the castle and the
+town, were singing as if the daybreak were ushering in a summer festival.
+
+But it was not to a merry-making that the soldiers were marching and the
+citizens thronging so eagerly from every street and alley towards the
+castle. By four o'clock the Outer and Inner Courts had been lined with
+detachments of the Prince's guard and companies of other regiments to the
+number of 1200 men. Occupying the north-eastern side of the court rose
+the grim, time-worn front of the ancient hall, consisting of one tall
+pyramidal gable of ancient grey brickwork flanked with two tall slender
+towers, the whole with the lancet-shaped windows and severe style of the
+twelfth century, excepting a rose-window in the centre with the decorated
+mullions of a somewhat later period.
+
+In front of the lower window, with its Gothic archway hastily converted
+into a door, a shapeless platform of rough, unhewn planks had that night
+been rudely patched together. This was the scaffold. A slight railing
+around it served to protect it from the crowd, and a heap of coarse sand
+had been thrown upon it. A squalid, unclean box of unplaned boards,
+originally prepared as a coffin for a Frenchman who some time before had
+been condemned to death for murdering the son of Goswyn Meurskens, a
+Hague tavern-keeper, but pardoned by the Stadholder--lay on the scaffold.
+It was recognized from having been left for a long time, half forgotten,
+at the public execution-place of the Hague.
+
+Upon this coffin now sat two common soldiers of ruffianly aspect playing
+at dice, betting whether the Lord or the Devil would get the soul of
+Barneveld. Many a foul and ribald jest at the expense of the prisoner was
+exchanged between these gamblers, some of their comrades, and a few
+townsmen, who were grouped about at that early hour. The horrible libels,
+caricatures, and calumnies which had been circulated, exhibited, and sung
+in all the streets for so many months had at last thoroughly poisoned the
+minds of the vulgar against the fallen statesman.
+
+The great mass of the spectators had forced their way by daybreak into
+the hall itself to hear the sentence, so that the Inner Courtyard had
+remained comparatively empty.
+
+At last, at half past nine o'clock, a shout arose, "There he comes! there
+he comes!" and the populace flowed out from the hall of judgment into the
+courtyard like a tidal wave.
+
+In an instant the Binnenhof was filled with more than three thousand
+spectators.
+
+The old statesman, leaning on his staff, walked out upon the scaffold and
+calmly surveyed the scene. Lifting his eyes to Heaven, he was heard to
+murmur, "O God! what does man come to!" Then he said bitterly once more:
+"This, then, is the reward of forty years' service to the State!"
+
+La Motte, who attended him, said fervently: "It is no longer time to
+think of this. Let us prepare your coming before God."
+
+"Is there no cushion or stool to kneel upon?" said Barneveld, looking
+around him.
+
+The provost said he would send for one, but the old man knelt at once on
+the bare planks. His servant, who waited upon him as calmly and
+composedly as if he had been serving him at dinner, held him by the arm.
+It was remarked that neither master nor man, true stoics and Hollanders
+both, shed a single tear upon the scaffold.
+
+La Motte prayed for a quarter of an hour, the Advocate remaining on his
+knees.
+
+He then rose and said to John Franken, "See that he does not come near
+me," pointing to the executioner who stood in the background grasping his
+long double-handed sword. Barneveld then rapidly unbuttoned his doublet
+with his own hands and the valet helped him off with it. "Make haste!
+make haste!" said his master.
+
+The statesman then came forward and said in a loud, firm voice to the
+people:
+
+"Men, do not believe that I am a traitor to the country. I have ever
+acted uprightly and loyally as a good patriot, and as such I shall die."
+
+The crowd was perfectly silent.
+
+He then took his cap from John Franken, drew it over his eyes, and went
+forward towards the sand, saying:
+
+"Christ shall be my guide. O Lord, my heavenly Father, receive my
+spirit."
+
+As he was about to kneel with his face to the south, the provost said:
+
+"My lord will be pleased to move to the other side, not where the sun is
+in his face."
+
+He knelt accordingly with his face towards his own house. The servant
+took farewell of him, and Barneveld said to the executioner:
+
+"Be quick about it. Be quick."
+
+The executioner then struck his head off at a single blow.
+
+Many persons from the crowd now sprang, in spite of all opposition, upon
+the scaffold and dipped their handkerchiefs in his blood, cut wet
+splinters from the boards, or grubbed up the sand that was steeped in it;
+driving many bargains afterwards for these relics to be treasured, with
+various feelings of sorrow, joy, glutted or expiated vengeance.
+
+It has been recorded, and has been constantly repeated to this day, that
+the Stadholder, whose windows exactly faced the scaffold, looked out upon
+the execution with a spy-glass; saying as he did so:
+
+"See the old scoundrel, how he trembles! He is afraid of the stroke."
+
+But this is calumny. Colonel Hauterive declared that he was with Maurice
+in his cabinet during the whole period of the execution, that by order of
+the Prince all the windows and shutters were kept closed, that no person
+wearing his livery was allowed to be abroad, that he anxiously received
+messages as to the proceedings, and heard of the final catastrophe with
+sorrowful emotion.
+
+It must be admitted, however, that the letter which Maurice wrote on the
+same morning to his cousin William Lewis does not show much pathos.
+
+"After the judges," he said, "have been busy here with the sentence
+against the Advocate Barneveld for several days, at last it has been
+pronounced, and this morning, between nine o'clock and half past, carried
+into execution with the sword, in the Binnenhof before the great hall.
+
+"The reasons they had for this you will see from the sentence, which will
+doubtless be printed, and which I will send you.
+
+"The wife of the aforesaid Barneveld and also some of his sons and
+sons-in-law or other friends have never presented any supplication for
+his pardon, but till now have vehemently demanded that law and justice
+should be done to him, and have daily let the report run through the
+people that he would soon come out. They also planted a may-pole before
+their house adorned with garlands and ribbands, and practised other
+jollities and impertinences, while they ought to have conducted
+themselves in a humble and lowly fashion. This is no proper manner of
+behaving, and moreover not a practical one to move the judges to any
+favour even if they had been thereto inclined."
+
+The sentence was printed and sent to the separate provinces. It was
+accompanied by a declaration of the States-General that they had received
+information from the judges of various points, not mentioned in the
+sentence, which had been laid to the charge of the late Advocate, and
+which gave much reason to doubt whether he had not perhaps turned his
+eyes toward the enemy. They could not however legally give judgment to
+that effect without a sharper investigation, which on account of his
+great age and for other reasons it was thought best to spare him.
+
+A meaner or more malignant postscript to a state paper recounting the
+issue of a great trial it would be difficult to imagine. The first
+statesman of the country had just been condemned and executed on a
+narrative, without indictment of any specified crime. And now, by a kind
+of apologetic after-thought, six or eight individuals calling themselves
+the States-General insinuated that he had been looking towards the enemy,
+and that, had they not mercifully spared him the rack, which is all that
+could be meant by their sharper investigation, he would probably have
+confessed the charge.
+
+And thus the dead man's fame was blackened by those who had not hesitated
+to kill him, but had shrunk from enquiring into his alleged crime.
+
+Not entirely without semblance of truth did Grotius subsequently say that
+the men who had taken his life would hardly have abstained from torturing
+him if they had really hoped by so doing to extract from him a confession
+of treason.
+
+The sentence was sent likewise to France, accompanied with a statement
+that Barneveld had been guilty of unpardonable crimes which had not been
+set down in the act of condemnation. Complaints were also made of the
+conduct of du Maurier in thrusting himself into the internal affairs of
+the States and taking sides so ostentatiously against the government. The
+King and his ministers were indignant with these rebukes, and sustained
+the Ambassador. Jeannin and de Boississe expressed the opinion that he
+had died innocent of any crime, and only by reason of his strong
+political opposition to the Prince.
+
+The judges had been unanimous in finding him guilty of the acts recorded
+in their narrative, but three of them had held out for some time in
+favour of a sentence of perpetual imprisonment rather than decapitation.
+
+They withdrew at last their opposition to the death penalty for the
+wonderful reason that reports had been circulated of attempts likely to
+be made to assassinate Prince Maurice. The Stadholder himself treated
+these rumours and the consequent admonition of the States-General that he
+would take more than usual precautions for his safety with perfect
+indifference, but they were conclusive with the judges of Barneveld.
+
+"Republica poscit exemplum," said Commissioner Junius, one of the three,
+as he sided with the death-warrant party.
+
+The same Doctor Junius a year afterwards happened to dine, in company of
+one of his fellow-commissioners, with Attorney-General Sylla at Utrecht,
+and took occasion to ask them why it was supposed that Barneveld had been
+hanging his head towards Spain, as not one word of that stood in the
+sentence.
+
+The question was ingenuous on the part of one learned judge to his
+colleagues in one of the most famous state trials of history, propounded
+as a bit of after-dinner casuistry, when the victim had been more than a
+year in his grave.
+
+But perhaps the answer was still more artless. His brother lawyers
+replied that the charge was easily to be deduced from the sentence,
+because a man who breaks up the foundation of the State makes the country
+indefensible, and therefore invites the enemy to invade it. And this
+Barneveld had done, who had turned the Union, religion, alliances, and
+finances upside down by his proceedings.
+
+Certainly if every constitutional minister, accused by the opposition
+party of turning things upside down by his proceedings, were assumed to
+be guilty of deliberately inviting a hostile invasion of his country,
+there would have been few from that day to this to escape hanging.
+
+Constructive treason could scarcely go farther than it was made to do in
+these attempts to prove, after his death, that the Advocate had, as it
+was euphuistically expressed, been looking towards the enemy.
+
+And no better demonstrations than these have ever been discovered.
+
+He died at the age of seventy-one years seven months and eighteen days.
+
+His body and head were huddled into the box upon which the soldiers had
+been shaking the dice, and was placed that night in the vault of the
+chapel in the Inner Court.
+
+It was subsequently granted as a boon to the widow and children that it
+might be taken thence and decently buried in the family vault at
+Amersfoort.
+
+On the day of the execution a formal entry was made in the register of
+the States of Holland.
+
+"Monday, 13th May 1619. To-day was executed with the sword here in the
+Hague, on a scaffold thereto erected in the Binnenhof before the steps of
+the great hall, Mr. John of Barneveld, in his life Knight, Lord of
+Berkel, Rodenrys, &c., Advocate of Holland and West Friesland, for
+reasons expressed in the sentence and otherwise, with confiscation of his
+property, after he had served the State thirty-three years two months and
+five days since 8th March 1586.; a man of great activity, business,
+memory, and wisdom--yes, extraordinary in every respect. He that stands
+let him see that he does not fall, and may God be merciful to his soul.
+Amen?"
+
+A year later-on application made by the widow and children of the
+deceased to compound for the confiscation of his property by payment of a
+certain sum, eighty florins or a similar trifle, according to an ancient
+privilege of the order of nobility--the question was raised whether he
+had been guilty of high-treason, as he had not been sentenced for such a
+crime, and as it was only in case of sentence for lese-majesty that this
+composition was disallowed. It was deemed proper therefore to ask the
+court for what crime the prisoner had been condemned. Certainly a more
+sarcastic question could not have been asked. But the court had ceased to
+exist. The commission had done its work and was dissolved. Some of its
+members were dead. Letters however were addressed by the States-General
+to the individual commissioners requesting them to assemble at the Hague
+for the purpose of stating whether it was because the prisoners had
+committed lese-majesty that their property had been confiscated. They
+never assembled. Some of them were perhaps ignorant of the exact nature
+of that crime. Several of them did not understand the words. Twelve of
+them, among whom were a few jurists, sent written answers to the
+questions proposed. The question was, "Did you confiscate the property
+because the crime was lese-majesty?" The reply was, "The crime was
+lese-majesty, although not so stated in the sentence, because we
+confiscated the property." In one of these remarkable documents this was
+stated to be "the unanimous opinion of almost all the judges."
+
+The point was referred to the commissioners, some of whom attended the
+court of the Hague in person, while others sent written opinions. All
+agreed that the criminal had committed high-treason because otherwise his
+property would not have been confiscated.
+
+A more wonderful example of the argument in a circle was never heard of.
+Moreover it is difficult to understand by what right the high commission,
+which had been dissolved a year before, after having completed its work,
+could be deemed competent to emit afterwards a judicial decision. But the
+fact is curious as giving one more proof of the irregular,
+unphilosophical, and inequitable nature of these famous proceedings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+   Grotius urged to ask Forgiveness--Grotius shows great Weakness--
+   Hoogerbeets and Grotius imprisoned for Life--Grotius confined at
+   Loevestein--Grotius' early Attainments--Grotius' Deportment in
+   Prison--Escape of Grotius--Deventer's Rage at Grotius' Escape.
+
+Two days after the execution of the Advocate, judgment was pronounced
+upon Gillis van Ledenberg. It would have been difficult to try him, or to
+extort a confession of high-treason from him by the rack or otherwise, as
+the unfortunate gentleman had been dead for more than seven months.
+
+Not often has a court of justice pronounced a man, without trial, to be
+guilty of a capital offence. Not often has a dead man been condemned and
+executed. But this was the lot of Secretary Ledenberg. He was sentenced
+to be hanged, his property declared confiscated.
+
+His unburied corpse, reduced to the condition of a mummy, was brought out
+of its lurking-place, thrust into a coffin, dragged on a hurdle to the
+Golgotha outside the Hague, on the road to Ryswyk, and there hung on a
+gibbet in company of the bodies of other malefactors swinging there in
+chains.
+
+His prudent scheme to save his property for his children by committing
+suicide in prison was thus thwarted.
+
+The reading of the sentence of Ledenberg, as had been previously the case
+with that of Barneveld, had been heard by Grotius through the open window
+of his prison, as he lay on his bed. The scaffold on which the Advocate
+had suffered was left standing, three executioners were still in the
+town, and there was every reason for both Grotius and Hoogerbeets to
+expect a similar doom. Great efforts were made to induce the friends of
+the distinguished prisoners to sue for their pardon. But even as in the
+case of the Barneveld family these attempts were fruitless. The austere
+stoicism both on the part of the sufferers and their relatives excites
+something like wonder.
+
+Three of the judges went in person to the prison chamber of Hoogerbeets,
+urging him to ask forgiveness himself or to allow his friends to demand
+it for him.
+
+"If my wife and children do ask," he said, "I will protest against it. I
+need no pardon. Let justice take its course. Think not, gentlemen, that I
+mean by asking for pardon to justify your proceedings."
+
+He stoutly refused to do either. The judges, astonished, took their
+departure, saying:
+
+"Then you will fare as Barneveld. The scaffold is still standing."
+
+He expected consequently nothing but death, and said many years
+afterwards that he knew from personal experience how a man feels who goes
+out of prison to be beheaded.
+
+The wife of Grotius sternly replied to urgent intimations from a high
+source that she should ask pardon for her husband, "I shall not do it. If
+he has deserved it, let them strike off his head."
+
+Yet no woman could be more devoted to her husband than was Maria van
+Reigersbergen to Hugo de Groot, as time was to prove. The Prince
+subsequently told her at a personal interview that "one of two roads must
+be taken, that of the law or that of pardon."
+
+Soon after the arrest it was rumoured that Grotius was ready to make
+important revelations if he could first be assured of the Prince's
+protection.
+
+His friends were indignant at the statement. His wife stoutly denied its
+truth, but, to make sure, wrote to her husband on the subject.
+
+"One thing amazes me," she said; "some people here pretend to say that
+you have stated to one gentleman in private that you have something to
+disclose greatly important to the country, but that you desired
+beforehand to be taken under the protection of his Excellency. I have not
+chosen to believe this, nor do I, for I hold that to be certain which you
+have already told me--that you know no secrets. I see no reason therefore
+why you should require the protection of any man. And there is no one to
+believe this, but I thought best to write to you of it. Let me, in order
+that I may contradict the story with more authority, have by the bearer
+of this a simple Yes or No. Study quietly, take care of your health, have
+some days' patience, for the Advocate has not yet been heard."
+
+The answer has not been preserved, but there is an allusion to the
+subject in an unpublished memorandum of Grotius written while he was in
+prison.
+
+It must be confessed that the heart of the great theologian and jurist
+seems to have somewhat failed him after his arrest, and although he was
+incapable of treachery--even if he had been possessed of any secrets,
+which certainly was not the case--he did not show the same Spartan
+firmness as his wife, and was very far from possessing the heroic calm of
+Barneveld. He was much disposed to extricate himself from his unhappy
+plight by making humble, if not abject, submission to Maurice. He
+differed from his wife in thinking that he had no need of the Prince's
+protection. "I begged the Chamberlain, Matthew de Cors," he said, a few
+days after his arrest, "that I might be allowed to speak with his
+Excellency of certain things which I would not willingly trust to the
+pen. My meaning was to leave all public employment and to offer my
+service to his Excellency in his domestic affairs. Thus I hoped that the
+motives for my imprisonment would cease. This was afterwards
+misinterpreted as if I had had wonderful things to reveal."
+
+But Grotius towards the end of his trial showed still greater weakness.
+After repeated refusals, he had at last obtained permission of the judges
+to draw up in writing the heads of his defence. To do this he was allowed
+a single sheet of paper, and four hours of time, the trial having lasted
+several months. And in the document thus prepared he showed faltering in
+his faith as to his great friend's innocence, and admitted, without any
+reason whatever, the possibility of there being truth in some of the vile
+and anonymous calumnies against him.
+
+"The friendship of the Advocate of Holland I had always highly prized,"
+he said, "hoping from the conversation of so wise and experienced a
+person to learn much that was good . . . . I firmly believed that his
+Excellency, notwithstanding occasional differences as to the conduct of
+public affairs, considered him a true and upright servant of the land
+. . . . I have been therefore surprised to understand, during my
+imprisonment, that the gentlemen had proofs in hand not alone of his
+correspondence with the enemy, but also of his having received money
+from them.
+
+"He being thus accused, I have indicated by word of mouth and afterwards
+resumed in writing all matters which I thought--the above-mentioned
+proofs being made good--might be thereto indirectly referred, in order to
+show that for me no friendships were so dear as the preservation of the
+freedom of the land. I wish that he may give explanation of all to the
+contentment of the judges, and that therefore his actions--which,
+supposing the said correspondence to be true, are subject to a bad
+interpretation--may be taken in another sense."
+
+Alas! could the Advocate--among whose first words after hearing of his
+own condemnation to death were, "And must my Grotius die too?" adding,
+with a sigh of relief when assured of the contrary, "I should deeply
+grieve for that; he is so young and may live to do the State much
+service." could he have read those faltering and ungenerous words from one
+he so held in his heart, he would have felt them like the stab of Brutus.
+
+Grotius lived to know that there were no such proofs, that the judges did
+not dare even allude to the charge in their sentence, and long years
+afterwards he drew a picture of the martyred patriot such as one might
+have expected from his pen.
+
+But these written words of doubt must have haunted him to his grave.
+
+On the 18th May 1619--on the fifty-first anniversary, as Grotius
+remarked, of the condemnation of Egmont and Hoorn by the Blood Tribunal
+of Alva--the two remaining victims were summoned to receive their doom.
+The Fiscal Sylla, entering de Groot's chamber early in the morning to
+conduct him before the judges, informed him that he was not instructed to
+communicate the nature of the sentence. "But," he said, maliciously, "you
+are aware of what has befallen the Advocate."
+
+"I have heard with my own ears," answered Grotius, "the judgment
+pronounced upon Barneveld and upon Ledenberg. Whatever may be my fate, I
+have patience to bear it."
+
+The sentence, read in the same place and in the same manner as had been
+that upon the Advocate, condemned both Hoogerbeets and Grotius to
+perpetual imprisonment.
+
+The course of the trial and the enumeration of the offences were nearly
+identical with the leading process which has been elaborately described.
+
+Grotius made no remark whatever in the court-room. On returning to his
+chamber he observed that his admissions of facts had been tortured into
+confessions of guilt, that he had been tried and sentenced against all
+principles and forms of law, and that he had been deprived of what the
+humblest criminal could claim, the right of defence and the examination
+of testimony. In regard to the penalty against him, he said, there was no
+such thing as perpetual imprisonment except in hell. Alluding to the
+leading cause of all these troubles, he observed that it was with the
+Stadholder and the Advocate as Cato had said of Caesar and Pompey. The
+great misery had come not from their being enemies, but from their having
+once been friends.
+
+On the night of 5th June the prisoners were taken from their prison in
+the Hague and conveyed to the castle of Loevestein.
+
+This fortress, destined thenceforth to be famous in history and--from its
+frequent use in after-times as a state-prison for men of similar
+constitutional views to those of Grotius and the Advocate--to give its
+name to a political party, was a place of extraordinary strength. Nature
+and art had made it, according to military ideas of that age, almost
+impregnable. As a prison it seemed the very castle of despair. "Abandon
+all hope ye who enter" seemed engraven over its portal.
+
+Situate in the very narrow, acute angle where the broad, deep, and turbid
+Waal--the chief of the three branches into which the Rhine divides itself
+on entering the Netherlands--mingles its current with the silver Meuse
+whose name it adopts as the united rivers roll to the sea, it was guarded
+on many sides by these deep and dangerous streams. On the land-side it
+was surrounded by high walls and a double foss, which protected it
+against any hostile invasion from Brabant. As the Twelve Years' Truce was
+running to its close, it was certain that pains would be taken to
+strengthen the walls and deepen the ditches, that the place might be
+proof against all marauders and land-robbers likely to swarm over from
+the territory of the Archdukes. The town of Gorcum was exactly opposite
+on the northern side of the Waal, while Worcum was about a league's
+distance from the castle on the southern side, but separated from it by
+the Meuse.
+
+The prisoners, after crossing the drawbridge, were led through thirteen
+separate doors, each one secured by iron bolts and heavy locks, until
+they reached their separate apartments.
+
+They were never to see or have any communication with each other. It had
+been accorded by the States-General however that the wives of the two
+gentlemen were to have access to their prison, were to cook for them in
+the castle kitchen, and, if they chose to inhabit the fortress, might
+cross to the neighbouring town of Gorcum from time to time to make
+purchases, and even make visits to the Hague. Twenty-four stuivers, or
+two shillings, a day were allowed by the States-General for the support
+of each prisoner and his family. As the family property of Grotius was at
+once sequestered, with a view to its ultimate confiscation, it was clear
+that abject indigence as well as imprisonment was to be the lifelong lot
+of this illustrious person, who had hitherto lived in modest affluence,
+occupying the most considerable of social positions.
+
+The commandant of the fortress was inspired from the outset with a desire
+to render the prisoner's situation as hateful as it was in his power to
+make it. And much was in his power. He resolved that the family should
+really live upon their daily pittance. Yet Madame de Groot, before the
+final confiscation of her own and her husband's estates, had been able to
+effect considerable loans, both to carry on process against government
+for what the prisoners contended was an unjust confiscation, and for
+providing for the household on a decent scale and somewhat in accordance
+with the requirements of the prisoner's health. Thus there was a
+wearisome and ignoble altercation, revived from day to day, between the
+Commandant and Madame de Groot. It might have been thought enough of
+torture for this virtuous and accomplished lady, but twenty-nine years of
+age and belonging to one of the eminent families of the country, to see
+her husband, for his genius and accomplishments the wonder of Europe,
+thus cut off in the flower of his age and doomed to a living grave. She
+was nevertheless to be subjected to the perpetual inquisition of the
+market-basket, which she was not ashamed with her maid to take to and
+from Gorcum, and to petty wrangles about the kitchen fire where she was
+proud to superintend the cooking of the scanty fare for her husband and
+her five children.
+
+There was a reason for the spite of the military jailer. Lieutenant
+Prouninx, called Deventer, commandant of Loevestein, was son of the
+notorious Gerard Prouninx, formerly burgomaster of Utrecht, one of the
+ringleaders of the Leicester faction in the days when the Earl made his
+famous attempts upon the four cities. He had sworn revenge upon all those
+concerned in his father's downfall, and it was a delight therefore to
+wreak a personal vengeance on one who had since become so illustrious a
+member of that party by which the former burgomaster had been deposed,
+although Grotius at the time of Leicester's government had scarcely left
+his cradle.
+
+Thus these ladies were to work in the kitchen and go to market from time
+to time, performing this menial drudgery under the personal inspection of
+the warrior who governed the garrison and fortress, but who in vain
+attempted to make Maria van Reigersbergen tremble at his frown.
+
+Hugo de Groot, when thus for life immured, after having already undergone
+a preliminary imprisonment of nine months, was just thirty-six years of
+age. Although comparatively so young, he had been long regarded as one of
+the great luminaries of Europe for learning and genius. Of an ancient and
+knightly race, his immediate ancestors had been as famous for literature,
+science, and municipal abilities as their more distant progenitors for
+deeds of arms in the feudal struggles of Holland in the middle ages.
+
+His father and grandfather had alike been eminent for Hebrew, Greek, and
+Latin scholarship, and both had occupied high positions in the University
+of Leyden from its beginning. Hugo, born and nurtured under such
+quickening influences, had been a scholar and poet almost from his
+cradle. He wrote respectable Latin verses at the age of seven, he was
+matriculated at Leyden at the age of eleven. That school, founded amid
+the storms and darkness of terrible war, was not lightly to be entered.
+It was already illustrated by a galaxy of shining lights in science and
+letters, which radiated over Christendom. His professors were Joseph
+Scaliger, Francis Junius, Paulus Merula, and a host of others. His
+fellow-students were men like Scriverius, Vossius, Baudius, Daniel
+Heinsius. The famous soldier and poet Douza, who had commanded the forces
+of Leyden during the immortal siege, addressed him on his admission to
+the university as "Magne peer magni dignissime cura parentis," in a copy
+of eloquent verses.
+
+When fourteen years old, he took his bachelor's degree, after a rigorous
+examination not only in the classics but astronomy, mathematics,
+jurisprudence, and theology, at an age when most youths would have been
+accounted brilliant if able to enter that high school with credit.
+
+On leaving the University he was attached to the embassy of Barneveld and
+Justinus van Nassau to the court of Henry IV. Here he attracted the
+attention of that monarch, who pointed him out to his courtiers as the
+"miracle of Holland," presented him with a gold chain with his miniature
+attached to it, and proposed to confer on him the dignity of knighthood,
+which the boy from motives of family pride appears to have refused. While
+in France he received from the University of Orleans, before the age of
+fifteen, the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws in a very eulogistic
+diploma. On his return to Holland he published an edition of the poet
+Johannes Capella with valuable annotations, besides giving to the public
+other learned and classical works and several tragedies of more or less
+merit. At the age of seventeen he was already an advocate in full
+practice before the supreme tribunals of the Hague, and when twenty-three
+years old he was selected by Prince Maurice from a list of three
+candidates for the important post of Fiscal or Attorney-General of
+Holland. Other civic dignities, embassies, and offices of various kinds,
+had been thrust upon him one after another, in all of which he had
+acquitted himself with dignity and brilliancy. He was but twenty-six when
+he published his argument for the liberty of the sea, the famous Mare
+Liberum, and a little later appeared his work on the Antiquity of the
+Batavian Republic, which procured for him in Spain the title of "Hugo
+Grotius, auctor damnatus." At the age of twenty-nine he had completed his
+Latin history of the Netherlands from the period immediately preceding
+the war of independence down to the conclusion of the Truce, 1550-1609--a
+work which has been a classic ever since its appearance, although not
+published until after his death. A chief magistrate of Rotterdam, member
+of the States of Holland and the States-General, jurist, advocate,
+attorney-general, poet, scholar, historian, editor of the Greek and Latin
+classics, writer of tragedies, of law treatises, of theological
+disquisitions, he stood foremost among a crowd of famous contemporaries.
+His genius, eloquence, and learning were esteemed among the treasures not
+only of his own country but of Europe. He had been part and parcel of his
+country's history from his earliest manhood, and although a child in
+years compared to Barneveld, it was upon him that the great statesman had
+mainly relied ever since the youth's first appearance in public affairs.
+Impressible, emotional, and susceptive, he had been accused from time to
+time, perhaps not entirely without reason, of infirmity of purpose, or at
+least of vacillation in opinion; but his worst enemies had never assailed
+the purity of his heart or integrity of his character. He had not yet
+written the great work on the 'Rights of War and Peace', which was to
+make an epoch in the history of civilization and to be the foundation of
+a new science, but the materials lay already in the ample storehouse of
+his memory and his brain.
+
+Possessed of singular personal beauty--which the masterly portraits of
+Miereveld attest to the present day--tall, brown-haired;
+straight-featured, with a delicate aquiline nose and piercing dark blue
+eyes, he was also athletic of frame and a proficient in manly exercises.
+This was the statesman and the scholar, of whom it is difficult to speak
+but in terms of affectionate but not exaggerated eulogy, and for whom the
+Republic of the Netherlands could now find no better use than to shut him
+up in the grim fortress of Loevestein for the remainder of his days. A
+commonwealth must have deemed itself rich in men which, after cutting off
+the head of Barneveld, could afford to bury alive Hugo Grotius.
+
+His deportment in prison was a magnificent moral lesson. Shut up in a
+kind of cage consisting of a bedroom and a study, he was debarred from
+physical exercise, so necessary for his mental and bodily health. Not
+choosing for the gratification of Lieutenant Deventer to indulge in weak
+complaints, he procured a huge top, which he employed himself in whipping
+several hours a day; while for intellectual employment he plunged once
+more into those classical, juridical, and theological studies which had
+always employed his leisure hours from childhood upwards.
+
+It had been forbidden by the States-General to sell his likeness in the
+shops. The copper plates on which they had been engraved had as far as
+possible been destroyed.
+
+The wish of the government, especially of his judges, was that his name
+and memory should die at once and for ever. They were not destined to be
+successful, for it would be equally difficult to-day to find an educated
+man in Christendom ignorant of the name of Hugo Grotius, or acquainted
+with that of a single one of his judges.
+
+And his friends had not forgotten him as he lay there living in his tomb.
+Especially the learned Scriverius, Vossius, and other professors, were
+permitted to correspond with him at intervals on literary subjects, the
+letters being subjected to preliminary inspection. Scriverius sent him
+many books from his well-stocked library, de Groot's own books and papers
+having been confiscated by the government. At a somewhat later period the
+celebrated Orientalist Erpenius sent him from time to time a large chest
+of books, the precious freight being occasionally renewed and the chest
+passing to and from Loevestein by way of Gorcum. At this town lived a
+sister of Erpenius, married to one Daatselaer, a considerable dealer in
+thread and ribbons, which he exported to England. The house of Daatselaer
+became a place of constant resort for Madame de Groot as well as the wife
+of Hoogerbeets, both dames going every few days from the castle across
+the Waal to Gorcum, to make their various purchases for the use of their
+forlorn little households in the prison. Madame Daatselaer therefore
+received and forwarded into Loevestein or into Holland many parcels and
+boxes, besides attending to the periodical transmission of the mighty
+chest of books.
+
+Professor Vossius was then publishing a new edition of the tragedies of
+Seneca, and at his request Grotius enriched that work, from his prison,
+with valuable notes. He employed himself also in translating the moral
+sentences extracted by Stobaeus from the Greek tragedies; drawing
+consolation from the ethics and philosophy of the ancient dramatists,
+whom he had always admired, especially the tragedies of Euripides; he
+formed a complete moral anthology from that poet and from the works of
+Sophocles, Menander, and others, which he translated into fluent Dutch
+verse. Becoming more and more interested in the subject, he executed a
+masterly rhymed translation of the 'Theban Brothers' of Euripides, thus
+seeking distraction from his own tragic doom in the portraiture of
+antique, distant, and heroic sorrow.
+
+Turning again to legal science, he completed an Introduction to the
+Jurisprudence of Holland, a work which as soon as published became
+thenceforward a text-book and an oracle in the law courts and the high
+schools of the country. Not forgetting theology, he composed for the use
+of the humbler classes, especially for sailors, in whose lot, so exposed
+to danger and temptation, he ever took deep interest, a work on the
+proofs of Christianity in easy and familiar rhyme--a book of gold, as it
+was called at once, which became rapidly popular with those for whom it
+was designed.
+
+At a somewhat later period Professor Erpenius, publishing a new edition
+of the New Testament in Greek, with translations in Arabic, Syriac, and
+Ethiopian, solicited his friend's help both in translations and in the
+Latin commentaries and expositions with which he proposed to accompany
+the work. The prisoner began with a modest disclaimer, saying that after
+the labours of Erasmus and Beza, Maldonatus and Jasenius, there was
+little for him to glean. Becoming more enthusiastic as he went on, he
+completed a masterly commentary on the Four Evangelists, a work for which
+the learned and religious world has ever recognized a kind of debt of
+gratitude to the castle of Loevestein, and hailed in him the founder of a
+school of manly Biblical criticism.
+
+And thus nearly two years wore away. Spinning his great top for exercise;
+soothing his active and prolific brain with Greek tragedy, with Flemish
+verse, with jurisprudence, history, theology; creating, expounding,
+adorning, by the warmth of his vivid intellect; moving the world, and
+doing good to his race from the depths of his stony sepulchre; Hugo
+Grotius rose superior to his doom and took captivity captive. The man is
+not to be envied who is not moved by so noble an example of great
+calamity manfully endured.
+
+The wife of Hoogerbeets, already advanced in years, sickened during the
+imprisonment and died at Loevestein after a lingering illness, leaving
+six children to the care of her unfortunate husband. Madame de Groot had
+not been permitted by the prison authorities to minister to her in
+sickness, nor to her children after her death.
+
+Early in the year 1621 Francis Aerssens, Lord of Sommelsdyk, the arch
+enemy of Barneveld and of Grotius, was appointed special ambassador to
+Paris. The intelligence--although hardly unexpected, for the stratagems
+of Aerssens had been completely successful--moved the prisoner deeply. He
+felt that this mortal enemy, not glutted with vengeance by the beheading
+of the Advocate and the perpetual imprisonment of his friend, would do
+his best at the French court to defame and to blacken him. He did what he
+could to obviate this danger by urgent letters to friends on whom he
+could rely.
+
+At about the same time Muis van Holy, one of the twenty-four
+commissioners, not yet satisfied with the misery he had helped to
+inflict, informed the States-General that Madame de Groot had been buying
+ropes at Gorcum. On his motion a committee was sent to investigate the
+matter at Castle Loevestein, where it was believed that the ropes had
+been concealed for the purpose of enabling Grotius to make his escape
+from prison.
+
+Lieutenant Deventer had heard nothing of the story. He was in high
+spirits at the rumour however, and conducted the committee very eagerly
+over the castle, causing minute search to be made in the apartment of
+Grotius for the ropes which, as they were assured by him and his wife,
+had never existed save in the imagination of Judge Muis. They succeeded
+at least in inflicting much superfluous annoyance on their victims, and
+in satisfying themselves that it would be as easy for the prisoner to fly
+out of the fortress on wings as to make his escape with ropes, even if he
+had them.
+
+Grotius soon afterwards addressed a letter to the States-General
+denouncing the statement of Muis as a fable, and these persistent
+attempts to injure him as cowardly and wicked.
+
+A few months later Madame de Groot happened to be in the house of
+Daatselaer on one of her periodical visits to Gorcum. Conversation
+turning on these rumours March of attempts at escape, she asked Madame
+Daatselaer if she would not be much embarrassed, should Grotius suddenly
+make his appearance there.
+
+"Oh no," said the good woman with a laugh; "only let him come. We will
+take excellent care of him."
+
+At another visit one Saturday, 20th March, (1621) Madame de Groot asked
+her friend why all the bells of Gorcum march were ringing.
+
+"Because to-morrow begins our yearly fair," replied Dame Daatselaer.
+
+"Well, I suppose that all exiles and outlaws may come to Gorcum on this
+occasion," said Madame de Groot.
+
+"Such is the law, they say," answered her friend.
+
+"And my husband might come too?"
+
+"No doubt," said Madame Daatselaer with a merry laugh, rejoiced at
+finding the wife of Grotius able to speak so cheerfully of her husband in
+his perpetual and hopeless captivity. "Send him hither. He shall have, a
+warm welcome."
+
+"What a good woman you are!" said Madame de Groot with a sigh as she rose
+to take leave. "But you know very well that if he were a bird he could
+never get out of the castle, so closely, he is caged there."
+
+Next morning a wild equinoctial storm was howling around the battlements
+of the castle. Of a sudden Cornelia, daughter of the de Groots, nine
+years of age, said to her mother without any reason whatever,
+
+"To-morrow Papa must be off to Gorcum, whatever the weather may be."
+
+De Groot, as well as his wife, was aghast at the child's remark, and took
+it as a direct indication from Heaven.
+
+For while Madame Daatselaer had considered the recent observations of her
+visitor from Loevestein as idle jests, and perhaps wondered that Madame
+de Groot could be frivolous and apparently lighthearted on so dismal a
+topic, there had been really a hidden meaning in her words.
+
+For several weeks past the prisoner had been brooding over a means of
+escape. His wife, whose every thought was devoted to him, had often cast
+her eyes on the great chest or trunk in which the books of Erpenius had
+been conveyed between Loevestein and Gorcum for the use of the prisoner.
+At first the trunk had been carefully opened and its contents examined
+every time it entered or left the castle. As nothing had ever been found
+in it save Hebrew, Greek, and Latin folios, uninviting enough to the
+Commandant, that warrior had gradually ceased to inspect the chest very
+closely, and had at last discontinued the practice altogether.
+
+It had been kept for some weeks past in the prisoner's study. His wife
+thought--although it was two finger breadths less than four feet in
+length, and not very broad or deep in proportion--that it might be
+possible for him to get into it. He was considerably above middle height,
+but found that by curling himself up very closely he could just manage to
+lie in it with the cover closed. Very secretly they had many times
+rehearsed the scheme which had now taken possession of their minds, but
+had not breathed a word of it to any one. He had lain in the chest with
+the lid fastened, and with his wife sitting upon the top of it, two hours
+at a time by the hour-glass. They had decided at last that the plan,
+though fraught with danger, was not absolutely impossible, and they were
+only waiting now for a favourable opportunity. The chance remark of the
+child Cornelia settled the time for hazarding the adventure. By a strange
+coincidence, too, the commandant of the fortress, Lieutenant Deventer,
+had just been promoted to a captaincy, and was to go to Heusden to
+receive his company. He left the castle for a brief absence that very
+Sunday evening. As a precautionary measure, the trunk filled with books
+had been sent to Gorcum and returned after the usual interval only a few
+days before.
+
+The maid-servant of the de Groots, a young girl of twenty, Elsje van
+Houwening by name, quick, intelligent, devoted, and courageous, was now
+taken into their confidence. The scheme was explained to her, and she was
+asked if she were willing to take the chest under her charge with her
+master in it, instead of the usual freight of books, and accompany it to
+Gorcum.
+
+She naturally asked what punishment could be inflicted upon her in case
+the plot were discovered.
+
+"None legally," answered her master; "but I too am innocent of any crime,
+and you see to what sufferings I have been condemned."
+
+"Whatever come of it," said Elsje stoutly; "I will take the risk and
+accompany my master."
+
+Every detail was then secretly arranged, and it was provided beforehand,
+as well as possible, what should be said or done in the many
+contingencies that might arise.
+
+On Sunday evening Madame de Groot then went to the wife of the
+Commandant, with whom she had always been on more friendly terms than
+with her malicious husband. She had also recently propitiated her
+affections by means of venison and other dainties brought from Gorcum.
+She expressed the hope that, notwithstanding the absence of Captain
+Deventer, she might be permitted to send the trunk full of books next day
+from the castle.
+
+"My husband is wearing himself out," she said, "with his perpetual
+studies. I shall be glad for a little time to be rid of some of these
+folios."
+
+The Commandant's wife made no objection to this slight request.
+
+On Monday morning the gale continued to beat with unabated violence on
+the turrets. The turbid Waal, swollen by the tempest, rolled darkly and
+dangerously along the castle walls.
+
+But the die was cast. Grotius rose betimes, fell on his knees, and prayed
+fervently an hour long. Dressed only in linen underclothes with a pair of
+silk stockings, he got into the chest with the help of his wife. The big
+Testament of Erpenius, with some bunches of thread placed upon it, served
+him as a pillow. A few books and papers were placed in the interstices
+left by the curves of his body, and as much pains as possible taken to
+prevent his being seriously injured or incommoded during the hazardous
+journey he was contemplating. His wife then took solemn farewell of him,
+fastened the lock, which she kissed, and gave the key to Elsje.
+
+The usual garments worn by the prisoner were thrown on a chair by the
+bedside and his slippers placed before it. Madame de Groot then returned
+to her bed, drew the curtains close, and rang the bell.
+
+It was answered by the servant who usually waited on the prisoner, and
+who was now informed by the lady that it had been her intention to go
+herself to Gorcum, taking charge of the books which were valuable. As the
+weather was so tempestuous however, and as she was somewhat indisposed,
+it had been decided that Elsje should accompany the trunk.
+
+She requested that some soldiers might be sent as usual to take it down
+to the vessel. Two or three of the garrison came accordingly, and seeing
+the clothes and slippers of Grotius lying about, and the bed-curtains
+closed, felt no suspicion.
+
+On lifting the chest, however, one of them said, half in jest:
+
+"The Arminian must be in it himself, it seems so heavy!"
+
+"Not the Arminian," replied Madame de Groot, in a careless voice, from
+the bed; "only heavy Arminian books."
+
+Partly lifting, partly dragging the ponderous box, the soldiers managed
+to get it down the stairs and through the thirteen barred and bolted
+doors. Four several times one or other of the soldiers expressed the
+opinion that Grotius himself must be locked within it, but they never
+spoke quite seriously, and Elsje was ever ready to turn aside the remark
+with a jest. A soldier's wife, just as the box was approaching the wharf,
+told a story of a malefactor who had once been carried out of the castle
+in a chest.
+
+"And if a malefactor, why not a lawyer?" she added. A soldier said he
+would get a gimlet and bore a hole into the Arminian. "Then you must get
+a gimlet that will reach to the top of the castle, where the Arminian
+lies abed and asleep," said Elsje.
+
+Not much heed was given to this careless talk, the soldiers, before
+leaving the chamber of Grotius, having satisfied themselves that there
+were no apertures in the chest save the keyhole, and that it would be
+impossible by that means alone for sufficient air to penetrate to keep a
+man enclosed in it from smothering.
+
+Madame Deventer was asked if she chose to inspect the contents of the
+trunk, and she enquired whether the Commandant had been wont so to do.
+When told that such search had been for a long time discontinued, as
+nothing had ever been found there but books, she observed that there was
+no reason why she should be more strict than her husband, and ordered the
+soldiers to take their heavy load to the vessel.
+
+Elsje insisted that the boatmen should place a doubly thick plank for
+sliding the box on board, as it seemed probable, she said, that the usual
+one would break in two, and then the valuable books borrowed of Professor
+Erpenius would be damaged or destroyed. The request caused much further
+grumbling, but was complied with at last and the chest deposited on the
+deck. The wind still continued to blow with great fury, and as soon as
+the sails were set the vessel heeled over so much, that Elsje implored
+the skipper to cause the box to be securely lashed, as it seemed in
+imminent danger, at the first lurch of the vessel, of sliding into the
+sea.
+
+This done, Elsje sat herself down and threw her white handkerchief over
+her head, letting it flutter in the wind. One of the crew asked her why
+she did so, and she replied that the servant in the castle had been
+tormenting her, saying that she would never dare to sail to Gorcum in
+such tempestuous weather, and she was now signalling him that she had
+been as good as her word. Whereupon she continued to wave the
+handkerchief.
+
+In reality the signal was for her mistress, who was now straining her
+eyes from the barred window which looked out upon the Waal, and with whom
+the maid had agreed that if all went prosperously she would give this
+token of success. Otherwise she would sit with her head in her hands.
+
+During the voyage an officer of the garrison, who happened to be on
+board, threw himself upon the chest as a convenient seat, and began
+drumming and pounding with his heels upon it. The ever watchful Elsje,
+feeling the dreadful inconvenience to the prisoner of these proceedings,
+who perhaps was already smothering and would struggle for air if not
+relieved, politely addressed the gentleman and induced him to remove to
+another seat by telling him that, besides the books, there was some
+valuable porcelain in the chest which might easily be broken.
+
+No further incident occurred. The wind, although violent, was favourable,
+and Gorcum in due time was reached. Elsje insisted upon having her own
+precious freight carried first into the town, although the skipper for
+some time was obstinately bent on leaving it to the very last, while all
+the other merchandise in the vessel should be previously unshipped.
+
+At last on promise of payment of ten stuivers, which was considered an
+exorbitant sum, the skipper and son agreed to transport the chest between
+them on a hand-barrow. While they were trudging with it to the town, the
+son remarked to his father that there was some living thing in the box.
+For the prisoner in the anguish of his confinement had not been able to
+restrain a slight movement.
+
+"Do you hear what my son says?" cried the skipper to Elsje. "He says you
+have got something alive in your trunk."
+
+"Yes, yes," replied the cheerful maid-servant; "Arminian books are always
+alive, always full of motion and spirit."
+
+They arrived at Daatselaer's house, moving with difficulty through the
+crowd which, notwithstanding the boisterous weather, had been collected
+by the annual fair. Many people were assembled in front of the building,
+which was a warehouse of great resort, while next door was a
+book-seller's shop thronged with professors, clergymen, and other
+literary persons. The carriers accordingly entered by the backway, and
+Elsje, deliberately paying them their ten stuivers, and seeing them
+depart, left the box lying in a room at the rear and hastened to the shop
+in front.
+
+Here she found the thread and ribbon dealer and his wife, busy with their
+customers, unpacking and exhibiting their wares. She instantly whispered
+in Madame Daatselaer's ear, "I have got my master here in your back
+parlour."
+
+The dame turned white as a sheet, and was near fainting on the spot. It
+was the first imprudence Elsje had committed. The good woman recovered
+somewhat of her composure by a strong effort however, and instantly went
+with Elsje to the rear of the house.
+
+"Master! master!" cried Elsje, rapping on the chest.
+
+There was no answer.
+
+"My God! my God!" shrieked the poor maid-servant. "My poor master is
+dead."
+
+"Ah!" said Madame Daatselaer, "your mistress has made a bad business of
+it. Yesterday she had a living husband. Now she has a dead one."
+
+But soon there was a vigorous rap on the inside of the lid, and a cry
+from the prisoner:
+
+"Open the chest! I am not dead, but did not at first recognize your
+voice."
+
+The lock was instantly unfastened, the lid thrown open, and Grotius arose
+in his linen clothing, like a dead man from his coffin.
+
+The dame instantly accompanied the two through a trapdoor into an upper
+room.
+
+Grotius asked her if she was always so deadly pale.
+
+"No," she replied, "but I am frightened to see you here. My lord is no
+common person. The whole world is talking of you. I fear this will cause
+the loss of all my property and perhaps bring my husband into prison in
+your place."
+
+Grotius rejoined: "I made my prayers to God before as much as this had
+been gained, and I have just been uttering fervent thanks to Him for my
+deliverance so far as it has been effected. But if the consequences are
+to be as you fear, I am ready at once to get into the chest again and be
+carried back to prison."
+
+But she answered, "No; whatever comes of it, we have you here and will do
+all that we can to help you on."
+
+Grotius being faint from his sufferings, the lady brought him a glass of
+Spanish wine, but was too much flustered to find even a cloak or shawl to
+throw over him. Leaving him sitting there in his very thin attire, just
+as he had got out of the chest, she went to the front warehouse to call
+her husband. But he prudently declined to go to his unexpected guest. It
+would be better in the examination sure to follow, he said, for him to
+say with truth that he had not seen him and knew nothing of the escape,
+from first to last.
+
+Grotius entirely approved of the answer when told to him. Meantime Madame
+Daatselaer had gone to her brother-in-law van der Veen, a clothier by
+trade, whom she found in his shop talking with an officer of the
+Loevestein garrison. She whispered in the clothier's ear, and he, making
+an excuse to the officer, followed her home at once. They found Grotius
+sitting where he had been left. Van der Veen gave him his hand, saying:
+
+"Sir, you are the man of whom the whole country is talking?"
+
+"Yes, here I am," was the reply, "and I put myself in your hands--"
+
+"There isn't a moment to lose," replied the clothier. "We must help you
+away at once."
+
+He went immediately in search of one John Lambertsen, a man in whom he
+knew he could confide, a Lutheran in religion, a master-mason by
+occupation. He found him on a scaffold against the gable-end of a house,
+working at his trade.
+
+He told him that there was a good deed to be done which he could do
+better than any man, that his conscience would never reproach him for it,
+and that he would at the same time earn no trifling reward.
+
+He begged the mason to procure a complete dress as for a journeyman, and
+to follow him to the house of his brother-in-law Daatselaer.
+
+Lambertsen soon made his appearance with the doublet, trunk-hose, and
+shoes of a bricklayer, together with trowel and measuring-rod. He was
+informed who his new journeyman was to be, and Grotius at once put on the
+disguise.
+
+The doublet did not reach to the waistband of the trunkhose, while those
+nether garments stopped short of his knees; the whole attire belonging to
+a smaller man than the unfortunate statesman. His delicate white hands,
+much exposed by the shortness of the sleeves, looked very unlike those of
+a day-labourer, and altogether the new mason presented a somewhat
+incongruous and wobegone aspect. Grotius was fearful too lest some of the
+preachers and professors frequenting the book-shop next door would
+recognize him through his disguise. Madame Daatselaer smeared his face
+and hands with chalk and plaster however and whispered encouragement, and
+so with a felt hat slouched over his forehead and a yardstick in his
+hand, he walked calmly forth into the thronged marketplace and through
+the town to the ferry, accompanied by the friendly Lambertsen. It had
+been agreed that van der Veen should leave the house in another direction
+and meet them at the landing-place.
+
+When they got to the ferry, they found the weather as boisterous as ever.
+The boatmen absolutely refused to make the dangerous crossing of the
+Merwede over which their course lay to the land of Altona, and so into
+the Spanish Netherlands, for two such insignificant personages as this
+mason and his scarecrow journeyman.
+
+Lambertsen assured them that it was of the utmost importance that he
+should cross the water at once. He had a large contract for purchasing
+stone at Altona for a public building on which he was engaged. Van der
+Veen coming up added his entreaties, protesting that he too was
+interested in this great stone purchase, and so by means of offering a
+larger price than they at first dared to propose, they were able to
+effect their passage.
+
+After landing, Lambertsen and Grotius walked to Waalwyk, van der Veen
+returning the same evening to Gorcum. It was four o'clock in the
+afternoon when they reached Waalwyk, where a carriage was hired to convey
+the fugitive to Antwerp. The friendly mason here took leave of his
+illustrious journeyman, having first told the driver that his companion
+was a disguised bankrupt fleeing from Holland into foreign territory to
+avoid pursuit by his creditors. This would explain his slightly
+concealing his face in passing through a crowd in any village.
+
+Grotius proved so ignorant of the value of different coins in making
+small payments on the road, that the honest waggoner, on being
+occasionally asked who the odd-looking stranger was, answered that he was
+a bankrupt, and no wonder, for he did not know one piece of money from
+another. For, his part he thought him little better than a fool.
+
+Such was the depreciatory opinion formed by the Waalwyk coachman as to
+the "rising light of the world" and the "miracle of Holland." They
+travelled all night and, arriving on the morning of the 21st within a few
+leagues of Antwerp, met a patrol of soldiers, who asked Grotius for his
+passport. He enquired in whose service they were, and was told in that of
+"Red Rod," as the chief bailiff of Antwerp was called. That functionary
+happened to be near, and the traveller approaching him said that his
+passport was on his feet, and forthwith told him his name and story.
+
+Red Rod treated him at once with perfect courtesy, offered him a horse
+for himself with a mounted escort, and so furthered his immediate
+entrance to Antwerp. Grotius rode straight to the house of a banished
+friend of his, the preacher Grevinkhoven. He was told by the daughter of
+that clergyman that her father was upstairs ministering at the bedside of
+his sick wife. But so soon as the traveller had sent up his name, both
+the preacher and the invalid came rushing downstairs to fall upon the
+neck of one who seemed as if risen from the dead.
+
+The news spread, and Episcopius and other exiled friends soon thronged to
+the house of Grevinkhoven, where they all dined together in great glee,
+Grotius, still in his journeyman's clothes, narrating the particulars of
+his wonderful escape.
+
+He had no intention of tarrying in his resting-place at Antwerp longer
+than was absolutely necessary. Intimations were covertly made to him that
+a brilliant destiny might be in store for him should he consent to enter
+the service of the Archdukes, nor were there waning rumours, circulated
+as a matter of course by his host of enemies, that he was about to become
+a renegade to country and religion. There was as much truth in the
+slanders as in the rest of the calumnies of which he had been the victim
+during his career. He placed on record a proof of his loyal devotion to
+his country in the letters which he wrote from Antwerp within a week of
+his arrival there. With his subsequent history, his appearance and long
+residence at the French court as ambassador of Sweden, his memorable
+labours in history, diplomacy, poetry, theology, the present narrative is
+not concerned. Driven from the service of his Fatherland, of which his
+name to all time is one of the proudest garlands, he continued to be a
+benefactor not only to her but to all mankind. If refutation is sought of
+the charge that republics are ungrateful, it will certainly not be found
+in the history of Hugo Grotius or John of Barneveld.
+
+Nor is there need to portray the wrath of Captain Deventer when he
+returned to Castle Loevestein.
+
+"Here is the cage, but your bird is flown," said corpulent Maria Grotius
+with a placid smile. The Commandant solaced himself by uttering
+imprecations on her, on her husband, and on Elsje van Houwening. But
+these curses could not bring back the fugitive. He flew to Gorcum to
+browbeat the Daatselaers and to search the famous trunk. He found in it
+the big New Testament and some skeins of thread, together with an octavo
+or two of theology and of Greek tragedies; but the Arminian was not in
+it, and was gone from the custody of the valiant Deventer for ever.
+
+After a brief period Madame de Groot was released and rejoined her
+husband. Elsje van Houwening, true heroine of the adventure, was
+subsequently married to the faithful servant of Grotius, who during the
+two years' imprisonment had been taught Latin and the rudiments of law by
+his master, so that he subsequently rose to be a thriving and respectable
+advocate at the tribunals of Holland.
+
+The Stadholder, when informed of the escape of the prisoner, observed, "I
+always thought the black pig was deceiving me," making not very
+complimentary allusion to the complexion and size of the lady who had
+thus aided the escape of her husband.
+
+He is also reported as saying that it "is no wonder they could not keep
+Grotius in prison, as he has more wit than all his judges put together."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+   Barneveld's Sons plot against Maurice--The Conspiracy betrayed to
+   Maurice--Escape of Stoutenburg--Groeneveld is arrested--Mary of
+   Barneveld appeals to the Stadholder--Groeneveld condemned to Death--
+   Execution of Groeneveld.
+
+The widow of Barneveld had remained, since the last scene of the fatal
+tragedy on the Binnenhof, in hopeless desolation. The wife of the man who
+during a whole generation of mankind had stood foremost among the
+foremost of the world, and had been one of those chief actors and
+directors in human affairs to whom men's eyes turned instinctively from
+near and from afar, had led a life of unbroken prosperity. An heiress in
+her own right, Maria van Utrecht had laid the foundation of her husband's
+wealth by her union with the rising young lawyer and statesman. Her two
+sons and two daughters had grown up around her, all four being married
+into the leading families of the land, and with apparently long lives of
+prosperity and usefulness before them. And now the headsman's sword had
+shivered all this grandeur and happiness at a blow. The name of the dead
+statesman had become a word of scoffing and reproach; vagabond
+mountebanks enacted ribald scenes to his dishonour in the public squares
+and streets; ballad-mongers yelled blasphemous libels upon him in the
+very ears of his widow and children. For party hatred was not yet glutted
+with the blood it had drunk.
+
+It would be idle to paint the misery of this brokenhearted woman.
+
+The great painters of the epoch have preserved her face to posterity; the
+grief-stricken face of a hard-featured but commanding and not uncomely
+woman, the fountains of whose tears seem exhausted; a face of austere and
+noble despair. A decorous veil should be thrown over the form of that
+aged matron, for whose long life and prosperity Fate took such merciless
+vengeance at last.
+
+For the woes of Maria of Barneveld had scarcely begun. Desolation had
+become her portion, but dishonour had not yet crossed her threshold.
+There were sterner strokes in store for her than that which smote her
+husband on the scaffold.
+
+She had two sons, both in the prime of life. The eldest, Reinier, Lord of
+Groeneveld, who had married a widow of rank and wealth, Madame de
+Brandwyk, was living since the death of his father in comparative ease,
+but entire obscurity. An easy-tempered, genial, kindly gentleman, he had
+been always much beloved by his friends and, until the great family
+catastrophe, was popular with the public, but of an infirm and
+vacillating character, easily impressed by others, and apt to be led by
+stronger natures than his own. He had held the lucrative office of head
+forester of Delfland of which he had now been deprived.
+
+The younger son William, called, from an estate conferred on him by his
+father, Lord of Stoutenburg, was of a far different mould. We have seen
+him at an earlier period of this narrative attached to the embassy of
+Francis Aerssens in Paris, bearing then from another estate the unmusical
+title of Craimgepolder, and giving his subtle and dangerous chief great
+cause of complaint by his irregular, expensive habits. He had been
+however rather a favourite with Henry IV., who had so profound a respect
+for the father as to consult him, and him only of all foreign statesmen,
+in the gravest affairs of his reign, and he had even held an office of
+honour and emolument at his court. Subsequently he had embraced the
+military career, and was esteemed a soldier of courage and promise. As
+captain of cavalry and governor of the fortress of Bergen op Zoom, he
+occupied a distinguished and lucrative position, and was likely, so soon
+as the Truce ran to its close, to make a name for himself in that
+gigantic political and religious war which had already opened in Bohemia,
+and in which it was evident the Republic would soon be desperately
+involved. His wife, Walburg de Marnix, was daughter to one of the noblest
+characters in the history of the Netherlands, or of any history, the
+illustrious Sainte-Aldegonde. Two thousand florins a year from his
+father's estate had been settled on him at his marriage, which, in
+addition to his official and military income, placed him in a position of
+affluence.
+
+After the death of his father the family estates were confiscated, and he
+was likewise deprived of his captaincy and his governorship. He was
+reduced at a blow from luxury and high station to beggary and obscurity.
+At the renewal of the war he found himself, for no fault of his own,
+excluded from the service of his country. Yet the Advocate almost in his
+last breath had recommended his sons to the Stadholder, and Maurice had
+sent a message in response that so long as the sons conducted themselves
+well they might rely upon his support.
+
+Hitherto they had not conducted themselves otherwise than well.
+Stoutenburg, who now dwelt in his house with his mother, was of a dark,
+revengeful, turbulent disposition. In the career of arms he had a right
+to look forward to success, but thus condemned to brood in idleness on
+the cruel wrongs to himself and his house it was not improbable that he
+might become dangerous.
+
+Years long he fed on projects of vengeance as his daily bread. He was
+convinced that his personal grievances were closely entwined with the
+welfare of the Commonwealth, and he had sworn to avenge the death of his
+father, the misery of his mother, and the wrongs which he was himself
+suffering, upon the Stadholder, whom he considered the author of all
+their woe. To effect a revolution in the government, and to bring back to
+power all the municipal regents whom Maurice had displaced so summarily,
+in order, as the son believed, to effect the downfall of the hated
+Advocate, this was the determination of Stoutenburg.
+
+He did not pause to reflect whether the arm which had been strong enough
+to smite to nothingness the venerable statesman in the plenitude of his
+power would be too weak to repel the attack of an obscure and disarmed
+partisan. He saw only a hated tyrant, murderer, and oppressor, as he
+considered him, and he meant to have his life.
+
+He had around him a set of daring and desperate men to whom he had from
+time to time half confided his designs. A certain unfrocked preacher of
+the Remonstrant persuasion, who, according to the fashion of the learned
+of that day, had translated his name out of Hendrik Sleet into Henricus
+Slatius, was one of his most unscrupulous instruments. Slatius, a big,
+swarthy, shag-eared, beetle-browed Hollander, possessed learning of no
+ordinary degree, a tempestuous kind of eloquence, and a habit of dealing
+with men; especially those of the humbler classes. He was passionate,
+greedy, overbearing, violent, and loose of life. He had sworn vengeance
+upon the Remonstrants in consequence of a private quarrel, but this did
+not prevent him from breathing fire and fury against the
+Contra-Remonstrants also, and especially against the Stadholder, whom he
+affected to consider the arch-enemy of the whole Commonwealth.
+
+Another twelvemonth went by. The Advocate had been nearly four years in
+his grave. The terrible German war was in full blaze. The Twelve Years'
+Truce had expired, the Republic was once more at war, and Stoutenburg,
+forbidden at the head of his troop to campaign with the Stadholder
+against the Archdukes, nourished more fiercely than ever his plan against
+the Stadholder's life.
+
+Besides the ferocious Slatius he had other associates. There was his
+cousin by marriage, van der Dussen, a Catholic gentleman, who had married
+a daughter of Elias Barneveld, and who shared all Stoutenburg's feelings
+of resentment towards Maurice. There was Korenwinder, another Catholic,
+formerly occupying an official position of responsibility as secretary of
+the town of Berkel, a man of immense corpulence, but none the less an
+active and dangerous conspirator.
+
+There was van Dyk, a secretary of Bleiswyk, equally active and dangerous,
+and as lean and hungry as Korenwinder was fat. Stoutenburg, besides other
+rewards, had promised him a cornetcy of cavalry, should their plans be
+successful. And there was the brother-in-law of Slatius, one Cornelis
+Gerritaen, a joiner by trade, living at Rotterdam, who made himself very
+useful in all the details of the conspiracy.
+
+For the plot was now arranged, the men just mentioned being its active
+agents and in constant communication with Stoutenburg.
+
+Korenwinder and van Dyk in the last days of December 1622 drew up a
+scheme on paper, which was submitted to their chief and met with his
+approval. The document began with a violent invective against the crimes
+and tyranny of the Stadholder, demonstrated the necessity of a general
+change in the government, and of getting rid of Maurice as an
+indispensable preliminary, and laid down the means and method of doing
+this deed.
+
+The Prince was in the daily habit of driving, unattended by his
+body-guard, to Ryswyk, about two miles from the Hague. It would not be
+difficult for a determined band of men divided into two parties to set
+upon him between the stables and his coach, either when alighting from or
+about to enter it--the one party to kill him while the other protected
+the retreat of the assassins, and beat down such defence as the few
+lackeys of the Stadholder could offer.
+
+The scheme, thus mapped out, was submitted to Stoutenburg, who gave it
+his approval after suggesting a few amendments. The document was then
+burnt. It was estimated that twenty men would be needed for the job, and
+that to pay them handsomely would require about 6000 guilders.
+
+The expenses and other details of the infamous plot were discussed as
+calmly as if it had been an industrial or commercial speculation. But
+6000 guilders was an immense sum to raise, and the Seigneur de
+Stoutenburg was a beggar. His associates were as forlorn as himself, but
+his brother-in-law, the ex-Ambassador van der Myle, was living at
+Beverwyk under the supervision of the police, his property not having
+been confiscated. Stoutenburg paid him a visit, accompanied by the
+Reverend Slatius, in hopes of getting funds from him, but at the first
+obscure hint of the infamous design van der Myle faced them with such
+looks, gestures, and words of disgust and indignation that the murderous
+couple recoiled, the son of Barneveld saying to the expreacher: "Let us
+be off, Slaet,'tis a mere cur. Nothing is to be made of him."
+
+The other son of Barneveld, the Seigneur de Groeneveld, had means and
+credit. His brother had darkly hinted to him the necessity of getting rid
+of Maurice, and tried to draw him into the plot. Groeneveld, more
+unstable than water, neither repelled nor encouraged these advances. He
+joined in many conversations with Stoutenburg, van Dyk, and Korenwinder,
+but always weakly affected not to know what they were driving at. "When
+we talk of business," said van Dyk to him one day, "you are always
+turning off from us and from the subject. You had better remain." Many
+anonymous letters were sent to him, calling on him to strike for
+vengeance on the murderer of his father, and for the redemption of his
+native land and the Remonstrant religion from foul oppression.
+
+At last yielding to the persuasions and threats of his fierce younger
+brother, who assured him that the plot would succeed, the government be
+revolutionized, and that then all property would be at the mercy of the
+victors, he agreed to endorse certain bills which Korenwinder undertook
+to negotiate. Nothing could be meaner, more cowardly, and more murderous
+than the proceedings of the Seigneur de Groeneveld. He seems to have felt
+no intense desire of vengeance upon Maurice, which certainly would not
+have been unnatural, but he was willing to supply money for his
+assassination. At the same time he was careful to insist that this
+pecuniary advance was by no means a free gift, but only a loan to be
+repaid by his more bloodthirsty brother upon demand with interest. With a
+businesslike caution, in ghastly contrast with the foulness of the
+contract, he exacted a note of hand from Stoutenburg covering the whole
+amount of his disbursements. There might come a time, he thought, when
+his brother's paper would be more negotiable than it was at that moment.
+
+Korenwinder found no difficulty in discounting Groeneveld's bills, and
+the necessary capital was thus raised for the vile enterprise. Van Dyk,
+the lean and hungry conspirator, now occupied himself vigorously in
+engaging the assassins, while his corpulent colleague remained as
+treasurer of the company. Two brothers Blansaerts, woollen manufacturers
+at Leyden--one of whom had been a student of theology in the Remonstrant
+Church and had occasionally preached--and a certain William Party, a
+Walloon by birth, but likewise a woollen worker at Leyden, agreed to the
+secretary's propositions. He had at first told, them that their services
+would be merely required for the forcible liberation of two Remonstrant
+clergymen, Niellius and Poppius, from the prison at Haarlem. Entertaining
+his new companions at dinner, however, towards the end of January, van
+Dyk, getting very drunk, informed them that the object of the enterprise
+was to kill the Stadholder; that arrangements had been made for effecting
+an immediate change in the magistracies in all the chief cities of
+Holland so soon as the deed was done; that all the recently deposed
+regents would enter the Hague at once, supported by a train of armed
+peasants from the country; and that better times for the oppressed
+religion, for the Fatherland, and especially for everyone engaged in the
+great undertaking, would begin with the death of the tyrant. Each man
+taking direct part in the assassination would receive at least 300
+guilders, besides being advanced to offices of honour and profit
+according to his capacity.
+
+The Blansaerts assured their superior that entire reliance might be
+placed on their fidelity, and that they knew of three or four other men
+in Leyden "as firm as trees and fierce as lions," whom they would
+engage--a fustian worker, a tailor, a chimney-sweeper, and one or two
+other mechanics. The looseness and utter recklessness with which this
+hideous conspiracy was arranged excites amazement. Van Dyk gave the two
+brothers 100 pistoles in gold--a coin about equal to a guinea--for their
+immediate reward as well as for that of the comrades to be engaged. Yet
+it seems almost certain from subsequent revelations that they were
+intending all the time to deceive him, to take as much money as they
+could get from him, "to milk, the cow as long as she would give milk," as
+William Party expressed it, and then to turn round upon and betray him.
+It was a dangerous game however, which might not prove entirely
+successful.
+
+Van Dyk duly communicated with Stoutenburg, who grew more and more
+feverish with hatred and impatience as the time for gratifying those
+passions drew nigh, and frequently said that he would like to tear the
+Stadholder to pieces with his own hands. He preferred however to act as
+controlling director over the band of murderers now enrolled.
+
+For in addition to the Leyden party, the Reverend Slatius, supplied with
+funds by van Dyk, had engaged at Rotterdam his brother-in-law Gerritsen,
+a joiner, living in that city, together with three sailors named
+respectively Dirk, John, and Herman.
+
+The ex-clergyman's house was also the arsenal of the conspiracy,
+and here were stored away a stock of pistols, snaphances, and
+sledge-hammers--together with that other death-dealing machinery, the
+whole edition of the 'Clearshining Torch', an inflammatory, pamphlet by
+Slatius--all to be used on the fatal day fast approaching.
+
+On the 1st February van Dyk visited Slatius at Rotterdam. He found
+Gerritsen hard at work.
+
+There in a dark back kitchen, by the lurid light of the fire in a dim
+wintry afternoon, stood the burly Slatius, with his swarthy face and
+heavy eyebrows, accompanied by his brother-in-law the joiner, both in
+workman's dress, melting lead, running bullets, drying powder, and
+burnishing and arranging the fire-arms and other tools to be used in the
+great crime now so rapidly maturing. The lean, busy, restless van Dyk,
+with his adust and sinister visage, came peering in upon the couple thus
+engaged, and observed their preparations with warm approval.
+
+He recommended that in addition to Dirk, John, and Herman, a few more
+hardy seafaring men should be engaged, and Slatius accordingly secured
+next day the services of one Jerome Ewouts and three other sailors. They
+were not informed of the exact nature of the enterprise, but were told
+that it was a dangerous although not a desperate one, and sure to be of
+great service to the Fatherland. They received, as all the rest had done,
+between 200 and 300 guilders in gold, that they would all be promoted to
+be captains and first mates.
+
+It was agreed that all the conspirators should assemble four days later
+at the Hague on Sunday, the 5th February, at the inn of the "Golden
+Helmet." The next day, Monday the 6th, had been fixed by Stoutenburg for
+doing the deed. Van Dyk, who had great confidence in the eloquence of
+William Party, the Walloon wool manufacturer, had arranged that he should
+make a discourse to them all in a solitary place in the downs between
+that city and the sea-shore, taking for his theme or brief the
+Clearshining Torch of Slatius.
+
+On Saturday that eminent divine entertained his sister and her husband
+Gerritsen, Jerome Ewouts, who was at dinner but half informed as to the
+scope of the great enterprise, and several other friends who were
+entirely ignorant of it. Slatius was in high spirits, although his
+sister, who had at last become acquainted with the vile plot, had done
+nothing but weep all day long. They had better be worms, with a promise
+of further reward and an intimation she said, and eat dirt for their
+food, than crawl in so base a business. Her brother comforted her with
+assurances that the project was sure to result in a triumph for religion
+and Fatherland, and drank many healths at his table to the success of all
+engaged in it. That evening he sent off a great chest filled with arms
+and ammunition to the "Golden Helmet" at the Hague under the charge of
+Jerome Ewouts and his three mates. Van Dyk had already written a letter
+to the landlord of that hostelry engaging a room there, and saying that
+the chest contained valuable books and documents to be used in a lawsuit,
+in which he was soon to be engaged, before the supreme tribunal.
+
+On the Sunday this bustling conspirator had John Blansaert and William
+Party to dine with him at the "Golden Helmet" in the Hague, and produced
+seven packages neatly folded, each containing gold pieces to the amount
+of twenty pounds sterling. These were for themselves and the others whom
+they had reported as engaged by them in Leyden. Getting drunk as usual,
+he began to bluster of the great political revolution impending, and
+after dinner examined the carbines of his guests. He asked if those
+weapons were to be relied upon. "We can blow a hair to pieces with them
+at twenty paces," they replied. "Ah! would that I too could be of the
+party," said van Dyk, seizing one of the carbines. "No, no," said John
+Blansaert, "we can do the deed better without you than with you. You must
+look out for the defence."
+
+Van Dyk then informed them that they, with one of the Rotterdam sailors,
+were to attack Maurice as he got out of his coach at Ryswyk, pin him
+between the stables and the coach, and then and there do him to death.
+"You are not to leave him," he cried, "till his soul has left his body."
+
+The two expressed their hearty concurrence with this arrangement, and
+took leave of their host for the night, going, they said, to distribute
+the seven packages of blood-money. They found Adam Blansaert waiting for
+them in the downs, and immediately divided the whole amount between
+themselves and him--the chimney-sweeper, tailor, and fustian worker,
+"firm as trees and fierce as lions," having never had any existence save
+in their fertile imaginations.
+
+On Monday, 6th February, van Dyk had a closing interview with Stoutenburg
+and his brother at the house of Groeneveld, and informed them that the
+execution of the plot had been deferred to the following day. Stoutenburg
+expressed disgust and impatience at the delay. "I should like to tear the
+Stadholder to pieces with my own hands!" he cried. He was pacified on
+hearing that the arrangements had been securely made for the morrow, and
+turning to his brother observed, "Remember that you can never retract.
+You are in our power and all your estates at our mercy." He then
+explained the manner in which the magistracies of Leyden, Gouda,
+Rotterdam, and other cities were to be instantly remodelled after the
+death of Maurice, the ex-regents of the Hague at the head of a band of
+armed peasants being ready at a moment's warning to take possession of
+the political capital.
+
+Prince Frederic Henry moreover, he hinted darkly and falsely, but in a
+manner not to be mistaken, was favourable to the movement, and would
+after the murder of Maurice take the government into his hands.
+
+Stoutenburg then went quietly home to pass the day and sleep at his
+mother's house awaiting the eventful morning of Tuesday.
+
+Van Dyk went back to his room at the "Golden Helmet" and began inspecting
+the contents of the arms and ammunition chest which Jerome Ewouts and his
+three mates had brought the night before from Rotterdam. He had been
+somewhat unquiet at having seen nothing of those mariners during the day;
+when looking out of window, he saw one of them in conference with some
+soldiers. A minute afterwards he heard a bustle in the rooms below, and
+found that the house was occupied by a guard, and that Gerritsen, with
+the three first engaged sailors Dirk, Peter, and Herman, had been
+arrested at the Zotje. He tried in vain to throw the arms back into the
+chest and conceal it under the bed, but it was too late. Seizing his hat
+and wrapping himself in his cloak, with his sword by his side, he walked
+calmly down the stairs looking carelessly at the group of soldiers and
+prisoners who filled the passages. A waiter informed the provost-marshal
+in command that the gentleman was a respectable boarder at the tavern,
+well known to him for many years. The conspirator passed unchallenged and
+went straight to inform Stoutenburg.
+
+The four mariners, last engaged by Slatius at Rotterdam, had signally
+exemplified the danger of half confidences. Surprised that they should
+have been so mysteriously entrusted with the execution of an enterprise
+the particulars of which were concealed from them, and suspecting that
+crime alone could command such very high prices as had been paid and
+promised by the ex-clergyman, they had gone straight to the residence of
+the Stadholder, after depositing the chest at the "Golden Helmet."
+
+Finding that he had driven as usual to Ryswyk, they followed him thither,
+and by dint of much importunity obtained an audience. If the enterprise
+was a patriotic one, they reasoned, he would probably know of it and
+approve it. If it were criminal, it would be useful for them to reveal
+and dangerous to conceal it.
+
+They told the story so far as they knew it to the Prince and showed him
+the money, 300 florins apiece, which they had already received from
+Slatius. Maurice hesitated not an instant. It was evident that a dark
+conspiracy was afoot. He ordered the sailors to return to the Hague by
+another and circuitous road through Voorburg, while he lost not a moment
+himself in hurrying back as fast as his horses would carry him. Summoning
+the president and several councillors of the chief tribunal, he took
+instant measures to take possession of the two taverns, and arrest all
+the strangers found in them.
+
+Meantime van Dyk came into the house of the widow Barneveld and found
+Stoutenburg in the stable-yard. He told him the plot was discovered, the
+chest of arms at the "Golden Helmet" found. "Are there any private
+letters or papers in the bog?" asked Stoutenburg. "None relating to the
+affair," was the answer.
+
+"Take yourself off as fast as possible," said Stoutenburg. Van Dyk needed
+no urging. He escaped through the stables and across the fields in the
+direction of Leyden. After skulking about for a week however and making
+very little progress, he was arrested at Hazerswoude, having broken
+through the ice while attempting to skate across the inundated and frozen
+pastures in that region.
+
+Proclamations were at once made, denouncing the foul conspiracy in which
+the sons of the late Advocate Barneveld, the Remonstrant clergyman
+Slatius, and others, were the ringleaders, and offering 4000 florins each
+for their apprehension. A public thanksgiving for the deliverance was
+made in all the churches on the 8th February.
+
+On the 12th February the States-General sent letters to all their
+ambassadors and foreign agents, informing them of this execrable plot to
+overthrow the Commonwealth and take the life of the Stadholder, set on
+foot by certain Arminian preachers and others of that faction, and this
+too in winter, when the ice and snow made hostile invasion practicable,
+and when the enemy was encamped in so many places in the neighbourhood.
+"The Arminians," said the despatch, "are so filled with bitterness that
+they would rather the Republic should be lost than that their pretended
+grievances should go unredressed." Almost every pulpit shook with
+Contra-Remonstrant thunder against the whole society of Remonstrants, who
+were held up to the world as rebels and prince-murderers; the criminal
+conspiracy being charged upon them as a body. Hardly a man of that
+persuasion dared venture into the streets and public places, for fear of
+being put to death by the rabble. The Chevalier William of Nassau,
+natural son of the Stadholder, was very loud and violent in all the
+taverns and tap-rooms, drinking mighty draughts to the damnation of the
+Arminians.
+
+Many of the timid in consequence shrank away from the society and joined
+the Contra-Remonstrant Church, while the more courageous members,
+together with the leaders of that now abhorred communion, published long
+and stirring appeals to the universal sense of justice, which was
+outraged by the spectacle of a whole sect being punished for a crime
+committed by a few individuals, who had once been unworthy members of it.
+
+Meantime hue and cry was made after the fugitive conspirators. The
+Blansaerts and William Party having set off from Leyden towards the Hague
+on Monday night, in order, as they said, to betray their employers, whose
+money they had taken, and whose criminal orders they had agreed to
+execute, attempted to escape, but were arrested within ten days. They
+were exhibited at their prison at Amsterdam to an immense concourse at a
+shilling a peep, the sums thus collected being distributed to the poor.
+Slatius made his way disguised as a boor into Friesland, and after
+various adventures attempted to cross the Bourtange Moors to Lingen.
+Stopping to refresh himself at a tavern near Koevorden, he found himself
+in the tap-room in presence of Quartermaster Blau and a company of
+soldiers from the garrison. The dark scowling boor, travel-stained and
+weary, with felt hat slouched over his forbidding visage, fierce and
+timorous at once like a hunted wild beast, excited their suspicion.
+Seeing himself watched, he got up, paid his scot, and departed, leaving
+his can of beer untasted. This decided the quartermaster, who accordingly
+followed the peasant out of the house, and arrested him as a Spanish spy
+on the watch for the train of specie which the soldiers were then
+conveying into Koevorden Castle.
+
+Slatius protested his innocence of any such design, and vehemently
+besought the officer to release him, telling him as a reason for his
+urgency and an explanation of his unprepossessing aspect--that he was an
+oculist from Amsterdam, John Hermansen by name, that he had just
+committed a homicide in that place, and was fleeing from justice.
+
+The honest quartermaster saw no reason why a suspected spy should go free
+because he proclaimed himself a murderer, nor why an oculist should
+escape the penalties of homicide. "The more reason," he said, "why thou
+shouldst be my prisoner." The ex-preacher was arrested and shut up in the
+state prison at the Hague.
+
+The famous engraver Visser executed a likeness on copper-plate of the
+grim malefactor as he appeared in his boor's disguise. The portrait,
+accompanied by a fiercely written broadsheet attacking the Remonstrant
+Church, had a great circulation, and deepened the animosity against the
+sect upon which the unfrocked preacher had sworn vengeance. His evil face
+and fame thus became familiar to the public, while the term Hendrik Slaet
+became a proverb at pot-houses, being held equivalent among tipplers to
+shirking the bottle.
+
+Korenwinder, the treasurer of the association, coming to visit
+Stoutenburg soon after van Dyk had left him, was informed of the
+discovery of the plot and did his best to escape, but was arrested within
+a fortnight's time.
+
+Stoutenburg himself acted with his usual promptness and coolness. Having
+gone straightway to his brother to notify him of the discovery and to
+urge him to instant flight, he contrived to disappear. A few days later a
+chest of merchandise was brought to the house of a certain citizen of
+Rotterdam, who had once been a fiddler, but was now a man of considerable
+property. The chest, when opened, was found to contain the Seigneur de
+Stoutenburg, who in past times had laid the fiddler under obligations,
+and in whose house he now lay concealed for many days, and until the
+strictness with which all roads and ferries in the neighbourhood were
+watched at first had somewhat given way. Meantime his cousin van der
+Dussen had also effected his escape, and had joined him in Rotterdam. The
+faithful fiddler then, for a thousand florins, chartered a trading vessel
+commanded by one Jacob Beltje to take a cargo of Dutch cheese to Wesel on
+the Rhine. By this means, after a few adventures, they effected their
+escape, and, arriving not long afterwards at Brussels, were formally
+taken under the protection of the Archduchess Isabella.
+
+Stoutenburg afterwards travelled in France and Italy, and returned to
+Brussels. His wife, loathing his crime and spurning all further
+communication with him, abandoned him to his fate. The daughter of Marnix
+of Sainte-Aldegonde had endured poverty, obscurity, and unmerited
+obloquy, which had become the lot of the great statesman's family after
+his tragic end, but she came of a race that would not brook dishonour.
+The conspirator and suborner of murder and treason, the hirer and
+companion of assassins, was no mate for her.
+
+Stoutenburg hesitated for years as to his future career, strangely enough
+keeping up a hope of being allowed to return to his country.
+
+Subsequently he embraced the cause of his country's enemies, converted
+himself to the Roman Church, and obtained a captaincy of horse in the
+Spanish service. He was seen one day, to the disgust of many spectators,
+to enter Antwerp in black foreign uniform, at the head of his troopers,
+waving a standard with a death's-head embroidered upon it, and wearing,
+like his soldiers, a sable scarf and plume. History disdains to follow
+further the career of the renegade, traitor, end assassin.
+
+When the Seigneur de Groeneveld learned from his younger brother, on the
+eventful 6th of February, that the plot had been discovered, he gave
+himself up for lost. Remorse and despair, fastening upon his naturally
+feeble character, seemed to render him powerless. His wife, of more
+hopeful disposition than himself and of less heroic mould than Walburg de
+Marnix, encouraged him to fly. He fled accordingly, through the desolate
+sandy downs which roll between the Hague and the sea, to Scheveningen,
+then an obscure fishing village on the coast, at a league's distance from
+the capital. Here a fisherman, devoted to him and his family, received
+him in his hut, disguised him in boatman's attire, and went with him to
+the strand, proposing to launch his pinkie, put out at once to sea, and
+to land him on the English coast, the French coast, in Hamburg--where he
+would.
+
+The sight of that long, sandy beach stretching for more than seventy
+miles in an unbroken, melancholy line, without cove, curve, or
+indentation to break its cruel monotony, and with the wild waves of the
+German Ocean, lashed by a wintry storm, breaking into white foam as far
+as the eye could reach, appalled the fugitive criminal. With the
+certainty of an ignominious death behind him, he shrank abjectly from the
+terrors of the sea, and, despite the honest fisherman's entreaties,
+refused to enter the boat and face the storm. He wandered feebly along
+the coast, still accompanied by his humble friend, to another little
+village, where the fisherman procured a waggon, which took them as far as
+Sandvoort. Thence he made his way through Egmond and Petten and across
+the Marsdiep to Tegel, where not deeming himself safe he had himself
+ferried over to the neighbouring island of Vlieland. Here amongst the
+quicksands, whirlpools, and shallows which mark the last verge of
+habitable Holland, the unhappy fugitive stood at bay.
+
+Meantime information had come to the authorities that a suspicious
+stranger had been seen at Scheveningen. The fisherman's wife was
+arrested. Threatened with torture she at last confessed with whom her
+husband had fled and whither. Information was sent to the bailiff of
+Vlieland, who with a party of followers made a strict search through his
+narrow precincts. A group of seamen seated on the sands was soon
+discovered, among whom, dressed in shaggy pea jacket with long
+fisherman's boots, was the Seigneur de Groeneveld, who, easily recognized
+through his disguise, submitted to his captors without a struggle. The
+Scheveningen fisherman, who had been so faithful to him, making a sudden
+spring, eluded his pursuers and disappeared; thus escaping the gibbet
+which would probably have been his doom instead of the reward of 4000
+golden guilders which he might have had for betraying him. Thus a sum
+more than double the amount originally furnished by Groeneveld, as the
+capital of the assassination company, had been rejected by the Rotterdam
+boatman who saved Stoutenburg, and by the Scheveningen fisherman who was
+ready to save Groeneveld. On the 19th February, within less than a
+fortnight from the explosion of the conspiracy, the eldest son of
+Barneveld was lodged in the Gevangen Poort or state prison of the Hague.
+
+The awful news of the 6th February had struck the widow of Barneveld as
+with a thunderbolt. Both her sons were proclaimed as murderers and
+suborners of assassins, and a price put upon their heads. She remained
+for days neither speaking nor weeping; scarcely eating, drinking, or
+sleeping. She seemed frozen to stone. Her daughters and friends could not
+tell whether she were dying or had lost her reason. At length the escape
+of Stoutenburg and the capture of Groeneveld seemed to rouse her from her
+trance. She then stooped to do what she had sternly refused to do when
+her husband was in the hands of the authorities. Accompanied by the wife
+and infant son of Groeneveld she obtained an audience of the stern
+Stadholder, fell on her knees before him, and implored mercy and pardon
+for her son.
+
+Maurice received her calmly and not discourteously, but held out no hopes
+of pardon. The criminal was in the hands of justice, he said, and he had
+no power to interfere. But there can scarcely be a doubt that he had
+power after the sentence to forgive or to commute, and it will be
+remembered that when Barneveld himself was about to suffer, the Prince
+had asked the clergyman Walaeus with much anxiety whether the prisoner in
+his message had said nothing of pardon.
+
+Referring to the bitter past, Maurice asked Madame de Barneveld why she
+not asked mercy for her son, having refused to do so for her husband.
+
+Her answer was simple and noble:
+
+"My husband was innocent of crime," she said; "my son is guilty."
+
+The idea of pardon in this case was of course preposterous. Certainly if
+Groeneveld had been forgiven, it would have been impossible to punish the
+thirteen less guilty conspirators, already in the hands of justice, whom
+he had hired to commit the assassination. The spectacle of the two
+cowardly ringleaders going free while the meaner criminals were gibbeted
+would have been a shock to the most rudimentary ideas of justice. It
+would have been an equal outrage to pardon the younger Barnevelds for
+intended murder, in which they had almost succeeded, when their great
+father had already suffered for a constructive lese-majesty, the guilt of
+which had been stoutly denied. Yet such is the dreary chain of cause and
+effect that it is certain, had pardon been nobly offered to the
+statesman, whose views of constitutional law varied from those of the
+dominant party, the later crime would never have been committed. But
+Francis Aerssens--considering his own and other partisans lives at stake
+if the States' right party did not fall--had been able to bear down all
+thoughts of mercy. He was successful, was called to the house of nobles,
+and regained the embassy of Paris, while the house of Barneveld was
+trodden into the dust of dishonour and ruin. Rarely has an offended
+politician's revenge been more thorough than his. Never did the mocking
+fiend betray his victims into the hands of the avenger more sardonically
+than was done in this sombre tragedy.
+
+The trials of the prisoners were rapidly conducted. Van Dyk, cruelly
+tortured, confessed on the rack all the details of the conspiracy as they
+were afterwards embodied in the sentences and have been stated in the
+preceding narrative. Groeneveld was not tortured. His answers to the
+interrogatories were so vague as to excite amazement at his general
+ignorance of the foul transaction or at the feebleness of his memory,
+while there was no attempt on his part to exculpate himself from the
+damning charge. That it was he who had furnished funds for the proposed
+murder and mutiny, knowing the purpose to which they were to be applied,
+was proved beyond all cavil and fully avowed by him.
+
+On the 28th May, he, Korenwinder, and van Dyk were notified that they
+were to appear next day in the courthouse to hear their sentence, which
+would immediately afterwards be executed.
+
+That night his mother, wife, and son paid him a long visit of farewell in
+his prison. The Gevangen Poort of the Hague, an antique but mean building
+of brown brick and commonplace aspect, still stands in one of the most
+public parts of the city. A gloomy archway, surmounted by windows grimly
+guarded by iron lattice-work, forms the general thoroughfare from the
+aristocratic Plaats and Kneuterdyk and Vyverberg to the inner court of
+the ancient palace. The cells within are dark, noisome, and dimly
+lighted, and even to this day the very instruments of torture, used in
+the trials of these and other prisoners, may be seen by the curious. Half
+a century later the brothers de Witt were dragged from this prison to be
+literally torn to pieces by an infuriated mob.
+
+The misery of that midnight interview between the widow of Barneveld, her
+daughter-in-law, and the condemned son and husband need not be described.
+As the morning approached, the gaoler warned the matrons to take their
+departure that the prisoner might sleep.
+
+"What a woful widow you will be," said Groeneveld to his wife, as she
+sank choking with tears upon the ground. The words suddenly aroused in
+her the sense of respect for their name.
+
+"At least for all this misery endured," she said firmly, "do me enough
+honour to die like a gentleman." He promised it. The mother then took
+leave of the son, and History drops a decorous veil henceforth over the
+grief-stricken form of Mary of Barneveld.
+
+Next morning the life-guards of the Stadholder and other troops were
+drawn up in battle-array in the outer and inner courtyard of the supreme
+tribunal and palace. At ten o'clock Groeneveld came forth from the
+prison. The Stadholder had granted as a boon to the family that he might
+be neither fettered nor guarded as he walked to the tribunal. The
+prisoner did not forget his parting promise to his wife. He appeared
+full-dressed in velvet cloak and plumed hat, with rapier by his side,
+walking calmly through the inner courtyard to the great hall. Observing
+the windows of the Stadholder's apartments crowded with spectators, among
+whom he seemed to recognize the Prince's face, he took off his hat and
+made a graceful and dignified salute. He greeted with courtesy many
+acquaintances among the crowd through which he passed. He entered the
+hall and listened in silence to the sentence condemning him to be
+immediately executed with the sword. Van Dyk and Korenwinder shared the
+same doom, but were provisionally taken back to prison.
+
+Groeneveld then walked calmly and gracefully as before from the hall to
+the scaffold, attended by his own valet, and preceded by the
+provost-marshal and assistants. He was to suffer, not where his father
+had been beheaded, but on the "Green Sod." This public place of execution
+for ordinary criminals was singularly enough in the most elegant and
+frequented quarter of the Hague. A few rods from the Gevangen Poort, at
+the western end of the Vyverberg, on the edge of the cheerful triangle
+called the Plaats, and looking directly down the broad and stately
+Kneuterdyk, at the end of which stood Aremberg House, lately the
+residence of the great Advocate, was the mean and sordid scaffold.
+
+Groeneveld ascended it with perfect composure. The man who had been
+browbeaten into crime by an overbearing and ferocious brother, who had
+quailed before the angry waves of the North Sea, which would have borne
+him to a place of entire security, now faced his fate with a smile upon
+his lips. He took off his hat, cloak, and sword, and handed them to his
+valet. He calmly undid his ruff and wristbands of pointlace, and tossed
+them on the ground. With his own hands and the assistance of his servant
+he unbuttoned his doublet, laying breast and neck open without suffering
+the headsman's hands to approach him.
+
+He then walked to the heap of sand and spoke a very few words to the vast
+throng of spectators.
+
+"Desire of vengeance and evil counsel," he said, "have brought me here.
+If I have wronged any man among you, I beg him for Christ's sake to
+forgive me."
+
+Kneeling on the sand with his face turned towards his father's house at
+the end of the Kneuterdyk, he said his prayers. Then putting a red velvet
+cap over his eyes, he was heard to mutter:
+
+"O God! what a man I was once, and what am I now?"
+
+Calmly folding his hands, he said, "Patience."
+
+The executioner then struck off his head at a blow. His body, wrapped in
+a black cloak, was sent to his house and buried in his father's tomb.
+
+Van Dyk and Korenwinder were executed immediately afterwards. They were
+quartered and their heads exposed on stakes. The joiner Gerritsen and the
+three sailors had already been beheaded. The Blansaerts and William
+Party, together with the grim Slatius, who was savage and turbulent to
+the last, had suffered on the 5th of May.
+
+Fourteen in all were executed for this crime, including an unfortunate
+tailor and two other mechanics of Leyden, who had heard something
+whispered about the conspiracy, had nothing whatever to do with it, but
+from ignorance, apathy, or timidity did not denounce it. The ringleader
+and the equally guilty van der Dussen had, as has been seen, effected
+their escape.
+
+Thus ended the long tragedy of the Barnevelds. The result of this foul
+conspiracy and its failure to effect the crime proposed strengthened
+immensely the power, popularity, and influence of the Stadholder, made
+the orthodox church triumphant, and nearly ruined the sect of the
+Remonstrants, the Arminians--most unjustly in reality, although with a
+pitiful show of reason--being held guilty of the crime of Stoutenburg and
+Slatius.
+
+The Republic--that magnificent commonwealth which in its infancy had
+confronted, single-handed, the greatest empire of the earth, and had
+wrested its independence from the ancient despot after a forty years'
+struggle--had now been rent in twain, although in very unequal portions,
+by the fiend of political and religious hatred. Thus crippled, she was to
+go forth and take her share in that awful conflict now in full blaze, and
+of which after-ages were to speak with a shudder as the Thirty Years'
+War.
+
+     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+     Argument in a circle
+     He that stands let him see that he does not fall
+     If he has deserved it, let them strike off his head
+     Misery had come not from their being enemies
+     O God! what does man come to!
+     Party hatred was not yet glutted with the blood it had drunk
+     Rose superior to his doom and took captivity captive
+     This, then, is the reward of forty years' service to the State
+     To milk, the cow as long as she would give milk
+
+
+
+
+     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS, ENTIRE JOHN OF BARNEVELD, 1614-23:
+
+     Acts of violence which under pretext of religion
+     Adulation for inferiors whom they despise
+     Affection of his friends and the wrath of his enemies
+     And give advice. Of that, although always a spendthrift
+     Argument in a circle
+     Better to be governed by magistrates than mobs
+     Burning with bitter revenge for all the favours he had received
+     Calumny is often a stronger and more lasting power than disdain
+     Casual outbursts of eternal friendship
+     Changed his positions and contradicted himself day by day
+     Conciliation when war of extermination was intended
+     Considered it his special mission in the world to mediate
+     Created one child for damnation and another for salvation
+     Death rather than life with a false acknowledgment of guilt
+     Denoungced as an obstacle to peace
+     Depths theological party spirit could descend
+     Depths of credulity men in all ages can sink
+     Devote himself to his gout and to his fair young wife
+     Enemy of all compulsion of the human conscience
+     Extraordinary capacity for yielding to gentle violence
+     France was mourning Henry and waiting for Richelieu
+     Furious mob set upon the house of Rem Bischop
+     Hardly a sound Protestant policy anywhere but in Holland
+     He that stands let him see that he does not fall
+     Heidelberg Catechism were declared to be infallible
+     Highborn demagogues in that as in every age affect adulation
+     History has not too many really important and emblematic men
+     Human nature in its meanness and shame
+     I hope and I fear
+     I know how to console myself
+     If he has deserved it, let them strike off his head
+     Implication there was much, of assertion very little
+     In this he was much behind his age or before it
+     It had not yet occurred to him that he was married
+     John Robinson
+     King who thought it furious madness to resist the enemy
+     Logic is rarely the quality on which kings pride themselves
+     Magistracy at that moment seemed to mean the sword
+     Make the very name of man a term of reproach
+     Misery had come not from their being enemies
+     Mockery of negotiation in which nothing could be negotiated
+     More apprehension of fraud than of force
+     Necessity of deferring to powerful sovereigns
+     Never lack of fishers in troubled waters
+     Not his custom nor that of his councillors to go to bed
+     O God! what does man come to!
+     Only true religion
+     Opening an abyss between government and people
+     Opposed the subjection of the magistracy by the priesthood
+     Partisans wanted not accommodation but victory
+     Party hatred was not yet glutted with the blood it had drunk
+     Pot-valiant hero
+     Puritanism in Holland was a very different thing from England
+     Rather a wilderness to reign over than a single heretic
+     Resolve to maintain the civil authority over the military
+     Rose superior to his doom and took captivity captive
+     Seemed bent on self-destruction
+     Stand between hope and fear
+     Successful in this step, he is ready for greater ones
+     Tempest of passion and prejudice
+     That he tries to lay the fault on us is pure malice
+     The magnitude of this wonderful sovereign's littleness
+     The effect of energetic, uncompromising calumny
+     The evils resulting from a confederate system of government
+     This, then, is the reward of forty years' service to the State
+     This wonderful sovereign's littleness oppresses the imagination
+     To milk, the cow as long as she would give milk
+     To stifle for ever the right of free enquiry
+     William Brewster
+     Wise and honest a man, although he be somewhat longsome
+     Yes, there are wicked men about
+     Yesterday is the preceptor of To-morrow
+
+
+
+
+     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS, ENTIRE JOHN OF BARNEVELD 1609-1623:
+
+     Abstinence from inquisition into consciences and private parlour
+     Acts of violence which under pretext of religion
+     Adulation for inferiors whom they despise
+     Advanced orthodox party-Puritans
+     Affection of his friends and the wrath of his enemies
+     Allowed the demon of religious hatred to enter into its body
+     Almost infinite power of the meanest of passions
+     And give advice. Of that, although always a spendthrift
+     And now the knife of another priest-led fanatic
+     Argument in a circle
+     Aristocracy of God's elect
+     As with his own people, keeping no back-door open
+     At a blow decapitated France
+     Atheist, a tyrant, because he resisted dictation from the clergy
+     Behead, torture, burn alive, and bury alive all heretics
+     Better to be governed by magistrates than mobs
+     Burning with bitter revenge for all the favours he had received
+     Calumny is often a stronger and more lasting power than disdain
+     Casual outbursts of eternal friendship
+     Changed his positions and contradicted himself day by day
+     Christian sympathy and a small assistance not being sufficient
+     Conciliation when war of extermination was intended
+     Conclusive victory for the allies seemed as predestined
+     Considered it his special mission in the world to mediate
+     Contained within itself the germs of a larger liberty
+     Could not be both judge and party in the suit
+     Covered now with the satirical dust of centuries
+     Created one child for damnation and another for salvation
+     Deadly hatred of Puritans in England and Holland
+     Death rather than life with a false acknowledgment of guilt
+     Denoungced as an obstacle to peace
+     Depths of credulity men in all ages can sink
+     Depths theological party spirit could descend
+     Determined to bring the very name of liberty into contempt
+     Devote himself to his gout and to his fair young wife
+     Disputing the eternal damnation of young children
+     Doctrine of predestination in its sternest and strictest sense
+     Emperor of Japan addressed him as his brother monarch
+     Enemy of all compulsion of the human conscience
+     Epernon, the true murderer of Henry
+     Estimating his character and judging his judges
+     Everybody should mind his own business
+     Extraordinary capacity for yielding to gentle violence
+     Fate, free will, or absolute foreknowledge
+     Father Cotton, who was only too ready to betray the secrets
+     France was mourning Henry and waiting for Richelieu
+     Furious mob set upon the house of Rem Bischop
+     Give him advice if he asked it, and money when he required
+     Great war of religion and politics was postponed
+     Hardly a sound Protestant policy anywhere but in Holland
+     He was not imperial of aspect on canvas or coin
+     He who would have all may easily lose all
+     He who spreads the snare always tumbles into the ditch himself
+     He was a sincere bigot
+     He that stands let him see that he does not fall
+     Heidelberg Catechism were declared to be infallible
+     Highborn demagogues in that as in every age affect adulation
+     History has not too many really important and emblematic men
+     Human nature in its meanness and shame
+     I know how to console myself
+     I hope and I fear
+     If he has deserved it, let them strike off his head
+     Impatience is often on the part of the non-combatants
+     Implication there was much, of assertion very little
+     In this he was much behind his age or before it
+     Intense bigotry of conviction
+     International friendship, the self-interest of each
+     It had not yet occurred to him that he was married
+     It was the true religion, and there was none other
+     James of England, who admired, envied, and hated Henry
+     Jealousy, that potent principle
+     Jesuit Mariana--justifying the killing of excommunicated kings
+     John Robinson
+     King who thought it furious madness to resist the enemy
+     King's definite and final intentions, varied from day to day
+     Language which is ever living because it is dead
+     Logic is rarely the quality on which kings pride themselves
+     Louis XIII.
+     Ludicrous gravity
+     Magistracy at that moment seemed to mean the sword
+     Make the very name of man a term of reproach
+     Misery had come not from their being enemies
+     Mockery of negotiation in which nothing could be negotiated
+     More apprehension of fraud than of force
+     More fiercely opposed to each other than to Papists
+     Most detestable verses that even he had ever composed
+     Necessity of deferring to powerful sovereigns
+     Neither kings nor governments are apt to value logic
+     Never lack of fishers in troubled waters
+     No man pretended to think of the State
+     No man can be neutral in civil contentions
+     No synod had a right to claim Netherlanders as slaves
+     None but God to compel me to say more than I choose to say
+     Not his custom nor that of his councillors to go to bed
+     O God! what does man come to!
+     Only true religion
+     Opening an abyss between government and people
+     Opposed the subjection of the magistracy by the priesthood
+     Outdoing himself in dogmatism and inconsistency
+     Partisans wanted not accommodation but victory
+     Party hatred was not yet glutted with the blood it had drunk
+     Philip IV.
+     Pot-valiant hero
+     Power the poison of which it is so difficult to resist
+     Practised successfully the talent of silence
+     Presents of considerable sums of money to the negotiators made
+     Priests shall control the state or the state govern the priests
+     Princes show what they have in them at twenty-five or never
+     Puritanism in Holland was a very different thing from England
+     Putting the cart before the oxen
+     Queen is entirely in the hands of Spain and the priests
+     Rather a wilderness to reign over than a single heretic
+     Religion was made the strumpet of Political Ambition
+     Religious toleration, which is a phrase of insult
+     Resolve to maintain the civil authority over the military
+     Rose superior to his doom and took captivity captive
+     Safest citadel against an invader and a tyrant is distrust
+     Schism in the Church had become a public fact
+     Secure the prizes of war without the troubles and dangers
+     Seemed bent on self-destruction
+     Senectus edam maorbus est
+     She declined to be his procuress
+     Small matter which human folly had dilated into a great one
+     Smooth words, in the plentiful lack of any substantial
+     So much in advance of his time as to favor religious equality
+     Stand between hope and fear
+     Stroke of a broken table knife sharpened on a carriage wheel
+     Successful in this step, he is ready for greater ones
+     Tempest of passion and prejudice
+     That he tries to lay the fault on us is pure malice
+     That cynical commerce in human lives
+     The effect of energetic, uncompromising calumny
+     The evils resulting from a confederate system of government
+     The vehicle is often prized more than the freight
+     The voice of slanderers
+     The truth in shortest about matters of importance
+     The assassin, tortured and torn by four horses
+     The defence of the civil authority against the priesthood
+     The magnitude of this wonderful sovereign's littleness
+     The Catholic League and the Protestant Union
+     Their own roofs were not quite yet in a blaze
+     Theological hatred was in full blaze throughout the country
+     Theology and politics were one
+     There was no use in holding language of authority to him
+     There was but one king in Europe, Henry the Bearnese
+     Therefore now denounced the man whom he had injured
+     They have killed him, 'e ammazato,' cried Concini
+     Things he could tell which are too odious and dreadful
+     Thirty Years' War tread on the heels of the forty years
+     This wonderful sovereign's littleness oppresses the imagination
+     This, then, is the reward of forty years' service to the State
+     To milk, the cow as long as she would give milk
+     To stifle for ever the right of free enquiry
+     To look down upon their inferior and lost fellow creatures
+     Uncouple the dogs and let them run
+     Unimaginable outrage as the most legitimate industry
+     Vows of an eternal friendship of several weeks' duration
+     What could save the House of Austria, the cause of Papacy
+     Whether repentance could effect salvation
+     Whether dead infants were hopelessly damned
+     Whose mutual hatred was now artfully inflamed by partisans
+     William Brewster
+     Wise and honest a man, although he be somewhat longsome
+     Wish to appear learned in matters of which they are ignorant
+     Work of the aforesaid Puritans and a few Jesuits
+     Wrath of the Jesuits at this exercise of legal authority
+     Yes, there are wicked men about
+     Yesterday is the preceptor of To-morrow
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life of John of Barneveld,
+1609-23, Complete, by John Lothrop Motley
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN OF BARNEVELD ***
+
+***** This file should be named 4899.txt or 4899.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/4/8/9/4899/
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/4899.zip b/4899.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..70b02e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/4899.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5599887
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #4899 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4899)
diff --git a/old/jm99v10.txt b/old/jm99v10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a59bfe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/jm99v10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,25989 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook Life of John of Barneveld, 1609-23, Complete
+#99 in our series by John Lothrop Motley
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
+
+This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
+Gutenberg file.  Please do not remove it.  Do not change or edit the
+header without written permission.
+
+Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
+eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file.  Included is
+important information about your specific rights and restrictions in
+how the file may be used.  You can also find out about how to make a
+donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**EBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
+
+
+Title: The Life of John of Barneveld, 1609-23, Complete
+
+Author: John Lothrop Motley
+
+Release Date: January, 2004  [EBook #4899]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on April 25, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF JOHN OF BARNEVELD, 1609-23 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
+file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND
+
+WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR
+
+By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+
+1880
+
+
+
+MOTLEY'S HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS, Project Gutenberg Edition, Volume 99
+
+THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JOHN OF BARNEVELD, 1609-1623, Complete
+
+
+
+PREFACE:
+
+These volumes make a separate work in themselves.  They form also the
+natural sequel to the other histories already published by the Author,
+as well as the necessary introduction to that concluding portion of his
+labours which he has always desired to lay before the public; a History
+of the Thirty Years' War.
+
+For the two great wars which successively established the independence
+of Holland and the disintegration of Germany are in reality but one;
+a prolonged Tragedy of Eighty Years.  The brief pause, which in the
+Netherlands was known as the Twelve Years' Truce with Spain, was
+precisely the epoch in which the elements were slowly and certainly
+gathering for the renewal over nearly the whole surface of civilized
+Europe of that immense conflict which for more than forty years had been
+raging within the narrow precincts of the Netherlands.
+
+The causes and character of the two wars were essentially the same.
+There were many changes of persons and of scenery during a struggle which
+lasted for nearly three generations of mankind; yet a natural succession
+both of actors, motives, and events will be observed from the beginning
+to the close.
+
+The designs of Charles V. to establish universal monarchy, which he had
+passionately followed for a lifetime through a series of colossal crimes
+against humanity and of private misdeeds against individuals, such as it
+has rarely been permitted to a single despot to perpetrate, had been
+baffled at last.  Disappointed, broken, but even to our own generation
+never completely unveiled, the tyrant had withdrawn from the stage of
+human affairs, leaving his son to carry on the great conspiracy against
+Human Right, independence of nations, liberty of thought, and equality of
+religions, with the additional vigour which sprang from intensity of
+conviction.
+
+For Philip possessed at least that superiority over his father that he
+was a sincere bigot.  In the narrow and gloomy depths of his soul he had
+doubtless persuaded himself that it was necessary for the redemption of
+the human species that the empire of the world should be vested in his
+hands, that Protestantism in all its forms should be extirpated as a
+malignant disease, and that to behead, torture, burn alive, and bury
+alive all heretics who opposed the decree of himself and the Holy Church
+was the highest virtue by which he could merit Heaven.
+
+The father would have permitted Protestantism if Protestantism would have
+submitted to universal monarchy.  There would have been small difficulty
+in the early part of his reign in effecting a compromise between Rome and
+Augsburg, had the gigantic secular ambition of Charles not preferred to
+weaken the Church and to convert conscientious religious reform into
+political mutiny; a crime against him who claimed the sovereignty of
+Christendom.
+
+The materials for the true history of that reign lie in the Archives of
+Spain, Austria, Rome, Venice, and the Netherlands, and in many other
+places.  When out of them one day a complete and authentic narrative
+shall have been constructed, it will be seen how completely the policy of
+Charles foreshadowed and necessitated that of Philip, how logically,
+under the successors of Philip, the Austrian dream of universal empire
+ended in the shattering, in the minute subdivision, and the reduction to
+a long impotence of that Germanic Empire which had really belonged to
+Charles.
+
+Unfortunately the great Republic which, notwithstanding the aid of
+England on the one side and of France on the other, had withstood almost
+single-handed the onslaughts of Spain, now allowed the demon of religious
+hatred to enter into its body at the first epoch of peace, although it
+had successfully exorcised the evil spirit during the long and terrible
+war.
+
+There can be no doubt whatever that the discords within the interior of
+the Dutch Republic during the period of the Truce, and their tragic
+catastrophe, had weakened her purpose and partially paralysed her arm.
+When the noble Commonwealth went forward to the renewed and general
+conflict which succeeded the concentrated one in which it had been the
+chief actor, the effect of those misspent twelve years became apparent.
+
+Indeed the real continuity of the war was scarcely broken by the fitful,
+armistice.  The death of John of Cleve, an event almost simultaneous with
+the conclusion of the Truce, seemed to those gifted with political vision
+the necessary precursor of a new and more general war.
+
+The secret correspondence of Barneveld shows the almost prophetic
+accuracy with which he indicated the course of events and the approach of
+an almost universal conflict, while that tragedy was still in the future,
+and was to be enacted after he had been laid in his bloody grave.  No man
+then living was so accustomed as he was to sweep the political horizon,
+and to estimate the signs and portents of the times.  No statesman was
+left in Europe during the epoch of the Twelve Years' Truce to compare
+with him in experience, breadth of vision, political tact, or
+administrative sagacity.
+
+Imbued with the grand traditions and familiar with the great personages
+of a most heroic epoch; the trusted friend or respected counsellor of
+William the Silent, Henry IV., Elizabeth, and the sages and soldiers on
+whom they leaned; having been employed during an already long lifetime in
+the administration of greatest affairs, he stood alone after the deaths
+of Henry of France and the second Cecil, and the retirement of Sully,
+among the natural leaders of mankind.
+
+To the England of Elizabeth, of Walsingham, Raleigh, and the Cecils, had
+succeeded the Great Britain of James, with his Carrs and Carletons,
+Nauntons, Lakes, and Winwoods.  France, widowed of Henry and waiting for
+Richelieu, lay in the clutches of Concini's, Epernons, and Bouillons,
+bound hand and foot to Spain.  Germany, falling from Rudolph to Matthias,
+saw Styrian Ferdinand in the background ready to shatter the fabric of a
+hundred years of attempted Reformation.  In the Republic of the
+Netherlands were the great soldier and the only remaining statesman of
+the age.  At a moment when the breathing space had been agreed upon
+before the conflict should be renewed; on a wider field than ever,
+between Spanish-Austrian world-empire and independence of the nations;
+between the ancient and only Church and the spirit of religious Equality;
+between popular Right and royal and sacerdotal Despotism; it would have
+been desirable that the soldier and the statesman should stand side by
+side, and that the fortunate Confederacy, gifted with two such champions
+and placed by its own achievements at the very head of the great party of
+resistance, should be true to herself.
+
+These volumes contain a slight and rapid sketch of Barneveld's career up
+to the point at which the Twelve Years' Truce with Spain was signed in
+the year 1609.  In previous works the Author has attempted to assign the
+great Advocate's place as part and parcel of history during the
+continuance of the War for Independence.  During the period of the Truce
+he will be found the central figure.  The history of Europe, especially
+of the Netherlands, Britain, France, and Germany, cannot be thoroughly
+appreciated without a knowledge of the designs, the labours, and the fate
+of Barneveld.
+
+The materials for estimating his character and judging his judges lie in
+the national archives of the land of which he was so long the foremost
+citizen.  But they have not long been accessible.  The letters, state
+papers, and other documents remain unprinted, and have rarely been read.
+M. van Deventer has published three most interesting volumes of the
+Advocate's correspondence, but they reach only to the beginning of 1609.
+He has suspended his labours exactly at the moment when these volumes
+begin.  I have carefully studied however nearly the whole of that
+correspondence, besides a mass of other papers.  The labour is not light,
+for the handwriting of the great Advocate is perhaps the worst that ever
+existed, and the papers, although kept in the admirable order which
+distinguishes the Archives of the Hague, have passed through many hands
+at former epochs before reaching their natural destination in the
+treasure-house of the nation.  Especially the documents connected with
+the famous trial were for a long time hidden from mortal view, for
+Barneveld's judges had bound themselves by oath to bury the proceedings
+out of sight.  And the concealment lasted for centuries.  Very recently
+a small portion of those papers has been published by the Historical
+Society of Utrecht.  The "Verhooren," or Interrogatories of the Judges,
+and the replies of Barneveld, have thus been laid before the reading
+public of Holland, while within the last two years the distinguished and
+learned historian, Professor Fruin, has edited the "Verhooren" of Hugo
+Grotius.
+
+But papers like these, important as they are, make but a slender portion
+of the material out of which a judgment concerning these grave events can
+be constructed.  I do not therefore offer an apology for the somewhat
+copious extracts which I have translated and given in these volumes from
+the correspondence of Barneveld and from other manuscripts of great
+value--most of them in the Royal Archives of Holland and Belgium--which
+are unknown to the public.
+
+I have avoided as much as possible any dealings with the theological
+controversies so closely connected with the events which I have attempted
+to describe.  This work aims at being a political study.  The subject is
+full of lessons, examples, and warnings for the inhabitants of all free
+states.  Especially now that the republican system of government is
+undergoing a series of experiments with more or less success in one
+hemisphere--while in our own land it is consolidated, powerful, and
+unchallenged--will the conflicts between the spirits of national
+centralization and of provincial sovereignty, and the struggle between
+the church, the sword, and the magistracy for supremacy in a free
+commonwealth, as revealed in the first considerable republic of modern
+history, be found suggestive of deep reflection.
+
+Those who look in this work for a history of the Synod of Dordtrecht will
+look in vain.  The Author has neither wish nor power to grapple with the
+mysteries and passions which at that epoch possessed so many souls.  The
+Assembly marks a political period.  Its political aspects have been
+anxiously examined, but beyond the ecclesiastical threshold there has
+been no attempt to penetrate.
+
+It was necessary for my purpose to describe in some detail the relations
+of Henry IV. with the Dutch Republic during the last and most pregnant
+year of his life, which makes the first of the present history.  These
+relations are of European importance, and the materials for appreciating
+them are of unexpected richness, in the Dutch and Belgian Archives.
+
+Especially the secret correspondence, now at the Hague, of that very able
+diplomatist Francis Aerssens with Barneveld during the years 1609, 1610,
+and 1611, together with many papers at Brussels, are full of vital
+importance.
+
+They throw much light both on the vast designs which filled the brain of
+Henry at this fatal epoch and on his extraordinary infatuation for the
+young Princess of Conde by which they were traversed, and which was
+productive of such widespread political anal tragical results.  This
+episode forms a necessary portion of my theme, and has therefore been set
+forth from original sources.
+
+I am under renewed obligations to my friend M. Gachard, the eminent
+publicist and archivist of Belgium, for his constant and friendly offices
+to me (which I have so often experienced before), while studying the
+documents under his charge relating to this epoch; especially the secret
+correspondence of Archduke Albert with Philip III, and his ministers, and
+with Pecquius, the Archduke's agent at Paris.
+
+It is also a great pleasure to acknowledge the unceasing courtesy and
+zealous aid rendered me during my renewed studies in the Archives at the
+Hague--lasting through nearly two years--by the Chief Archivist, M. van
+den Berg, and the gentlemen connected with that institution, especially
+M. de Jonghe and M. Hingman, without whose aid it would have been
+difficult for me to decipher and to procure copies of the almost
+illegible holographs of Barneveld.
+
+I must also thank M. van Deventer for communicating copies of some
+curious manuscripts relating to my subject, some from private archives in
+Holland, and others from those of Simancas.
+
+A single word only remains to be said in regard to the name of the
+statesman whose career I have undertaken to describe.
+
+His proper appellation and that by which he has always been known in his
+own country is Oldenbarneveld, but in his lifetime and always in history
+from that time to this he has been called Barneveld in English as well as
+French, and this transformation, as it were, of the name has become so
+settled a matter that after some hesitation it has been adopted in the
+present work.
+
+The Author would take this opportunity of expressing his gratitude for
+the indulgence with which his former attempts to illustrate an important
+period of European history have been received by the public, and his
+anxious hope that the present volumes may be thought worthy of attention.
+They are the result at least of severe and conscientious labour at the
+original sources of history, but the subject is so complicated and
+difficult that it may well be feared that the ability to depict and
+unravel is unequal to the earnestness with which the attempt has been
+made.
+
+LONDON, 1873.
+
+
+
+The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, v1, 1609
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+     John of Barneveld the Founder of the Commonwealth of the United
+     Provinces--Maurice of Orange Stadholder, but Servant to the States-
+     General--The Union of Utrecht maintained--Barneveld makes a
+     Compromise between Civil Functionaries and Church Officials--
+     Embassies to France, England, and to Venice--the Appointment of
+     Arminius to be Professor of Theology at Leyden creates Dissension--
+     The Catholic League opposed by the Great Protestant Union--Death of
+     the Duke of Cleve and Struggle for his Succession--The Elector of
+     Brandenburg and Palatine of Neuburg hold the Duchies at Barneveld's
+     Advice against the Emperor, though having Rival Claims themselves--
+     Negotiations with the King of France--He becomes the Ally of the
+     States-General to Protect the Possessory Princes, and prepares for
+     war.
+
+I propose to retrace the history of a great statesman's career.  That
+statesman's name, but for the dark and tragic scenes with which it was
+ultimately associated, might after the lapse of two centuries and a half
+have faded into comparative oblivion, so impersonal and shadowy his
+presence would have seemed upon the great European theatre where he was
+so long a chief actor, and where his efforts and his achievements were
+foremost among those productive of long enduring and widespread results.
+
+There is no doubt whatever that John of Barneveld, Advocate and Seal
+Keeper of the little province of Holland during forty years of as
+troubled and fertile an epoch as any in human history, was second to none
+of his contemporary statesmen.  Yet the singular constitution and
+historical position of the republic whose destinies he guided and the
+peculiar and abnormal office which he held combined to cast a veil over
+his individuality.  The ever-teeming brain, the restless almost
+omnipresent hand, the fertile pen, the eloquent and ready tongue, were
+seen, heard, and obeyed by the great European public, by the monarchs,
+statesmen, and warriors of the time, at many critical moments of history,
+but it was not John of Barneveld that spoke to the world.  Those "high
+and puissant Lords my masters the States-General" personified the young
+but already majestic republic.  Dignified, draped, and concealed by that
+overshadowing title the informing and master spirit performed its never
+ending task.
+
+Those who study the enormous masses of original papers in the archives of
+the country will be amazed to find how the penmanship, most difficult to
+decipher, of the Advocate meets them at every turn.  Letters to monarchs,
+generals, ambassadors, resolutions of councils, of sovereign assemblies,
+of trading corporations, of great Indian companies, legal and historical
+disquisitions of great depth and length on questions agitating Europe,
+constitutional arguments, drafts of treaties among the leading powers of
+the world, instructions to great commissions, plans for European
+campaigns, vast combinations covering the world, alliances of empire,
+scientific expeditions and discoveries--papers such as these covered now
+with the satirical dust of centuries, written in the small, crabbed,
+exasperating characters which make Barneveld's handwriting almost
+cryptographic, were once, when fairly engrossed and sealed with the great
+seal of the haughty burgher-aristocracy, the documents which occupied the
+close attention of the cabinets of Christendom.
+
+It is not unfrequent to find four or five important despatches compressed
+almost in miniature upon one sheet of gigantic foolscap.  It is also
+curious to find each one of these rough drafts conscientiously beginning
+in the statesman's own hand with the elaborate phrases of compliment
+belonging to the epoch such as "Noble, strenuous, severe, highly
+honourable, very learned, very discreet, and very wise masters," and
+ending with "May the Lord God Almighty eternally preserve you and hold
+you in His holy keeping in this world and for ever"--decorations which
+one might have thought it safe to leave to be filled in by the secretary
+or copying clerk.
+
+Thus there have been few men at any period whose lives have been more
+closely identical than his with a national history.  There have been few
+great men in any history whose names have become less familiar to the
+world, and lived less in the mouths of posterity.  Yet there can be no
+doubt that if William the Silent was the founder of the independence of
+the United Provinces Barneveld was the founder of the Commonwealth
+itself.  He had never the opportunity, perhaps he might have never had
+the capacity, to make such prodigious sacrifices in the cause of country
+as the great prince had done.  But he had served his country strenuously
+from youth to old age with an abiding sense of duty, a steadiness of
+purpose, a broad vision, a firm grasp, and an opulence of resource such
+as not one of his compatriots could even pretend to rival.
+
+Had that country of which he was so long the first citizen maintained
+until our own day the same proportionate position among the empires of
+Christendom as it held in the seventeenth century, the name of John of
+Barneveld would have perhaps been as familiar to all men as it is at this
+moment to nearly every inhabitant of the Netherlands.  Even now political
+passion is almost as ready to flame forth either in ardent affection or
+enthusiastic hatred as if two centuries and a half had not elapsed since
+his death.  His name is so typical of a party, a polity, and a faith, so
+indelibly associated with a great historical cataclysm, as to render it
+difficult even for the grave, the conscientious, the learned, the
+patriotic of his own compatriots to speak of him with absolute
+impartiality.
+
+A foreigner who loves and admires all that is great and noble in the
+history of that famous republic and can have no hereditary bias as to its
+ecclesiastical or political theories may at least attempt the task with
+comparative coldness, although conscious of inability to do thorough
+justice to a most complex subject.
+
+In former publications devoted to Netherland history I have endeavoured
+to trace the course of events of which the life and works of the Advocate
+were a vital ingredient down to the period when Spain after more than
+forty years of hard fighting virtually acknowledged the independence of
+the Republic and concluded with her a truce of twelve years.
+
+That convention was signed in the spring of 1609.  The ten ensuing years
+in Europe were comparatively tranquil, but they were scarcely to be
+numbered among the full and fruitful sheaves of a pacific epoch.  It was
+a pause, a breathing spell during which the sulphurous clouds which had
+made the atmosphere of Christendom poisonous for nearly half a century
+had sullenly rolled away, while at every point of the horizon they were
+seen massing themselves anew in portentous and ever accumulating
+strength.  At any moment the faint and sickly sunshine in which poor
+exhausted Humanity was essaying a feeble twitter of hope as it plumed
+itself for a peaceful flight might be again obscured.  To us of a remote
+posterity the momentary division of epochs seems hardly discernible.  So
+rapidly did that fight of Demons which we call the Thirty Years' War
+tread on the heels of the forty years' struggle for Dutch Independence
+which had just been suspended that we are accustomed to think and speak
+of the Eighty Years' War as one pure, perfect, sanguinary whole.
+
+And indeed the Tragedy which was soon to sweep solemnly across Europe was
+foreshadowed in the first fitful years of peace.  The throb of the
+elementary forces already shook the soil of Christendom.  The fantastic
+but most significant conflict in the territories of the dead Duke of
+Clove reflected the distant and gigantic war as in a mirage.  It will be
+necessary to direct the reader's attention at the proper moment to that
+episode, for it was one in which the beneficent sagacity of Barneveld was
+conspicuously exerted in the cause of peace and conservation.  Meantime
+it is not agreeable to reflect that this brief period of nominal and
+armed peace which the Republic had conquered after nearly two generations
+of warfare was employed by her in tearing her own flesh.  The heroic
+sword which had achieved such triumphs in the cause of freedom could have
+been bitter employed than in an attempt at political suicide.
+
+In a picture of the last decade of Barneveld's eventful life his
+personality may come more distinctly forward perhaps than in previous
+epochs.  It will however be difficult to disentangle a single thread from
+the great historical tapestry of the Republic and of Europe in which his
+life and achievements are interwoven.  He was a public man in the fullest
+sense of the word, and without his presence and influence the record of
+Holland, France, Spain, Britain, and Germany might have been essentially
+modified.
+
+The Republic was so integral a part of that system which divided Europe
+into two great hostile camps according to creeds rather than frontiers
+that the history of its foremost citizen touches at every point the
+general history of Christendom.
+
+The great peculiarity of the Dutch constitution at this epoch was that no
+principle was absolutely settled.  In throwing off a foreign tyranny and
+successfully vindicating national independence the burghers and nobles
+had not had leisure to lay down any organic law.  Nor had the day for
+profound investigation of the political or social contract arrived.
+Men dealt almost exclusively with facts, and when the facts arranged
+themselves illogically and incoherently the mischief was grave and
+difficult to remedy.  It is not a trifling inconvenience for an organized
+commonwealth to be in doubt as to where, in whom, and of what nature is
+its sovereignty.  Yet this was precisely the condition of the United
+Netherlands.  To the eternal world so dazzling were the reputation and
+the achievements of their great captain that he was looked upon by many
+as the legitimate chief of the state and doubtless friendly monarchs
+would have cordially welcomed him into their brotherhood.
+
+During the war he had been surrounded by almost royal state.  Two hundred
+officers lived daily at his table.  Great nobles and scions of sovereign
+houses were his pupils or satellites.  The splendour of military
+despotism and the awe inspired by his unquestioned supremacy in what was
+deemed the greatest of all sciences invested the person of Maurice of
+Nassau with a grandeur which many a crowned potentate might envy.  His
+ample appointments united with the spoils of war provided him with almost
+royal revenues, even before the death of his elder brother Philip William
+had placed in his hands the principality and wealthy possessions of
+Orange.  Hating contradiction, arbitrary by instinct and by military
+habit, impatient of criticism, and having long acknowledged no master in
+the chief business of state, he found himself at the conclusion of the
+truce with his great occupation gone, and, although generously provided
+for by the treasury of the Republic, yet with an income proportionately
+limited.
+
+Politics and theology were fields in which he had hardly served an
+apprenticeship, and it was possible that when he should step forward as
+a master in those complicated and difficult pursuits, soon to absorb the
+attention of the Commonwealth and the world, it might appear that war
+was not the only science that required serious preliminary studies.
+
+Meantime he found himself not a king, not the master of a nominal
+republic, but the servant of the States-General, and the limited
+stadholder of five out of seven separate provinces.
+
+And the States-General were virtually John of Barneveld.  Could
+antagonism be more sharply defined?  Jealousy, that potent principle
+which controls the regular movements and accounts for the aberrations of
+humanity in widest spheres as well as narrowest circles far more
+generally and conclusively than philosophers or historians have been
+willing to admit, began forthwith to manifest its subtle and irresistible
+influence.
+
+And there were not to be wanting acute and dangerous schemers who saw
+their profit in augmenting its intensity.
+
+The Seven Provinces, when the truce of twelve years had been signed, were
+neither exhausted nor impoverished.  Yet they had just emerged from a
+forty years' conflict such as no people in human history had ever waged
+against a foreign tyranny.  They had need to repose and recruit, but they
+stood among the foremost great powers of the day.  It is not easy in
+imagination to thrust back the present leading empires of the earth into
+the contracted spheres of their not remote past.  But to feel how a
+little confederacy of seven provinces loosely tied together by an ill-
+defined treaty could hold so prominent and often so controlling a place
+in the European system of the seventeenth century, we must remember that
+there was then no Germany, no Russia, no Italy, no United States of
+America, scarcely even a Great Britain in the sense which belongs to that
+mighty empire now.
+
+France, Spain, England, the Pope, and the Emperor were the leading powers
+with which the Netherlands were daily called on to solve great problems
+and try conclusions; the study of political international equilibrium,
+now rapidly and perhaps fortunately becoming one of the lost arts, being
+then the most indispensable duty of kings and statesmen.
+
+Spain and France, which had long since achieved for themselves the
+political union of many independent kingdoms and states into which they
+had been divided were the most considerable powers and of necessity
+rivals.  Spain, or rather the House of Austria divided into its two great
+branches, still pursued its persistent and by no means fantastic dream of
+universal monarchy.  Both Spain and France could dispose of somewhat
+larger resources absolutely, although not relatively, than the Seven
+Provinces, while at least trebling them in population.  The yearly
+revenue of Spain after deduction of its pledged resources was perhaps
+equal to a million sterling, and that of France with the same reservation
+was about as much.  England had hardly been able to levy and make up a
+yearly income of more than L600,000 or L700,000 at the end of Elizabeth's
+reign or in the first years of James, while the Netherlands had often
+proved themselves capable of furnishing annually ten or twelve millions
+of florins, which would be the equivalent of nearly a million sterling.
+
+The yearly revenues of the whole monarchy of the Imperial house of
+Habsburg can scarcely be stated at a higher figure than L350,000.
+
+Thus the political game--for it was a game--was by no means a desperate
+one for the Netherlands, nor the resources of the various players so
+unequally distributed as at first sight it might appear.
+
+The emancipation of the Provinces from the grasp of Spain and the
+establishment by them of a commonwealth, for that epoch a very free one,
+and which contained within itself the germs of a larger liberty,
+religious, political, and commercial, than had yet been known, was
+already one of the most considerable results of the Reformation.  The
+probability of its continued and independent existence was hardly
+believed in by potentate or statesman outside its own borders, and had
+not been very long a decided article of faith even within them.  The
+knotty problem of an acknowledgment of that existence, the admission of
+the new-born state into the family of nations, and a temporary peace
+guaranteed by two great powers, had at last been solved mainly by the
+genius of Barneveld working amid many disadvantages and against great
+obstructions.  The truce had been made, and it now needed all the skill,
+coolness, and courage of a practical and original statesman to conduct
+the affairs of the Confederacy.  The troubled epoch of peace was even now
+heaving with warlike emotions, and was hardly less stormy than the war
+which had just been suspended.
+
+The Republic was like a raft loosely strung together, floating almost on
+a level of the ocean, and often half submerged, but freighted with
+inestimable treasures for itself and the world.  It needed an unsleeping
+eye and a powerful brain to conduct her over the quicksands and through
+the whirlpools of an unmapped and intricate course.
+
+The sovereignty of the country so far as its nature could be
+satisfactorily analysed seemed to be scattered through, and inherent in
+each one of, the multitudinous boards of magistracy--close corporations,
+self-elected--by which every city was governed.  Nothing could be more
+preposterous.  Practically, however, these boards were represented by
+deputies in each of the seven provincial assemblies, and these again sent
+councillors from among their number to the general assembly which was
+that of their High Mightinesses the Lords States-General.
+
+The Province of Holland, being richer and more powerful than all its six
+sisters combined, was not unwilling to impose a supremacy which on the
+whole was practically conceded by the rest.  Thus the Union of Utrecht
+established in 1579 was maintained for want of anything better as the
+foundation of the Commonwealth.
+
+The Advocate and Keeper of the Great Seal of that province was therefore
+virtually prime minister, president, attorney-general, finance minister,
+and minister of foreign affairs of the whole republic.  This was
+Barneveld's position.  He took the lead in the deliberations both of the
+States of Holland and the States-General, moved resolutions, advocated
+great measures of state, gave heed to their execution, collected the
+votes, summed up the proceedings, corresponded with and instructed
+ambassadors, received and negotiated with foreign ministers, besides
+directing and holding in his hands the various threads of the home
+policy and the rapidly growing colonial system of the Republic.
+
+All this work Barneveld had been doing for thirty years.
+
+The Reformation was by no mans assured even in the lands where it had
+at first made the most essential progress.  But the existence of the new
+commonwealth depended on the success of that great movement which had
+called it into being.  Losing ground in France, fluctuating in England,
+Protestantism was apparently more triumphant in vast territories where
+the ancient Church was one day to recover its mastery.  Of the population
+of Bohemia, there were perhaps ten Protestants to one Papist, while in
+the United Netherlands at least one-third of the people were still
+attached to the Catholic faith.
+
+The great religious struggle in Bohemia and other dominions of the
+Habsburg family was fast leading to a war of which no man could even
+imagine the horrors or foresee the vast extent.  The Catholic League and
+the Protestant Union were slowly arranging Europe into two mighty
+confederacies.
+
+They were to give employment year after year to millions of mercenary
+freebooters who were to practise murder, pillage, and every imaginable
+and unimaginable outrage as the most legitimate industry that could
+occupy mankind.  The Holy Empire which so ingeniously combined the worst
+characteristics of despotism and republicanism kept all Germany and half
+Europe in the turmoil of a perpetual presidential election.  A theatre
+where trivial personages and graceless actors performed a tragi-comedy of
+mingled folly, intrigue, and crime, and where earnestness and vigour were
+destined to be constantly baffled, now offered the principal stage for
+the entertainment and excitement of Christendom.
+
+There was but one king in Europe, Henry the Bearnese.  The men who sat on
+the thrones in Madrid, Vienna, London, would have lived and died unknown
+but for the crowns they wore, and while there were plenty of bustling
+politicians here and there in Christendom, there were not many statesmen.
+
+Among them there was no stronger man than John of Barneveld, and no man
+had harder or more complicated work to do.
+
+Born in Amersfoort in 1547, of the ancient and knightly house of
+Oldenbarneveldt, of patrician blood through all his ancestors both male
+and female, he was not the heir to large possessions, and was a diligent
+student and hardworking man from youth upward.  He was not wont to boast
+of his pedigree until in later life, being assailed by vilest slander,
+all his kindred nearest or most remote being charged with every possible
+and unmentionable crime, and himself stigmatized as sprung from the
+lowest kennels of humanity--as if thereby his private character and
+public services could be more legitimately blackened--he was stung into
+exhibiting to the world the purity and antiquity of his escutcheon, and a
+roll of respectably placed, well estated, and authentically noble, if not
+at all illustrious, forefathers in his country's records of the previous
+centuries.
+
+Without an ancestor at his back he might have valued himself still more
+highly on the commanding place he held in the world by right divine of
+intellect, but as the father of lies seemed to have kept his creatures so
+busy with the Barneveld genealogy, it was not amiss for the statesman
+once for all to make the truth known.
+
+His studies in the universities of Holland, France, Italy, and Germany
+had been profound.  At an early age he was one of the first civilians of
+the time.  His manhood being almost contemporary with the great war of
+freedom, he had served as a volunteer and at his own expense through
+several campaigns, having nearly lost his life in the disastrous attempt
+to relieve the siege of Haarlem, and having been so disabled by sickness
+and exposure at the heroic leaguer of Leyden as to have been deprived of
+the joy of witnessing its triumphant conclusion.
+
+Successfully practising his profession afterwards before the tribunals of
+Holland, he had been called at the comparatively early age of twenty-nine
+to the important post of Chief Pensionary of Rotterdam.  So long as
+William the Silent lived, that great prince was all in all to his
+country, and Barneveld was proud and happy to be among the most
+trusted and assiduous of his counsellors.
+
+When the assassination of William seemed for an instant to strike the
+Republic with paralysis, Barneveld was foremost among the statesmen of
+Holland to spring forward and help to inspire it with renewed energy.
+
+The almost completed negotiations for conferring the sovereignty, not of
+the Confederacy, but of the Province of Holland, upon the Prince had been
+abruptly brought to an end by his death.  To confer that sovereign
+countship on his son Maurice, then a lad of eighteen and a student at
+Leyden, would have seemed to many at so terrible a crisis an act of
+madness, although Barneveld had been willing to suggest and promote the
+scheme.  The confederates under his guidance soon hastened however to lay
+the sovereignty, and if not the sovereignty, the protectorship, of all
+the provinces at the feet first of England and then of France.
+
+Barneveld was at the head of the embassy, and indeed was the
+indispensable head of all important, embassies to each of those two
+countries throughout all this portion of his career.  Both monarchs
+refused, almost spurned, the offered crown in which was involved a war
+with the greatest power in the world, with no compensating dignity or
+benefit, as it was thought, beside.
+
+Then Elizabeth, although declining the sovereignty, promised assistance
+and sent the Earl of Leicester as governor-general at the head of a
+contingent of English troops.  Precisely to prevent the consolidation
+thus threatened of the Provinces into one union, a measure which had been
+attempted more than once in the Burgundian epoch, and always successfully
+resisted by the spirit of provincial separatism, Barneveld now proposed
+and carried the appointment of Maurice of Nassau to the stadholdership of
+Holland.  This was done against great opposition and amid fierce debate.
+Soon afterwards Barneveld was vehemently urged by the nobles and regents
+of the cities of Holland to accept the post of Advocate of that province.
+After repeatedly declining the arduous and most responsible office, he
+was at last induced to accept it.  He did it under the remarkable
+condition that in case any negotiation should be undertaken for the
+purpose of bringing back the Province of Holland under the dominion of
+the King of Spain, he should be considered as from that moment relieved
+from the service.
+
+His brother Elias Barneveld succeeded him as Pensionary of Rotterdam, and
+thenceforth the career of the Advocate is identical with the history of
+the Netherlands.  Although a native of Utrecht, he was competent to
+exercise such functions in Holland, a special and ancient convention
+between those two provinces allowing the citizens of either to enjoy
+legal and civic rights in both.  Gradually, without intrigue or
+inordinate ambition, but from force of circumstances and the commanding
+power of the man, the native authority stamped upon his forehead, he
+became the political head of the Confederacy.  He created and maintained
+a system of public credit absolutely marvellous in the circumstances, by
+means of which an otherwise impossible struggle was carried to a
+victorious end.
+
+When the stadholderate of the provinces of Gelderland, Utrecht, and
+Overyssel became vacant, it was again Barneveld's potent influence and
+sincere attachment to the House of Nassau that procured the election of
+Maurice to those posts.  Thus within six years after his father's death
+the youthful soldier who had already given proof of his surpassing
+military genius had become governor, commander-in-chief, and high
+admiral, of five of the seven provinces constituting the Confederacy.
+
+At about the same period the great question of Church and State, which
+Barneveld had always felt to be among the vital problems of the age, and
+on which his opinions were most decided, came up for partial solution.
+It would have been too much to expect the opinion of any statesman to
+be so much in advance of his time as to favor religious equality.
+Toleration of various creeds, including the Roman Catholic, so far as
+abstinence from inquisition into consciences and private parlours could
+be called toleration, was secured, and that was a considerable step in
+advance of the practice of the sixteenth century.  Burning, hanging, and
+burying alive of culprits guilty of another creed than the dominant one
+had become obsolete.  But there was an established creed--the Reformed
+religion, founded on the Netherland Confession and the Heidelberg
+Catechism.  And there was one established principle then considered
+throughout Europe the grand result of the Reformation; "Cujus regio ejus
+religio;" which was in reality as impudent an invasion of human right as
+any heaven-born dogma of Infallibility.  The sovereign of a country,
+having appropriated the revenues of the ancient church, prescribed his
+own creed to his subjects.  In the royal conscience were included the
+million consciences of his subjects.  The inevitable result in a country
+like the Netherlands, without a personal sovereign, was a struggle
+between the new church and the civil government for mastery.  And at this
+period, and always in Barneveld's opinion, the question of dogma was
+subordinate to that of church government.  That there should be no
+authority over the King had been settled in England.
+
+Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and afterwards James, having become popes in
+their own realm, had no great hostility to, but rather an affection for,
+ancient dogma and splendid ceremonial.  But in the Seven Provinces, even
+as in France, Germany, and Switzerland, the reform where it had been
+effected at all had been more thorough, and there was little left of
+Popish pomp or aristocratic hierarchy.  Nothing could be severer than the
+simplicity of the Reformed Church, nothing more imperious than its dogma,
+nothing more infallible than its creed.  It was the true religion, and
+there was none other.  But to whom belonged the ecclesiastical edifices,
+the splendid old minsters in the cities--raised by the people's confiding
+piety and the purchased remission of their sins in a bygone age--and the
+humbler but beautiful parish churches in every town and village?  To the
+State; said Barneveld, speaking for government; to the community
+represented by the states of the provinces, the magistracies of the
+cities and municipalities.  To the Church itself, the one true church
+represented by its elders, and deacons, and preachers, was the reply.
+
+And to whom belonged the right of prescribing laws and ordinances of
+public worship, of appointing preachers, church servants, schoolmasters,
+sextons?  To the Holy Ghost inspiring the Class and the Synod, said the
+Church.
+
+To the civil authority, said the magistrates, by which the churches are
+maintained, and the salaries of the ecclesiastics paid.  The states of
+Holland are as sovereign as the kings of England or Denmark, the electors
+of Saxony or Brandenburg, the magistrates of Zurich or Basel or other
+Swiss cantons.  "Cujus regio ejus religio."
+
+In 1590 there was a compromise under the guidance of Barneveld.  It was
+agreed that an appointing board should be established composed of civil
+functionaries and church officials in equal numbers.  Thus should the
+interests of religion and of education be maintained.
+
+The compromise was successful enough during the war.  External pressure
+kept down theological passion, and there were as yet few symptoms of
+schism in the dominant church.  But there was to come a time when the
+struggle between church and government was to break forth with an
+intensity and to rage to an extent which no man at that moment could
+imagine.
+
+Towards the end of the century Henry IV. made peace with Spain.  It was a
+trying moment for the Provinces.  Barneveld was again sent forth on an
+embassy to the King.  The cardinal point in his policy, as it had ever
+been in that of William the Silent, was to maintain close friendship with
+France, whoever might be its ruler.  An alliance between that kingdom
+and Spain would be instantaneous ruin to the Republic.  With the French
+and English sovereigns united with the Provinces, the cause of the
+Reformation might triumph, the Spanish world-empire be annihilated,
+national independence secured.
+
+Henry assured the Ambassador that the treaty of Vervins was
+indispensable, but that he would never desert his old allies.
+In proof of this, although he had just bound himself to Spain to give no
+assistance to the Provinces, open or secret, he would furnish them with
+thirteen hundred thousand crowns, payable at intervals during four years.
+He was under great obligations to his good friends the States, he said,
+and nothing in the treaty forbade him to pay his debts.
+
+It was at this period too that Barneveld was employed by the King to
+attend to certain legal and other private business for which he professed
+himself too poor at the moment to compensate him.  There seems to
+have been nothing in the usages of the time or country to make the
+transaction, innocent in itself, in any degree disreputable.  The King
+promised at some future clay, when he should be more in funds, to pay him
+a liberal fee.  Barneveld, who a dozen years afterwards received 20,000
+florins for his labour, professed that he would much rather have had one
+thousand at the time.
+
+Thence the Advocate, accompanied by his colleague, Justinus de Nassau,
+proceeded to England, where they had many stormy interviews with
+Elizabeth.  The Queen swore with many an oath that she too would make
+peace with Philip, recommended the Provinces to do the same thing with
+submission to their ancient tyrant, and claimed from the States immediate
+payment of one million sterling in satisfaction of their old debts to
+her.  It would have been as easy for them at that moment to pay a
+thousand million.  It was at last agreed that the sum of the debt should
+be fixed at L800,000, and that the cautionary towns should be held in
+Elizabeth's hands by English troops until all the debt should be
+discharged.  Thus England for a long time afterwards continued to regard
+itself, as in a measure the sovereign and proprietor of the Confederacy,
+and Barneveld then and there formed the resolve to relieve the country of
+the incubus, and to recover those cautionary towns and fortresses at the
+earliest possible moment.  So long as foreign soldiers commanded by
+military governors existed on the soil of the Netherlands, they could
+hardly account themselves independent.  Besides, there was the perpetual
+and horrid nightmare, that by a sudden pacification between Spain and
+England those important cities, keys to the country's defence, might be
+handed over to their ancient tyrant.
+
+Elizabeth had been pacified at last, however, by the eloquence of the
+Ambassador.  "I will assist you even if you were up to the neck in
+water," she said.  "Jusque la," she added, pointing to her chin.
+
+Five years later Barneveld, for the fifth time at the head of a great
+embassy, was sent to England to congratulate James on his accession.
+It was then and there that he took measure of the monarch with whom he
+was destined to have many dealings, and who was to exert so baleful an
+influence on his career.  At last came the time when it was felt that
+peace between Spain and her revolted provinces might be made.  The
+conservation of their ancient laws, privileges, and charters, the
+independence of the States, and included therein the freedom to establish
+the Reformed religion, had been secured by forty years of fighting.
+
+The honour of Spain was saved by a conjunction.  She agreed to treat
+with her old dependencies "as" with states over which she had no
+pretensions.  Through virtue of an "as," a truce after two years'
+negotiation, perpetually traversed and secretly countermined by the
+military party under the influence of Maurice, was carried by the
+determination of Barneveld.  The great objects of the war had been
+secured.  The country was weary of nearly half a century of bloodshed.
+It was time to remember that there could be such a condition as Peace.
+
+The treaty was signed, ratifications exchanged, and the usual presents of
+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.
+
+Even at the court of the best friend of the Republic, the French king,
+men looked coldly at the upstart commonwealth.  Francis Aerssens, the
+keen and accomplished minister of the States, resident in Paris for many
+years, was received as ambassador after the truce with all the ceremonial
+befitting the highest rank in the diplomatic service; yet Henry could not
+yet persuade himself to look upon the power accrediting him as a
+thoroughly organized commonwealth.
+
+The English ambassador asked the King if he meant to continue his aid and
+assistance to the States during the truce.  "Yes," answered Henry.
+
+"And a few years beyond it?"
+
+"No.  I do not wish to offend the King of Spain from mere gaiety of
+heart."
+
+"But they are free," replied the Ambassador; "the King of Spain could
+have no cause for offence."
+
+"They are free," said the King, "but not sovereign."--"Judge then," wrote
+Aerssens to Barneveld, "how we shall be with the King of Spain at the end
+of our term when our best friends make this distinction among themselves
+to our disadvantage.  They insist on making a difference between liberty
+and sovereignty; considering liberty as a mean term between servitude and
+sovereignty."
+
+"You would do well," continued the Dutch ambassador, "to use the word
+'sovereignty' on all occasions instead of 'liberty.'"  The hint was
+significant and the advice sound.
+
+The haughty republic of Venice, too, with its "golden Book" and its
+pedigree of a thousand years, looked askance at the republic of yesterday
+rising like herself out of lagunes and sand banks, and affecting to place
+herself side by side with emperors, kings, and the lion of St. Mark.  But
+the all-accomplished council of that most serene commonwealth had far too
+much insight and too wide experience in political combinations to make
+the blunder of yielding to this aristocratic sentiment.
+
+The natural enemy of the Pope, of Spain, of Austria, must of necessity
+be the friend of Venice, and it was soon thought highly desirable to
+intimate half officially that a legation from the States-General to the
+Queen of the Adriatic, announcing the conclusion of the Twelve Years'
+Truce, would be extremely well received.
+
+The hint was given by the Venetian ambassador at Paris to Francis
+Aerssens, who instantly recommended van der Myle, son-in-law of
+Barneveld, as a proper personage to be entrusted with this important
+mission.  At this moment an open breach had almost occurred between Spain
+and Venice, and the Spanish ambassador at Paris, Don Pedro de Toledo,
+naturally very irate with Holland, Venice, and even with France, was
+vehement in his demonstrations.  The arrogant Spaniard had for some time
+been employed in an attempt to negotiate a double marriage between the
+Dauphin and the eldest daughter of Philip III., and between the eldest
+son of that king and the Princess Elizabeth of France.  An indispensable
+but secret condition of this negotiation was the absolute renunciation by
+France of its alliance and friendly relations with the United Provinces.
+The project was in truth a hostile measure aimed directly at the life of
+the Republic.  Henry held firm however, and Don Pedro was about to depart
+malcontent, his mission having totally failed.  He chanced, when going to
+his audience of leave-taking, after the arrival of his successor, Don
+Inigo de Cardenas, to meet the Venetian ambassador, Antonio Foscarini.
+An altercation took place between them, during which the Spaniard poured
+out his wrath so vehemently, calling his colleague with neat alliteration
+"a poltroon, a pantaloon, and a pig," that Henry heard him.
+
+What Signor Antonio replied has not been preserved, but it is stated that
+he was first to seek a reconciliation, not liking, he said, Spanish
+assassinations.
+
+Meantime the double marriage project was for a season at least suspended,
+and the alliance between the two republics went forwards.  Van der Myle,
+appointed ambassador to Venice, soon afterwards arrived in Paris, where
+he made a very favourable impression, and was highly lauded by Aerssens
+in his daily correspondence with Barneveld.  No portentous shadow of
+future and fatal discord between those statesmen fell upon the cheerful
+scene.  Before the year closed, he arrived at his post, and was received
+with great distinction, despite the obstacles thrown in his way by Spain
+and other powers; the ambassador of France itself, de Champigny, having
+privately urged that he ought to be placed on the same footing with the
+envoys of Savoy and of Florence.
+
+Van der Myle at starting committed the trifling fault of styling the
+States-General "most illustrious" (illustrissimi) instead of "most
+serene," the title by which Venice designated herself.
+
+The fault was at once remedied, however, Priuli the Doge seating the
+Dutch ambassador on his right hand at his solemn reception, and giving
+directions that van der Myle should be addressed as Excellency, his post
+being assigned him directly after his seniors, the ambassadors of Pope,
+Emperor, and kings.  The same precedence was settled in Paris, while
+Aerssens, who did not consider himself placed in a position of greater
+usefulness by his formal installation as ambassador, received private
+intimation from Henry, with whom he was on terms of great confidence and
+intimacy, that he should have private access to the King as frequently
+and as in formally as before.  The theory that the ambassador,
+representing the personality of his sovereign, may visit the monarch
+to whom he is accredited, without ceremony and at his own convenience,
+was as rarely carried into practice in the sixteenth century as in the
+nineteenth, while on the other hand Aerssens, as the private and
+confidential agent of a friendly but not publicly recognized
+commonwealth, had been for many years in almost daily personal
+communication with the King.
+
+It is also important to note that the modern fallacy according to which
+republics being impersonal should not be represented by ambassadors had
+not appeared in that important epoch in diplomatic history.  On the
+contrary, the two great republics of the age, Holland and Venice,
+vindicated for themselves, with as much dignity and reason as success,
+their right to the highest diplomatic honours.
+
+The distinction was substantial not shadowy; those haughty commonwealths
+not considering it advantageous or decorous that their representatives
+should for want of proper official designations be ranked on great
+ceremonial occasions with the ministers of petty Italian principalities
+or of the three hundred infinitesimal sovereignties of Germany.
+
+It was the advice of the French king especially, who knew politics and
+the world as well as any man, that the envoys of the Republic which he
+befriended and which stood now on the threshold of its official and
+national existence, should assert themselves at every court with the
+self-reliance and courtesy becoming the functionaries of a great power.
+That those ministers were second to the representatives of no other
+European state in capacity and accomplishment was a fact well known to
+all who had dealings with them, for the States required in their
+diplomatic representatives knowledge of history and international law,
+modern languages, and the classics, as well as familiarity with political
+customs and social courtesies; the breeding of gentlemen in short, and
+the accomplishments of scholars.  It is both a literary enjoyment and a
+means of historical and political instruction to read after the lapse of
+centuries their reports and despatches.  They worthily compare as works
+of art with those diplomatic masterpieces the letters and 'Relazioni' of
+the Venetian ambassadors; and it is well known that the earlier and some
+of the most important treatises on public and international law ever
+written are from the pens of Hollanders, who indeed may be said to have
+invented that science.'
+
+The Republic having thus steadily shouldered its way into the family of
+nations was soon called upon to perform a prominent part in the world's
+affairs.  More than in our own epoch there was a close political
+commingling of such independent states as held sympathetic views on the
+great questions agitating Europe.  The policy of isolation so wisely and
+successfully carried out by our own trans-Atlantic commonwealth was
+impossible for the Dutch republic, born as it was of a great religious
+schism, and with its narrow territory wedged between the chief political
+organizations of Christendom.  Moreover the same jealousy on the part of
+established powers which threw so many obstacles in its path to
+recognized sovereignty existed in the highest degree between its two
+sponsors and allies, France and England, in regard to their respective
+relations to the new state.
+
+"If ever there was an obliged people," said Henry's secretary of state,
+Villeroy, to Aerssens, "then it is you Netherlanders to his Majesty.  He
+has converted your war into peace, and has never abandoned you.  It is
+for you now to show your affection and gratitude."
+
+In the time of Elizabeth, and now in that of her successor, there was
+scarcely a day in which the envoys of the States were not reminded of the
+immense load of favour from England under which they tottered, and of the
+greater sincerity and value of English friendship over that of France.
+
+Sully often spoke to Aerssens on the subject in even stronger language,
+deeming himself the chief protector and guardian angel of the Republic,
+to whom they were bound by ties of eternal gratitude.  "But if the
+States," he said, "should think of caressing the King of England more
+than him, or even of treating him on an equality with his Majesty, Henry
+would be very much affronted.  He did not mean that they should neglect
+the friendship of the King of Britain, but that they should cultivate it
+after and in subordination to his own, for they might be sure that James
+held all things indifferent, their ruin or their conservation, while his
+Majesty had always manifested the contrary both by his counsels and by
+the constant furnishing of supplies."
+
+Henry of France and Navarre--soldier, statesman, wit, above all a man
+and every inch a king--brimful of human vices, foibles, and humours, and
+endowed with those high qualities of genius which enabled him to mould
+events and men by his unscrupulous and audacious determination to conform
+to the spirit of his times which no man better understood than himself,
+had ever been in such close relations with the Netherlands as to seem in
+some sort their sovereign.
+
+James Stuart, emerging from the school of Buchanan and the atmosphere of
+Calvinism in which he had been bred, now reigned in those more sunny and
+liberal regions where Elizabeth so long had ruled.  Finding himself at
+once, after years of theological study, face to face with a foreign
+commonwealth and a momentous epoch, in which politics were so commingled
+with divinity as to offer daily the most puzzling problems, the royal
+pedant hugged himself at beholding so conspicuous a field for his
+talents.
+
+To turn a throne into a pulpit, and amaze mankind with his learning,
+was an ambition most sweet to gratify.  The Calvinist of Scotland now
+proclaimed his deadly hatred of Puritans in England and Holland, and
+denounced the Netherlanders as a pack of rebels whom it always pleased
+him to irritate, and over whom he too claimed, through the possession of
+the cautionary towns, a kind of sovereignty.  Instinctively feeling that
+in the rough and unlovely husk of Puritanism was enclosed the germ of a
+wider human liberty than then existed, he was determined to give battle
+to it with his tongue, his pen, with everything but his sword.
+
+Doubtless the States had received most invaluable assistance from both
+France and England, but the sovereigns of those countries were too apt to
+forget that it was their own battles, as well as those of the Hollanders,
+that had been fought in Flanders and Brabant.  But for the alliance and
+subsidies of the faithful States, Henry would not so soon have ascended
+the throne of his ancestors, while it was matter of history that the
+Spanish government had for years been steadily endeavouring to subjugate
+England not so much for the value of the conquest in itself as for a
+stepping-stone to the recovery of the revolted Netherlands.
+
+For the dividing line of nations or at least of national alliances was a
+frontier not of language but of faith.  Germany was but a geographical
+expression.  The union of Protestantism, subscribed by a large proportion
+of its three hundred and seven sovereigns, ran zigzag through the
+country, a majority probably of the people at that moment being opposed
+to the Roman Church.
+
+It has often been considered amazing that Protestantism having
+accomplished so much should have fallen backwards so soon, and yielded
+almost undisputed sway in vast regions to the long dominant church.  But
+in truth there is nothing surprising about it.  Catholicism was and
+remained a unit, while its opponents were eventually broken up into
+hundreds of warring and politically impotent organizations.  Religious
+faith became distorted into a weapon for selfish and greedy territorial
+aggrandizement in the hands of Protestant princes.  "Cujus regio ejus
+religio" was the taunt hurled in the face of the imploring Calvinists of
+France and the Low Countries by the arrogant Lutherans of Germany.  Such
+a sword smote the principle of religious freedom and mutual toleration
+into the dust, and rendered them comparatively weak in the conflict with
+the ancient and splendidly organized church.
+
+The Huguenots of France, notwithstanding the protection grudgingly
+afforded them by their former chieftain, were dejected and discomfited
+by his apostasy, and Henry, placed in a fearfully false position, was an
+object of suspicion to both friends and foes.  In England it is difficult
+to say whether a Jesuit or a Puritan was accounted the more noxious
+animal by the dominant party.
+
+In the United Provinces perhaps one half the population was either openly
+or secretly attached to the ancient church, while among the Protestant
+portion a dire and tragic convulsion was about to break forth, which for
+a time at least was to render Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants more
+fiercely opposed to each other than to Papists.
+
+The doctrine of predestination in its sternest and strictest sense had
+long been the prevailing one in the Reformed Church of the revolted
+Netherlands, as in those of Scotland, France, Geneva, and the Palatinate.
+No doubt up to the period of the truce a majority had acquiesced in that
+dogma and its results, although there had always been many preachers to
+advocate publicly a milder creed.  It was not until the appointment of
+Jacob Arminius to the professorship of theology at Leyden, in the place
+of Francis Junius, in the year 1603, that a danger of schism in the
+Church, seemed impending.  Then rose the great Gomarus in his wrath,
+and with all the powers of splendid eloquence, profound learning,
+and the intense bigotry of conviction, denounced the horrible heresy.
+Conferences between the two before the Court of Holland, theological
+tournaments between six champions on a side, gallantly led by their
+respective chieftains, followed, with the usual result of confirming
+both parties in the conviction that to each alone belonged exclusively
+the truth.
+
+The original influence of Arminius had however been so great that when
+the preachers of Holland had been severally called on by a synod to sign
+the Heidelberg Catechism, many of them refused.  Here was open heresy and
+revolt.  It was time for the true church to vindicate its authority.
+The great war with Spain had been made, so it was urged and honestly
+believed, not against the Inquisition, not to prevent Netherlanders from
+being burned and buried alive by the old true church, not in defence of
+ancient charters, constitutions, and privileges--the precious result of
+centuries of popular resistance to despotic force--not to maintain an
+amount of civil liberty and local self-government larger in extent than
+any then existing in the world, not to assert equality of religion for
+all men, but simply to establish the true religion, the one church, the
+only possible creed; the creed and church of Calvin.
+
+It is perfectly certain that the living fire which glowed in the veins of
+those hot gospellers had added intense enthusiasm to the war spirit
+throughout that immense struggle.  It is quite possible that without that
+enthusiasm the war might not have been carried on to its successful end.
+But it is equally certain that Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists, and
+devotees of many other creeds, had taken part in the conflict in defence
+both of hearth and altar, and that without that aid the independence of
+the Provinces would never have been secured.
+
+Yet before the war was ended the arrogance of the Reformed priesthood had
+begun to dig a chasm.  Men who with William the Silent and Barneveld had
+indulged in the vision of religious equality as a possible result of so
+much fighting against the Holy Inquisition were perhaps to be
+disappointed.
+
+Preachers under the influence of the gentle Arminius having dared to
+refuse signing the Creed were to be dealt with.  It was time to pass from
+censure to action.
+
+Heresy must be trampled down.  The churches called for a national synod,
+and they did this as by divine right.  "My Lords the States-General must
+observe," they said, "that this assembly now demanded is not a human
+institution but an ordinance of the Holy Ghost in its community, not
+depending upon any man's authority, but proceeding from God to the
+community."  They complained that the true church was allowed to act only
+through the civil government, and was thus placed at a disadvantage
+compared even with Catholics and other sects, whose proceedings were
+winked at.  "Thus the true church suffered from its apparent and public
+freedom, and hostile sects gained by secret connivance."
+
+A crisis was fast approaching.  The one church claimed infallibility and
+superiority to the civil power.  The Holy Ghost was placed in direct,
+ostentatious opposition to My Lords the States-General.  It was for
+Netherlanders to decide whether, after having shaken off the Holy
+Inquisition, and subjected the old true church to the public authority,
+they were now to submit to the imperious claims of the new true church.
+
+There were hundreds of links connecting the Church with the State.  In
+that day a divorce between the two was hardly possible or conceivable.
+The system of Congregationalism so successfully put into practice soon
+afterwards in the wilderness of New England, and to which so much of
+American freedom political as well as religious is due, was not easy
+to adopt in an old country like the Netherlands.  Splendid churches and
+cathedrals, the legal possession of which would be contended for by rival
+sects, could scarcely be replaced by temporary structures of lath and
+plaster, or by humble back parlours of mechanics' shops.  There were
+questions of property of complicated nature.  Not only the states and the
+communities claimed in rivalry the ownership of church property, but many
+private families could show ancient advowsons and other claims to present
+or to patronize, derived from imperial or ducal charters.
+
+So long as there could be liberty of opinion within the Church upon
+points not necessarily vital, open schism could be avoided, by which the
+cause of Protestantism throughout Europe must be weakened, while at the
+same time subordination of the priesthood to the civil authority would be
+maintained.  But if the Holy Ghost, through the assembled clergy, were
+to dictate an iron formulary to which all must conform, to make laws for
+church government which every citizen must obey, and to appoint preachers
+and school-masters from whom alone old and young could receive
+illumination and instruction religious or lay, a theocracy would be
+established which no enlightened statesman could tolerate.
+
+The States-General agreed to the synod, but imposed a condition that
+there should be a revision of Creed and Catechism.  This was thundered
+down with one blast.  The condition implied a possibility that the vile
+heresy of Arminius might be correct.  An unconditional synod was
+demanded.  The Heidelberg Creed and Netherland Catechism were sacred,
+infallible, not to be touched.  The answer of the government, through
+the mouth of Barneveld, was that "to My Lords the States-General as the
+foster-fathers and protectors of the churches every right belonged."
+
+Thus far the States-General under the leadership of the Advocate were
+unanimous.  The victory remained with State against Church.  But very
+soon after the truce had been established, and men had liberty to devote
+themselves to peaceful pursuits, the ecclesiastical trumpet again sounded
+far and wide, and contending priests and laymen rushed madly to the fray.
+The Remonstrance and Contra-Remonstrance, and the appointment of Conrad
+Vorstius, a more abominable heretic than Arminius, to the vacant chair
+of Arminius--a step which drove Gomarus and the Gomarites to frenzy,
+although Gomarus and Vorstius remained private and intimate friends
+to the last--are matters briefly to be mentioned on a later page.
+
+Thus to the four chief actors in the politico-religious drama, soon to be
+enacted as an interlude to an eighty years' war, were assigned parts at
+first sight inconsistent with their private convictions.  The King of
+France, who had often abjured his religion, and was now the best of
+Catholics, was denounced ferociously in every Catholic pulpit in
+Christendom as secretly an apostate again, and the open protector of
+heretics and rebels.  But the cheerful Henry troubled himself less than
+he perhaps had cause to do with these thunderblasts.  Besides, as we
+shall soon see, he had other objects political and personal to sway his
+opinions.
+
+James the ex-Calvinist, crypto-Arminian, pseudo-Papist, and avowed
+Puritan hater, was girding on his armour to annihilate Arminians and to
+defend and protect Puritans in Holland, while swearing that in England he
+would pepper them and harry them and hang them and that he would even
+like to bury them alive.
+
+Barneveld, who turned his eyes, as much as in such an inflammatory age it
+was possible, from subtle points of theology, and relied on his great-
+grandfather's motto of humility, "Nil scire tutissima fides" was perhaps
+nearer to the dogma of the dominant Reformed Church than he knew,
+although always the consistent and strenuous champion of the civil
+authority over Church as well as State.
+
+Maurice was no theologian.  He was a steady churchgoer, and his
+favorite divine, the preacher at his court chapel, was none other than
+Uytenbogaert.  The very man who was instantly to be the champion of the
+Arminians, the author of the Remonstrance, the counsellor and comrade of
+Barneveld and Grotius, was now sneered at by the Gomarites as the "Court
+Trumpeter."  The preacher was not destined to change his opinions.
+Perhaps the Prince might alter.  But Maurice then paid no heed to the
+great point at issue, about which all the Netherlanders were to take each
+other by the throat--absolute predestination.  He knew that the Advocate
+had refused to listen to his stepmother's suggestion as to his obtaining
+the sovereignty.  "He knew nothing of predestination," he was wont to
+say, "whether it was green or whether it was blue.  He only knew that his
+pipe and the Advocate's were not likely to make music together."  This
+much of predestination he did know, that if the Advocate and his friends
+were to come to open conflict with the Prince of Orange-Nassau, the
+conqueror of Nieuwpoort, it was predestined to go hard with the Advocate
+and his friends.
+
+The theological quibble did not interest him much, and he was apt to
+blunder about it.
+
+"Well, preacher," said he one day to Albert Huttenus, who had come to him
+to intercede for a deserter condemned to be hanged, "are you one of those
+Arminians who believe that one child is born to salvation and another to
+damnation?"
+
+Huttenus, amazed to the utmost at the extraordinary question, replied,
+"Your Excellency will be graciously pleased to observe that this is not
+the opinion of those whom one calls by the hateful name of Arminians, but
+the opinion of their adversaries."
+
+"Well, preacher," rejoined Maurice, "don't you think I know better?"  And
+turning to Count Lewis William, Stadholder of Friesland, who was present,
+standing by the hearth with his hand on a copper ring of the
+chimneypiece, he cried,
+
+"Which is right, cousin, the preacher or I?"
+
+"No, cousin," answered Count Lewis, "you are in the wrong."
+
+Thus to the Catholic League organized throughout Europe in solid and
+consistent phalanx was opposed the Great Protestant Union, ardent and
+enthusiastic in detail, but undisciplined, disobedient, and inharmonious
+as a whole.
+
+The great principle, not of religious toleration, which is a phrase of
+insult, but of religious equality, which is the natural right of mankind,
+was to be evolved after a lapse of, additional centuries out of the
+elemental conflict which had already lasted so long.  Still later was
+the total divorce of State and Church to be achieved as the final
+consummation of the great revolution.  Meantime it was almost inevitable
+that the privileged and richly endowed church, with ecclesiastical armies
+and arsenals vastly superior to anything which its antagonist could
+improvise, should more than hold its own.
+
+At the outset of the epoch which now occupies our attention, Europe was
+in a state of exhaustion and longing for repose.  Spain had submitted to
+the humiliation of a treaty of truce with its rebellious subjects which
+was substantially a recognition of their independence.  Nothing could be
+more deplorable than the internal condition of the country which claimed
+to be mistress of the world and still aspired to universal monarchy.
+
+It had made peace because it could no longer furnish funds for the war.
+The French ambassador, Barante, returning from Madrid, informed his
+sovereign that he had often seen officers in the army prostrating
+themselves on their knees in the streets before their sovereign as he
+went to mass, and imploring him for payment of their salaries, or at
+least an alms to keep them from starving, and always imploring in vain.
+
+The King, who was less than a cipher, had neither capacity to feel
+emotion, nor intelligence to comprehend the most insignificant affair of
+state.  Moreover the means were wanting to him even had he been disposed
+to grant assistance.  The terrible Duke of Lerma was still his inexorably
+lord and master, and the secretary of that powerful personage, who kept
+an open shop for the sale of offices of state both high and low, took
+care that all the proceeds should flow into the coffers of the Duke and
+his own lap instead of the royal exchequer.
+
+In France both king and people declared themselves disgusted with war.
+Sully disapproved of the treaty just concluded between Spain and the
+Netherlands, feeling sure that the captious and equivocal clauses
+contained in it would be interpreted to the disadvantage of the Republic
+and of the Reformed religion whenever Spain felt herself strong enough to
+make the attempt.  He was especially anxious that the States should make
+no concessions in regard to the exercise of the Catholic worship within
+their territory, believing that by so doing they would compromise their
+political independence besides endangering the cause of Protestantism
+everywhere.  A great pressure was put upon Sully that moment by the King
+to change his religion.
+
+"You will all be inevitably ruined if you make concessions in this
+regard," said he to Aerssens.  "Take example by me.  I should be utterly
+undone if I had listened to any overture on this subject."
+
+Nevertheless it was the opinion of the astute and caustic envoy that the
+Duke would be forced to yield at last.  The Pope was making great efforts
+to gain him, and thus to bring about the extirpation of Protestantism in
+France.  And the King, at that time much under the influence of the
+Jesuits, had almost set his heart on the conversion.  Aerssens insinuated
+that Sully was dreading a minute examination into the affairs of his
+administration of the finances--a groundless calumny--and would be thus
+forced to comply.  Other enemies suggested that nothing would effect this
+much desired apostasy but the office of Constable of France, which it was
+certain would never be bestowed on him.
+
+At any rate it was very certain that Henry at this period was bent on
+peace.
+
+"Make your account," said Aerssens to Barneveld, as the time for signing
+the truce drew nigh, "on this indubitable foundation that the King is
+determined against war, whatever pretences he may make.  His bellicose
+demeanour has been assumed only to help forward our treaty, which he
+would never have favoured, and ought never to have favoured, if he had
+not been too much in love with peace.  This is a very important secret if
+we manage it discreetly, and a very dangerous one if our enemies discover
+it."
+
+Sully would have much preferred that the States should stand out for a
+peace rather than for a truce, and believed it might have been obtained
+if the King had not begun the matter so feebly, and if he had let it be
+understood that he would join his arms to those of the Provinces in case
+of rupture.
+
+He warned the States very strenuously that the Pope, and the King of
+Spain, and a host of enemies open and covert, were doing their host to
+injure them at the French court.  They would find little hindrance in
+this course if the Republic did not show its teeth, and especially if it
+did not stiffly oppose all encroachments of the Roman religion, without
+even showing any deference to the King in this regard, who was much
+importuned on the subject.
+
+He advised the States to improve the interval of truce by restoring order
+to their finances and so arranging their affairs that on the resumption
+of hostilities, if come they must, their friends might be encouraged to
+help them, by the exhibition of thorough vigour on their part.
+
+France then, although utterly indisposed for war at that moment, was
+thoroughly to be relied on as a friend and in case of need an ally, so
+long as it was governed by its present policy.  There was but one king
+left in Europe since the death of Elizabeth of England.
+
+But Henry was now on the abhorred threshold of old age which he
+obstinately refused to cross.
+
+There is something almost pathetic, in spite of the censure which much of
+his private life at this period provokes, in the isolation which now
+seemed his lot.
+
+Deceived and hated by his wife and his mistresses, who were conspiring
+with each other and with his ministers, not only against his policy but
+against his life; with a vile Italian adventurer, dishonouring his
+household, entirely dominating the queen, counteracting the royal
+measures, secretly corresponding, by assumed authority, with Spain, in
+direct violation of the King's instructions to his ambassadors, and
+gorging himself with wealth and offices at the expense of everything
+respectable in France; surrounded by a pack of malignant and greedy
+nobles, who begrudged him his fame, his authority, his independence;
+without a home, and almost without a friend, the Most Christian King in
+these latter days led hardly as merry a life as when fighting years long
+for his crown, at the head of his Gascon chivalry, the beloved chieftain
+of Huguenots.
+
+Of the triumvirate then constituting his council, Villeroy, Sillery, and
+Sully, the two first were ancient Leaguers, and more devoted at heart to
+Philip of Spain than to Henry of France and Navarre.
+
+Both silent, laborious, plodding, plotting functionaries, thriftily
+gathering riches; skilled in routine and adepts at intrigue; steady self-
+seekers, and faithful to office in which their lives had passed, they
+might be relied on at any emergency to take part against their master,
+if to ruin would prove more profitable than to serve him.
+
+There was one man who was truer to Henry than Henry had been to himself.
+The haughty, defiant, austere grandee, brave soldier, sagacious
+statesman, thrifty financier, against whom the poisoned arrows of
+religious hatred, envious ambition, and petty court intrigue were daily
+directed, who watched grimly over the exchequer confided to him, which
+was daily growing fuller in despite of the cormorants who trembled at his
+frown; hard worker, good hater, conscientious politician, who filled his
+own coffers without dishonesty, and those of the state without tyranny;
+unsociable, arrogant; pious, very avaricious, and inordinately vain,
+Maximilian de Bethune, Duke of Sully, loved and respected Henry as no man
+or woman loved and respected him.  In truth, there was but one living
+being for whom the Duke had greater reverence and affection than for the
+King, and that was the Duke of Sully himself.
+
+At this moment he considered himself, as indeed he was, in full
+possession of his sovereign's confidence.  But he was alone in this
+conviction.  Those about the court, men like Epernon and his creatures,
+believed the great financier on the brink of perdition.  Henry, always
+the loosest of talkers even in regard to his best friends, had declared,
+on some temporary vexation in regard to the affair between Aiguillon and
+Balagny, that he would deal with the Duke as with the late Marshal de
+Biron, and make him smaller than he had ever made him great: goading him
+on this occasion with importunities, almost amounting to commands, that
+both he and his son should forthwith change their religion or expect
+instant ruin.  The blow was so severe that Sully shut himself up, refused
+to see anyone, and talked of retiring for good to his estates.  But he
+knew, and Henry knew, how indispensable he was, and the anger of the
+master was as shortlived as the despair of the minister.
+
+There was no living statesman for whom Henry had a more sincere respect
+than for the Advocate of Holland.  "His Majesty admires and greatly
+extols your wisdom, which he judges necessary for the preservation of
+our State; deeming you one of the rare and sage counsellors of the age."
+It is true that this admiration was in part attributed to the singular
+coincidence of Barneveld's views of policy with the King's own.  Sully,
+on his part, was a severe critic of that policy.  He believed that better
+terms might have been exacted from Spain in the late negotiations, and
+strongly objected to the cavilling and equivocal language of the treaty.
+Rude in pen as in speech, he expressed his mind very freely in his
+conversation and correspondence with Henry in regard to leading
+personages and great affairs, and made no secret of his opinions
+to the States' ambassador.
+
+He showed his letters in which he had informed the King that he ought
+never to have sanctioned the truce without better securities than
+existed, and that the States would never have moved in any matter without
+him.  It would have been better to throw himself into a severe war than
+to see the Republic perish.  He further expressed the conviction that
+Henry ought to have such authority over the Netherlands that they would
+embrace blindly whatever counsel he chose to give them, even if they saw
+in it their inevitable ruin; and this not so much from remembrance of
+assistance rendered by him, but from the necessity in which they should
+always feel of depending totally upon him.
+
+"You may judge, therefore," concluded Aerssens, "as to how much we can
+build on such foundations as these.  I have been amazed at these frank
+communications, for in those letters he spares neither My Lords the
+States, nor his Excellency Prince Maurice, nor yourself; giving his
+judgment of each of you with far too much freedom and without sufficient
+knowledge."
+
+Thus the alliance between the Netherlands and France, notwithstanding
+occasional traces of caprice and flaws of personal jealousy, was on
+the whole sincere, for it was founded on the surest foundation of
+international friendship, the self-interest of each.  Henry, although
+boasting of having bought Paris with a mass, knew as well as his worst
+enemy that in that bargain he had never purchased the confidence of the
+ancient church, on whose bosom he had flung himself with so much dramatic
+pomp.  His noble position, as champion of religious toleration, was not
+only unappreciated in an age in which each church and every sect
+arrogated to itself a monopoly of the truth, but it was one in which
+he did not himself sincerely believe.
+
+After all, he was still the chieftain of the Protestant Union, and,
+although Eldest Son of the Church, was the bitter antagonist of the
+League and the sworn foe to the House of Austria.  He was walking through
+pitfalls with a crowd of invisible but relentless foes dogging his every
+footstep.  In his household or without were daily visions of dagger and
+bowl, and he felt himself marching to his doom.  How could the man on
+whom the heretic and rebellious Hollanders and the Protestant princes of
+Germany relied as on their saviour escape the unutterable wrath and the
+patient vengeance of a power that never forgave?
+
+In England the jealousy of the Republic and of France as co-guardian and
+protector of the Republic was even greater than in France.  Though placed
+by circumstances in the position of ally to the Netherlands and enemy to
+Spain, James hated the Netherlands and adored Spain.  His first thought
+on escaping the general destruction to which the Gunpowder Plot was to
+have involved himself and family and all the principal personages of the
+realm seems to have been to exculpate Spain from participation in the
+crime.  His next was to deliver a sermon to Parliament, exonerating the
+Catholics and going out of his way to stigmatize the Puritans as
+entertaining doctrines which should be punished with fire.  As the
+Puritans had certainly not been accused of complicity with Guy Fawkes
+or Garnet, this portion of the discourse was at least superfluous.  But
+James loathed nothing so much as a Puritan.  A Catholic at heart, be
+would have been the warmest ally of the League had he only been permitted
+to be Pope of Great Britain.  He hated and feared a Jesuit, not for his
+religious doctrines, for with these he sympathized, but for his political
+creed.  He liked not that either Roman Pontiff or British Presbyterian
+should abridge his heaven-born prerogative.  The doctrine of Papal
+superiority to temporal sovereigns was as odious to him as Puritan
+rebellion to the hierarchy of which he was the chief.  Moreover,
+in his hostility to both Papists and Presbyterians, there was much of
+professional rivalry.  Having been deprived by the accident of birth of
+his true position as theological professor, he lost no opportunity of
+turning his throne into a pulpit and his sceptre into a controversial
+pen.
+
+Henry of France, who rarely concealed his contempt for Master Jacques, as
+he called him, said to the English ambassador, on receiving from him one
+of the King's books, and being asked what he thought of it--"It is not
+the business of us kings to write, but to fight.  Everybody should mind
+his own business, but it is the vice of most men to wish to appear
+learned in matters of which they are ignorant."
+
+The flatterers of James found their account in pandering to his
+sacerdotal and royal vanity.  "I have always believed," said the Lord
+Chancellor, after hearing the King argue with and browbeat a Presbyterian
+deputation, "that the high-priesthood and royalty ought to be united, but
+I never witnessed the actual junction till now, after hearing the learned
+discourse of your Majesty."  Archbishop Whitgift, grovelling still lower,
+declared his conviction that James, in the observations he had deigned to
+make, had been directly inspired by the Holy Ghost.
+
+Nothing could be more illogical and incoherent with each other than his
+theological and political opinions.  He imagined himself a defender of
+the Protestant faith, while hating Holland and fawning on the House of
+Austria.
+
+In England he favoured Arminianism, because the Anglican Church
+recognized for its head the temporal chief of the State.  In Holland
+he vehemently denounced the Arminians, indecently persecuting their
+preachers and statesmen, who were contending for exactly the same
+principle--the supremacy of State over Church.  He sentenced Bartholomew
+Legate to be burned alive in Smithfield as a blasphemous heretic, and did
+his best to compel the States of Holland to take the life of Professor
+Vorstius of Leyden.  He persecuted the Presbyterians in England as
+furiously as he defended them in Holland.  He drove Bradford and Carver
+into the New England wilderness, and applauded Gomarus and Walaeus and
+the other famous leaders of the Presbyterian party in the Netherlands
+with all his soul and strength.
+
+He united with the French king in negotiations for Netherland
+independence, while denouncing the Provinces as guilty of criminal
+rebellion against their lawful sovereign.
+
+"He pretends," said Jeannin, "to assist in bringing about the peace, and
+nevertheless does his best openly to prevent it."
+
+Richardot declared that the firmness of the King of Spain proceeded
+entirely from reliance on the promise of James that there should be no
+acknowledgment in the treaty of the liberty of the States.  Henry wrote
+to Jeannin that he knew very well "what that was capable of, but that he
+should not be kept awake by anything he could do."
+
+As a king he spent his reign--so much of it as could be spared from
+gourmandizing, drunkenness, dalliance with handsome minions of his own
+sex, and theological pursuits--in rescuing the Crown from dependence on
+Parliament; in straining to the utmost the royal prerogative; in
+substituting proclamations for statutes; in doing everything in his
+power, in short, to smooth the path for his successor to the scaffold.
+As father of a family he consecrated many years of his life to the
+wondrous delusion of the Spanish marriages.
+
+The Gunpowder Plot seemed to have inspired him with an insane desire
+for that alliance, and few things in history are more amazing than the
+persistency with which he pursued the scheme, until the pursuit became
+not only ridiculous, but impossible.
+
+With such a man, frivolous, pedantic, conceited, and licentious, the
+earnest statesmen of Holland were forced into close alliance.  It is
+pathetic to see men like Barneveld and Hugo Grotius obliged, on great
+occasions of state, to use the language of respect and affection to one
+by whom they were hated, and whom they thoroughly despised.
+
+But turning away from France, it was in vain for them to look for kings
+or men either among friends or foes.  In Germany religious dissensions
+were gradually ripening into open war, and it would be difficult to
+imagine a more hopelessly incompetent ruler than the man who was
+nominally chief of the Holy Roman Realm.  Yet the distracted Rudolph was
+quite as much an emperor as the chaos over which he was supposed to
+preside was an empire.  Perhaps the very worst polity ever devised by
+human perverseness was the system under which the great German race was
+then writhing and groaning.  A mad world with a lunatic to govern it;
+a democracy of many princes, little and big, fighting amongst each
+other, and falling into daily changing combinations as some masterly or
+mischievous hand whirled the kaleidoscope; drinking Rhenish by hogsheads,
+and beer by the tun; robbing churches, dictating creeds to their
+subjects, and breaking all the commandments themselves; a people at the
+bottom dimly striving towards religious freedom and political life out of
+abject social, ecclesiastical, and political serfdom, and perhaps even
+then dumbly feeling within its veins, with that prophetic instinct which
+never abandons great races, a far distant and magnificent Future of
+national unity and Imperial splendour, the very reverse of the confusion
+which was then the hideous Present; an Imperial family at top with many
+heads and slender brains; a band of brothers and cousins wrangling,
+intriguing, tripping up each others' heels, and unlucky Rudolph, in his
+Hradschin, looking out of window over the peerless Prague, spread out in
+its beauteous landscape of hill and dale, darkling forest, dizzy cliffs,
+and rushing river, at his feet, feebly cursing the unhappy city for its
+ingratitude to an invisible and impotent sovereign; his excellent brother
+Matthias meanwhile marauding through the realms and taking one crown
+after another from his poor bald head.
+
+It would be difficult to depict anything more precisely what an emperor
+in those portentous times should not be.  He collected works of art of
+many kinds--pictures, statues, gems.  He passed his days in his galleries
+contemplating in solitary grandeur these treasures, or in his stables,
+admiring a numerous stud of horses which he never drove or rode.
+Ambassadors and ministers of state disguised themselves as grooms and
+stable-boys to obtain accidental glimpses of a sovereign who rarely
+granted audiences.  His nights were passed in star-gazing with Tycho de
+Brake, or with that illustrious Suabian whose name is one of the great
+lights and treasures of the world.  But it was not to study the laws of
+planetary motion nor to fathom mysteries of divine harmony that the
+monarch stood with Kepler in the observatory.  The influence of countless
+worlds upon the destiny of one who, by capricious accident, if accident
+ever exists in history, had been entrusted with the destiny of so large a
+portion of one little world; the horoscope, not of the Universe, but of
+himself; such were the limited purposes with which the Kaiser looked upon
+the constellations.
+
+For the Catholic Rudolph had received the Protestant Kepler, driven from
+Tubingen because Lutheran doctors, knowing from Holy Writ that the sun
+had stood still in Ajalon, had denounced his theory of planetary motion.
+His mother had just escaped being burned as a witch, and the world owes
+a debt of gratitude to the Emperor for protecting the astrologer, when
+enlightened theologians might, perhaps, have hanged the astronomer.
+
+A red-faced, heavy fowled, bald-headed, somewhat goggle-eyed old
+gentleman, Rudolph did his best to lead the life of a hermit, and escape
+the cares of royalty.  Timid by temperament, yet liable to fits of
+uncontrollable anger, he broke his furniture to pieces when irritated,
+and threw dishes that displeased him in his butler's face, but left
+affairs of state mainly to his valet, who earned many a penny by selling
+the Imperial signature.
+
+He had just signed the famous "Majestatsbrief," by which he granted vast
+privileges to the Protestants of Bohemia, and had bitten the pen to
+pieces in a paroxysm of anger, after dimly comprehending the extent of
+the concessions which he had made.
+
+There were hundreds of sovereign states over all of which floated the
+shadowy and impalpable authority of an Imperial crown scarcely fixed
+on the head of any one of the rival brethren and cousins; there was a
+confederation of Protestants, with the keen-sighted and ambitious
+Christian of Anhalt acting as its chief, and dreaming of the Bohemian
+crown; there was the just-born Catholic League, with the calm, far-
+seeing, and egotistical rather than self-seeking Maximilian at its head;
+each combination extending over the whole country, stamped with
+imbecility of action from its birth, and perverted and hampered by
+inevitable jealousies.  In addition to all these furrows ploughed by
+the very genius of discord throughout the unhappy land was the wild and
+secret intrigue with which Leopold, Archduke and Bishop, dreaming also
+of the crown of Wenzel, was about to tear its surface as deeply as he
+dared.
+
+Thus constituted were the leading powers of Europe in the earlier part of
+1609--the year in which a peaceful period seemed to have begun.  To those
+who saw the entangled interests of individuals, and the conflict of
+theological dogmas and religious and political intrigue which furnished
+so much material out of which wide-reaching schemes of personal ambition
+could be spun, it must have been obvious that the interval of truce was
+necessarily but a brief interlude between two tragedies.
+
+It seemed the very mockery of Fate that, almost at the very instant when
+after two years' painful negotiation a truce had been made, the signal
+for universal discord should be sounded.  One day in the early summer of
+1609, Henry IV. came to the Royal Arsenal, the residence of Sully,
+accompanied by Zamet and another of his intimate companions.  He asked
+for the Duke and was told that he was busy in his study.  "Of course,"
+said the King, turning to his followers, "I dare say you expected to be
+told that he was out shooting, or with the ladies, or at the barber's.
+But who works like Sully?  Tell him," he said, "to come to the balcony
+in his garden, where he and I are not accustomed to be silent."
+
+As soon as Sully appeared, the King observed: "Well; here the Duke of
+Cleve is dead, and has left everybody his heir."
+
+It was true enough, and the inheritance was of vital importance to the
+world.
+
+It was an apple of discord thrown directly between the two rival camps
+into which Christendom was divided.  The Duchies of Cleve, Berg, and
+Julich, and the Counties and Lordships of Mark, Ravensberg, and
+Ravenstein, formed a triangle, political and geographical, closely wedged
+between Catholicism and Protestantism, and between France, the United
+Provinces, Belgium, and Germany.  Should it fall into Catholic hands, the
+Netherlands were lost, trampled upon in every corner, hedged in on all
+sides, with the House of Austria governing the Rhine, the Meuse, and the
+Scheldt.  It was vital to them to exclude the Empire from the great
+historic river which seemed destined to form the perpetual frontier of
+jealous powers and rival creeds.
+
+Should it fall into heretic hands, the States were vastly strengthened,
+the Archduke Albert isolated and cut off from the protection of Spain and
+of the Empire.  France, although Catholic, was the ally of Holland and
+the secret but well known enemy of the House of Austria.  It was
+inevitable that the king of that country, the only living statesman that
+wore a crown, should be appealed to by all parties and should find
+himself in the proud but dangerous position of arbiter of Europe.
+
+In this emergency he relied upon himself and on two men besides,
+Maximilian de Bethune and John of Barneveld.  The conference between the
+King and Sully and between both and Francis Aerssens, ambassador of the
+States, were of almost daily occurrence.  The minute details given in the
+adroit diplomatist's correspondence indicate at every stage the extreme
+deference paid by Henry to the opinion of Holland's Advocate and the
+confidence reposed by him in the resources and the courage of the
+Republic.
+
+All the world was claiming the heritage of the duchies.
+
+It was only strange that an event which could not be long deferred and
+the consequences of which were soon to be so grave, the death of the Duke
+of Cleve, should at last burst like a bomb-shell on the council tables of
+the sovereigns and statesmen of Europe.  That mischievous madman John
+William died childless in the spring of 1609.  His sister Sibylla, an
+ancient and malignant spinster, had governed him and his possessions
+except in his lucid intervals.  The mass of the population over which he
+ruled being Protestant, while the reigning family and the chief nobles
+were of the ancient faith, it was natural that the Catholic party under,
+the lead of Maximilian of Bavaria should deem it all-important that there
+should be direct issue to that family.  Otherwise the inheritance on his
+death would probably pass to Protestant princes.
+
+The first wife provided for him was a beautiful princess; Jacobea of
+Baden.  The Pope blessed the nuptials, and sent the bride a golden rose,
+but the union was sterile and unhappy.  The Duke, who was in the habit
+of careering through his palace in full armour, slashing at and wounding
+anyone that came in his way, was at last locked up.  The hapless Jacobea,
+accused by Sibylla of witchcraft and other crimes possible and
+impossible, was thrown into prison.  Two years long the devilish
+malignity of the sister-in-law was exercised upon her victim, who, as it
+is related, was not allowed natural sleep during all that period, being
+at every hour awakened by command of Sibylla.  At last the Duchess was
+strangled in prison.  A new wife was at once provided for the lunatic,
+Antonia of Lorraine.  The two remained childless, and Sibylla at the age
+of forty-nine took to herself a husband, the Margrave of Burgau, of the
+House of Austria, the humble birth of whose mother, however, did not
+allow him the rank of Archduke.  Her efforts thus to provide Catholic
+heirs to the rich domains of Clove proved as fruitless as her previous
+attempts.
+
+And now Duke John William had died, and the representatives of his three
+dead sisters, and the living Sibylla were left to fight for the duchies.
+
+It would be both cruel and superfluous to inflict on the reader a
+historical statement of the manner in which these six small provinces
+were to be united into a single state.  It would be an equally sterile
+task to retrace the legal arguments by which the various parties prepared
+themselves to vindicate their claims, each pretender more triumphantly
+than the other.  The naked facts alone retain vital interest, and of
+these facts the prominent one was the assertion of the Emperor that the
+duchies, constituting a fief masculine, could descend to none of the
+pretenders, but were at his disposal as sovereign of Germany.
+
+On the other hand nearly all the important princes of that country sent
+their agents into the duchies to look after the interests real or
+imaginary which they claimed,
+
+There were but four candidates who in reality could be considered serious
+ones.
+
+Mary Eleanor, eldest sister of the Duke, had been married in the lifetime
+of their father to Albert Frederic of Brandenburg, Duke of Prussia.  To
+the children of this marriage was reserved the succession of the whole
+property in case of the masculine line becoming extinct.  Two years
+afterwards the second sister, Anne, was married to Duke Philip Lewis,
+Count-Palatine of Neuburg; the children of which marriage stood next
+in succession to those of the eldest sister, should that become
+extinguished.  Four years later the third sister, Magdalen, espoused
+the Duke John, Count-Palatine of Deux-Ponts; who, like Neuburg, made
+resignation of rights of succession in favour of the descendants of the
+Brandenburg marriage.  The marriage of the youngest sister, Sibylla, with
+the Margrave of Burgau has been already mentioned.  It does not appear
+that her brother, whose lunatic condition hardly permitted him to assure
+her the dowry which had been the price of renunciation in the case of her
+three elder sisters, had obtained that renunciation from her.
+
+The claims of the childless Sibylla as well as those of the Deux-Ponts
+branch were not destined to be taken into serious consideration.
+
+The real competitors were the Emperor on the one side and the Elector of
+Brandenburg and the Count-Palatine of Neuburg on the other.
+
+It is not necessary to my purpose to say a single word as to the legal
+and historical rights of the controversy.  Volumes upon volumes of
+forgotten lore might be consulted, and they would afford exactly as much
+refreshing nutriment as would the heaps of erudition hardly ten years
+old, and yet as antiquated as the title-deeds of the Pharaohs, concerning
+the claims to the Duchies of Schleswig-Holstein.  The fortunate house of
+Brandenburg may have been right or wrong in both disputes.  It is certain
+that it did not lack a more potent factor in settling the political
+problems of the world in the one case any more than in the other.
+
+But on the occasion with which we are occupied it was not on the might of
+his own right hand that the Elector of Brandenburg relied.  Moreover, he
+was dilatory in appealing to the two great powers on whose friendship he
+must depend for the establishment of his claims: the United Republic and
+the King of France.  James of England was on the whole inclined to
+believe in the rights of Brandenburg.  His ambassador, however, with more
+prophetic vision than perhaps the King ever dreamt--of, expressed a fear
+lest Brandenburg should grow too great and one day come to the Imperial
+crown.
+
+The States openly favoured the Elector.  Henry as at first disposed
+towards Neuburg, but at his request Barneveld furnished a paper on the
+subject, by which the King seems to have been entirely converted to the
+pretensions of Brandenburg.
+
+But the solution of the question had but little to do with the legal
+claim of any man.  It was instinctively felt throughout Christendom that
+the great duel between the ancient church and the spirit of the
+Reformation was now to be renewed upon that narrow, debateable spot.
+
+The Emperor at once proclaimed his right to arbitrate on the succession
+and to hold the territory until decision should be made; that is to say,
+till the Greek Kalends.  His familiar and most tricksy spirit, Bishop-
+Archduke Leopold, played at once on his fears and his resentments,
+against the ever encroaching, ever menacing, Protestantism of Germany,
+with which he had just sealed a compact so bitterly detested.
+
+That bold and bustling prelate, brother of the Queen of Spain and of
+Ferdinand of Styria, took post from Prague in the middle of July.
+Accompanied by a certain canon of the Church and disguised as his
+servant, he arrived after a rapid journey before the gates of Julich,
+chief city and fortress of the duchies.  The governor of the place,
+Nestelraed, inclined like most of the functionaries throughout the
+duchies to the Catholic cause, was delighted to recognize under the
+livery of the lackey the cousin and representative of the Emperor.
+Leopold, who had brought but five men with him, had conquered his capital
+at a blow.  For while thus comfortably established as temporary governor
+of the duchies he designed through the fears or folly of Rudolph to
+become their sovereign lord.  Strengthened by such an acquisition and
+reckoning on continued assistance in men and money from Spain and the
+Catholic League, he meant to sweep back to the rescue of the perishing
+Rudolph, smite the Protestants of Bohemia, and achieve his appointment to
+the crown of that kingdom.
+
+The Spanish ambassador at Prague had furnished him with a handsome sum
+of money for the expenses of his journey and preliminary enterprise.  It
+should go hard but funds should be forthcoming to support him throughout
+this audacious scheme.  The champion of the Church, the sovereign prince
+of important provinces, the possession of which ensured conclusive
+triumph to the House of Austria and to Rome--who should oppose him in
+his path to Empire?  Certainly not the moody Rudolph, the slippery and
+unstable Matthias, the fanatic and Jesuit-ridden Ferdinand.
+
+"Leopold in Julich," said Henry's agent in Germany, "is a ferret in a
+rabbit warren."
+
+But early in the spring and before the arrival of Leopold, the two
+pretenders, John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg, and Philip Lewis,
+Palatine of Neuburg, had made an arrangement.  By the earnest advice
+of Barneveld in the name of the States-General and as the result of a
+general council of many Protestant princes of Germany, it had been
+settled that those two should together provisionally hold and administer
+the duchies until the principal affair could be amicably settled.
+
+The possessory princes were accordingly established in Dusseldorf with
+the consent of the provincial estates, in which place those bodies were
+wont to assemble.
+
+Here then was Spain in the person of Leopold quietly perched in the chief
+citadel of the country, while Protestantism in the shape of the
+possessory princes stood menacingly in the capital.
+
+Hardly was the ink dry on the treaty which had suspended for twelve years
+the great religious war of forty years, not yet had the ratifications
+been exchanged, but the trumpet was again sounding, and the hostile
+forces were once more face to face.
+
+Leopold, knowing where his great danger lay, sent a friendly message to
+the States-General, expressing the hope that they would submit to his
+arrangements until the Imperial decision should be made.
+
+The States, through the pen and brain of Barneveld, replied that they
+had already recognized the rights of the possessory princes, and were
+surprised that the Bishop-Archduke should oppose them.  They expressed
+the hope that, when better informed, he would see the validity of the
+Treaty of Dortmund.  "My Lords the States-General," said the Advocate,
+"will protect the princes against violence and actual disturbances, and
+are assured that the neighbouring kings and princes will do the same.
+They trust that his Imperial Highness will not allow matters, to proceed
+to extremities."
+
+This was language not to be mistaken.  It was plain that the Republic did
+not intend the Emperor to decide a question of life and death to herself,
+nor to permit Spain, exhausted by warfare, to achieve this annihilating
+triumph by a petty intrigue.
+
+While in reality the clue to what seemed to the outside world a
+labyrinthine maze of tangled interests and passions was firmly held in
+the hand of Barneveld, it was not to him nor to My Lords the States-
+General that the various parties to the impending conflict applied in the
+first resort.
+
+Mankind were not yet sufficiently used to this young republic, intruding
+herself among the family of kings, to defer at once to an authority which
+they could not but feel.
+
+Moreover, Henry of France was universally looked to both by friends and
+foes as the probable arbiter or chief champion in the great debate.  He
+had originally been inclined to favour Neuberg, chiefly, so Aerssens
+thought, on account of his political weakness.  The States-General on the
+other hand were firmly disposed for Brandenburg from the first, not only
+as a strenuous supporter of the Reformation and an ancient ally of their
+own always interested in their safety, but because the establishment of
+the Elector on the Rhine would roll back the Empire beyond that river.
+As Aerssens expressed it, they would have the Empire for a frontier, and
+have no longer reason to fear the Rhine.
+
+The King, after the representations of the States, saw good ground to
+change his opinion and; becoming convinced that the Palatine had long
+been coquetting with the Austrian party, soon made no secret of his
+preference for Brandenburg.  Subsequently Neuburg and Brandenburg fell
+into a violent quarrel notwithstanding an arrangement that the Palatine
+should marry the daughter of the Elector.  In the heat of discussion
+Brandenburg on one occasion is said to have given his intended son-in-law
+a box on the ear! an argument 'ad hominem' which seems to have had the
+effect of sending the Palatine into the bosom of the ancient church and
+causing him to rely thenceforth upon the assistance of the League.
+Meantime, however, the Condominium settled by the Treaty of Dortmund
+continued in force; the third brother of Brandenburg and the eldest son
+of Neuburg sharing possession and authority at Dusseldorf until a final
+decision could be made.
+
+A flock of diplomatists, professional or volunteers, openly accredited or
+secret, were now flying busily about through the troubled atmosphere,
+indicating the coming storm in which they revelled.  The keen-sighted,
+subtle, but dangerously intriguing ambassador of the Republic, Francis
+Aerssens, had his hundred eyes at all the keyholes in Paris, that centre
+of ceaseless combination and conspiracy, and was besides in almost daily
+confidential intercourse with the King.  Most patiently and minutely he
+kept the Advocate informed, almost from hour to hour, of every web that
+was spun, every conversation public or whispered in which important
+affairs were treated anywhere and by anybody.  He was all-sufficient as a
+spy and intelligencer, although not entirely trustworthy as a counsellor.
+Still no man on the whole could scan the present or forecast the future
+more accurately than he was able to do from his advantageous position and
+his long experience of affairs.
+
+There was much general jealousy between the States and the despotic king,
+who loved to be called the father of the Republic and to treat the
+Hollanders as his deeply obliged and very ungrateful and miserly little
+children.  The India trade was a sore subject, Henry having throughout
+the negotiations sought to force or wheedle the States into renouncing
+that commerce at the command of Spain, because he wished to help himself
+to it afterwards, and being now in the habit of secretly receiving Isaac
+Le Maire and other Dutch leaders in that lucrative monopoly, who lay
+disguised in Paris and in the house of Zamet--but not concealed from
+Aerssens, who pledged himself to break, the neck of their enterprise--and
+were planning with the King a French East India Company in opposition to
+that of the Netherlands.
+
+On the whole, however, despite these commercial intrigues which Barneveld
+through the aid of Aerssens was enabled to baffle, there was much
+cordiality and honest friendship between the two countries.  Henry, far
+from concealing his political affection for the Republic, was desirous of
+receiving a special embassy of congratulation and gratitude from the
+States on conclusion of the truce; not being satisfied with the warm
+expressions of respect and attachment conveyed through the ordinary
+diplomatic channel.
+
+"He wishes," wrote Aerssens to the Advocate, "a public demonstration--in
+order to show on a theatre to all Christendom the regard and deference of
+My Lords the States for his Majesty."  The Ambassador suggested that
+Cornelis van der Myle, son-in-law of Barneveld, soon to be named first
+envoy for Holland to the Venetian republic, might be selected as chief of
+such special embassy.
+
+"Without the instructions you gave me," wrote Aerssens, "Neuburg might
+have gained his cause in this court.  Brandenburg is doing himself much
+injury by not soliciting the King."
+
+"Much deference will be paid to your judgment," added the envoy, "if you
+see fit to send it to his Majesty."
+
+Meantime, although the agent of Neuburg was busily dinning in Henry's
+ears the claims of the Palatine, and even urging old promises which, as
+he pretended, had been made, thanks to Barneveld, he took little by his
+importunity, notwithstanding that in the opinion both of Barneveld and
+Villeroy his claim 'stricti-juris' was the best.  But it was policy and
+religious interests, not the strict letter of the law, that were likely
+to prevail.  Henry, while loudly asserting that he would oppose any
+usurpation on the part of the Emperor or any one else against the
+Condominium, privately renewed to the States assurances of his intention
+to support ultimately the claims of Brandenburg, and notified them to
+hold the two regiments of French infantry, which by convention they still
+kept at his expense in their service, to be ready at a moment's warning
+for the great enterprise which he was already planning.  "You would do
+well perhaps," wrote Aerssens to Barneveld, "to set forth the various
+interests in regard to this succession, and of the different relations of
+the claimants towards our commonwealth; but in such sort nevertheless and
+so dexterously that the King may be able to understand your desires, and
+on the other hand may see the respect you bear him in appearing to defer
+to his choice."
+
+Neuburg, having always neglected the States and made advances to Archduke
+Albert, and being openly preferred over Brandenburg by the Austrians, who
+had however no intention of eventually tolerating either, could make but
+small headway at court, notwithstanding Henry's indignation that
+Brandenburg had not yet made the slightest demand upon him for
+assistance.
+
+The Elector had keenly solicited the aid of the states, who were bound to
+him by ancient contract on this subject, but had manifested wonderful
+indifference or suspicion in regard to France.  "These nonchalant
+Germans," said Henry on more than one occasion, "do nothing but sleep
+or drink."
+
+It was supposed that the memory of Metz might haunt the imagination of
+the Elector.  That priceless citadel, fraudulently extorted by Henry II.
+as a forfeit for assistance to the Elector of Saxony three quarters of a
+century before, gave solemn warning to Brandenburg of what might be
+exacted by a greater Henry, should success be due to his protection.
+It was also thought that he had too many dangers about him at home, the
+Poles especially, much stirred up by emissaries from Rome, making many
+troublesome demonstrations against the Duchy of Prussia.
+
+It was nearly midsummer before a certain Baron Donals arrived as emissary
+of the Elector.  He brought with him, many documents in support of the
+Brandenburg claims, and was charged with excuses for the dilatoriness of
+his master.  Much stress was laid of course on the renunciation made by
+Neuburg at the tithe of his marriage, and Henry was urged to grant his
+protection to the Elector in his good rights.  But thus far there were
+few signs of any vigorous resolution for active measures in an affair
+which could scarcely fail to lead to war.
+
+"I believe," said Henry to the States ambassador, "that the right of
+Brandenburg is indubitable, and it is better for you and for me that he
+should be the man rather than Neuburg, who has always sought assistance
+from the House of Austria.  But he is too lazy in demanding possession.
+It is the fault of the doctors by whom he is guided.  This delay works
+in favour of the Emperor, whose course however is less governed by any
+determination of his own than by the irresolution of the princes."
+
+Then changing the conversation, Henry asked the Ambassador whether the
+daughter of de Maldere, a leading statesman of Zealand, was married or
+of age to be married, and if she was rich; adding that they must make a
+match between her and Barneveld's second son, then a young gentleman in
+the King's service, and very much liked by him.
+
+Two months later a regularly accredited envoy, Belin by name, arrived
+from the Elector.  His instructions were general.  He was to thank the
+King for his declarations in favour of the possessory princes, and
+against all usurpation on the part of the Spanish party.  Should the
+religious cord be touched, he was to give assurances that no change would
+be made in this regard.  He was charged with loads of fine presents in
+yellow amber, such as ewers, basins, tables, cups, chessboards, for the
+King and Queen, the Dauphin, the Chancellor, Villeroy, Sully, Bouillon,
+and other eminent personages.  Beyond the distribution of these works of
+art and the exchange of a few diplomatic commonplaces, nothing serious in
+the way of warlike business was transacted, and Henry was a few weeks
+later much amused by receiving a letter from the possessory princes
+coolly thrown into the post-office, and addressed like an ordinary letter
+to a private person, in which he was requested to advance them a loan
+of 400,000 crowns.  There was a great laugh at court at a demand made
+like a bill of exchange at sight upon his Majesty as if he had been a
+banker, especially as there happened to be no funds of the drawers in his
+hands.  It was thought that a proper regard for the King's quality and
+the amount of the sum demanded required that the letter should be brought
+at least by an express messenger, and Henry was both diverted and
+indignant at these proceedings, at the months long delay before the
+princes had thought proper to make application for his protection, and
+then for this cool demand for alms on a large scale as a proper beginning
+of their enterprise.
+
+Such was the languid and extremely nonchalant manner in which the early
+preparations for a conflict which seemed likely to set Europe in a blaze,
+and of which possibly few living men might witness the termination, were
+set on foot by those most interested in the immediate question.
+
+Chessboards in yellow amber and a post-office order for 400,000 crowns
+could not go far in settling the question of the duchies in which the
+great problem dividing Christendom as by an abyss was involved.
+
+Meantime, while such were the diplomatic beginnings of the possessory
+princes, the League was leaving no stone unturned to awaken Henry to a
+sense of his true duty to the Church of which he was Eldest Son.
+
+Don Pedro de Toledo's mission in regard to the Spanish marriages had
+failed because Henry had spurned the condition which was unequivocally
+attached to them on the part of Spain, the king's renunciation of his
+alliance with the Dutch Republic, which then seemed an equivalent to its
+ruin.  But the treaty of truce and half-independence had been signed at
+last by the States and their ancient master, and the English and French
+negotiators had taken their departure, each receiving as a present for
+concluding the convention 20,000 livres from the Archdukes, and 30,000
+from the States-General.  Henry, returning one summer's morning from the
+chase and holding the Count of Soissons by one hand and Ambassador
+Aerssens by the other, told them he had just received letters from Spain
+by which he learned that people were marvellously rejoiced at the
+conclusion of the truce.  Many had regretted that its conditions were so
+disadvantageous and so little honourable to the grandeur and dignity of
+Spain, but to these it was replied that there were strong reasons why
+Spain should consent to peace on these terms rather than not have it at
+all.  During the twelve years to come the King could repair his disasters
+and accumulate mountains of money in order to finish the war by the
+subjugation of the Provinces by force of gold.
+
+Soissons here interrupted the King by saying that the States on their
+part would finish it by force of iron.
+
+Aerssens, like an accomplished courtier, replied they would finish it by
+means of his Majesty's friendship.
+
+The King continued by observing that the clear-sighted in Spain laughed
+at these rodomontades, knowing well that it was pure exhaustion that had
+compelled the King to such extremities.  "I leave you to judge," said
+Henry, "whether he is likely to have any courage at forty-five years of
+age, having none now at thirty-two.  Princes show what they have in them
+of generosity and valour at the age of twenty-five or never."  He said
+that orders had been sent from Spain to disband all troops in the
+obedient Netherlands except Spaniards and Italians, telling the Archdukes
+that they must raise the money out of the country to content them.  They
+must pay for a war made for their benefit, said Philip.  As for him he
+would not furnish one maravedi.
+
+Aerssens asked if the Archdukes would disband their troops so long as the
+affair of Cleve remained unsettled.  "You are very lucky," replied the
+King, "that Europe is governed by such princes as you wot of.  The King
+of Spain thinks of nothing but tranquillity.  The Archdukes will never
+move except on compulsion.  The Emperor, whom every one is so much afraid
+of in this matter, is in such plight that one of these days, and before
+long, he will be stripped of all his possessions.  I have news that the
+Bohemians are ready to expel him."
+
+It was true enough that Rudolph hardly seemed a formidable personage.
+The Utraquists and Bohemian Brothers, making up nearly the whole
+population of the country, were just extorting religious liberty from
+their unlucky master in his very palace and at the point of the knife.
+The envoy of Matthias was in Paris demanding recognition of his master
+as King of Hungary, and Henry did not suspect the wonderful schemes of
+Leopold, the ferret in the rabbit warren of the duchies, to come to the
+succour of his cousin and to get himself appointed his successor and
+guardian.
+
+Nevertheless, the Emperor's name had been used to protest solemnly
+against the entrance into Dusseldorf of the Margrave Ernest of
+Brandenburg and Palatine Wolfgang William of Neuburg, representatives
+respectively of their brother and father.
+
+The induction was nevertheless solemnly made by the Elector-Palatine
+and the Landgrave of Hesse, and joint possession solemnly taken by
+Brandenburg and Neuburg in the teeth of the protest, and expressly in
+order to cut short the dilatory schemes and the artifices of the Imperial
+court.
+
+Henry at once sent a corps of observation consisting of 1500 cavalry to
+the Luxemburg frontier by way of Toul, Mezieres, Verdun, and Metz, to
+guard against movements by the disbanded troops of the Archdukes, and
+against any active demonstration against the possessory princes on the
+part of the Emperor.
+
+The 'Condominium' was formally established, and Henry stood before the
+world as its protector threatening any power that should attempt
+usurpation.  He sent his agent Vidomacq to the Landgrave of Hesse with
+instructions to do his utmost to confirm the princes of the Union in
+organized resistance to the schemes of Spain, and to prevent any
+interference with the Condominium.
+
+He wrote letters to the Archdukes and to the Elector of Cologne,
+sternly notifying them that he would permit no assault upon the princes,
+and meant to protect them in their rights.  He sent one of his most
+experienced diplomatists, de Boississe, formerly ambassador in England,
+to reside for a year or more in the duchies as special representative of
+France, and directed him on his way thither to consult especially with
+Barneveld and the States-General as to the proper means of carrying out
+their joint policy either by diplomacy or, if need should be, by their
+united arms.
+
+Troops began at once to move towards the frontier to counteract the plans
+of the Emperor's council and the secret levies made by Duchess Sibylla's
+husband, the Margrave of Burgau.  The King himself was perpetually at
+Monceaux watching the movements of his cavalry towards the Luxemburg
+frontier, and determined to protect the princes in their possession until
+some definite decision as to the sovereignty of the duchies should be
+made.
+
+Meantime great pressure was put upon him by the opposite party.  The Pope
+did his best through the Nuncius at Paris directly, and through agents at
+Prague, Brussels, and Madrid indirectly, to awaken the King to a sense of
+the enormity of his conduct.
+
+Being a Catholic prince, it was urged, he had no right to assist
+heretics.  It was an action entirely contrary to his duty as a Christian
+and of his reputation as Eldest Son of the Church.  Even if the right
+were on the side of the princes, his Majesty would do better to strip
+them of it and to clothe himself with it than to suffer the Catholic
+faith and religion to receive such notable detriment in an affair likely
+to have such important consequences.
+
+Such was some of the advice given by the Pontiff.  The suggestions were
+subtle, for they were directed to Henry's self-interest both as champion
+of the ancient church and as a possible sovereign of the very territories
+in dispute.  They were also likely, and were artfully so intended, to
+excite suspicion of Henry's designs in the breasts of the Protestants
+generally and of the possessory princes especially.  Allusions indeed to
+the rectification of the French border in Henry II.'s time at the expense
+of Lorraine were very frequent.  They probably accounted for much of the
+apparent supineness and want of respect for the King of which he
+complained every day and with so much bitterness.
+
+The Pope's insinuations, however, failed to alarm him, for he had made up
+his mind as to the great business of what might remain to him of life; to
+humble the House of Austria and in doing so to uphold the Dutch Republic
+on which he relied for his most efficient support.  The situation was a
+false one viewed from the traditional maxims which governed Europe.  How
+could the Eldest Son of the Church and the chief of an unlimited monarchy
+make common cause with heretics and republicans against Spain and Rome?
+That the position was as dangerous as it was illogical, there could be
+but little doubt.  But there was a similarity of opinion between the King
+and the political chief of the Republic on the great principle which was
+to illume the distant future but which had hardly then dawned upon the
+present; the principle of religious equality.  As he protected
+Protestants in France so he meant to protect Catholics in the duchies.
+Apostate as he was from the Reformed Church as he had already been from
+the Catholic, he had at least risen above the paltry and insolent maxim
+of the princely Protestantism of Germany: "Cujus regio ejus religio."
+
+While refusing to tremble before the wrath of Rome or to incline his ear
+to its honeyed suggestions, he sent Cardinal Joyeuse with a special
+mission to explain to the Pope that while the interests of France would
+not permit him to allow the Spaniard's obtaining possession of provinces
+so near to her, he should take care that the Church received no detriment
+and that he should insist as a price of the succour he intended for the
+possessory princes that they should give ample guarantees for the liberty
+of Catholic worship.
+
+There was no doubt in the mind either of Henry or of Barneveld that the
+secret blows attempted by Spain at the princes were in reality aimed at
+the Republic and at himself as her ally.
+
+While the Nuncius was making these exhortations in Paris, his colleague
+from Spain was authorized to propound a scheme of settlement which did
+not seem deficient in humour.  At any rate Henry was much diverted with
+the suggestion, which was nothing less than that the decision as to the
+succession to the duchies should be left to a board of arbitration
+consisting of the King of Spain, the Emperor, and the King of France.
+As Henry would thus be painfully placed by himself in a hopeless
+minority, the only result of the scheme would be to compel him to
+sanction a decision sure to be directly the reverse of his own resolve.
+He was hardly such a schoolboy in politics as to listen to the proposal
+except to laugh at it.
+
+Meantime arrived from Julich, without much parade, a quiet but somewhat
+pompous gentleman named Teynagel.  He had formerly belonged to the
+Reformed religion, but finding it more to his taste or advantage to
+become privy councillor of the Emperor, he had returned to the ancient
+church.  He was one of the five who had accompanied the Archduke Leopold
+to Julich.
+
+That prompt undertaking having thus far succeeded so well, the warlike
+bishop had now despatched Teynagel on a roving diplomatic mission.
+Ostensibly he came to persuade Henry that, by the usages and laws of the
+Empire, fiefs left vacant for want of heirs male were at the disposal of
+the Emperor.  He expressed the hope therefore of obtaining the King's
+approval of Leopold's position in Julich as temporary vicegerent of his
+sovereign and cousin.  The real motive of his mission, however, was
+privately to ascertain whether Henry was really ready to go to war for
+the protection of the possessory princes, and then, to proceed to Spain.
+It required an astute politician, however, to sound all the shoals,
+quicksands, and miseries through which the French government was then
+steering, and to comprehend with accuracy the somewhat varying humours
+of the monarch and the secret schemes of the ministers who immediately
+surrounded him.
+
+People at court laughed at Teynagel and his mission, and Henry treated
+him as a crackbrained adventurer.  He announced himself as envoy of the
+Emperor, although he had instructions from Leopold only.  He had
+interviews with the Chancellor and with Villeroy, and told them that
+Rudolf claimed the right of judge between the various pretenders to the
+duchies.  The King would not be pleased, he observed, if the King of
+Great Britain should constitute himself arbiter among claimants that
+might make their appearance for the crown of France; but Henry had set
+himself up as umpire without being asked by any one to act in that
+capacity among the princes of Germany.  The Emperor, on the contrary,
+had been appealed to by the Duke of Nevers, the Elector of Saxony, the
+Margrave of Burgau, and other liege subjects of the Imperial crown as a
+matter of course and of right.  This policy of the King, if persisted in,
+said Teynagel, must lead to war.  Henry might begin such a war, but he
+would be obliged to bequeath it to the Dauphin.  He should remember that
+France had always been unlucky when waging war with the Empire and with
+the house of Austria.'
+
+The Chancellor and Villeroy, although in their hearts not much in love
+with Henry's course, answered the emissary with arrogance equal to his
+own that their king could finish the war as well as begin it, that he
+confided in his strength and the justice of his cause, and that he knew
+very well and esteemed very little the combined forces of Spain and the
+Empire.  They added that France was bound by the treaty of Vervins to
+protect the princes, but they offered no proof of that rather startling
+proposition.
+
+Meantime Teynagel was busy in demonstrating that the princes of Germany
+were in reality much more afraid of Henry than of the Emperor.  His
+military movements and deep designs excited more suspicion throughout
+that country and all Europe than the quiet journey of Leopold and five
+friends by post to Julich.
+
+He had come provided with copies of the King's private letters to the
+princes, and seemed fully instructed as to his most secret thoughts.
+For this convenient information he was supposed to be indebted to the
+revelations of Father Cotton, who was then in disgrace; having been
+detected in transmitting to the General of Jesuits Henry's most sacred
+confidences and confessions as to his political designs.
+
+Fortified with this private intelligence, and having been advised by
+Father Cotton to carry matters with a high hand in order to inspire the
+French court with a wholesome awe, he talked boldly about the legitimate
+functions of the Emperor.  To interfere with them, he assured the
+ministers, would lead to a long and bloody war, as neither the King nor
+the Archduke Albert would permit the Emperor to be trampled upon.
+
+Peter Pecquius, the crafty and experienced agent of the Archduke at
+Paris, gave the bouncing envoy more judicious advice, however, than that
+of the Jesuit, assuring him that he would spoil his whole case should he
+attempt to hold such language to the King.
+
+He was admitted to an audience of Henry at Monceaux, but found him
+prepared to show his teeth as Aerssens had predicted.  He treated
+Teynagel as a mere madcap and, adventurer who had no right to be received
+as a public minister at all, and cut short his rodomontades by assuring
+him that his mind was fully made up to protect the possessory princes.
+Jeannin was present at the interview, although, as Aerssens well
+observed, the King required no pedagogue on such an occasion?  Teynagel
+soon afterwards departed malcontent to Spain, having taken little by his
+abnormal legation to Henry, and being destined to find at the court of
+Philip as urgent demands on that monarch for assistance to the League
+as he was to make for Leopold and the House of Austria.
+
+For the League, hardly yet thoroughly organized under the leadership of
+Maximilian of Bavaria, was rather a Catholic corrival than cordial ally
+of the Imperial house.  It was universally suspected that Henry meant to
+destroy and discrown the Habsburgs, and it lay not in the schemes of
+Maximilian to suffer the whole Catholic policy to be bound to the
+fortunes of that one family.
+
+Whether or not Henry meant to commit the anachronism and blunder of
+reproducing the part of Charlemagne might be doubtful.  The supposed
+design of Maximilian to renew the glories of the House of Wittelsbach was
+equally vague.  It is certain, however, that a belief in such ambitious
+schemes on the part of both had been insinuated into the ears of Rudolf,
+and had sunk deeply into his unsettled mind.
+
+Scarcely had Teynagel departed than the ancient President Richardot
+appeared upon the scene.  "The mischievous old monkey," as he had
+irreverently been characterized during the Truce negotiations, "who
+showed his tail the higher he climbed," was now trembling at the thought
+that all the good work he had been so laboriously accomplishing during
+the past two years should be annihilated.  The Archdukes, his masters,
+being sincerely bent on peace, had deputed him to Henry, who, as they
+believed, was determined to rekindle war.  As frequently happens in such
+cases, they were prepared to smooth over the rough and almost impassable
+path to a cordial understanding by comfortable and cheap commonplaces
+concerning the blessings of peace, and to offer friendly compromises by
+which they might secure the prizes of war without the troubles and
+dangers of making it.
+
+They had been solemnly notified by Henry that he would go to war
+rather than permit the House of Austria to acquire the succession to the
+duchies.  They now sent Richardot to say that neither the Archdukes nor
+the King of Spain would interfere in the matter, and that they hoped the
+King of France would not prevent the Emperor from exercising his rightful
+functions of judge.
+
+Henry, who knew that Don Baltasar de Cuniga, Spanish ambassador at the
+Imperial court, had furnished Leopold, the Emperor's cousin, with 50,000
+crowns to defray his first expenses in the Julich expedition, considered
+that the veteran politician had come to perform a school boy's task.
+He was more than ever convinced by this mission of Richardot that the
+Spaniards had organized the whole scheme, and he was likely only to smile
+at any propositions the President might make.
+
+At the beginning of his interview, in which the King was quite alone,
+Richardot asked if he would agree to maintain neutrality like the King of
+Spain and the Archdukes, and allow the princes to settle their business
+with the Emperor.
+
+"No," said the King.
+
+He then asked if Henry would assist them in their wrong.
+
+"No," said the King.
+
+He then asked if the King thought that the princes had justice on their
+side, and whether, if the contrary were shown, he would change his
+policy?
+
+Henry replied that the Emperor could not be both judge and party in the
+suit and that the King of Spain was plotting to usurp the provinces
+through the instrumentality of his brother-in-law Leopold and under the
+name of the Emperor.  He would not suffer it, he said.
+
+"Then there will be a general war," replied Richardot, since you are
+determined to assist these princes."
+
+"Be it so," said the King.
+
+"You are right," said the President, "for you are a great and puissant
+monarch, having all the advantages that could be desired, and in case of
+rupture I fear that all this immense power will be poured out over us who
+are but little princes."
+
+"Cause Leopold to retire then and leave the princes in their right," was
+the reply.  "You will then have nothing to fear.  Are you not very
+unhappy to live under those poor weak archdukes?  Don't you foresee that
+as soon as they die you will lose all the little you have acquired in the
+obedient Netherlands during the last fifty years?"
+
+The President had nothing to reply to this save that he had never
+approved of Leopold's expedition, and that when Spaniards make mistakes
+they always had recourse to their servants to repair their faults.  He
+had accepted this mission inconsiderately, he said, inspired by a hope to
+conjure the rising storms mingled with fears as to the result which were
+now justified.  He regretted having come, he said.
+
+The King shrugged his shoulders.
+
+Richardot then suggested that Leopold might be recognized in Julich, and
+the princes at Dusseldorf, or that all parties might retire until the
+Emperor should give his decision.
+
+All these combinations were flatly refused by the King, who swore that no
+one of the House of Austria should ever perch in any part of those
+provinces.  If Leopold did not withdraw at once, war was inevitable.
+
+He declared that he would break up everything and dare everything,
+whether the possessory princes formally applied to him or not.  He would
+not see his friends oppressed nor allow the Spaniard by this usurpation
+to put his foot on the throat of the States-General, for it was against
+them that this whole scheme was directed.
+
+To the President's complaints that the States-General had been moving
+troops in Gelderland, Henry replied at once that it was done by his
+command, and that they were his troops.
+
+With this answer Richardot was fain to retire crestfallen, mortified, and
+unhappy.  He expressed repentance and astonishment at the result, and
+protested that those peoples were happy whose princes understood affairs.
+His princes were good, he said, but did not give themselves the trouble
+to learn their business.
+
+Richardot then took his departure from Paris, and very soon afterwards
+from the world.  He died at Arras early in September, as many thought of
+chagrin at the ill success of his mission, while others ascribed it to a
+surfeit of melons and peaches.
+
+"Senectus edam maorbus est," said Aerssens with Seneca.
+
+Henry said he could not sufficiently wonder at these last proceedings
+at his court, of a man he had deemed capable and sagacious, but who had
+been committing an irreparable blunder.  He had never known two such
+impertinent ambassadors as Don Pedro de Toledo and Richardot on this
+occasion.  The one had been entirely ignorant of the object of his
+mission; the other had shown a vain presumption in thinking he could
+drive him from his fixed purpose by a flood of words.  He had accordingly
+answered him on the spot without consulting his council, at which poor
+Richardot had been much amazed.
+
+And now another envoy appeared upon the scene, an ambassador coming
+directly from the Emperor.  Count Hohenzollern, a young man, wild,
+fierce, and arrogant, scarcely twenty-three years of age, arrived in
+Paris on the 7th of September, with a train of forty horsemen.
+
+De Colly, agent of the Elector-Palatine, had received an outline of
+his instructions, which the Prince of Anhalt had obtained at Prague.
+He informed Henry that Hohenzollern would address him thus: "You are a
+king.  You would not like that the Emperor should aid your subjects in
+rebellion.  He did not do this in the time of the League, although often
+solicited to do so.  You should not now sustain the princes in disobeying
+the Imperial decree.  Kings should unite in maintaining the authority and
+majesty of each other."  He would then in the Emperor's name urge the
+claims of the House of Saxony to the duchies.
+
+Henry was much pleased with this opportune communication by de Colly of
+the private instructions to the Emperor's envoy, by which he was enabled
+to meet the wild and fierce young man with an arrogance at least equal to
+his own.
+
+The interview was a stormy one.  The King was alone in the gallery of the
+Louvre, not choosing that his words and gestures should be observed.  The
+Envoy spoke much in the sense which de Colly had indicated; making a long
+argument in favour of the Emperor's exclusive right of arbitration, and
+assuring the King that the Emperor was resolved on war if interference
+between himself and his subjects was persisted in.  He loudly pronounced
+the proceedings of the possessory princes to be utterly illegal, and
+contrary to all precedent.  The Emperor would maintain his authority at
+all hazards, and one spark of war would set everything in a blaze within
+the Empire and without.
+
+Henry replied sternly but in general terms, and referred him for a final
+answer to his council.
+
+"What will you do," asked the Envoy, categorically, at a subsequent
+interview about a month later, "to protect the princes in case the
+Emperor constrains them to leave the provinces which they have unjustly
+occupied?"
+
+"There is none but God to compel me to say more than I choose to say,"
+replied the King.  "It is enough for you to know that I will never
+abandon my friends in a just cause.  The Emperor can do much for the
+general peace.  He is not to lend his name to cover this usurpation."
+
+And so the concluding interview terminated in an exchange of threats
+rather than with any hope of accommodation.
+
+Hohenzollern used as high language to the ministers as to the monarch,
+and received payment in the same coin.  He rebuked their course not very
+adroitly as being contrary to the interests of Catholicism.  They were
+placing the provinces in the hands of Protestants, he urged.  It required
+no envoy from Prague to communicate this startling fact.  Friends and
+foes, Villeroy and Jeannin, as well as Sully and Duplessis, knew well
+enough that Henry was not taking up arms for Rome.  "Sir! do you look at
+the matter in that way?" cried Sully, indignantly.  "The Huguenots are as
+good as the Catholics.  They fight like the devil!"
+
+"The Emperor will never permit the, princes to remain nor Leopold to
+withdraw," said the Envoy to Jeannin.
+
+Jeannin replied that the King was always ready to listen to reason, but
+there was no use in holding language of authority to him.  It was money
+he would not accept.
+
+"Fiat justitia pereat mundus," said the haggard Hohenzollern.
+
+"Your world may perish," replied Jeannin, "but not ours.  It is much
+better put together."
+
+A formal letter was then written by the King to the Emperor, in which
+Henry expressed his desire to maintain peace and fraternal relations, but
+notified him that if, under any pretext whatever, he should trouble the
+princes in their possession, he would sustain them with all his power,
+being bound thereto by treaties and by reasons of state.
+
+This letter was committed to the care of Hohenzollern, who forthwith
+departed, having received a present of 4000 crowns.  His fierce, haggard
+face thus vanishes for the present from our history.
+
+The King had taken his ground, from which there was no receding.  Envoys
+or agents of Emperor, Pope, King of Spain, Archduke at Brussels, and
+Archduke at Julich, had failed to shake his settled purpose.  Yet the
+road was far from smooth.  He had thus far no ally but the States-
+General.  He could not trust James of Great Britain.  Boderie came back
+late in the summer from his mission to that monarch, reporting him as
+being favourably inclined to Brandenburg, but hoping for an amicable
+settlement in the duchies.  No suggestion being made even by the
+sagacious James as to the manner in which the ferret and rabbits were
+to come to a compromise, Henry inferred, if it came to fighting, that the
+English government would refuse assistance.  James had asked Boderie in
+fact whether his sovereign and the States, being the parties chiefly
+interested, would be willing to fight it out without allies.  He had also
+sent Sir Ralph Winwood on a special mission to the Hague, to Dusseldorf,
+and with letters to the Emperor, in which he expressed confidence that
+Rudolph would approve the proceedings of the possessory princes.  As he
+could scarcely do that while loudly claiming through his official envoy
+in Paris that the princes should instantly withdraw on pain of instant
+war, the value of the English suggestion of an amicable compromise might
+easily be deduced.
+
+Great was the jealousy in France of this mission from England.  That the
+princes should ask the interference of James while neglecting, despising,
+or fearing Henry, excited Henry's wrath.  He was ready, and avowed his
+readiness, to put on armour at once in behalf of the princes, and to
+arbitrate on the destiny of Germany, but no one seemed ready to follow
+his standard.  No one asked him to arbitrate.  The Spanish faction
+wheedled and threatened by turns, in order to divert him from his
+purpose, while the Protestant party held aloof, and babbled of
+Charlemagne and of Henry II.
+
+He said he did not mean to assist the princes by halves, but as became a
+King of France, and the princes expressed suspicion of him, talked of the
+example of Metz, and called the Emperor their very clement lord.
+
+It was not strange that Henry was indignant and jealous.  He was holding
+the wolf by the ears, as he himself observed more than once.  The war
+could not long be delayed; yet they in whose behalf it was to be waged
+treated him with a disrespect and flippancy almost amounting to scorn.
+
+They tried to borrow money of him through the post, and neglected to send
+him an ambassador.  This was most decidedly putting the cart before the
+oxen, so Henry said, and so thought all his friends.  When they had
+blockaded the road to Julich, in order to cut off Leopold's supplies,
+they sent to request that the two French regiments in the States' service
+might be ordered to their assistance, Archduke Albert having threatened
+to open the passage by force of arms.  "This is a fine stratagem," said
+Aerssens, "to fling the States-General headlong into the war, and, as it
+were, without knowing it."
+
+But the States-General, under the guidance of Barneveld, were not likely
+to be driven headlong by Brandenburg and Neuburg.  They managed with
+caution, but with perfect courage, to move side by side with Henry, and
+to leave the initiative to him, while showing an unfaltering front to the
+enemy.  That the princes were lost, Spain and the Emperor triumphant,
+unless Henry and the States should protect them with all their strength,
+was as plain as a mathematical demonstration.
+
+Yet firm as were the attitude and the language of Henry, he was thought
+to be hoping to accomplish much by bluster.  It was certain that the bold
+and unexpected stroke of Leopold had produced much effect upon his mind,
+and for a time those admitted to his intimacy saw, or thought they saw,
+a decided change in his demeanour.  To the world at large his language
+and his demonstrations were even more vehement than they had been at the
+outset of the controversy; but it was believed that there was now a
+disposition to substitute threats for action.  The military movements set
+on foot were thought to be like the ringing of bells and firing of cannon
+to dissipate a thunderstorm.  Yet it was treason at court to doubt the
+certainty of war.  The King ordered new suits of armour, bought splendid
+chargers,  and gave himself all the airs of a champion rushing to a
+tournament as gaily as in the earliest days of his king-errantry.
+He spoke of his eager desire to break a lance with Spinola, and give a
+lesson to the young volunteer who had sprung into so splendid a military
+reputation, while he had been rusting, as he thought, in pacific
+indolence, and envying the laurels of the comparatively youthful Maurice.
+Yet those most likely to be well informed believed that nothing would
+come of all this fire and fury.
+
+The critics were wrong.  There was really no doubt of Henry's sincerity,
+but his isolation was terrible.  There was none true to him at home but
+Sully.  Abroad, the States-General alone were really friendly, so far as
+positive agreements existed.  Above all, the intolerable tergiversations
+and suspicions of those most interested, the princes in possession, and
+their bickerings among themselves, hampered his movements.
+
+Treason and malice in his cabinet and household, jealousy and fear
+abroad, were working upon and undermining him like a slow fever.  His
+position was most pathetic, but his purpose was fixed.
+
+James of England, who admired, envied, and hated Henry, was wont to
+moralize on his character and his general unpopularity, while engaged in
+negotiations with him.  He complained that in the whole affair of the
+truce he had sought only his particular advantage.  "This is not to be
+wondered at in one of his nature," said the King, "who only careth to
+provide for the felicities of his present life, without any respect for
+his life to come.  Indeed, the consideration of his own age and the youth
+of his children, the doubt of their legitimation, the strength of
+competitioners, and the universal hatred borne unto him, makes him seek
+all means of security for preventing of all dangers."
+
+There were changes from day to day; hot and cold fits necessarily
+resulting from the situation.  As a rule, no eminent general who has had
+much experience wishes to go into a new war inconsiderately and for the
+mere love of war.  The impatience is often on the part of the non-
+combatants.  Henry was no exception to the rule.  He felt that the
+complications then existing, the religious, political, and dynastic
+elements arrayed against each other, were almost certain to be brought to
+a crisis and explosion by the incident of the duchies.  He felt that the
+impending struggle was probably to be a desperate and a general one, but
+there was no inconsistency in hoping that the show of a vigorous and
+menacing attitude might suspend, defer, or entirely dissipate the
+impending storm.
+
+The appearance of vacillation on his part from day to day was hardly
+deserving of the grave censure which it received, and was certainly in
+the interests of humanity.
+
+His conferences with Sully were almost daily and marked by intense
+anxiety.  He longed for Barneveld, and repeatedly urged that the
+Advocate, laying aside all other business, would come to Paris, that they
+might advise together thoroughly and face to face.  It was most important
+that the combination of alliances should be correctly arranged before
+hostilities began, and herein lay the precise difficulty.  The princes
+applied formally and freely to the States-General for assistance.  They
+applied to the King of Great Britain.  The agents of the opposite party
+besieged Henry with entreaties, and, failing in those, with threats;
+going off afterwards to Spain, to the Archdukes, and to other Catholic
+powers in search of assistance.
+
+The States-General professed their readiness to put an army of 15,000
+foot and 3000 horse in the field for the spring campaign, so soon as they
+were assured of Henry's determination for a rupture.
+
+"I am fresh enough still," said he to their ambassador, "to lead an army
+into Cleve.  I shall have a cheap bargain enough of the provinces.  But
+these Germans do nothing but eat and sleep.  They will get the profit
+and assign to me the trouble.  No matter, I will never suffer the
+aggrandizement of the House of Austria.  The States-General must disband
+no troops, but hold themselves in readiness."
+
+Secretary of State Villeroy held the same language, but it was easy to
+trace beneath his plausible exterior a secret determination to traverse
+the plans of his sovereign.  "The Cleve affair must lead to war," he
+said.  "The Spaniard, considering how necessary it is for him to have a
+prince there at his devotion, can never quietly suffer Brandenburg and
+Neuburg to establish themselves in those territories.  The support thus
+gained by the States-General would cause the loss of the Spanish
+Netherlands."
+
+This was the view of Henry, too, but the Secretary of State, secretly
+devoted to the cause of Spain, looked upon the impending war with much
+aversion.
+
+"All that can come to his Majesty from war," he said, "is the glory of
+having protected the right.  Counterbalance this with the fatigue, the
+expense, and the peril of a great conflict, after our long repose, and
+you will find this to be buying glory too dearly."
+
+When a Frenchman talked of buying glory too dearly, it seemed probable
+that the particular kind of glory was not to his taste.
+
+Henry had already ordered the officers, then in France, of the 4000
+French infantry kept in the States' service at his expense to depart at
+once to Holland, and he privately announced his intention of moving to
+the frontier at the head of 30,000 men.
+
+'Yet not only Villeroy, but the Chancellor and the Constable, while
+professing opposition to the designs of Austria and friendliness to those
+of Brandenburg and Neuburg, deprecated this precipitate plunge into war.
+"Those most interested," they said, "refuse to move; fearing Austria,
+distrusting France.  They leave us the burden and danger, and hope for
+the spoils themselves.  We cannot play cat to their monkey.  The King
+must hold himself in readiness to join in the game when the real players
+have shuffled and dealt the cards.  It is no matter to us whether the
+Spaniard or Brandenburg or anyone else gets the duchies.  The States-
+General require a friendly sovereign there, and ought to say how much
+they will do for that result."
+
+The Constable laughed at the whole business.  Coming straight from the
+Louvre, he said "there would be no serious military movement, and that
+all those fine freaks would evaporate in air."
+
+But Sully never laughed.  He was quietly preparing the ways and means for
+the war, and he did not intend, so far as he had influence, that France
+should content herself with freaks and let Spain win the game.  Alone in
+the council he maintained that "France had gone too far to recede without
+sacrifice of reputation."--"The King's word is engaged both within and
+without," he said.  "Not to follow it with deeds would be dangerous to
+the kingdom.  The Spaniard will think France afraid of war.  We must
+strike a sudden blow, either to drive the enemy away or to crush him at
+once.  There is no time for delay.  The Netherlands must prevent the
+aggrandizement of Austria or consent to their own ruin."
+
+Thus stood the game therefore.  The brother of Brandenburg and son of
+Neuburg had taken possession of Dusseldorf.
+
+The Emperor, informed of this, ordered them forthwith to decamp.  He
+further summoned all pretenders to the duchies to appear before him, in
+person or by proxy, to make good their claims.  They refused and appealed
+for advice and assistance to the States-General.  Barneveld, aware of the
+intrigues of Spain, who disguised herself in the drapery of the Emperor,
+recommended that the Estates of Cleve, Julich, Berg, Mark, Ravensberg,
+and Ravenstein, should be summoned in Dusseldorf.  This was done and a
+resolution taken to resist any usurpation.
+
+The King of France wrote to the Elector of Cologne, who, by directions
+of Rome and by means of the Jesuits, had been active in the intrigue,
+that he would not permit the princes to be disturbed.
+
+The Archduke Leopold suddenly jumped into the chief citadel of the
+country and published an edict of the Emperor.  All the proceedings were
+thereby nullified as illegal and against the dignity of the realm and the
+princes proclaimed under ban.
+
+A herald brought the edict and ban to the princes in full assembly.
+The princes tore it to pieces on the spot.  Nevertheless they were much
+frightened, and many members of the Estates took themselves off; others
+showing an inclination to follow.
+
+The princes sent forth with a deputation to the Hague to consult My Lords
+the States-General.  The States-General sent an express messenger to
+Paris.  Their ambassador there sent him back a week later, with notice of
+the King's determination to risk everything against everything to
+preserve the rights of the princes.  It was added that Henry required to
+be solicited by them, in order not by volunteer succour to give cause for
+distrust as to his intentions.  The States-General were further apprised
+by the King that his interests and theirs were so considerable in the
+matter that they would probably be obliged to go into a brisk and open
+war, in order to prevent the Spaniard from establishing himself in the
+duchies.  He advised them to notify the Archdukes in Brussels that they
+would regard the truce as broken if, under pretext of maintaining the
+Emperor's rights, they should molest the princes.  He desired them
+further to send their forces at once to the frontier of Gelderland under
+Prince Maurice, without committing any overt act of hostility, but in
+order to show that both the King and the States were thoroughly in
+earnest.
+
+The King then sent to Archduke Albert, as well as to the Elector of
+Cologne, and despatched a special envoy to the King of Great Britain.
+
+Immediately afterwards came communications from Barneveld to Henry, with
+complete adhesion to the King's plans.  The States would move in exact
+harmony with him, neither before him nor after him, which was precisely
+what he wished.  He complained bitterly to Aerssens, when he communicated
+the Advocate's despatches, of the slothful and timid course of the
+princes.  He ascribed it to the arts of Leopold, who had written and
+inspired many letters against him insinuating that he was secretly in
+league and correspondence with the Emperor; that he was going to the
+duchies simply in the interest of the Catholics; that he was like Henry
+II. only seeking to extend the French frontier; and Leopold, by these
+intrigues and falsehoods, had succeeded in filling the princes with
+distrust, and they had taken umbrage at the advance of his cavalry.
+
+Henry professed himself incapable of self-seeking or ambition.  He meant
+to prevent the aggrandizement of Austria, and was impatient at the
+dilatoriness and distrust of the princes.
+
+"All their enemies are rushing to the King of Spain.  Let them address
+themselves to the King of France," he said, "for it is we two that must
+play this game."
+
+And when at last they did send an embassy, they prefaced it by a post
+letter demanding an instant loan, and with an intimation that they would
+rather have his money than his presence!
+
+Was it surprising that the King's course should seem occasionally
+wavering when he found it so difficult to stir up such stagnant waters
+into honourable action?  Was it strange that the rude and stern Sully
+should sometimes lose his patience, knowing so much and suspecting more
+of the foul designs by which his master was encompassed, of the web of
+conspiracy against his throne, his life, and his honour, which was daily
+and hourly spinning?
+
+"We do nothing and you do nothing," he said one day to Aerssens.  "You
+are too soft, and we are too cowardly.  I believe that we shall spoil
+everything, after all.  I always suspect these sudden determinations of
+ours.  They are of bad augury.  We usually founder at last when we set
+off so fiercely at first.  There are words enough an every side, but
+there will be few deeds.  There is nothing to be got out of the King of
+Great Britain, and the King of Spain will end by securing these provinces
+for himself by a treaty."  Sully knew better than this, but he did not
+care to let even the Dutch envoy know, as yet, the immense preparations
+he had been making for the coming campaign.
+
+The envoys of the possessory princes, the Counts Solms, Colonel Pallandt,
+and Dr. Steyntgen, took their departure, after it had been arranged that
+final measures should be concerted at the general congress of the German
+Protestants to be held early in the ensuing year at Hall, in Suabia.
+
+At that convention de Boississe would make himself heard on the part of
+France, and the representatives of the States-General, of Venice, and
+Savoy, would also be present.
+
+Meantime the secret conferences between Henry and his superintendent of
+finances and virtual prime minister were held almost every day.  Scarcely
+an afternoon passed that the King did not make his appearance at the
+Arsenal, Sully's residence, and walk up and down the garden with him for
+hours, discussing the great project of which his brain was full.  This
+great project was to crush for ever the power of the Austrian house; to
+drive Spain back into her own limits, putting an end to her projects for
+universal monarchy; and taking the Imperial crown from the House of
+Habsburg.  By thus breaking up the mighty cousinship which, with the aid
+of Rome, overshadowed Germany and the two peninsulas, besides governing
+the greater part of both the Indies, he meant to bring France into the
+preponderant position over Christendom which he believed to be her due.
+
+It was necessary, he thought, for the continued existence of the Dutch
+commonwealth that the opportunity should be taken once for all, now that
+a glorious captain commanded its armies and a statesman unrivalled for
+experience, insight, and patriotism controlled its politics and its
+diplomacy, to drive the Spaniard out of the Netherlands.
+
+The Cleve question, properly and vigorously handled, presented exactly
+the long desired opportunity for carrying out these vast designs.
+
+The plan of assault upon Spanish power was to be threefold.  The King
+himself at the head of 35,000 men, supported by Prince Maurice and the
+States' forces amounting to at least 14,000, would move to the Rhine and
+seize the duchies.  The Duke de la Force would command the army of the
+Pyrenees and act in concert with the Moors of Spain, who roused to frenzy
+by their expulsion from the kingdom could be relied on for a revolt or at
+least a most vigorous diversion.  Thirdly, a treaty with the Duke of
+Savoy by which Henry accorded his daughter to the Duke's eldest son, the
+Prince of Piedmont, a gift of 100,000 crowns, and a monthly pension
+during the war of 50,000 crowns a month, was secretly concluded.
+
+Early in the spring the Duke was to take the field with at least 10,000
+foot and 1200 horse, supported by a French army of 12,000 to 15,000 men
+under the experienced Marshal de Lesdiguieres.  These forces were to
+operate against the Duchy of Milan with the intention of driving the
+Spaniards out of that rich possession, which the Duke of Savoy claimed
+for himself, and of assuring to Henry the dictatorship of Italy.  With
+the cordial alliance of Venice, and by playing off the mutual jealousies
+of the petty Italian princes, like Florence, Mantua, Montserrat, and
+others, against each other and against the Pope, it did not seem doubtful
+to Sully that the result would be easily accomplished.  He distinctly
+urged the wish that the King should content himself with political
+influence, with the splendid position of holding all Italy dependent upon
+his will and guidance, but without annexing a particle of territory to
+his own crown.
+
+It was Henry's intention, however, to help himself to the Duchy of Savoy,
+and to the magnificent city and port of Genoa as a reward to himself for
+the assistance, matrimonial alliance, and aggrandizement which he was
+about to bestow upon Charles Emmanuel.  Sully strenuously opposed these
+self-seeking views on the part of his sovereign, however, constantly
+placing before him the far nobler aim of controlling the destinies of
+Christendom, of curbing what tended to become omnipotent, of raising up
+and protecting that which had been abased, of holding the balance of
+empire with just and steady hand in preference to the more vulgar and
+commonplace ambition of annexing a province or two to the realms of
+France.
+
+It is true that these virtuous homilies, so often preached by him against
+territorial aggrandizement in one direction, did not prevent him from
+indulging in very extensive visions of it in another.  But the dreams
+pointed to the east rather than to the south.  It was Sully's policy to
+swallow a portion not of Italy but of Germany.  He persuaded his master
+that the possessory princes, if placed by the help of France in the
+heritage which they claimed, would hardly be able to maintain themselves
+against the dangers which surrounded them except by a direct dependence
+upon France.  In the end the position would become an impossible one,
+and it would be easy after the war was over to indemnify Brandenburg with
+money and with private property in the heart of France for example, and
+obtain the cession of those most coveted provinces between the Meuse and
+the Weser to the King.  "What an advantage for France," whispered Sully,
+"to unite to its power so important a part of Germany.  For it cannot be
+denied that by accepting the succour given by the King now those princes
+oblige themselves to ask for help in the future in order to preserve
+their new acquisition.  Thus your Majesty will make them pay for it very
+dearly."
+
+Thus the very virtuous self-denial in regard to the Duke of Savoy did not
+prevent a secret but well developed ambition at the expense of the
+Elector of Brandenburg.  For after all it was well enough known that the
+Elector was the really important and serious candidate.  Henry knew full
+well that Neuburg was depending on the Austrians and the Catholics, and
+that the claims of Saxony were only put forward by the Emperor in order
+to confuse the princes and excite mutual distrust.
+
+The King's conferences with the great financier were most confidential,
+and Sully was as secret as the grave.  But Henry never could keep a
+secret even when it concerned his most important interests, and nothing
+would serve him but he must often babble of his great projects even to
+their minutest details in presence of courtiers and counsellors whom in
+his heart he knew to be devoted to Spain and in receipt of pensions from
+her king.  He would boast to them of the blows by which he meant to
+demolish Spain and the whole house of Austria, so that there should be
+no longer danger to be feared from that source to the tranquillity and
+happiness of Europe, and he would do this so openly and in presence of
+those who, as he knew, were perpetually setting traps for him and
+endeavouring to discover his deepest secrets as to make Sully's hair
+stand on end.  The faithful minister would pluck his master by the cloak
+at times, and the King, with the adroitness which never forsook him when
+he chose to employ it, would contrive to extricate himself from a dilemma
+and pause at the brink of tremendous disclosures.--[Memoires de Sully,
+t. vii.  p. 324.]--But Sully could not be always at his side, nor were
+the Nuncius or Don Inigo de Cardenas or their confidential agents and
+spies always absent.  Enough was known of the general plan, while as to
+the probability of its coming into immediate execution, perhaps the
+enemies of the King were often not more puzzled than his friends.
+
+But what the Spanish ambassador did not know, nor the Nuncius, nor even
+the friendly Aerssens, was the vast amount of supplies which had been
+prepared for the coming conflict by the finance minister.  Henry did not
+know it himself.  "The war will turn on France as on a pivot," said
+Sully; "it remains to be seen if we have supplies and money enough.
+I will engage if the war is not to last more than three years and you
+require no more than 40,000 men at a time that I will show you munitions
+and ammunition and artillery and the like to such an extent that you will
+say, 'It is enough.'
+
+"As to money--"
+
+"How much money have I got?" asked the King; "a dozen millions?"
+
+"A little more than that," answered the Minister.
+
+"Fourteen millions?"
+
+"More still."
+
+"Sixteen?" continued the King.
+
+"More yet," said Sully.
+
+And so the King went on adding two millions at each question until thirty
+millions were reached, and when the question as to this sum was likewise
+answered in the affirmative, he jumped from his chair, hugged his
+minister around the neck, and kissed him on both cheeks.
+
+"I want no more than that," he cried.
+
+Sully answered by assuring him that he had prepared a report showing a
+reserve of forty millions on which he might draw for his war expenses,
+without in the least degree infringing on the regular budget for ordinary
+expenses.
+
+The King was in a transport of delight, and would have been capable of
+telling the story on the spot to the Nuncius had he met him that
+afternoon, which fortunately did not occur.
+
+But of all men in Europe after the faithful Sully, Henry most desired to
+see and confer daily and secretly with Barneveld.  He insisted vehemently
+that, neglecting all other business, he should come forthwith to Paris at
+the head of the special embassy which it had been agreed that the States
+should send.  No living statesman, he said, could compare to Holland's
+Advocate in sagacity, insight, breadth of view, knowledge of mankind and
+of great affairs, and none he knew was more sincerely attached to his
+person or felt more keenly the value of the French alliance.
+
+With him he indeed communicated almost daily through the medium of
+Aerssens, who was in constant receipt of most elaborate instructions
+from Barneveld, but he wished to confer with him face to face, so that
+there would be no necessity of delay in sending back for instructions,
+limitations, and explanation.  No man knew better than the King did that
+so far as foreign affairs were concerned the States-General were simply
+Barneveld.
+
+On the 22nd January the States' ambassador had a long and secret
+interview with the King.'  He informed him that the Prince of Anhalt had
+been assured by Barneveld that the possessory princes would be fully
+supported in their position by the States, and that the special deputies
+of Archduke Albert, whose presence at the Hague made Henry uneasy, as he
+regarded them as perpetual spies, had been dismissed.  Henry expressed
+his gratification.  They are there, he said, entirely in the interest of
+Leopold, who has just received 500,000 crowns from the King of Spain, and
+is to have that sum annually, and they are only sent to watch all your
+proceedings in regard to Cleve.
+
+The King then fervently pressed the Ambassador to urge Barneveld's coming
+to Paris with the least possible delay.  He signified his delight with
+Barneveld's answer to Anhalt, who thus fortified would be able to do good
+service at the assembly at Hall.  He had expected nothing else from
+Barneveld's sagacity, from his appreciation of the needs of Christendom,
+and from his affection for himself.  He told the Ambassador that he was
+anxiously waiting for the Advocate in order to consult with him as to all
+the details of the war.  The affair of Cleve, he said, was too special a
+cause.  A more universal one was wanted.  The King preferred to begin
+with Luxemburg, attacking Charlemont or Namur, while the States ought at
+the same time to besiege Venlo, with the intention afterwards of uniting
+with the King in laying siege to Maestricht.
+
+He was strong enough, he said, against all the world, but he still
+preferred to invite all princes interested to join him in putting down
+the ambitious and growing power of Spain.  Cleve was a plausible pretext,
+but the true cause, he said, should be found in the general safety of
+Christendom.
+
+Boississe had been sent to the German princes to ascertain whether and to
+what extent they would assist the King.  He supposed that once they found
+him engaged in actual warfare in Luxemburg, they would get rid of their
+jealousy and panic fears of him and his designs.  He expected them to
+furnish at least as large a force as he would supply as a contingent.
+
+For it was understood that Anhalt as generalissimo of the German forces
+would command a certain contingent of French troops, while the main army
+of the King would be led by himself in person.
+
+Henry expressed the conviction that the King of Spain would be taken by
+surprise finding himself attacked in three places and by three armies at
+once, he believing that the King of France was entirely devoted to his
+pleasures and altogether too old for warlike pursuits, while the States,
+just emerging from the misery of their long and cruel conflict, would be
+surely unwilling to plunge headlong into a great and bloody war.
+
+Henry inferred this, he said, from observing the rude and brutal manner
+in which the soldiers in the Spanish Netherlands were now treated.  It
+seemed, he said, as if the Archdukes thought they had no further need of
+them, or as if a stamp of the foot could raise new armies out of the
+earth.  "My design," continued the King, "is the more likely to succeed
+as the King of Spain, being a mere gosling and a valet of the Duke of
+Lerma, will find himself stripped of all his resources and at his wits'
+end; unexpectedly embarrassed as he will be on the Italian side, where we
+shall be threatening to cut the jugular vein of his pretended universal
+monarchy."
+
+He intimated that there was no great cause for anxiety in regard to the
+Catholic League just formed at Wurzburg.  He doubted whether the King of
+Spain would join it, and he had learned that the Elector of Cologne was
+making very little progress in obtaining the Emperor's adhesion.  As to
+this point the King had probably not yet thoroughly understood that the
+Bavarian League was intended to keep clear of the House of Habsburg,
+Maximilian not being willing to identify the success of German
+Catholicism with the fortunes of that family.
+
+Henry expressed the opinion that the King of Spain, that is to say, his
+counsellors, meant to make use of the Emperor's name while securing all
+the profit, and that Rudolph quite understood their game, while Matthias
+was sure to make use of this opportunity, supported by the Protestants of
+Bohemia, Austria, and Moravia, to strip the Emperor of the last shred of
+Empire.
+
+The King was anxious that the States should send a special embassy at
+once to the King of Great Britain.  His ambassador, de la Boderie, gave
+little encouragement of assistance from that quarter, but it was at least
+desirable to secure his neutrality.  "'Tis a prince too much devoted to
+repose," said Henry, "to be likely to help in this war, but at least he
+must not be allowed to traverse our great designs.  He will probably
+refuse the league offensive and defensive which I have proposed to him,
+but he must be got, if possible, to pledge himself to the defensive.  I
+mean to assemble my army on the frontier, as if to move upon Julich, and
+then suddenly sweep down on the Meuse, where, sustained by the States'
+army and that of the princes, I will strike my blows and finish my
+enterprise before our adversary has got wind of what is coming.  We must
+embark James in the enterprise if we can, but at any rate we must take
+measures to prevent his spoiling it."
+
+Henry assured the Envoy that no one would know anything of the great
+undertaking but by its effect; that no one could possibly talk about it
+with any knowledge except himself, Sully, Villeroy, Barneveld, and
+Aerssens.  With them alone he conferred confidentially, and he doubted
+not that the States would embrace this opportunity to have done for ever
+with the Spaniards.  He should take the field in person, he said, and
+with several powerful armies would sweep the enemy away from the Meuse,
+and after obtaining control of that river would quietly take possession
+of the sea-coast of Flanders, shut up Archduke Albert between the States
+and the French, who would thus join hands and unite their frontiers.
+
+Again the King expressed his anxiety for Barneveld's coming, and directed
+the Ambassador to urge it, and to communicate to him the conversation
+which had just taken place.  He much preferred, he said, a general war.
+He expressed doubts as to the Prince of Anhalt's capacity as chief in the
+Cleve expedition, and confessed that being jealous of his own reputation
+he did not like to commit his contingent of troops to the care of a
+stranger and one so new to his trade.  The shame would fall on himself,
+not on Anhalt in case of any disaster.  Therefore, to avoid all petty
+jealousies and inconveniences of that nature by which the enterprise
+might be ruined, it was best to make out of this small affair a great
+one, and the King signified his hope that the Advocate would take this
+view of the case and give him his support.  He had plenty of grounds of
+war himself, and the States had as good cause of hostilities in the
+rupture of the truce by the usurpation attempted by Leopold with the
+assistance of Spain and in the name of the Emperor.  He hoped, he said,
+that the States would receive no more deputations from Archduke Albert,
+but decide to settle everything at the point of the sword.  The moment
+was propitious, and, if neglected, might never return.  Marquis Spinola
+was about to make a journey to Spain on various matters of business.  On
+his return, Henry said, he meant to make him prisoner as a hostage for
+the Prince of Conde, whom the Archdukes were harbouring and detaining.
+This would be the pretext, he said, but the object would be to deprive
+the Archdukes of any military chief, and thus to throw them into utter
+confusion.  Count van den Berg would never submit to the authority of Don
+Luis de Velasco, nor Velasco to his, and not a man could come from Spain
+or Italy, for the passages would all be controlled by France.
+
+Fortunately for the King's reputation, Spinola's journey was deferred,
+so that this notable plan for disposing of the great captain fell to the
+ground.
+
+Henry agreed to leave the two French regiments and the two companies of
+cavalry in the States' service as usual, but stipulated in certain
+contingencies for their use.
+
+Passing to another matter concerning which there had been so much
+jealousy on the part of the States, the formation of the French East
+India Company--to organize which undertaking Le Roy and Isaac Le Maire
+of Amsterdam had been living disguised in the house of Henry's famous
+companion, the financier Zamet at Paris--the King said that Barneveld
+ought not to envy him a participation in the great profits of this
+business.
+
+Nothing would be done without consulting him after his arrival in Paris.
+He would discuss the matter privately with him, he said, knowing that
+Barneveld was a great personage, but however obstinate he might be, he
+felt sure that he would always yield to reason.  On the other hand the
+King expressed his willingness to submit to the Advocate's opinions if
+they should seem the more just.
+
+On leaving the King the Ambassador had an interview with Sully, who again
+expressed his great anxiety for the arrival of Barneveld, and his hopes
+that he might come with unlimited powers, so that the great secret might
+not leak out through constant referring of matters back to the Provinces.
+
+After rendering to the Advocate a detailed account of this remarkable
+conversation, Aerssens concluded with an intimation that perhaps his own
+opinion might be desired as to the meaning of all those movements
+developing themselves so suddenly and on so many sides.
+
+"I will say," he observed, "exactly what the poet sings of the army of
+ants--
+
+         'Hi motus animorum atque haec certamina tanta
+          Pulveris exigui jactu contacts quiescunt.'
+
+If the Prince of Conde comes back, we shall be more plausible than ever.
+If he does not come back, perhaps the consideration of the future will
+sweep us onwards.  All have their special views, and M. de Villeroy more
+warmly than all the rest."
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Abstinence from inquisition into consciences and private parlour
+Allowed the demon of religious hatred to enter into its body
+Behead, torture, burn alive, and bury alive all heretics
+Christian sympathy and a small assistance not being sufficient
+Contained within itself the germs of a larger liberty
+Could not be both judge and party in the suit
+Covered now with the satirical dust of centuries
+Deadly hatred of Puritans in England and Holland
+Doctrine of predestination in its sternest and strictest sense
+Emperor of Japan addressed him as his brother monarch
+Estimating his character and judging his judges
+Everybody should mind his own business
+He was a sincere bigot
+Impatience is often on the part of the non-combatants
+Intense bigotry of conviction
+International friendship, the self-interest of each
+It was the true religion, and there was none other
+James of England, who admired, envied, and hated Henry
+Jealousy, that potent principle
+Language which is ever living because it is dead
+More fiercely opposed to each other than to Papists
+None but God to compel me to say more than I choose to say
+Power the poison of which it is so difficult to resist
+Presents of considerable sums of money to the negotiators made
+Princes show what they have in them at twenty-five  or never
+Putting the cart before the oxen
+Religious toleration, which is a phrase of insult
+Secure the prizes of war without the troubles and dangers
+Senectus edam maorbus est
+So much in advance of his time as to favor religious equality
+The Catholic League and the Protestant Union
+The truth in shortest about matters of importance
+The vehicle is often prized more than the freight
+There was but one king in Europe, Henry the Bearnese
+There was no use in holding language of authority to him
+Thirty Years' War tread on the heels of the forty years
+Unimaginable outrage as the most legitimate industry
+Wish to appear learned in matters of which they are ignorant
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext Life of John Barneveld, v1, Motley #86
+by John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND
+
+WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR
+
+By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+
+
+The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, v2, 1609-10
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+     Passion of Henry IV. for Margaret de Montmorency--Her Marriage with
+     the Prince of Conde--Their Departure for the Country-Their Flight to
+     the Netherlands-Rage of the King--Intrigues of Spain--Reception of
+     the Prince and Princess of Conde by the Archdukes at Brussels--
+     Splendid Entertainments by Spinola--Attempts of the King to bring
+     the Fugitives back--Mission of De Coeuvres to Brussels--Difficult
+     Position of the Republic--Vast but secret Preparations for War.
+
+"If the Prince of Conde comes back."  What had the Prince of Conde, his
+comings and his goings, to do with this vast enterprise?
+
+It is time to point to the golden thread of most fantastic passion which
+runs throughout this dark and eventful history.
+
+One evening in the beginning of the year which had just come to its close
+there was to be a splendid fancy ball at the Louvre in the course of
+which several young ladies of highest rank were to perform a dance in
+mythological costume.
+
+The King, on ill terms with the Queen, who harassed him with scenes of
+affected jealousy, while engaged in permanent plots with her paramour and
+master, the Italian Concini, against his policy and his life; on still
+worse terms with his latest mistress in chief, the Marquise de Verneuil,
+who hated him and revenged herself for enduring his caresses by making
+him the butt of her venomous wit, had taken the festivities of a court in
+dudgeon where he possessed hosts of enemies and flatterers but scarcely a
+single friend.
+
+He refused to attend any of the rehearsals of the ballet, but one day a
+group of Diana and her nymphs passed him in the great gallery of the
+palace.  One of the nymphs as she went by turned and aimed her gilded
+javelin at his heart.  Henry looked and saw the most beautiful young
+creature, so he thought, that mortal eye had ever gazed upon, and
+according to his wont fell instantly over head and ears in love.
+He said afterwards that he felt himself pierced to the heart and
+was ready to faint away.
+
+The lady was just fifteen years of age.  The King was turned of fifty-
+five.  The disparity of age seemed to make the royal passion ridiculous.
+To Henry the situation seemed poetical and pathetic.  After this first
+interview he never missed a single rehearsal.  In the intervals he called
+perpetually for the services of the court poet Malherbe, who certainly
+contrived to perpetrate in his behalf some of the most detestable verses
+that even he had ever composed.
+
+The nymph was Marguerite de Montmorency, daughter of the Constable of
+France, and destined one day to become the mother of the great Conde,
+hero of Rocroy.  There can be no doubt that she was exquisitely
+beautiful.  Fair-haired, with a complexion of dazzling purity, large
+expressive eyes, delicate but commanding features, she had a singular
+fascination of look and gesture, and a winning, almost childlike,
+simplicity of manner.  Without feminine artifice or commonplace coquetry,
+she seemed to bewitch and subdue at a glance men of all ranks, ages, and
+pursuits; kings and cardinals, great generals, ambassadors and statesmen,
+as well as humbler mortals whether Spanish, Italian, French, or Flemish.
+The Constable, an ignorant man who, as the King averred, could neither
+write nor read, understood as well as more learned sages the manners and
+humours of the court.  He had destined his daughter for the young and
+brilliant Bassompierre, the most dazzling of all the cavaliers of the
+day.  The two were betrothed.
+
+But the love-stricken Henry, then confined to his bed with the gout, sent
+for the chosen husband of the beautiful Margaret.
+
+"Bassompierre, my friend," said the aged king, as the youthful lover
+knelt before him at the bedside, "I have become not in love, but mad,
+out of my senses, furious for Mademoiselle de Montmorency.  If she should
+love you, I should hate you.  If she should love me, you would hate me.
+'Tis better that this should not be the cause of breaking up our good
+intelligence, for I love you with affection and inclination.  I am
+resolved to marry her to my nephew the Prince of Conde, and to keep her
+near my family.  She will be the consolation and support of my old age
+into which I am now about to enter.  I shall give my nephew, who loves
+the chase a thousand times better than he does ladies, 100,000 livres a
+year, and I wish no other favour from her than her affection without
+making further pretensions."
+
+It was eight o'clock of a black winter's morning, and the tears as he
+spoke ran down the cheeks of the hero of Ivry and bedewed the face of the
+kneeling Bassompierre.
+
+The courtly lover sighed and--obeyed.  He renounced the hand of the
+beautiful Margaret, and came daily to play at dice with the King at
+his bedside with one or two other companions.
+
+And every day the Duchess of Angouleme, sister of the Constable, brought
+her fair niece to visit and converse with the royal invalid.  But for the
+dark and tragic clouds which were gradually closing around that eventful
+and heroic existence there would be something almost comic in the
+spectacle of the sufferer making the palace and all France ring with the
+howlings of his grotesque passion for a child of fifteen as he lay
+helpless and crippled with the gout.
+
+One day as the Duchess of Angouleme led her niece away from their morning
+visit to the King, Margaret as she passed by Bassompierre shrugged her
+shoulders with a scornful glance.  Stung by this expression of contempt,
+the lover who had renounced her sprang from the dice table, buried his
+face in his hat, pretending that his nose was bleeding, and rushed
+frantically from the palace.
+
+Two days long he spent in solitude, unable to eat, drink, or sleep,
+abandoned to despair and bewailing his wretched fate, and it was long
+before he could recover sufficient equanimity to face his lost Margaret
+and resume his place at the King's dicing table.  When he made his
+appearance, he was according to his own account so pale, changed, and
+emaciated that his friends could not recognise him.
+
+The marriage with Conde, first prince of the blood, took place early in
+the spring.  The bride received magnificent presents, and the husband a,
+pension of 100,000 livres a year.  The attentions of the King became soon
+outrageous and the reigning scandal of the hour.  Henry, discarding the
+grey jacket and simple costume on which he was wont to pride himself,
+paraded himself about in perfumed ruffs and glittering doublet, an
+ancient fop, very little heroic, and much ridiculed.  The Princess made
+merry with the antics of her royal adorer, while her vanity at least, if
+not her affection, was really touched, and there was one great round of
+court festivities in her honour, at which the King and herself were ever
+the central figures.  But Conde was not at all amused.  Not liking the
+part assigned to him in the comedy thus skilfully arranged by his cousin
+king, never much enamoured of his bride, while highly appreciating the
+100,000 livres of pension, he remonstrated violently with his wife,
+bitterly reproached the King, and made himself generally offensive.
+"The Prince is here," wrote Henry to Sully, "and is playing the very
+devil.  You would be in a rage and be ashamed of the things he says of
+me.  But at last I am losing patience, and am resolved to give him a bit
+of my mind."  He wrote in the same terms to Montmorency.  The Constable,
+whose conduct throughout the affair was odious and pitiable, promised to
+do his best to induce the Prince, instead of playing the devil, to listen
+to reason, as he and the Duchess of Angouleme understood reason.
+
+Henry had even the ineffable folly to appeal to the Queen to use her
+influence with the refractory Conde.  Mary de' Medici replied that there
+were already thirty go-betweens at work, and she had no idea of being the
+thirty-first--[Henrard, 30].
+
+Conde, surrounded by a conspiracy against his honour and happiness,
+suddenly carried off his wife to the country, much to the amazement and
+rage of Henry.
+
+In the autumn he entertained a hunting party at a seat of his, the Abbey
+of Verneuille, on the borders of Picardy.  De Traigny, governor of
+Amiens, invited the Prince, Princess, and the Dowager-Princess to a
+banquet at his chateau not far from the Abbey.  On their road thither
+they passed a group of huntsmen and grooms in the royal livery.  Among
+them was an aged lackey with a plaister over one eye, holding a couple of
+hounds in leash.  The Princess recognized at a glance under that
+ridiculous disguise the King.
+
+"What a madman!" she murmured as she passed him, "I will never forgive
+you;" but as she confessed many years afterwards, this act of gallantly
+did not displease her.'
+
+In truth, even in mythological fable, Trove has scarcely ever reduced
+demi-god or hero to more fantastic plight than was this travesty of the
+great Henry.  After dinner Madame de Traigny led her fair guest about the
+castle to show her the various points of view.  At one window she paused,
+saying that it commanded a particularly fine prospect.
+
+The Princess looked from it across a courtyard, and saw at an opposite
+window an old gentleman holding his left hand tightly upon his heart to
+show that it was wounded, and blowing kisses to her with the other: "My
+God! it is the King himself," she cried to her hostess.  The princess
+with this exclamation rushed from the window, feeling or affecting much
+indignation, ordered horses to her carriage instantly, and overwhelmed
+Madame de Traigny with reproaches.  The King himself, hastening to the
+scene, was received with passionate invectives, and in vain attempted to
+assuage the Princess's wrath and induce her to remain.
+
+They left the chateau at once, both Prince and Princess.
+
+One night, not many weeks afterwards, the Due de Sully, in the Arsenal at
+Paris, had just got into bed at past eleven o'clock when he received a
+visit from Captain de Praslin, who walked straight into his bed-chamber,
+informing him that the King instantly required his presence.
+
+Sully remonstrated.  He was obliged to rise at three the next morning,
+he said, enumerating pressing and most important work which Henry
+required to be completed with all possible haste.  "The King said you
+would be very angry," replied Praslin; "but there is no help for it.
+Come you must, for the man you know of has gone out of the country, as
+you said he would, and has carried away the lady on the crupper behind
+him."
+
+"Ho, ho," said the Duke, "I am wanted for that affair, am I?"  And the
+two proceeded straightway to the Louvre, and were ushered, of all
+apartments in the world, into the Queen's bedchamber.  Mary de' Medici
+had given birth only four days before to an infant, Henrietta Maria,
+future queen of Charles I. of England.  The room was crowded with
+ministers and courtiers; Villeroy, the Chancellor, Bassompierre, and
+others, being stuck against the wall at small intervals like statues,
+dumb, motionless, scarcely daring to breathe.  The King, with his hands
+behind him and his grey beard sunk on his breast, was pacing up and down
+the room in a paroxysm of rage and despair.
+
+"Well," said he, turning to Sully as he entered, "our man has gone off
+and carried everything with him.  What do you say to that?"
+
+The Duke beyond the boding "I told you so" phrase of consolation which
+he was entitled to use, having repeatedly warned his sovereign that
+precisely this catastrophe was impending, declined that night to offer
+advice.  He insisted on sleeping on it.  The manner in which the
+proceedings of the King at this juncture would be regarded by the
+Archdukes Albert and Isabella--for there could be no doubt that Conde had
+escaped to their territory--and by the King of Spain, in complicity with
+whom the step had unquestionably been taken--was of gravest political
+importance.
+
+Henry had heard the intelligence but an hour before.  He was at cards in
+his cabinet with Bassompierre and others when d'Elbene entered and made a
+private communication to him.  "Bassompierre, my friend," whispered the
+King immediately in that courtier's ear, "I am lost.  This man has
+carried his wife off into a wood.  I don't know if it is to kill her or
+to take her out of France.  Take care of my money and keep up the game."
+
+Bassompierre followed the king shortly afterwards and brought him his
+money.  He said that he had never seen a man so desperate, so
+transported.
+
+The matter was indeed one of deepest and universal import.  The reader
+has seen by the preceding narrative how absurd is the legend often
+believed in even to our own days that war was made by France upon the
+Archdukes and upon Spain to recover the Princess of Conde from captivity
+in Brussels.
+
+From contemporary sources both printed and unpublished; from most
+confidential conversations and revelations, we have seen how broad,
+deliberate, and deeply considered were the warlike and political
+combinations in the King's ever restless brain.  But although the
+abduction of the new Helen by her own Menelaus was not the cause of the
+impending, Iliad, there is no doubt whatever that the incident had much
+to do with the crisis, was the turning point in a great tragedy, and that
+but for the vehement passion of the King for this youthful princess
+events might have developed themselves on a far different scale from that
+which they were destined to assume.  For this reason a court intrigue,
+which history under other conditions might justly disdain, assumes vast
+proportions and is taken quite away from the scandalous chronicle which
+rarely busies itself with grave affairs of state.
+
+"The flight of Conde," wrote Aerssens, "is the catastrophe to the comedy
+which has been long enacting.  'Tis to be hoped that the sequel may not
+prove tragical."
+
+"The Prince," for simply by that title he was usually called to
+distinguish him from all other princes in France, was next of blood.
+Had Henry no sons, he would have succeeded him on the throne.  It was a
+favourite scheme of the Spanish party to invalidate Henry's divorce from
+Margaret of Valois, and thus to cast doubts on the legitimacy of the
+Dauphin and the other children of Mary de' Medici.
+
+The Prince in the hands of the Spanish government might prove a docile
+and most dangerous instrument to the internal repose of France not only
+after Henry's death but in his life-time.  Conde's character was
+frivolous, unstable, excitable, weak, easy to be played upon by designing
+politicians, and he had now the deepest cause for anger and for indulging
+in ambitious dreams.
+
+He had been wont during this unhappy first year of his marriage to loudly
+accuse Henry of tyranny, and was now likely by public declaration to
+assign that as the motive of his flight.  Henry had protested in reply
+that he had never been guilty of tyranny but once in his life, and that
+was when he allowed this youth to take the name and title of Conde?
+
+For the Princess-Dowager his mother had lain for years in prison, under
+the terrible accusation of having murdered her husband, in complicity
+with her paramour, a Gascon page, named Belcastel.  The present prince
+had been born several months after his reputed father's death.  Henry,
+out of good nature, or perhaps for less creditable reasons, had come to
+the rescue of the accused princess, and had caused the process to be
+stopped, further enquiry to be quashed, and the son to be recognized as
+legitimate Prince of Conde.  The Dowager had subsequently done her best
+to further the King's suit to her son's wife, for which the Prince
+bitterly reproached her to her face, heaping on her epithets which she
+well deserved.
+
+Henry at once began to threaten a revival of the criminal suit, with a
+view of bastardizing him again, although the Dowager had acted on all
+occasions with great docility in Henry's interests.
+
+The flight of the Prince and Princess was thus not only an incident of
+great importance to the internal politics of trance, but had a direct and
+important bearing on the impending hostilities.  Its intimate connection
+with the affairs of the Netherland commonwealth was obvious.  It was
+probable that the fugitives would make their way towards the Archdukes'
+territory, and that afterwards their first point of destination would be
+Breda, of which Philip William of Orange, eldest brother of Prince
+Maurice, was the titular proprietor.  Since the truce recently concluded
+the brothers, divided so entirely by politics and religion, could meet
+on fraternal and friendly terms, and Breda, although a city of the
+Commonwealth, received its feudal lord.  The Princess of Orange was the
+sister of Conde.  The morning after the flight the King, before daybreak,
+sent for the Dutch ambassador.  He directed him to despatch a courier
+forthwith to Barneveld, notifying him that the Prince had left the
+kingdom without the permission or knowledge of his sovereign, and stating
+the King's belief that he had fled to the territory of the Archdukes.  If
+he should come to Breda or to any other place within the jurisdiction of
+the States, they were requested to make sure of his person at once, and
+not to permit him to retire until further instructions should be received
+from the King.  De Praslin, captain of the body-guards and lieutenant of
+Champagne, it was further mentioned, was to be sent immediately on secret
+mission concerning this affair to the States and to the Archdukes.
+
+The King suspected Conde of crime, so the Advocate was to be informed.
+He believed him to be implicated in the conspiracy of Poitou; the six who
+had been taken prisoners having confessed that they had thrice conferred
+with a prince at Paris, and that the motive of the plot was to free
+themselves and France from the tyranny of Henry IV.  The King insisted
+peremptorily, despite of any objections from Aerssens, that the thing
+must be done and his instructions carried out to the letter.  So much he
+expected of the States, and they should care no more for ulterior
+consequences, he said, than he had done for the wrath of Spain when he
+frankly undertook their cause.  Conde was important only because his
+relative, and he declared that if the Prince should escape, having once
+entered the territory of the Republic, he should lay the blame on its
+government.
+
+"If you proceed languidly in the affair," wrote Aerssens to Barneveld,
+"our affairs will suffer for ever."
+
+Nobody at court believed in the Poitou conspiracy, or that Conde had any
+knowledge of it.  The reason of his flight was a mystery to none, but as
+it was immediately followed by an intrigue with Spain, it seemed
+ingenious to Henry to make, use of a transparent pretext to conceal the
+ugliness of the whole affair.
+
+He hoped that the Prince would be arrested at Breda and sent back by the
+States.  Villeroy said that if it was not done, they would be guilty of
+black ingratitude.  It would be an awkward undertaking, however, and the
+States devoutly prayed that they might not be put to the test.  The
+crafty Aerssens suggested to Barneveld that if Conde was not within their
+territory it would be well to assure the King that, had he been there, he
+would have been delivered up at once.  "By this means," said the
+Ambassador, "you will give no cause of offence to the Prince, and will at
+the same time satisfy the King.  It is important that he should think
+that you depend immediately upon him.  If you see that after his arrest
+they take severe measures against him, you will have a thousand ways of
+parrying the blame which posterity might throw upon you.  History teaches
+you plenty of them."
+
+He added that neither Sully nor anyone else thought much of the Poitou
+conspiracy.  Those implicated asserted that they had intended to raise
+troops there to assist the King in the Cleve expedition.  Some people
+said that Henry had invented this plot against his throne and life.  The
+Ambassador, in a spirit of prophecy, quoted the saying of Domitian:
+"Misera conditio imperantium quibus de conspiratione non creditor nisi
+occisis."
+
+Meantime the fugitives continued their journey.  The Prince was
+accompanied by one of his dependants, a rude officer, de Rochefort, who
+carried the Princess on a pillion behind him.  She had with her a lady-
+in-waiting named du Certeau and a lady's maid named Philippote.  She had
+no clothes but those on her back, not even a change of linen.  Thus the
+young and delicate lady made the wintry journey through the forests.
+They crossed the frontier at Landrecies, then in the Spanish Netherlands,
+intending to traverse the Archduke's territory in order to reach Breda,
+where Conde meant to leave his wife in charge of his sister, the Princess
+of Orange, and then to proceed to Brussels.
+
+He wrote from the little inn at Landrecies to notify the Archduke of his
+project.  He was subsequently informed that Albert would not prevent his
+passing through his territories, but should object to his making a fixed
+residence within them.  The Prince also wrote subsequently to the King of
+Spain and to the King of France.
+
+To Henry he expressed his great regret at being obliged to leave the
+kingdom in order to save his honour and his life, but that he had no
+intention of being anything else than his very humble and faithful
+cousin, subject, and servant.  He would do nothing against his service,
+he said, unless forced thereto, and he begged the King not to take it
+amiss if he refused to receive letters from any one whomsoever at court,
+saving only such letters as his Majesty himself might honour him by
+writing.
+
+The result of this communication to the King was of course to enrage that
+monarch to the utmost, and his first impulse on finding that the Prince
+was out of his reach was to march to Brussels at once and take possession
+of him and the Princess by main force.  More moderate counsels prevailed
+for the moment however, and negotiations were attempted.
+
+Praslin did not contrive to intercept the fugitives, but the States-
+General, under the advice of Barneveld, absolutely forbade their coming
+to Breda or entering any part of their jurisdiction.  The result of
+Conde's application to the King of Spain was an ultimate offer of
+assistance and asylum, through a special emissary, one Anover; for the
+politicians of Madrid were astute enough to see what a card the Prince
+might prove in their hands.
+
+Henry instructed his ambassador in Spain to use strong and threatening
+language in regard to the harbouring a rebel and a conspirator against
+the throne of France; while on the other hand he expressed his
+satisfaction with the States for having prohibited the Prince from
+entering their territory.  He would have preferred, he said, if they had
+allowed him entrance and forbidden his departure, but on the whole he was
+content.  It was thought in Paris that the Netherland government had
+acted with much adroitness in thus abstaining both from a violation of
+the law of nations and from giving offence to the King.
+
+A valet of Conde was taken with some papers of the Prince about him,
+which proved a determination on his part never to return to France during
+the lifetime of Henry.  They made no statement of the cause of his
+flight, except to intimate that it might be left to the judgment of
+every one, as it was unfortunately but too well known to all.
+
+Refused entrance into the Dutch territory, the Prince was obliged to
+renounce his project in regard to Breda, and brought his wife to
+Brussels.  He gave Bentivoglio, the Papal nuncio, two letters to forward
+to Italy, one to the Pope, the other to his nephew, Cardinal Borghese.
+Encouraged by the advices which he had received from Spain, he justified
+his flight from France both by the danger to his honour and to his life,
+recommending both to the protection of his Holiness and his Eminence.
+Bentivoglio sent the letters, but while admitting the invincible reasons
+for his departure growing out of the King's pursuit of the Princess, he
+refused all credence to the pretended violence against Conde himself.
+Conde informed de Praslin that he would not consent to return to France.
+Subsequently he imposed as conditions of return that the King should
+assign to him certain cities and strongholds in Guienne, of which
+province he was governor, far from Paris and very near the Spanish
+frontier; a measure dictated by Spain and which inflamed Henry's wrath
+almost to madness.  The King insisted on his instant return, placing
+himself and of course the Princess entirely in his hands and receiving a
+full pardon for this effort to save his honour.  The Prince and Princess
+of Orange came from Breda to Brussels to visit their brother and his
+wife.  Here they established them in the Palace of Nassau, once the
+residence in his brilliant youth of William the Silent; a magnificent
+mansion, surrounded by park and garden, built on the brow of the almost
+precipitous hill, beneath which is spread out so picturesquely the
+antique and beautiful capital of Brabant.
+
+The Archdukes received them with stately courtesy at their own palace.
+On their first ceremonious visit to the sovereigns of the land, the
+formal Archduke, coldest and chastest of mankind, scarcely lifted his
+eyes to gaze on the wondrous beauty of the Princess, yet assured her
+after he had led her through a portrait gallery of fair women that
+formerly these had been accounted beauties, but that henceforth it was
+impossible to speak of any beauty but her own.
+
+The great Spinola fell in love with her at once, sent for the illustrious
+Rubens from Antwerp to paint her portrait, and offered Mademoiselle de
+Chateau Vert 10,000 crowns in gold if she would do her best to further
+his suit with her mistress.  The Genoese banker-soldier made love, war,
+and finance on a grand scale.  He gave a magnificent banquet and ball in
+her honour on Twelfth Night, and the festival was the wonder of the town.
+Nothing like it had been seen in Brussels for years.  At six in the
+evening Spinola in splendid costume, accompanied by Don Luis Velasco,
+Count Ottavio Visconti, Count Bucquoy, with other nobles of lesser note,
+drove to the Nassau Palace to bring the Prince and Princess and their
+suite to the Marquis's mansion.  Here a guard of honour of thirty
+musketeers was standing before the door, and they were conducted from
+their coaches by Spinola preceded by twenty-four torch-bearers up the
+grand staircase to a hall, where they were received by the Princesses of
+Mansfeld, Velasco, and other distinguished dames.  Thence they were led
+through several apartments rich with tapestry and blazing with crystal
+and silver plate to a splendid saloon where was a silken canopy, under
+which the Princess of Conde and the Princess of Orange seated themselves,
+the Nuncius Bentivoglio to his delight being placed next the beautiful
+Margaret.  After reposing for a little while they were led to the ball-
+room, brilliantly lighted with innumerable torches of perfumed wax and
+hung with tapestry of gold and silk, representing in fourteen embroidered
+designs the chief military exploits of Spinola.  Here the banquet, a cold
+collation, was already spread on a table decked and lighted with regal
+splendour.  As soon as the guests were seated, an admirable concert of
+instrumental music began.  Spinola walked up and down providing for the
+comforts of his company, the Duke of Aumale stood behind the two
+princesses to entertain them with conversation, Don Luis Velasco served
+the Princess of Conde with plates, handed her the dishes, the wine, the
+napkins, while Bucquoy and Visconti in like manner waited upon the
+Princess of Orange; other nobles attending to the other ladies.  Forty-
+eight pages in white, yellow, and red scarves brought and removed the
+dishes.  The dinner, of courses innumerable, lasted two hours and a half,
+and the ladies, being thus fortified for the more serious business of the
+evening, were led to the tiring-rooms while the hall was made ready for
+dancing.  The ball was opened by the Princess of Conde and Spinola, and
+lasted until two in the morning.  As the apartment grew warm, two of the
+pages went about with long staves and broke all the windows until not a
+single pane of glass remained.  The festival was estimated by the thrifty
+chronicler of Antwerp to have cost from 3000 to 4000 crowns.  It was, he
+says, "an earthly paradise of which soon not a vapour remained."  He
+added that he gave a detailed account of it "not because he took pleasure
+in such voluptuous pomp and extravagance, but that one might thus learn
+the vanity of the world."  These courtesies and assiduities on the part
+of the great "shopkeeper," as the Constable called him, had so much
+effect, if not on the Princess, at least on Conde himself, that he
+threatened to throw his wife out of window if she refused to caress
+Spinola.  These and similar accusations were made by the father and aunt
+when attempting to bring about a divorce of the Princess from her
+husband.  The Nuncius Bentivoglio, too, fell in love with her, devoting
+himself to her service, and his facile and eloquent pen to chronicling
+her story.  Even poor little Philip of Spain in the depths of the
+Escurial heard of her charms, and tried to imagine himself in love with
+her by proxy.
+
+Thenceforth there was a succession of brilliant festivals in honour of
+the Princess.  The Spanish party was radiant with triumph, the French
+maddened with rage.  Henry in Paris was chafing like a lion at bay.  A
+petty sovereign whom he could crush at one vigorous bound was protecting
+the lady for whose love he was dying.  He had secured Conde's exclusion
+from Holland, but here were the fugitives splendidly established in
+Brussels; the Princess surrounded by most formidable suitors, the Prince
+encouraged in his rebellious and dangerous schemes by the power which the
+King most hated on earth, and whose eternal downfall he had long since
+sworn to accomplish.
+
+For the weak and frivolous Conde began to prattle publicly of his deep
+projects of revenge.  Aided by Spanish money and Spanish troops he would
+show one day who was the real heir to the throne of France--the
+illegitimately born Dauphin or himself.
+
+The King sent for the first president of Parliament, Harlay, and
+consulted with him as to the proper means of reviving the suppressed
+process against the Dowager and of publicly degrading Conde from his
+position of first prince of the blood which he had been permitted to
+usurp.  He likewise procured a decree accusing him of high-treason and
+ordering him to be punished at his Majesty's pleasure, to be prepared
+by the Parliament of Paris; going down to the court himself in his
+impatience and seating himself in everyday costume on the bench of
+judges to see that it was immediately proclaimed.
+
+Instead of at once attacking the Archdukes in force as he intended in
+the first ebullition of his wrath, he resolved to send de Boutteville-
+Montmorency, a relative of the Constable, on special and urgent mission
+to Brussels.  He was to propose that Conde and his wife should return
+with the Prince and Princess of Orange to Breda, the King pledging
+himself that for three or four months nothing should be undertaken
+against him.  Here was a sudden change of determination fit to surprise
+the States-General, but the King's resolution veered and whirled about
+hourly in the tempests of his wrath and love.
+
+That excellent old couple, the Constable and the Duchess of Angouleme,
+did their best to assist their sovereign in his fierce attempts to get
+their daughter and niece into his power.
+
+The Constable procured a piteous letter to be written to Archduke Albert,
+signed "Montmorency his mark," imploring him not to "suffer that his
+daughter, since the Prince refused to return to France, should leave
+Brussels to be a wanderer about the world following a young prince who
+had no fixed purpose in his mind."
+
+Archduke Albert, through his ambassador in Paris, Peter Pecquius,
+suggested the possibility of a reconciliation between Henry and his
+kinsman, and offered himself as intermediary.  He enquired whether the
+King would find it agreeable that he should ask for pardon in name of the
+Prince.  Henry replied that he was willing that the Archduke should
+accord to Conde secure residence for the time within his dominions on
+three inexorable conditions:--firstly, that the Prince should ask for
+pardon without any stipulations, the King refusing to listen to any
+treaty or to assign him towns or places of security as had been vaguely
+suggested, and holding it utterly unreasonable that a man sueing for
+pardon should, instead of deserved punishment, talk of terms and
+acquisitions; secondly, that, if Conde should reject the proposition,
+Albert should immediately turn him out of his country, showing himself
+justly irritated at finding his advice disregarded; thirdly, that,
+sending away the Prince, the Archduke should forthwith restore the
+Princess to her father the Constable and her aunt Angouleme, who had
+already made their petitions to Albert and Isabella for that end, to
+which the King now added his own most particular prayers.
+
+If the Archduke should refuse consent to these three conditions, Henry
+begged that he would abstain from any farther attempt to effect a
+reconciliation and not suffer Conde to remain any longer within his
+territories.
+
+Pecquius replied that he thought his master might agree to the two first
+propositions while demurring to the third, as it would probably not seem
+honourable to him to separate man and wife, and as it was doubtful
+whether the Princess would return of her own accord.
+
+The King, in reporting the substance of this conversation to Aerssens,
+intimated his conviction that they were only wishing in Brussels to gain
+time; that they were waiting for letters from Spain, which they were
+expecting ever since the return of Conde's secretary from Milan, whither
+he had been sent to confer with the Governor, Count Fuentes.  He said
+farther that he doubted whether the Princess would go to Breda, which he
+should now like, but which Conde would not now permit.  This he imputed
+in part to the Princess of Orange, who had written a letter full of
+invectives against himself to the Dowager--Princess of Conde which she
+had at once sent to him.  Henry expressed at the same time his great
+satisfaction with the States-General and with Barneveld in this affair,
+repeating his assurances that they were the truest and best friends he
+had.
+
+The news of Conde's ceremonious visit to Leopold in Julich could not fail
+to exasperate the King almost as much as the pompous manner in which he
+was subsequently received at Brussels; Spinola and the Spanish Ambassador
+going forth to meet him.  At the same moment the secretary of Vaucelles,
+Henry's ambassador in Madrid, arrived in Paris, confirming the King's
+suspicions that Conde's flight had been concerted with Don Inigo de
+Cardenas, and was part of a general plot of Spain against the peace of
+the kingdom.  The Duc d'Epernon, one of the most dangerous plotters at
+the court, and deep in the intimacy of the Queen and of all the secret
+adherents of the Spanish policy, had been sojourning a long time at Metz,
+under pretence of attending to his health, had sent his children to
+Spain, as hostages according to Henry's belief, had made himself master
+of the citadel, and was turning a deaf ear to all the commands of the
+King.
+
+The supporters of Conde in France were openly changing their note and
+proclaiming by the Prince's command that he had left the kingdom in order
+to preserve his quality of first prince of the blood, and that he meant
+to make good his right of primogeniture against the Dauphin and all
+competitors.
+
+Such bold language and such open reliance on the support of Spain in
+disputing the primogeniture of the Dauphin were fast driving the most
+pacifically inclined in France into enthusiasm for the war.
+
+The States, too, saw their opportunity more vividly every day.  "What
+could we desire more," wrote Aerssens to Barneveld, "than open war
+between France and Spain?  Posterity will for ever blame us if we reject
+this great occasion."
+
+Peter Pecquius, smoothest and sliest of diplomatists, did his best to
+make things comfortable, for there could be little doubt that his masters
+most sincerely deprecated war.  On their heads would come the first
+blows, to their provinces would return the great desolation out of which
+they had hardly emerged.  Still the Archduke, while racking his brains
+for the means of accommodation, refused, to his honour, to wink at any
+violation of the law of nations, gave a secret promise, in which the
+Infanta joined, that the Princess should not be allowed to leave Brussels
+without her husband's permission, and resolutely declined separating the
+pair except with the full consent of both.  In order to protect himself
+from the King's threats, he suggested sending Conde to some neutral place
+for six or eight months, to Prague, to Breda, or anywhere else; but Henry
+knew that Conde would never allow this unless he had the means by Spanish
+gold of bribing the garrison there, and so of holding the place in
+pretended neutrality, but in reality at the devotion of the King of
+Spain.
+
+Meantime Henry had despatched the Marquis de Coeuvres, brother of the
+beautiful Gabrielle, Duchess de Beaufort, and one of the most audacious
+and unscrupulous of courtiers, on a special mission to Brussels.  De
+Coeuvres saw Conde before presenting his credentials to the Archduke, and
+found him quite impracticable.  Acting under the advice of the Prince of
+Orange, he expressed his willingness to retire to some neutral city of
+Germany or Italy, drawing meanwhile from Henry a pension of 40,000 crowns
+a year.  But de Coeuvres firmly replied that the King would make no terms
+with his vassal nor allow Conde to prescribe conditions to him.  To leave
+him in Germany or Italy, he said, was to leave him in the dependence of
+Spain.  The King would not have this constant apprehension of her
+intrigues while, living, nor leave such matter in dying for turbulence in
+his kingdom.  If it appeared that the Spaniards wished to make use of the
+Prince for such purposes, he would be beforehand with them, and show them
+how much more injury he could inflict on Spain than they on France.
+Obviously committed to Spain, Conde replied to the entreaties of the
+emissary that if the King would give him half his kingdom he would not
+accept the offer nor return to France; at least before the 8th of
+February, by which date he expected advices from Spain.  He had given his
+word, he said, to lend his ear to no overtures before that time.  He made
+use of many threats, and swore that he would throw himself entirely into
+the arms of the Spanish king if Henry would not accord him the terms
+which he had proposed.
+
+To do this was an impossibility.  To grant him places of security would,
+as the King said, be to plant a standard for all the malcontents of
+France to rally around.  Conde had evidently renounced all hopes of a
+reconciliation, however painfully his host the Archduke might intercede
+for it.  He meant to go to Spain.  Spinola was urging this daily and
+hourly, said Henry, for he had fallen in love with the Princess, who
+complained of all these persecutions in her letters to her father, and
+said that she would rather die than go to Spain.
+
+The King's advices from de Coeuvres were however to the effect that the
+step would probably be taken, that the arrangements were making, and that
+Spinola had been shut up with Conde six hours long with nobody present
+but Rochefort and a certain counsellor of the Prince of Orange named
+Keeremans.
+
+Henry was taking measures to intercept them on their flight by land, but
+there was some thought of their proceeding to Spain by sea.  He therefore
+requested the States to send two ships of war, swift sailors, well
+equipped, one to watch in the roads of St. Jean and the other on the
+English coast.  These ships were to receive their instructions from
+Admiral de Vicq, who would be well informed of all the movements of
+the Prince and give warning to the captains of the Dutch vessels by a
+preconcerted signal.  The King begged that Barneveld would do him this
+favour, if he loved him, and that none might have knowledge of it but
+the Advocate and Prince Maurice.  The ships would be required for two
+or three months only, but should be equipped and sent forth as soon
+as possible.
+
+The States had no objection to performing this service, although it
+subsequently proved to be unnecessary, and they were quite ready at that
+moment to go openly into the war to settle the affairs of Clove, and once
+for all to drive the Spaniards out of the Netherlands and beyond seas and
+mountains.  Yet strange to say, those most conversant with the state of
+affairs could not yet quite persuade themselves that matters were
+serious, and that the King's mind was fixed.  Should Conde return,
+renounce his Spanish stratagems, and bring back the Princess to court, it
+was felt by the King's best and most confidential friends that all might
+grow languid again, the Spanish faction get the upper hand in the King's
+councils, and the States find themselves in a terrible embarrassment.
+
+On the other hand, the most prying and adroit of politicians were puzzled
+to read the signs of the times.  Despite Henry's garrulity, or perhaps in
+consequence of it, the envoys of Spain, the Empire, and of Archduke
+Albert were ignorant whether peace were likely to be broken or not, in
+spite of rumours which filled the air.  So well had the secrets been kept
+which the reader has seen discussed in confidential conversations--the
+record of which has always remained unpublished--between the King and
+those admitted to his intimacy that very late in the winter Pecquius,
+while sadly admitting to his masters that the King was likely to take
+part against the Emperor in the affair of the duchies, expressed the
+decided opinion that it would be limited to the secret sending of succour
+to Brandenburg and Neuburg as formerly to the United Provinces, but that
+he would never send troops into Cleve, or march thither himself.
+
+It is important, therefore, to follow closely the development of these
+political and amorous intrigues, for they furnish one of the most curious
+and instructive lessons of history; there being not the slightest doubt
+that upon their issue chiefly depended the question of a great and
+general war.
+
+Pecquius, not yet despairing that his master would effect a
+reconciliation between the King and Conde, proposed again that the Prince
+should be permitted to reside for a time in some place not within the
+jurisdiction of Spain or of the Archdukes, being allowed meantime to draw
+his annual pension of 100,000 livres.  Henry ridiculed the idea of
+Conde's drawing money from him while occupying his time abroad with
+intrigues against his throne and his children's succession.  He scoffed
+at the Envoy's pretences that Conde was not in receipt of money from
+Spain, as if a man so needy and in so embarrassing a position could live
+without money from some source; and as if he were not aware, from his
+correspondents in Spain, that funds were both promised and furnished to
+the Prince.
+
+He repeated his determination not to accord him pardon unless he returned
+to France, which he had no cause to leave, and, turning suddenly on
+Pecquius, demanded why, the subject of reconciliation having failed, the
+Archduke did not immediately fulfil his promise of turning Conde out of
+his dominions.
+
+Upon this Albert's minister drew back with the air of one amazed, asking
+how and when the Archduke had ever made such a promise.
+
+"To the Marquis de Coeuvres," replied Henry.
+
+Pecquius asked if his ears had not deceived him, and if the King had
+really said that de Coeuvres had made such a statement.
+
+Henry repeated and confirmed the story.
+
+Upon the Minister's reply that he had himself received no such
+intelligence from the Archduke, the King suddenly changed his tone,
+and said,
+
+"No, I was mistaken--I was confused--the Marquis never wrote me this; but
+did you not say yourself that I might be assured that there would be no
+difficulty about it if the Prince remained obstinate."
+
+Pecquius replied that he had made such a proposition to his masters by
+his Majesty's request; but there had been no answer received, nor time
+for one, as the hope of reconciliation had not yet been renounced.  He
+begged Henry to consider whether, without instructions from his master,
+he could have thus engaged his word.
+
+"Well," said the King, "since you disavow it, I see very well that the
+Archduke has no wish to give me pleasure, and that these are nothing but
+tricks that you have been amusing me with all this time.  Very good; each
+of us will know what we have to do."
+
+Pecquius considered that the King had tried to get him into a net, and to
+entrap him into the avowal of a promise which he had never made.  Henry
+remained obstinate in his assertions, notwithstanding all the envoy's
+protestations.
+
+"A fine trick, indeed, and unworthy of a king, 'Si dicere fas est,'" he
+wrote to Secretary of State Praets.  "But the force of truth is such that
+he who spreads the snare always tumbles into the ditch himself."
+
+Henry concluded the subject of Conde at this interview by saying that he
+could have his pardon on the conditions already named, and not otherwise.
+
+He also made some complaints about Archduke Leopold, who, he said,
+notwithstanding his demonstrations of wishing a treaty of compromise,
+was taking towns by surprise which he could not hold, and was getting his
+troops massacred on credit.
+
+Pecquius expressed the opinion that it would be better to leave the
+Germans to make their own arrangements among themselves, adding that
+neither his masters nor the King of Spain meant to mix themselves up in
+the matter.
+
+"Let them mix themselves in it or keep out of it, as they like," said
+Henry, "I shall not fail to mix myself up in it."
+
+The King was marvellously out of humour.
+
+Before finishing the interview, he asked Pecquius whether Marquis Spinola
+was going to Spain very soon, as he had permission from his Majesty to do
+so, and as he had information that he would be on the road early in Lent.
+The Minister replied that this would depend on the will of the Archduke,
+and upon various circumstances.  The answer seemed to displease the King,
+and Pecquius was puzzled to know why.  He was not aware, of course, of
+Henry's project to kidnap the Marquis on the road, and keep him as a
+surety for Conde.
+
+The Envoy saw Villeroy after the audience, who told him not to mind the
+King's ill-temper, but to bear it as patiently as he could.  His Majesty
+could not digest, he said, his infinite displeasure at the obstinacy of
+the Prince; but they must nevertheless strive for a reconciliation.  The
+King was quick in words, but slow in deeds, as the Ambassador might have
+observed before, and they must all try to maintain peace, to which he
+would himself lend his best efforts.
+
+As the Secretary of State was thoroughly aware that the King was making
+vast preparations for war, and had given in his own adhesion to the
+project, it is refreshing to observe the candour with which he assured
+the representative of the adverse party of his determination that
+friendliest relations should be preserved.
+
+It is still more refreshing to find Villeroy, the same afternoon, warmly
+uniting with Sully, Lesdiguieres, and the Chancellor, in the decision
+that war should begin forthwith.
+
+For the King held a council at the Arsenal immediately after this
+interview with Pecquius, in which he had become convinced that Conde
+would never return.  He took the Queen with him, and there was not a
+dissentient voice as to the necessity of beginning hostilities at once.
+
+Sully, however, was alone in urging that the main force of the attack
+should be in the north, upon the Rhine and Meuse.  Villeroy and those who
+were secretly in the Spanish interest were for beginning it with the
+southern combination and against Milan.  Sully believed the Duke of Savoy
+to be variable and attached in his heart to Spain, and he thought it
+contrary to the interests of France to permit an Italian prince to grow
+so great on her frontier.  He therefore thoroughly disapproved the plan,
+and explained to the Dutch ambassador that all this urgency to carry on
+the war in the south came from hatred to the United Provinces, jealousy
+of their aggrandizement, detestation of the Reformed religion, and hope
+to engage Henry in a campaign which he could not carry on successfully.
+But he assured Aerssens that he had the means of counteracting these
+designs and of bringing on an invasion for obtaining possession of the
+Meuse.  If the possessory princes found Henry making war in the Milanese
+only, they would feel themselves ruined, and might throw up the game.
+He begged that Barneveld would come on to Paris at once, as now or never
+was the moment to assure the Republic for all time.
+
+The King had acted with malicious adroitness in turning the tables upon
+the Prince and treating him as a rebel and a traitor because, to save his
+own and his wife's honour, he had fled from a kingdom where he had but
+too good reason to suppose that neither was safe.  The Prince, with
+infinite want of tact, had played into the King's hands.  He had bragged
+of his connection with Spain and of his deep designs, and had shown to
+all the world that he was thenceforth but an instrument in the hands of
+the Spanish cabinet, while all the world knew the single reason for which
+he had fled.
+
+The King, hopeless now of compelling the return of Conde, had become most
+anxious to separate him from his wife.  Already the subject of divorce
+between the two had been broached, and it being obvious that the Prince
+would immediately betake himself into the Spanish dominions, the King was
+determined that the Princess should not follow him thither.
+
+He had the incredible effrontery and folly to request the Queen to
+address a letter to her at Brussels, urging her to return to France.
+But Mary de' Medici assured her husband that she had no intention of
+becoming his assistant, using, to express her thought, the plainest and
+most vigorous word that the Italian language could supply.  Henry had
+then recourse once more to the father and aunt.
+
+That venerable couple being about to wait upon the Archduke's envoy, in
+compliance with the royal request, Pecquius, out of respect to their
+advanced age, went to the Constable's residence.  Here both the Duchess
+and Constable, with tears in their eyes, besought that diplomatist to do
+his utmost to prevent the Princess from the sad fate of any longer
+sharing her husband's fortunes.
+
+The father protested that he would never have consented to her marriage,
+preferring infinitely that she should have espoused any honest gentleman
+with 2000 crowns a year than this first prince of the blood, with a
+character such as it had proved to be; but that he had not dared to
+disobey the King.
+
+He spoke of the indignities and cruelties to which she was subjected,
+said that Rochefort, whom Conde had employed to assist him in their
+flight from France, and on the crupper of whose horse the Princess had
+performed the journey, was constantly guilty of acts of rudeness and
+incivility towards her; that but a few days past he had fired off pistols
+in her apartment where she was sitting alone with the Princess of Orange,
+exclaiming that this was the way he would treat anyone who interfered
+with the commands of his master, Conde; that the Prince was incessantly
+railing at her for refusing to caress the Marquis of Spinola; and that,
+in short, he would rather she were safe in the palace of the Archduchess
+Isabella, even in the humblest position among her gentlewomen, than to
+know her vagabondizing miserably about the world with her husband.
+
+This, he said, was the greatest fear he had, and he would rather see her
+dead than condemned to such a fate.
+
+He trusted that the Archdukes were incapable of believing the stories
+that he and the Duchess of Angouleme were influenced in the appeals they
+made for the separation of the Prince and Princess by a desire to serve
+the purposes of the King.  Those were fables put about by Conde.  All
+that the Constable and his sister desired was that the Archduchess would
+receive the Princess kindly when she should throw herself at her feet,
+and not allow her to be torn away against her will.  The Constable spoke
+with great gravity and simplicity, and with all the signs of genuine
+emotion, and Peter Pecquius was much moved.  He assured the aged pair
+that he would do his best to comply with their wishes, and should
+immediately apprise the Archdukes of the interview which had just taken
+place.  Most certainly they were entirely disposed to gratify the
+Constable and the Duchess as well as the Princess herself, whose virtues,
+qualities, and graces had inspired them with affection, but it must be
+remembered that the law both human and divine required wives to submit
+themselves to the commands of their husbands and to be the companions of
+their good and evil fortunes.  Nevertheless, he hoped that the Lord would
+so conduct the affairs of the Prince of Conde that the Most Christian
+King and the Archdukes would all be satisfied.
+
+These pious and consolatory commonplaces on the part of Peter Pecquius
+deeply affected the Constable.  He fell upon the Envoy's neck, embraced
+him repeatedly, and again wept plentifully.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+     Strange Scene at the Archduke's Palace--Henry's Plot frustrated--
+     His Triumph changed to Despair--Conversation of the Dutch Ambassador
+     with the King--The War determined upon.
+
+It was in the latter part of the Carnival, the Saturday night preceding
+Shrove Tuesday, 1610.  The winter had been a rigorous one in Brussels,
+and the snow lay in drifts three feet deep in the streets.  Within and
+about the splendid palace of Nassau there was much commotion.  Lights and
+flambeaux were glancing, loud voices, martial music, discharge of pistols
+and even of artillery were heard together with the trampling of many
+feet, but there was nothing much resembling the wild revelry or cheerful
+mummery of that holiday season.  A throng of the great nobles of Belgium
+with drawn swords and menacing aspect were assembled in the chief
+apartments, a detachment of the Archduke's mounted body-guard was
+stationed in the courtyard, and five hundred halberdiers of the burgher
+guilds kept watch and ward about the palace.
+
+The Prince of Conde, a square-built, athletic young man of middle
+stature, with regular features, but a sulky expression, deepened at
+this moment into ferocity, was seen chasing the secretary of the French
+resident minister out of the courtyard, thwacking him lustily about the
+shoulders with his drawn sword, and threatening to kill him or any other
+Frenchman on the spot, should he show himself in that palace.  He was
+heard shouting rather than speaking, in furious language against the
+King, against Coeuvres, against Berny, and bitterly bewailing his
+misfortunes, as if his wife were already in Paris instead of Brussels.
+
+Upstairs in her own apartment which she had kept for some days on pretext
+of illness sat the Princess Margaret, in company' of Madame de Berny,
+wife of the French minister, and of the Marquis de Coeuvres, Henry's
+special envoy, and a few other Frenchmen.  She was passionately fond of
+dancing.  The adoring cardinal described her as marvellously graceful and
+perfect in that accomplishment.  She had begged her other adorer, the
+Marquis Spinola, "with sweetest words," that she might remain a few days
+longer in the Nassau Palace before removing to the Archduke's residence,
+and that the great general, according to the custom in France and
+Flanders, would be the one to present her with the violins.  But Spinola,
+knowing the artifice concealed beneath these "sweetest words," had
+summoned up valour enough to resist her blandishments, and had refused a
+second entertainment.
+
+It was not, therefore, the disappointment at losing her ball that now
+made the Princess sad.  She and her companions saw that there had been
+a catastrophe; a plot discovered.  There was bitter disappointment and
+deep dismay upon their faces.  The plot had been an excellent one.  De
+Coeuvres had arranged it all, especially instigated thereto by the father
+of the Princess acting in concurrence with the King.  That night when all
+was expected to be in accustomed quiet, the Princess, wrapped in her
+mantilla, was to have stolen down into the garden, accompanied only by
+her maid the adventurous and faithful Philipotte, to have gone through a
+breach which led through a garden wall to the city ramparts, thence
+across the foss to the counterscarp, where a number of horsemen under
+trustworthy commanders were waiting.  Mounting on the crupper behind one
+of the officers of the escort, she was then to fly to the frontier,
+relays of horses having been provided at every stage until she should
+reach Rocroy, the first pausing place within French territory; a perilous
+adventure for the young and delicate Princess in a winter of almost
+unexampled severity.
+
+On the very morning of the day assigned for the adventure, despatches
+brought by special couriers from the Nuncius and the Spanish ambassador
+at Paris gave notice of the plot to the Archdukes and to Conde, although
+up to that moment none knew of it in Brussels.  Albert, having been
+apprised that many Frenchmen had been arriving during the past few days,
+and swarming about the hostelries of the city and suburbs, was at once
+disposed to believe in the story.  When Conde came to him, therefore,
+with confirmation from his own letters, and demanding a detachment of the
+body-guard in addition to the burgher militiamen already granted by the
+magistrates, he made no difficulty granting the request.  It was as if
+there had been a threatened assault of the city, rather than the
+attempted elopement of a young lady escorted by a handful of cavaliers.
+
+The courtyard of the Nassau Palace was filled with cavalry sent by the
+Archduke, while five hundred burgher guards sent by the magistrates were
+drawn up around the gate.  The noise and uproar, gaining at every moment
+more mysterious meaning by the darkness of night, soon spread through the
+city.  The whole population was awake, and swarming through the streets.
+Such a tumult had not for years been witnessed in Brussels, and the
+rumour flew about and was generally believed that the King of France at
+the head of an army was at the gates of the city determined to carry off
+the Princess by force.  But although the superfluous and very scandalous
+explosion might have been prevented, there could be no doubt that the
+stratagem had been defeated.
+
+Nevertheless, the effrontery and ingenuity of de Coeuvres became now
+sublime.  Accompanied by his colleague, the resident minister, de Berny,
+who was sure not to betray the secret because he had never known it--his
+wife alone having been in the confidence of the Princess--he proceeded
+straightway to the Archduke's palace, and, late in the night as it was,
+insisted on an audience.
+
+Here putting on his boldest face when admitted to the presence, he
+complained loudly of the plot, of which he had just become aware,
+contrived by the Prince of Conde to carry off his wife to Spain against
+her will, by main force, and by assistance of Flemish nobles, archiducal
+body-guard, and burgher militia.
+
+It was all a plot of Conde, he said, to palliate still more his flight
+from France.  Every one knew that the Princess could not fly back to
+Paris through the air.  To take her out of a house filled with people,
+to pierce or scale the walls of the city, to arrange her journey by
+ordinary means, and to protect the whole route by stations of cavalry,
+reaching from Brussels to the frontier, and to do all this in profound
+secrecy, was equally impossible.  Such a scheme had never been arranged
+nor even imagined, he said.  The true plotter was Conde, aided by
+ministers in Flanders hostile to France, and as the honour of the King
+and the reputation of the Princess had been injured by this scandal, the
+Ambassador loudly demanded a thorough investigation of the affair in
+order that vengeance might fall where it was due.
+
+The prudent Albert was equal to the occasion.  Not wishing to state the
+full knowledge which he possessed of de Coeuvres' agency and the King's
+complicity in the scheme of abduction to France, he reasoned calmly with
+the excited marquis, while his colleague looked and listened in dumb
+amazement, having previously been more vociferous and infinitely more
+sincere than his colleague in expressions of indignation.
+
+The Archduke said that he had not thought the plot imputed to the King
+and his ambassador very probable.  Nevertheless, the assertions of the
+Prince had been so positive as to make it impossible to refuse the guards
+requested by him.  He trusted, however, that the truth would soon be
+known, and that it would leave no stain on the Princess, nor give any
+offence to the King.
+
+Surprised and indignant at the turn given to the adventure by the French
+envoys, he nevertheless took care to conceal these sentiments, to abstain
+from accusation, and calmly to inform them that the Princess next morning
+would be established under his own roof; and enjoy the protection of the
+Archduchess.
+
+For it had been arranged several days before that Margaret should leave
+the palace of Nassau for that of Albert and Isabella on the 14th, and the
+abduction had been fixed for the night of the 13th precisely because the
+conspirators wished to profit by the confusion incident on a change of
+domicile.
+
+The irrepressible de Coeuvres, even then hardly willing to give up the
+whole stratagem as lost, was at least determined to discover how and by
+whom the plot had been revealed.  In a cemetery piled three feet deep
+with snow on the evening following that mid-winter's night which had been
+fixed for the Princess's flight, the unfortunate ambassador waited until
+a certain Vallobre, a gentleman of Spinola's, who was the go-between of
+the enamoured Genoese and the Princess, but whom de Coeuvres had gained
+over, came at last to meet him by appointment.  When he arrived, it was
+only to inform him of the manner in which he had been baffled, to
+convince him that the game was up, and that nothing was left him but to
+retreat utterly foiled in his attempt, and to be stigmatized as a
+blockhead by his enraged sovereign.
+
+Next day the Princess removed her residence to the palace of the
+Archdukes, where she was treated with distinguished honour by Isabella,
+and installed ceremoniously in the most stately, the most virtuous, and
+the most dismal of courts.  Her father and aunt professed themselves as
+highly pleased with the result, and Pecquius wrote that "they were glad
+to know her safe from the importunities of the old fop who seemed as mad
+as if he had been stung by a tarantula."
+
+And how had the plot been revealed?  Simply through the incorrigible
+garrulity of the King himself.  Apprised of the arrangement in all its
+details by the Constable, who had first received the special couriers of
+de Coeuvres, he could not keep the secret to himself for a moment, and
+the person of all others in the world to whom he thought good to confide
+it was the Queen herself.  She received the information with a smile, but
+straightway sent for the Nuncius Ubaldini, who at her desire instantly
+despatched a special courier to Spinola with full particulars of the time
+and mode of the proposed abduction.
+
+Nevertheless the ingenuous Henry, confiding in the capacity of his deeply
+offended queen to keep the secret which he had himself divulged, could
+scarcely contain himself for joy.
+
+Off he went to Saint-Germain with a train of coaches, impatient to get
+the first news from de Coeuvres after the scheme should have been carried
+into effect, and intending to travel post towards Flanders to meet and
+welcome the Princess.
+
+"Pleasant farce for Shrove Tuesday," wrote the secretary of Pecquius, "is
+that which the Frenchmen have been arranging down there! He in whose
+favour the abduction is to be made was seen going out the same day
+spangled and smart, contrary to his usual fashion, making a gambado
+towards Saint-Germain-en-Laye with four carriages and four to meet the
+nymph."
+
+Great was the King's wrath and mortification at this ridiculous exposure
+of his detestable scheme.  Vociferous were Villeroy's expressions of
+Henry's indignation at being supposed to have had any knowledge of or
+complicity in the affair.  "His Majesty cannot approve of the means one
+has taken to guard against a pretended plot for carrying off the
+Princess," said the Secretary of State; "a fear which was simulated by
+the Prince in order to defame the King."  He added that there was no
+reason to suspect the King, as he had never attempted anything of the
+sort in his life, and that the Archduke might have removed the Princess
+to his palace without sending an army to the hotel of the Prince of
+Orange, and causing such an alarm in the city, firing artillery on the
+rampart as if the town had been full of Frenchmen in arms, whereas one
+was ashamed next morning to find that there had been but fifteen in all.
+"But it was all Marquis Spinola's fault," he said, "who wished to show
+himself off as a warrior."
+
+The King, having thus through the mouth of his secretary of state warmly
+protested against his supposed implication in the attempted abduction,
+began as furiously to rail at de Coeuvres for its failure; telling the
+Duc de Vendome that his uncle was an idiot, and writing that unlucky
+envoy most abusive letters for blundering in the scheme which had been so
+well concerted between them.  Then he sent for Malherbe, who straightway
+perpetrated more poems to express the King's despair, in which Henry was
+made to liken himself to a skeleton with a dried skin, and likewise to a
+violet turned up by the ploughshare and left to wither.
+
+He kept up through Madame de Berny a correspondence with "his beautiful
+angel," as he called the Princess, whom he chose to consider a prisoner
+and a victim; while she, wearied to death with the frigid monotony and
+sepulchral gaieties of the archiducal court, which she openly called her
+"dungeon" diverted herself with the freaks and fantasies of her royal
+adorer, called him in very ill-spelled letters "her chevalier, her heart,
+her all the world," and frequently wrote to beg him, at the suggestion of
+the intriguing Chateau Vert, to devise some means of rescuing her from
+prison.
+
+The Constable and Duchess meanwhile affected to be sufficiently satisfied
+with the state of things.  Conde, however, received a letter from the
+King, formally summoning him to return to France, and, in case of
+refusal, declaring him guilty of high-treason for leaving the kingdom
+without the leave and against the express commands of the King.  To this
+letter, brought to him by de Coeuvres, the Prince replied by a paper,
+drawn up and served by a notary of Brussels, to the effect that he had
+left France to save his life and honour; that he was ready to return when
+guarantees were given him for the security of both.  He would live and
+die, he said, faithful to the King.  But when the King, departing from
+the paths of justice, proceeded through those of violence against him, he
+maintained that every such act against his person was null and invalid.
+Henry had even the incredible meanness and folly to request the Queen to
+write to the Archdukes, begging that the Princess might be restored to
+assist at her coronation.  Mary de' Medici vigorously replied once more
+that, although obliged to wink at the King's amours, she declined to be
+his procuress.  Conde then went off to Milan very soon after the scene
+at the Nassau Palace and the removal of the Princess to the care of the
+Archdukes.  He was very angry with his wife, from whom he expressed a
+determination to be divorced, and furious with the King, the validity of
+whose second marriage and the legitimacy of whose children he proposed
+with Spanish help to dispute.
+
+The Constable was in favour of the divorce, or pretended to be so, and
+caused importunate letters to be written, which he signed, to both Albert
+and Isabella, begging that his daughter might be restored to him to be
+the staff of his old age, and likewise to be present at the Queen's
+coronation.  The Archdukes, however, resolutely refused to permit her to
+leave their protection without Conde's consent, or until after a divorce
+had been effected, notwithstanding that the father and aunt demanded it.
+The Constable and Duchess however, acquiesced in the decision, and
+expressed immense gratitude to Isabella.
+
+"The father and aunt have been talking to Pecquius," said Henry very
+dismally; "but they give me much pain.  They are even colder than the
+season, but my fire thaws them as soon as I approach."
+
+"P. S.--I am so pining away in my anguish that I am nothing but skin and
+bones.  Nothing gives me pleasure.  I fly from company, and if in order
+to comply with the law of nations I go into some assembly or other,
+instead of enlivening, it nearly kills me."--[Lettres missives de Henri
+vii. 834].
+
+And the King took to his bed.  Whether from gout, fever, or the pangs of
+disappointed love, he became seriously ill.  Furious with every one, with
+Conde, the Constable, de Coeuvres, the Queen, Spinola, with the Prince of
+Orange, whose councillor Keeremans had been encouraging Conde in his
+rebellion and in going to Spain with Spinola, he was now resolved that
+tho war should go on.  Aerssens, cautious of saying too much on paper of
+this very delicate affair, always intimated to Barneveld that, if the
+Princess could be restored, peace was still possible, and that by moving
+an inch ahead of the King in the Cleve matter the States at the last
+moment might be left in the lurch.  He distinctly told the Advocate, on
+his expressing a hope that Henry might consent to the Prince's residence
+in some neutral place until a reconciliation could be effected, that the
+pinch of the matter was not there, and that van der Myle, who knew all
+about it, could easily explain it.
+
+Alluding to the project of reviving the process against the Dowager, and
+of divorcing the Prince and Princess, he said these steps would do much
+harm, as they would too much justify the true cause of the retreat of the
+Prince, who was not believed when he merely talked of his right of
+primogeniture: "The matter weighs upon us very heavily," he said, "but
+the trouble is that we don't search for the true remedies.  The matter is
+so delicate that I don't dare to discuss it to the very bottom."
+
+The Ambassador had a long interview with the King as he lay in his bed
+feverish and excited.  He was more impatient than ever for the arrival
+of the States' special embassy, reluctantly acquiesced in the reasons
+assigned for the delay, but trusted that it would arrive soon with
+Barneveld at the head, and with Count Lewis William as a member for
+"the sword part of it."
+
+He railed at the Prince of Orange, not believing that Keeremans would
+have dared to do what he had done but with the orders of his master.
+He said that the King of Spain would supply Conde with money and with
+everything he wanted, knowing that he could make use of him to trouble
+his kingdom.  It was strange, he thought, that Philip should venture to
+these extremities with his affairs in such condition, and when he had so
+much need of repose.  He recalled all his ancient grievances against
+Spain, his rights to the Kingdom of Navarre and the County of St. Pol
+violated; the conspiracy of Biron, the intrigues of Bouillon, the plots
+of the Count of Auvergne and the Marchioness of Verneuil, the treason of
+Meragne, the corruption of L'Hoste, and an infinity of other plots of the
+King and his ministers; of deep injuries to him and to the public repose,
+not to be tolerated by a mighty king like himself, with a grey beard.  He
+would be revenged, he said, for this last blow, and so for all the rest.
+He would not leave a troublesome war on the hands of his young son.  The
+occasion was favourable.  It was just to defend the oppressed princes
+with the promptly accorded assistance of the States-General.  The King of
+Great Britain was favourable.  The Duke of Savoy was pledged.  It was
+better to begin the war in his green old age than to wait the pleasure
+and opportunity of the King of Spain.
+
+All this he said while racked with fever, and dismissed the Envoy at
+last, after a long interview, with these words:  "Mr. Ambassador--I have
+always spoken roundly and frankly to you, and you will one day be my
+witness that I have done all that I could to draw the Prince out of the
+plight into which he has put himself.  But he is struggling for the
+succession to this crown under instructions from the Spaniards, to whom
+he has entirely pledged himself.  He has already received 6000 crowns for
+his equipment.  I know that you and my other friends will work for the
+conservation of this monarchy, and will never abandon me in my designs to
+weaken the power of Spain.  Pray God for my health."
+
+The King kept his bed a few days afterwards, but soon recovered.
+Villeroy sent word to Barneveld in answer to his suggestions of
+reconciliation that it was too late, that Conde was entirely desperate
+and Spanish.  The crown of France was at stake, he said, and the Prince
+was promising himself miracles and mountains with the aid of Spain,
+loudly declaring the marriage of Mary de' Medici illegal, and himself
+heir to the throne.  The Secretary of State professed himself as
+impatient as his master for the arrival of the embassy; the States being
+the best friends France ever had and the only allies to make the war
+succeed.
+
+Jeannin, who was now never called to the council, said that the war was
+not for Germany but for Conde, and that Henry could carry it on for eight
+years.  He too was most anxious for Barneveld's arrival, and was of his
+opinion that it would have been better for Conde to be persuaded to
+remain at Breda and be supported by his brother-in-law, the Prince of
+Orange.  The impetuosity of the King had however swept everything before
+it, and Conde had been driven to declare himself Spanish and a pretender
+to the crown.  There was no issue now but war.
+
+Boderie, the King's envoy in Great Britain, wrote that James would be
+willing to make a defensive league for the affairs of Cleve and Julich
+only, which was the slenderest amount of assistance; but Henry always
+suspected Master Jacques of intentions to baulk him if possible and
+traverse his designs.  But the die was cast.  Spinola had carried off
+Conde in triumph; the Princess was pining in her gilt cage in Brussels,
+and demanding a divorce for desertion and cruel treatment; the King
+considered himself as having done as much as honour allowed him to effect
+a reconciliation, and it was obvious that, as the States' ambassador
+said, he could no longer retire from the war without shame, which would
+be the greatest danger of all.
+
+"The tragedy is ready to begin," said Aerssens.  "They are only waiting
+now for the arrival of our ambassadors."
+
+On the 9th March the King before going to Fontainebleau for a few days
+summoned that envoy to the Louvre.  Impatient at a slight delay in his
+arrival, Henry came down into the courtyard as he was arriving and asked
+eagerly if Barneveld was coming to Paris.  Aerssens replied, that the
+Advocate had been hastening as much as possible the departure of the
+special embassy, but that the condition of affairs at home was such as
+not to permit him to leave the country at that moment.  Van der Myle, who
+would be one of the ambassadors, would more fully explain this by word of
+mouth.
+
+The King manifested infinite annoyance and disappointment that Barneveld
+was not to make part of the embassy.  "He says that he reposes such
+singular confidence in your authority in the state, experience in
+affairs, and affection for himself," wrote Aerssens, "that he might treat
+with you in detail and with open heart of all his designs.  He fears now
+that the ambassadors will be limited in their powers and instructions,
+and unable to reply at once on the articles which at different times have
+been proposed to me for our enterprise.  Thus much valuable time will be
+wasted in sending backwards and forwards."
+
+The King also expressed great anxiety to consult with Count Lewis William
+in regard to military details, but his chief sorrow was in regard to the
+Advocate.  "He acquiesced only with deep displeasure and regret in your
+reasons," said the Ambassador, "and says that he can hope for nothing
+firm now that you refuse to come."
+
+Villeroy intimated that Barneveld did not come for fear of exciting the
+jealousy of the English.
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+He who spreads the snare always tumbles into the ditch himself
+Most detestable verses that even he had ever composed
+She declined to be his procuress
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext Life of John Barneveld, v2, Motley #87
+by John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND
+
+WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR
+
+By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+
+
+The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, v3, 1610
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+     Difficult Position of Barneveld--Insurrection at Utrecht subdued by
+     the States' Army--Special Embassies to England and France--Anger of
+     the King with Spain and the Archdukes--Arrangements of Henry for the
+     coming War--Position of Spain--Anxiety of the King for the Presence
+     of Barneveld in Paris--Arrival of the Dutch Commissioners in France
+     and their brilliant Reception--Their Interview with the King and his
+     Ministers--Negotiations--Delicate Position of the Dutch Government--
+     India Trade--Simon Danzer, the Corsair--Conversations of Henry with
+     the Dutch Commissioners--Letter of the King to Archduke Albert--
+     Preparations for the Queen's Coronation, and of Henry to open the
+     Campaign in person--Perplexities of Henry--Forebodings and Warnings
+     --The Murder accomplished--Terrible Change in France--Triumph of
+     Concini and of Spain--Downfall of Sully--Disputes of the Grandees
+     among themselves--Special Mission of Condelence from the Republic--
+     Conference on the great Enterprise--Departure of van der Myle from
+     Paris.
+
+There were reasons enough why the Advocate could not go to Paris at this
+juncture.  It was absurd in Henry to suppose it possible.  Everything
+rested on Barneveld's shoulders.  During the year which had just passed
+he had drawn almost every paper, every instruction in regard to the peace
+negotiations, with his own hand, had assisted at every conference,
+guided and mastered the whole course of a most difficult and intricate
+negotiation, in which he had not only been obliged to make allowance
+for the humbled pride and baffled ambition of the ancient foe of the
+Netherlands, but to steer clear of the innumerable jealousies,
+susceptibilities, cavillings, and insolences of their patronizing
+friends.
+
+It was his brain that worked, his tongue that spoke, his restless pen
+that never paused.  His was not one of those easy posts, not unknown in
+the modern administration of great affairs, where the subordinate
+furnishes the intellect, the industry, the experience, while the bland
+superior, gratifying the world with his sign-manual, appropriates the
+applause.  So long as he lived and worked, the States-General and the
+States of Holland were like a cunningly contrived machine, which seemed
+to be alive because one invisible but mighty mind vitalized the whole.
+
+And there had been enough to do.  It was not until midsummer of 1609 that
+the ratifications of the Treaty of Truce, one of the great triumphs in
+the history of diplomacy, had been exchanged, and scarcely had this
+period been put to the eternal clang of arms when the death of a lunatic
+threw the world once more into confusion.  It was obvious to Barneveld
+that the issue of the Cleve-Julich affair, and of the tremendous
+religious fermentation in Bohemia, Moravia, and Austria, must sooner or
+later lead to an immense war.  It was inevitable that it would devolve
+upon the States to sustain their great though vacillating, their generous
+though encroaching, their sincere though most irritating, ally.  And
+yet, thoroughly as Barneveld had mastered all the complications and
+perplexities of the religious and political question, carefully as he
+had calculated the value of the opposing forces which were shaking
+Christendom, deeply as he had studied the characters of Matthias and
+Rudolph, of Charles of Denmark and Ferdinand of Graz, of Anhalt and
+Maximilian, of Brandenburg and Neuburg, of James and Philip, of Paul V.
+and Charles Emmanuel, of Sully and Yilleroy, of Salisbury and Bacon, of
+Lerma and Infantado; adroitly as he could measure, weigh, and analyse all
+these elements in the great problem which was forcing itself on the
+attention of Europe--there was one factor with which it was difficult for
+this austere republican, this cold, unsuseeptible statesman, to deal: the
+intense and imperious passion of a greybeard for a woman of sixteen.
+
+For out of the cauldron where the miscellaneous elements of universal
+war were bubbling rose perpetually the fantastic image of Margaret
+Montmorency: the fatal beauty at whose caprice the heroic sword of Ivry
+and Cahors was now uplifted and now sheathed.
+
+Aerssens was baffled, and reported the humours of the court where he
+resided as changing from hour to hour.  To the last he reported that all
+the mighty preparations then nearly completed "might evaporate in smoke"
+if the Princess of Conde should come back.  Every ambassador in Paris was
+baffled.  Peter Pecquius was as much in the dark as Don Inigo de
+Cardenas, as Ubaldini or Edmonds.  No one save Sully, Aerssens,
+Barneveld, and the King knew the extensive arrangements and profound
+combinations which had been made for the war.  Yet not Sully, Aerssens,
+Barneveld, or the King, knew whether or not the war would really be made.
+
+Barneveld had to deal with this perplexing question day by day.  His
+correspondence with his ambassador at Henry's court was enormous, and we
+have seen that the Ambassador was with the King almost daily; sleeping or
+waking; at dinner or the chase; in the cabinet or the courtyard.
+
+But the Advocate was also obliged to carry in his arms, as it were, the
+brood of snarling, bickering, cross-grained German princes, to supply
+them with money, with arms, with counsel, with brains; to keep them awake
+when they went to sleep, to steady them in their track, to teach them to
+go alone.  He had the congress at Hall in Suabia to supervise and direct;
+he had to see that the ambassadors of the new republic, upon which they
+in reality were already half dependent and chafing at their dependence,
+were treated with the consideration due to the proud position which the
+Commonwealth had gained.  Questions of etiquette were at that moment
+questions of vitality.  He instructed his ambassadors to leave the
+congress on the spot if they were ranked after the envoys of princes who
+were only feudatories of the Emperor.  The Dutch ambassadors,
+"recognising and relying upon no superiors but God and their sword,"
+placed themselves according to seniority with the representatives of
+proudest kings.
+
+He had to extemporize a system of free international communication with
+all the powers of the earth--with the Turk at Constantinople, with the
+Czar of Muscovy; with the potentates of the Baltic, with both the Indies.
+The routine of a long established and well organized foreign office in a
+time-honoured state running in grooves; with well-balanced springs and
+well oiled wheels, may be a luxury of civilization; but it was a more
+arduous task to transact the greatest affairs of a state springing
+suddenly into recognized existence and mainly dependent for its primary
+construction and practical working on the hand of one man.
+
+Worse than all, he had to deal on the most dangerous and delicate topics
+of state with a prince who trembled at danger and was incapable of
+delicacy; to show respect for a character that was despicable, to lean on
+a royal word falser than water, to inhale almost daily the effluvia from
+a court compared to which the harem of Henry was a temple of vestals.
+The spectacle of the slobbering James among his Kars and Hays and
+Villiers's and other minions is one at which history covers her eyes and
+is dumb; but the republican envoys, with instructions from a Barneveld,
+were obliged to face him daily, concealing their disgust, and bowing
+reverentially before him as one of the arbiters of their destinies and
+the Solomon of his epoch.
+
+A special embassy was sent early in the year to England to convey the
+solemn thanks of the Republic to the King for his assistance in the truce
+negotiations, and to treat of the important matters then pressing on the
+attention of both powers.  Contemporaneously was to be despatched the
+embassy for which Henry was waiting so impatiently at Paris.
+
+Certainly the Advocate had enough with this and other, important business
+already mentioned to detain him at his post.  Moreover the first year of
+peace had opened disastrously in the Netherlands.  Tremendous tempests
+such as had rarely been recorded even in that land of storms had raged
+all the winter.  The waters everywhere had burst their dykes and
+inundations, which threatened to engulph the whole country, and which had
+caused enormous loss of property and even of life, were alarming the most
+courageous.  It was difficult in many district to collect the taxes for
+the every-day expenses of the community, and yet the Advocate knew that
+the Republic would soon be forced to renew the war on a prodigious scale.
+
+Still more to embarrass the action of the government and perplex its
+statesmen, an alarming and dangerous insurrection broke out in Utrecht.
+
+In that ancient seat of the hard-fighting, imperious, and opulent
+sovereign archbishops of the ancient church an important portion of the
+population had remained Catholic.  Another portion complained of the
+abolition of various privileges which they had formerly enjoyed; among
+others that of a monopoly of beer-brewing for the province.  All the
+population, as is the case with all populations in all countries and all
+epochs, complained of excessive taxation.
+
+A clever politician, Dirk Kanter by name, a gentleman by birth, a scholar
+and philosopher by pursuit and education, and a demagogue by profession,
+saw an opportunity of taking an advantage of this state of things.  More
+than twenty years before he had been burgomaster of the city, and had
+much enjoyed himself in that position.  He was tired of the learned
+leisure to which the ingratitude of his fellow-citizens had condemned
+him.  He seems to have been of easy virtue in the matter of religion, a
+Catholic, an Arminian, an ultra orthodox Contra-Remonstrant by turns.  He
+now persuaded a number of determined partisans that the time had come for
+securing a church for the public worship of the ancient faith, and at the
+same time for restoring the beer brewery, reducing the taxes, recovering
+lost privileges, and many other good things.  Beneath the whole scheme
+lay a deep design to effect the secession of the city and with it of the
+opulent and important province of Utrecht from the Union.  Kanter had
+been heard openly to avow that after all the Netherlands had flourished
+under the benign sway of the House of Burgundy, and that the time would
+soon come for returning to that enviable condition.
+
+By a concerted assault the city hall was taken possession of by main
+force, the magistracy was overpowered, and a new board of senators and
+common council-men appointed, Kanter and a devoted friend of his,
+Heldingen by name, being elected burgomasters.
+
+The States-Provincial of Utrecht, alarmed at these proceedings in the
+city, appealed for protection against violence to the States-General
+under the 3rd Article of the Union, the fundamental pact which bore the
+name of Utrecht itself.  Prince Maurice proceeded to the city at the head
+of a detachment of troops to quell the tumults.  Kanter and his friends
+were plausible enough to persuade him of the legality and propriety of
+the revolution which they had effected, and to procure his formal
+confirmation of the new magistracy.  Intending to turn his military
+genius and the splendour of his name to account, they contrived to keep
+him for a time at least in an amiable enthralment, and induced him to
+contemplate in their interest the possibility of renouncing the oath
+which subjected him to the authority of the States of Utrecht.  But the
+far-seeing eye of Barneveld could not be blind to the danger which at
+this crisis beset the Stadholder and the whole republic.  The Prince was
+induced to return to the Hague, but the city continued by armed revolt to
+maintain the new magistracy.  They proceeded to reduce the taxes, and in
+other respects to carry out the measures on the promise of which they had
+come into power.  Especially the Catholic party sustained Kanter and his
+friends, and promised themselves from him and from his influence over
+Prince Maurice to obtain a power of which they had long been deprived.
+
+The States-General now held an assembly at Woerden, and summoned the
+malcontents of Utrecht to bring before that body a statement of their
+grievances.  This was done, but there was no satisfactory arrangement
+possible, and the deputation returned to Utrecht, the States-General to
+the Hague. The States-Provincial of Utrecht urged more strongly than ever
+upon the assembly of the Union to save the city from the hands of a
+reckless and revolutionary government.  The States-General resolved
+accordingly to interfere by force.  A considerable body of troops was
+ordered to march at once upon Utrecht and besiege the city.  Maurice, in
+his capacity of captain-general and stadholder of the province, was
+summoned to take charge of the army.  He was indisposed to do so, and
+pleaded sickness.  The States, determined that the name of Nassau should
+not be used as an encouragement to disobedience, and rebellion, then
+directed the brother of Maurice, Frederic Henry, youngest son of William
+the Silent, to assume the command.  Maurice insisted that his brother was
+too young, and that it was unjust to allow so grave a responsibility to
+fall upon his shoulders.  The States, not particularly pleased with the
+Prince's attitude at this alarming juncture, and made anxious by the
+glamour which seemed to possess him since his conferences with the
+revolutionary party at Utrecht, determined not to yield.
+
+The army marched forth and laid siege to the city, Prince Frederic Henry
+at its head.  He was sternly instructed by the States-General, under
+whose orders he acted, to take possession of the city at all hazards.
+He was to insist on placing there a garrison of 2000 foot and 300 horse,
+and to permit not another armed man within the walls.  The members of the
+council of state and of the States of Utrecht accompanied the army.  For
+a moment the party in power was disposed to resist the forces of the
+Union.  Dick Kanter and his friends were resolute enough; the Catholic
+priests turned out among the rest with their spades and worked on the
+entrenchments.  The impossibility of holding the city against the
+overwhelming power of the States was soon obvious, and the next day the
+gates were opened, and easy terms were granted.  The new magistracy was
+set aside, the old board that had been deposed by the rebels reinstated.
+The revolution and the counterrevolution were alike bloodless, and it was
+determined that the various grievances of which the discontented party
+had complained should be referred to the States-General, to Prince
+Maurice, to the council of state, and to the ambassadors of France and
+England.  Amnesty was likewise decreed on submission.
+
+The restored government was Arminian in its inclinations, the
+revolutionary one was singularly compounded both of Catholic and of
+ultra-orthodox elements.  Quiet was on the whole restored, but the
+resources of the city were crippled.  The event occurring exactly at the
+crisis of the Clove and Julich expedition angered the King of France.
+
+"The trouble of Utrecht," wrote Aerssens to Barneveld, "has been turned
+to account here marvellously, the Archdukes and Spaniards boasting that
+many more revolts like this may be at once expected.  I have explained to
+his Majesty, who has been very much alarmed about it, both its source and
+the hopes that it will be appeased by the prudence of his Excellency
+Prince Maurice and the deputies of the States.  The King desires that
+everything should be pacified as soon as possible, so that there may be
+no embarrassment to the course of public affairs.  But he fears, he tells
+me, that this may create some new jealousy between Prince Maurice and
+yourself.  I don't comprehend what he means, although he held this
+language to me very expressly and without reserve.  I could only answer
+that you were living on the best of terms together in perfect amity and
+intelligence.  If you know if this talk of his has any other root, please
+to enlighten me, that I may put a stop to false reports, for I know
+nothing of affairs except what you tell me."
+
+King James, on the other hand, thoroughly approved the promptness of the
+States-General in suppressing the tumult.
+
+Nothing very serious of alike nature occurred in Utrecht until the end of
+the year, when a determined and secret conspiracy was discovered, having
+for its object to overpower the garrison and get bodily possession of
+Colonel John Ogle, the military commander of the town.  At the bottom of
+the movement were the indefatigable Dirk Kanter and his friend Heldingen.
+The attempt was easily suppressed, and the two were banished from the
+town.  Kanter died subsequently in North Holland, in the odour of ultra-
+orthodoxy.  Four of the conspirators--a post-master, two shoemakers, and
+a sexton, who had bound themselves by oath to take the lives of two
+eminent Arminian preachers, besides other desperate deeds--were condemned
+to death, but pardoned on the scaffold.  Thus ended the first revolution
+at Utrecht.
+
+Its effect did not cease, however, with the tumults which were its
+original manifestations.  This earliest insurrection in organized shape
+against the central authority of the States-General; this violent though
+abortive effort to dissolve the Union and to nullify its laws; this
+painful necessity for the first time imposed upon the federal government
+to take up arms against misguided citizens of the Republic, in order to
+save itself from disintegration and national death, were destined to be
+followed by far graver convulsions on the self-same spot.  Religious
+differences and religious hatreds were to mingle their poison with
+antagonistic political theories and personal ambitions, and to develop on
+a wide scale the danger ever lurking in a constitution whose fundamental
+law was unstable, ill defined, and liable to contradictory
+interpretations.  For the present it need only be noticed that the
+States-General, guided by Barneveld, most vigorously suppressed the local
+revolt and the incipient secession, while Prince Maurice, the right arm
+of the executive, the stadholder of the province, and the representative
+of the military power of the Commonwealth, was languid in the exertion of
+that power, inclined to listen to the specious arguments of the Utrecht
+rebels, and accused at least of tampering with the fell spirit which the
+Advocate was resolute to destroy.  Yet there was no suspicion of treason,
+no taint of rebellion, no accusation of unpatriotic motives uttered
+against the Stadholder.
+
+There was a doubt as to the true maxims by which the Confederacy was to
+be governed, and at this moment, certainly, the Prince and the Advocate
+represented opposite ideas.  There was a possibility, at a future day,
+when the religious and political parties might develop themselves on a
+wider scale and the struggles grow fiercer, that the two great champions
+in the conflict might exchange swords and inflict mutual and poisoned
+wounds.  At present the party of the Union had triumphed, with Barneveld
+at its head.  At a later but not far distant day, similar scenes might be
+enacted in the ancient city of Utrecht, but with a strange difference and
+change in the cast of parts and with far more tragical results.
+
+For the moment the moderate party in the Church, those more inclined to
+Arminianism and the supremacy of the civil authority in religious
+matters, had asserted their ascendency in the States-General, and had
+prevented the threatened rupture.
+
+Meantime it was doubly necessary to hasten the special embassies to
+France and to England, in both which countries much anxiety as to the
+political health and strength of the new republic had been excited by
+these troubles in Utrecht.  It was important for the States-General to
+show that they were not crippled, and would not shrink from the coming
+conflict, but would justify the reliance placed on them by their allies.
+
+Thus there were reasons enough why Barneveld could not himself leave the
+country in the eventful spring of 1610.  It must be admitted, however,
+that he was not backward in placing his nearest relatives in places of
+honour, trust, and profit.
+
+His eldest son Reinier, Seignior of Groeneveld, had been knighted by
+Henry IV.; his youngest, William, afterwards called Seignior of
+Stoutenburg, but at this moment bearing the not very mellifluous title of
+Craimgepolder, was a gentleman-in-waiting at that king's court, with a
+salary of 3000 crowns a year.  He was rather a favourite with the easy-
+going monarch, but he gave infinite trouble to the Dutch ambassador
+Aerssens, who, feeling himself under immense obligations to the Advocate
+and professing for him boundless gratitude, did his best to keep the
+idle, turbulent, extravagant, and pleasure-loving youth up to the strict
+line of his duties.
+
+"Your son is in debt again," wrote Aerssens, on one occasion, "and
+troubled for money.  He is in danger of going to the usurers.  He says he
+cannot keep himself for less than 200 crowns a month.  This is a large
+allowance, but he has spent much more than that.  His life is not
+irregular nor his dress remarkably extravagant.  His difficulty is that
+he will not dine regularly with me nor at court.  He will keep his own
+table and have company to dinner.  That is what is ruining him.  He comes
+sometimes to me, not for the dinner nor the company, but for tennis,
+which he finds better in my faubourg than in town.  His trouble comes
+from the table, and I tell you frankly that you must regulate his
+expenses or they will become very onerous to you.  I am ashamed of them
+and have told him so a hundred times, more than if he had been my own
+brother.  It is all for love of you .  .  .  .  I have been all to him
+that could be expected of a man who is under such vast obligations to
+you; and I so much esteem the honour of your friendship that I should
+always neglect my private affairs in order to do everything for your
+service and meet your desires .  .  .  .  .  If M. de Craimgepolder comes
+back from his visit home, you must restrict him in two things, the table
+and tennis, and you can do this if you require him to follow the King
+assiduously as his service requires."
+
+Something at a future day was to be heard of William of Barneveld, as
+well as of his elder brother Reinier, and it is good, therefore, to have
+these occasional glimpses of him while in the service of the King and
+under the supervision of one who was then his father's devoted friend,
+Francis Aerssens.  There were to be extraordinary and tragical changes in
+the relations of parties and of individuals ere many years should go by.
+
+Besides the sons of the Advocate, his two sons-in-law, Brederode,
+Seignior of Veenhuizep, and Cornelis van der Myle, were constantly
+employed?  in important embassies.  Van der Myle had been the first
+ambassador to the great Venetian republic, and was now placed at the
+head of the embassy to France, an office which it was impossible at that
+moment for the Advocate to discharge.  At the same critical moment
+Barneveld's brother Elias, Pensionary of Rotterdam, was appointed
+one of the special high commissioners to the King of Great Britain.
+
+It is necessary to give an account of this embassy.
+
+They were provided with luminous and minute instructions from the hand of
+the Advocate.
+
+They were, in the first place, and ostensibly, to thank the King for his
+services in bringing about the truce, which, truly, had been of the
+slightest, as was very well known.  They were to explain, on the part of
+the States, their delay in sending this solemn commission, caused by the
+tardiness of the King of Spain in sending his ratification to the treaty,
+and by the many disputations caused by the irresolutions of the Archdukes
+and the obstinacy of their commissioners in regard to their many
+contraventions of the treaty.  After those commissioners had gone,
+further hindrances had been found in the "extraordinary tempests, high
+floods, rising of the waters, both of the ocean and the rivers, and the
+very disastrous inundations throughout nearly all the United Provinces,
+with the immense and exorbitant damage thus inflicted, both on the public
+and on many individuals; in addition to all which were to be mentioned
+the troubles in the city of Utrecht."
+
+They were, in almost hyperbolical language, directed to express the
+eternal gratitude of the States for the constant favours received by
+them from the crown of England, and their readiness to stand forth at
+any moment with sincere affection and to the utmost of their power,
+at all times and seasons, in resistance of any attempts against his
+Majesty's person or crown, or against the Prince of Wales or the royal
+family.  They were to thank him for his "prudent, heroic, and courageous
+resolve to suffer nothing to be done under colour of justice, authority,
+or any other pretext, to the hindrance of the Elector of Brandenburg and
+Palatine of Neuburg, in the maintenance of their lawful rights and
+possession of the principalities of Julich, Cleve, and Berg, and other
+provinces."
+
+By this course his Majesty, so the commissioners were to state, would put
+an end to the imaginations of those who thought they could give the law
+to everybody according to their pleasure.
+
+They were to assure the King that the States-General would exert
+themselves to the utmost to second his heroic resolution, notwithstanding
+the enormous burthens of their everlasting war, the very exorbitant
+damage caused by the inundations, and the sensible diminution in the
+contributions and other embarrassments then existing in the country.
+
+They were to offer 2000 foot and 500 horse for the general purpose under
+Prince Henry of Nassau, besides the succours furnished by the King of
+France and the electors and princes of Germany.  Further assistance in
+men, artillery, and supplies were promised under certain contingencies,
+and the plan of the campaign on the Meuse in conjunction with the King of
+France was duly mapped.
+
+They were to request a corresponding promise of men and money from the
+King of Great Britain, and they were to propose for his approval a closer
+convention for mutual assistance between his Majesty, the United
+Netherlands, the King of France, the electors and princes and other
+powers of Germany; as such close union would be very beneficial to all
+Christendom.  It would put a stop to all unjust occupations, attempts,
+and intrigues, and if the King was thereto inclined, he was requested to
+indicate time and place for making such a convention.
+
+The commissioners were further to point out the various contraventions
+on the part of the Archdukes of the Treaty of Truce, and were to give
+an exposition of the manner in which the States-General had quelled the
+tumults at Utrecht, and reasons why such a course had of necessity been
+adopted.
+
+They were instructed to state that, "over and above the great expenses of
+the late war and the necessary maintenance of military forces to protect
+their frontiers against their suspected new friends or old enemies, the
+Provinces were burthened with the cost of the succour to the Elector of
+Brandenburg and Palatine of Neuburg, and would be therefore incapable of
+furnishing the payments coming due to his Majesty.  They were accordingly
+to sound his Majesty as to whether a good part of the debt might not be
+remitted or at least an arrangement made by which the terms should begin
+to run only after a certain number of years."
+
+They were also directed to open the subject of the fisheries on the
+coasts of Great Britain, and to remonstrate against the order lately
+published by the King forbidding all foreigners from fishing on those
+coasts.  This was to be set forth as an infringement both of natural law
+and of ancient treaties, and as a source of infinite danger to the
+inhabitants of the United Provinces.
+
+The Seignior of Warmond, chief of the commission, died on the 15th April.
+His colleagues met at Brielle on the 16th, ready to take passage to
+England in the ship of war, the Hound.  They were, however, detained
+there six days by head winds and great storms, and it was not until the
+22nd that they were able to put to sea.  The following evening their ship
+cast anchor in Gravesend.  Half an hour before, the Duke of Wurtemberg
+had arrived from Flushing in a ship of war brought from France by the
+Prince of Anhalt.
+
+Sir Lewis Lewkener, master of ceremonies, had been waiting for the
+ambassadors at Gravesend, and informed them that the royal barges were to
+come next morning from London to take them to town.  They remained that
+night on board the Hound, and next morning, the wind blowing up the
+river, they proceeded in their ship as far as Blackwall, where they were
+formally received and bade welcome in the name of the King by Sir Thomas
+Cornwallis and Sir George Carew, late ambassador in France.  Escorted by
+them and Sir Lewis, they were brought in the court barges to Tower Wharf.
+Here the royal coaches were waiting, in which they were taken to lodgings
+provided for them in the city at the house of a Dutch merchant.  Noel de
+Caron, Seignior of Schonewal, resident ambassador of the States in
+London, was likewise there to greet them.  This was Saturday night: On
+the following Tuesday they went by appointment to the Palace of Whitehall
+in royal carriages for their first audience.  Manifestations of as entire
+respect and courtesy had thus been made to the Republican envoys as could
+be shown to the ambassadors of the greatest sovereigns.  They found the
+King seated on his throne in the audience chamber, accompanied by the
+Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, the Lord High Treasurer and Lord High
+Admiral, the Duke of Lenox, the Earls of Arundel and Northampton, and
+many other great nobles and dignitaries.  James rose from his seat, took
+off his hat, and advanced several paces to meet the ambassadors, and bade
+them courteously and respectfully welcome.  He then expressed his regret
+at the death of the Seignior of Warmond, and after the exchange of a few
+commonplaces listened, still with uncovered head, to the opening address.
+
+The spokesman, after thanking the King for his condolences on the death
+of the chief commissioner, whom, as was stated with whimsical simplicity,
+"the good God had called to Himself after all his luggage had been put on
+board ship," proceeded in the French language to give a somewhat
+abbreviated paraphrase of Barneveld's instructions.
+
+When this was done and intimation made that they would confer more fully
+with his Majesty's council on the subjects committed to their charge,
+the ambassadors were conducted home with the same ceremonies as had
+accompanied their arrival.  They received the same day the first visit
+from the ambassadors of France and Venice, Boderie and Carrero, and had a
+long conference a few days afterwards with the High Treasurer, Lord
+Salisbury.
+
+On the 3rd May they were invited to attend the pompous celebration of the
+festival of St. George in the palace at Westminster, where they were
+placed together with the French ambassador in the King's oratorium; the
+Dukes of Wurtemberg and Brunswick being in that of the Queen.
+
+These details are especially to be noted, and were at the moment of
+considerable importance, for this was the first solemn and extraordinary
+embassy sent by the rebel Netherlanders, since their independent national
+existence had been formally vindicated, to Great Britain, a power which a
+quarter of a century before had refused the proffered sovereignty over
+them.  Placed now on exactly the same level with the representatives of
+emperors and kings, the Republican envoys found themselves looked upon
+by the world with different eyes from those which had regarded their
+predecessors askance, and almost with derision, only seven years before.
+At that epoch the States' commissioners, Barneveld himself at the head of
+them, had gone solemnly to congratulate King James on his accession, had
+scarcely been admitted to audience by king or minister, and had found
+themselves on great festivals unsprinkled with the holy water of the
+court, and of no more account than the crowd of citizens and spectators
+who thronged the streets, gazing with awe at the distant radiance of the
+throne.
+
+But although the ambassadors were treated with every external
+consideration befitting their official rank, they were not likely to
+find themselves in the most genial atmosphere when they should come to
+business details.  If there was one thing in the world that James did not
+intend to do, it was to get himself entangled in war with Spain, the
+power of all others which he most revered and loved.  His "heroic and
+courageous resolve" to defend the princes, on which the commissioners by
+instructions of the Advocate had so highly complimented him, was not
+strong enough to carry him much beyond a vigorous phraseology.  He had
+not awoke from the delusive dream of the Spanish marriage which had
+dexterously been made to flit before him, and he was not inclined, for
+the sake of the Republic which he hated the more because obliged to be
+one of its sponsors, to risk the animosity of a great power which
+entertained the most profound contempt for him.  He was destined to find
+himself involved more closely than he liked, and through family ties,
+with the great Protestant movement in Germany, and the unfortunate
+"Winter King" might one day find his father-in-law as unstable a reed to
+lean upon as the States had found their godfather, or the Brandenburgs
+and Neuburgs at the present juncture their great ally.  Meantime, as the
+Bohemian troubles had not yet reached the period of actual explosion, and
+as Henry's wide-reaching plan against the House of Austria had been
+strangely enough kept an inviolable secret by the few statesmen, like
+Sully and Barneveld, to whom they had been confided, it was necessary for
+the King and his ministers to deal cautiously and plausibly with the
+Dutch ambassadors.  Their conferences were mere dancing among eggs, and
+if no actual mischief were done, it was the best result that could be
+expected.
+
+On the 8th of May, the commissioners met in the council chamber at
+Westminster, and discussed all the matters contained in their
+instructions with the members of the council; the Lord Treasurer
+Salisbury, Earl of Northampton, Privy Seal and Warden of the Cinque
+Ports, Lord Nottingham, Lord High Admiral, the Lord Chamberlain, Earl of
+Suffolk, Earls of Shrewsbury, Worcester, and several others being
+present.
+
+The result was not entirely satisfactory.  In regard to the succour
+demanded for the possessory princes, the commissioners were told that
+they seemed to come with a long narrative of their great burthens during
+the war, damage from inundations, and the like, to excuse themselves from
+doing their share in the succour, and thus the more to overload his
+Majesty, who was not much interested in the matter, and was likewise
+greatly encumbered by various expenses.  The King had already frankly
+declared his intention to assist the princes with the payment of 4000
+men, and to send proportionate artillery and powder from England.  As the
+States had supplies in their magazines enough to move 12,000 men, he
+proposed to draw upon those, reimbursing the States for what was thus
+consumed by his contingent.
+
+With regard to the treaty of close alliance between France, Great
+Britain, the princes, and the Republic, which the ambassadors had
+proposed, the--Lord Treasurer and his colleagues gave a reply far from
+gratifying.  His Majesty had not yet decided on this point, they said.
+The King of France had already proposed to treat for such an alliance,
+but it did not at present seem worth while for all to negotiate together.
+
+This was a not over-courteous hint that the Republic was after all not
+expected to place herself at the council-board of kings on even terms of
+intimacy and fraternal alliance.
+
+What followed was even less flattering.  If his Majesty, it was
+intimated, should decide to treat with the King of France, he would not
+shut the door on their High Mightinesses; but his Majesty was not yet
+exactly informed whether his Majesty had not certain rights over the
+provinces 'in petitorio.'
+
+This was a scarcely veiled insinuation against the sovereignty of the
+States, a sufficiently broad hint that they were to be considered in a
+certain degree as British provinces.  To a soldier like Maurice, to a
+statesman like Barneveld, whose sympathies already were on the side of
+France, such rebuffs and taunts were likely to prove unpalatable.  The
+restiveness of the States at the continual possession by Great Britain of
+those important sea-ports the cautionary towns, a fact which gave colour
+to these innuendoes, was sure to be increased by arrogant language on the
+part of the English ministers.  The determination to be rid of their debt
+to so overbearing an ally, and to shake off the shackles imposed by the
+costly mortgages, grew in strength from that hour.
+
+In regard to the fisheries, the Lord Treasurer and his colleagues
+expressed amazement that the ambassadors should consider the subjects
+of their High Mightinesses to be so much beloved by his Majesty.  Why
+should they of all other people be made an exception of, and be exempt
+from, the action of a general edict?  The reasons for these orders in
+council ought to be closely examined.  It would be very difficult to
+bring the opinions of the English jurists into harmony with those of the
+States.  Meantime it would be well to look up such treaties as might be
+in existence, and have a special joint commission to confer together on
+the subject.  It was very plain, from the course of the conversation,
+that the Netherland fishermen were not to be allowed, without paying
+roundly for a license, to catch herrings on the British coasts as they
+had heretofore done.
+
+Not much more of importance was transacted at this first interview
+between the ambassadors and the Ding's ministers.  Certainly they had
+not yet succeeded in attaining their great object, the formation of an
+alliance offensive and defensive between Great Britain and the Republic
+in accordance with the plan concerted between Henry and Barneveld.  They
+could find but slender encouragement for the warlike plans to which
+France and the States were secretly committed; nor could they obtain
+satisfactory adjustment of affairs more pacific and commercial in their
+tendencies.  The English ministers rather petulantly remarked that, while
+last year everybody was talking of a general peace, and in the present
+conjuncture all seemed to think, or at least to speak, of nothing but a
+general war, they thought best to defer consideration of the various
+subjects connected with duties on the manufactures and products of the
+respective countries, the navigation laws, the "entrecours," and other
+matters of ancient agreement and controversy, until a more convenient
+season.
+
+After the termination of the verbal conference, the ambassadors delivered
+to the King's government, in writing, to be pondered by the council and
+recorded in the archives, a summary of the statements which had been thus
+orally treated.  The document was in French, and in the main a paraphrase
+of the Advocate's instructions, the substance of which has been already
+indicated.  In regard, however, to the far-reaching designs of Spain, and
+the corresponding attitude which it would seem fitting for Great Britain
+to assume, and especially the necessity of that alliance the proposal for
+which had in the conference been received so haughtily, their language
+was far plainer, bolder, and more vehement than that of the instructions.
+
+"Considering that the effects show," they said, "that those who claim
+the monarchy of Christendom, and indeed of the whole world, let slip no
+opportunity which could in any way serve their designs, it is suitable to
+the grandeur of his Majesty the King, and to the station in which by the
+grace of the good God he is placed, to oppose himself thereto for the
+sake of the common liberty of Christendom, to which end, and in order the
+better to prevent all unjust usurpatiops, there could be no better means
+devised than a closer alliance between his Majesty and the Most Christian
+King, My Lords the States-General, and the electors, princes, and states
+of Germany.  Their High Mightinesses would therefore be most glad to
+learn that his Majesty was inclined to such a course, and would be glad
+to discuss the subject when and wherever his Majesty should appoint, or
+would readily enter into such an alliance on reasonable conditions."
+
+This language and the position taken up by the ambassadors were highly
+approved by their government, but it was fated that no very great result
+was to be achieved by this embassy.  Very elaborate documents, exhaustive
+in legal lore, on the subject of the herring fisheries, and of the right
+to fish in the ocean and on foreign coasts, fortified by copious
+citations from the 'Pandects' and 'Institutes' of Justinian, were
+presented for the consideration of the British government, and were
+answered as learnedly, exhaustively, and ponderously.  The English
+ministers were also reminded that the curing of herrings had been
+invented in the fifteenth century by a citizen of Biervliet, the
+inscription on whose tombstone recording that faces might still be
+read in the church of that town.
+
+All this did not prevent, however, the Dutch herring fishermen from being
+excluded from the British waters unless they chose to pay for licenses.
+
+The conferences were however for a season interrupted, and a new aspect
+was given to affairs by an unforeseen and terrible event.
+
+Meanwhile it is necessary to glance for a moment at the doings of the
+special embassy to France, the instructions for which were prepared by
+Barneveld almost at the same moment at which he furnished those for the
+commission to England.
+
+The ambassadors were Walraven, Seignior of Brederode, Cornelis van der
+Myle, son-in-law of the Advocate, and Jacob van Maldere.  Remembering how
+impatient the King of France had long been for their coming, and that all
+the preparations and decisions for a great war were kept in suspense
+until the final secret conferences could be held with the representatives
+of the States-General, it seems strange enough to us to observe the
+extreme deliberation with which great affairs of state were then
+conducted and the vast amount of time consumed in movements and
+communications which modern science has either annihilated or abridged
+from days to hours.  While Henry was chafing with anxiety in Paris, the
+ambassadors, having received Barneveld's instructions dated 31st March,
+set forth on the 8th April from the Hague, reached Rotterdam at noon, and
+slept at Dordrecht.  Newt day they went to Breda, where the Prince of
+Orange insisted upon their passing a couple of days with him in his
+castle, Easter-day being 11th April.  He then provided them with a couple
+of coaches and pair in which they set forth on their journey, going by
+way of Antwerp, Ghent, Courtray, Ryssel, to Arras, making easy stages,
+stopping in the middle of the day to bait, and sleeping at each of the
+cities thus mentioned, where they duly received the congratulatory visit
+and hospitalities of their respective magistracies.
+
+While all this time had been leisurely employed in the Netherlands in
+preparing, instructing, and despatching the commissioners, affairs were
+reaching a feverish crisis in France.
+
+The States' ambassador resident thought that it would have been better
+not to take such public offence at the retreat of the Prince of Conde.
+The King had enough of life and vigour in him; he could afford to leave
+the Dauphin to grow up, and when he should one day be established on the
+throne, he would be able to maintain his heritage.  "But," said Aerssens,
+"I fear that our trouble is not where we say it is, and we don't dare to
+say where it is."  Writing to Carew, former English ambassador in Paris,
+whom we have just seen in attendance on the States' commissioners in
+London, he said: "People think that the Princess is wearying herself much
+under the protection of the Infanta, and very impatient at not obtaining
+the dissolution of her marriage, which the Duchess of Angouleme is to go
+to Brussels to facilitate.  This is not our business, but I mention it
+only as the continuation of the Tragedy which you saw begin. Nevertheless
+I don't know if the greater part of our deliberations is not founded on
+this matter."
+
+It had been decided to cause the Queen to be solemnly crowned after
+Easter.  She had set her heart with singular persistency upon the
+ceremony, and it was thought that so public a sacrament would annihilate
+all the wild projects attributed to Spain through the instrumentality of
+Conde to cast doubts on the validity of her marriage and the legitimacy
+of the Dauphin.  The King from the first felt and expressed a singular
+repugnance, a boding apprehension in regard to the coronation, but had
+almost yielded to the Queen's importunity.  He told her he would give his
+consent provided she sent Concini to Brussels to invite in her own name
+the Princess of Conde to be present on the occasion.  Otherwise he
+declared that at least the festival should be postponed till September.
+
+The Marquis de Coeuvres remained in disgrace after the failure of his
+mission, Henry believing that like all the world he had fallen in love
+with the Princess, and had only sought to recommend himself, not to
+further the suit of his sovereign.
+
+Meanwhile Henry had instructed his ambassador in Spain, M. de Vaucelas,
+to tell the King that his reception of Conde within his dominions would
+be considered an infraction of the treaty of Vervins and a direct act of
+hostility.  The Duke of Lerma answered with a sneer that the Most
+Christian King had too greatly obliged his Most Catholic Majesty by
+sustaining his subjects in their rebellion and by aiding them to make
+their truce to hope now that Conde would be sent back.  France had ever
+been the receptacle of Spanish traitors and rebels from Antonio Perez
+down, and the King of Spain would always protect wronged and oppressed
+princes like Conde.  France had just been breaking up the friendly
+relations between Savoy and Spain and goading the Duke into hostilities.
+
+On the other hand the King had more than one stormy interview with Don
+Inigo de Cardenas in Paris.  That ambassador declared that his master
+would never abandon his only sister the most serene Infanta, such was the
+affection he born her, whose dominions were obviously threatened by these
+French armies about to move to the frontiers.  Henry replied that the
+friends for whom he was arming had great need of his assistance; that his
+Catholic Majesty was quite right to love his sister, whom he also loved;
+but that he did not choose that his own relatives should be so much
+beloved in Spain as they were.  "What relatives?" asked Don Inigo.
+"The Prince of Conde," replied the King, in a rage, "who has been
+debauched by the Spaniards just as Marshal Biron was, and the Marchioness
+Verneuil, and so many others.  There are none left for them to debauch
+now but the Dauphin and his brothers."  The Ambassador replied that, if
+the King had consulted him about the affair of Conde, he could have
+devised a happy issue from it.  Henry rejoined that he had sent messages
+on the subject to his Catholic Majesty, who had not deigned a response,
+but that the Duke of Lerma had given a very indiscreet one to his
+ambassador.  Don Inigo professed ignorance of any such reply.  The King
+said it was a mockery to affect ignorance of such matters.  Thereupon
+both grew excited and very violent in their discourses; the more so as
+Henry knowing but little Spanish and the Envoy less French they could
+only understand from tone and gesture that each was using exceedingly
+unpleasant language.  At last Don Inigo asked what he should write to his
+sovereign.  "Whatever you like," replied the King, and so the audience
+terminated, each remaining in a towering passion.
+
+Subsequently Villeroy assured the Archduke's ambassador that the King
+considered the reception given to the Prince in the Spanish dominions as
+one of the greatest insults and injuries that could be done to him.
+Nothing could excuse it, said the Secretary of State, and for this reason
+it was very difficult for the two kings to remain at peace with each
+other, and that it would be wiser to prevent at once the evil designs of
+his Catholic Majesty than to leave leisure for the plans to be put into
+execution, and the claims of the Dauphin to his father's crown to be
+disputed at a convenient season.
+
+He added that war would not be made for the Princess, but for the Prince,
+and that even the war in Germany, although Spain took the Emperor's side
+and France that of the possessory princes, would not necessarily produce
+a rupture between the two kings if it were not for this affair of the
+Prince--true cause of the disaster now hanging over Christianity.
+Pecquius replied by smooth commonplaces in favour of peace with which
+Villeroy warmly concurred; both sadly expressing the conviction however
+that the wrath divine had descended on them all on account of their sins.
+
+A few days later, however, the Secretary changed his tone.
+
+"I will speak to you frankly and clearly," he said to Pecquius, "and tell
+you as from myself that there is passion, and if one is willing to
+arrange the affair of the Princess, everything else can be accommodated
+and appeased.  Put if the Princess remain where she is, we are on the eve
+of a rupture which may set fire to the four corners of Christendom."
+Pecquius said he liked to talk roundly, and was glad to find that he had
+not been mistaken in his opinion, that all these commotions were only
+made for the Princess, and if all the world was going to war, she would
+be the principal subject of it.  He could not marvel sufficiently, he
+said, at this vehement passion which brought in its train so great and
+horrible a conflagration; adding many arguments to show that it was no
+fault of the Archdukes, but that he who was the cause of all might one
+day have reason to repent.
+
+Villeroy replied that "the King believed the Princess to be suffering and
+miserable for love of him, and that therefore he felt obliged to have her
+sent back to her father."  Pecquius asked whether in his conscience the
+Secretary of State believed it right or reasonable to make war for such a
+cause.  Villeroy replied by asking "whether even admitting the negative,
+the Ambassador thought it were wisely done for such a trifle, for a
+formality, to plunge into extremities and to turn all Christendom upside
+down."  Pecquius, not considering honour a trifle or a formality, said
+that "for nothing in the world would his Highness the Archduke descend to
+a cowardly action or to anything that would sully his honour."  Villeroy
+said that the Prince had compelled his wife, pistol in hand, to follow
+him to the Netherlands, and that she was no longer bound to obey a
+husband who forsook country and king.  Her father demanded her, and she
+said "she would rather be strangled than ever to return to the company of
+her husband."  The Archdukes were not justified in keeping her against
+her will in perpetual banishment.  He implored the Ambassador in most
+pathetic terms to devise some means of sending back the Princess, saying
+that he who should find such expedient would do the greatest good that
+was ever done to Christianity, and that otherwise there was no guarantee
+against a universal war.  The first design of the King had been merely to
+send a moderate succour to the Princes of Brandenburg and Neuburg, which
+could have given no umbrage to the Archdukes, but now the bitterness
+growing out of the affairs of the Prince and Princess had caused him to
+set on foot a powerful army to do worse.  He again implored Pecquius to
+invent some means of sending back the Princess, and the Ambassador
+besought him ardently to divert the King from his designs.  Of this the
+Secretary of State left little hope and they parted, both very low and.
+dismal in mind.  Subsequent conversations with the leading councillors of
+state convinced Pecquius that these violent menaces were only used to
+shake the constancy of the Archduke, but that they almost all highly
+disapproved the policy of the King.  "If this war goes on, we are all
+ruined," said the Duke d'Epernon to the Nuncius.
+
+Thus there had almost ceased to be any grimacing between the two kings,
+although it was still a profound mystery where or when hostilities would
+begin, and whether they would break out at all.  Henry frequently
+remarked that the common opinion all over Europe was working in his
+favour.  Few people in or out of France believed that he meant a rupture,
+or that his preparations were serious.  Thus should he take his enemies
+unawares and unprepared.  Even Aerssens, who saw him almost daily, was
+sometimes mystified, in spite of Henry's vehement assertions that he was
+resolved to make war at all hazards and on all sides, provided My Lords
+the States would second him as they ought, their own existence being at
+stake.
+
+"For God's sake," cried the King, "let us take the bit into our mouths.
+Tell your masters that I am quite resolved, and that I am shrieking
+loudly at their delays."  He asked if he could depend on the States, if
+Barneveld especially would consent to a league with him.  The Ambassador
+replied that for the affair of Cleve and Julich he had instructions to
+promise entire concurrence, that Barneveld was most resolute in the
+matter, and had always urged the enterprise and wished information as
+to the levies making in France and other military preparations.
+
+"Tell him," said Henry, "that they are going on exactly as often before
+stated, but that we are holding everything in suspense until I have
+talked with your ambassadors, from whom I wish counsel, safety, and
+encouragement for doing much more than the Julich business.  That alone
+does not require so great a league and such excessive and unnecessary
+expense."
+
+The King observed however that the question of the duchies would serve as
+just cause and excellent pretext to remove those troublesome fellows for
+ever from his borders and those of the States.  Thus the princes would be
+established safely in their possession and the Republic as well as
+himself freed from the perpetual suspicions which the Spaniards excited
+by their vile intrigues, and it was on this general subject that he
+wished to confer with the special commissioners.  It would not be
+possible for him to throw succour into Julich without passing through
+Luxemburg in arms.  The Archdukes would resist this, and thus a cause of
+war would arise.  His campaign on the Meuse would help the princes more
+than if he should only aid them by the contingent he had promised.  Nor
+could the jealousy of King James be excited since the war would spring
+out of the Archdukes' opposition to his passage towards the duchies, as
+he obviously could not cut himself off from his supplies, leaving a
+hostile province between himself and his kingdom.  Nevertheless he could
+not stir, he said, without the consent and active support of the States,
+on whom he relied as his principal buttress and foundation.
+
+The levies for the Milanese expedition were waiting until Marshal de
+Lesdiguieres could confer personally with the Duke of Savoy.  The reports
+as to the fidelity of that potentate were not to be believed.  He was
+trifling with the Spanish ambassadors, so Henry was convinced, who were
+offering him 300,000 crowns a year besides Piombino, Monaco, and two
+places in the Milanese, if he would break his treaty with France.  But he
+was thought to be only waiting until they should be gone before making
+his arrangements with Lesdiguieres.  "He knows that he can put no trust
+in Spain, and that he can confide in me," said the King.  "I have made a
+great stroke by thus entangling the King of Spain by the use of a few
+troops in Italy.  But I assure you that there is none but me and My Lords
+the States that can do anything solid.  Whether the Duke breaks or holds
+fast will make no difference in our first and great designs.  For the
+honour of God I beg them to lose no more time, but to trust in me.  I
+will never deceive them, never abandon them."
+
+At last 25,000 infantry and 5000 cavalry were already in marching order,
+and indeed had begun to move towards the Luxemburg frontier, ready to co-
+operate with the States' army and that of the possessory princes for the
+campaign of the Meuse and Rhine.
+
+Twelve thousand more French troops under Lesdiguieres were to act with
+the Duke of Savoy, and an army as large was to assemble in the Pyrenees
+and to operate on the Spanish frontier, in hope of exciting and fomenting
+an insurrection caused by the expulsion of the Moors.  That gigantic act
+of madness by which Spain thought good at this juncture to tear herself
+to pieces, driving hundreds of thousands of the most industrious, most
+intelligent, and most opulent of her population into hopeless exile, had
+now been accomplished, and was to stand prominent for ever on the records
+of human fatuity.
+
+Twenty-five thousand Moorish families had arrived at Bayonne, and the
+Viceroy of Canada had been consulted as to the possibility and expediency
+of establishing them in that province, although emigration thither
+seemed less tempting to them than to Virginia.  Certainly it was not
+unreasonable for Henry to suppose that a kingdom thus torn by internal
+convulsions might be more open to a well organized attack, than capable
+of carrying out at that moment fresh projects of universal dominion.
+
+As before observed, Sully was by no means in favour of this combined
+series of movements, although at a later day, when dictating his famous
+memoirs to his secretaries, he seems to describe himself as
+enthusiastically applauding and almost originating them.  But there is no
+doubt at all that throughout this eventful spring he did his best to
+concentrate the whole attack on Luxemburg and the Meuse districts, and
+wished that the movements in the Milanese and in Provence should be
+considered merely a slight accessory, as not much more than a diversion
+to the chief design, while Villeroy and his friends chose to consider the
+Duke of Savoy as the chief element in the war.  Sully thoroughly
+distrusted the Duke, whom he deemed to be always put up at auction
+between Spain and France and incapable of a sincere or generous policy.
+He was entirely convinced that Villeroy and Epernon and Jeannin and other
+earnest Papists in France were secretly inclined to the cause of Spain,
+that the whole faction of the Queen, in short, were urging this
+scattering of the very considerable forces now at Henry's command in
+the hope of bringing him into a false position, in which defeat or an
+ignominious peace would be the alternative.  To concentrate an immense
+attack upon the Archdukes in the Spanish Netherlands and the debateable
+duchies would have for its immediate effect the expulsion of the
+Spaniards out of all those provinces and the establishment of the Dutch
+commonwealth on an impregnable basis.  That this would be to strengthen
+infinitely the Huguenots in France and the cause of Protestantism in
+Bohemia, Moravia and Austria, was unquestionable.  It was natural,
+therefore, that the stern and ardent Huguenot should suspect the plans
+of the Catholics with whom he was in daily council.  One day he asked the
+King plumply in the presence of Villeroy if his Majesty meant anything
+serious by all these warlike preparations.  Henry was wroth, and
+complained bitterly that one who knew him to the bottom of his soul
+should doubt him.  But Sully could not persuade himself that a great
+and serious war would be carried on both in the Netherlands and in Italy.
+
+As much as his sovereign he longed for the personal presence of
+Barneveld, and was constantly urging the States' ambassador to induce
+his coming to Paris.  "You know," said Aerssens, writing to the French
+ambassador at the Hague, de Russy, "that it is the Advocate alone that
+has the universal knowledge of the outside and the inside of our
+commonwealth."
+
+Sully knew his master as well as any man knew him, but it was difficult
+to fix the chameleon hues of Henry at this momentous epoch.  To the
+Ambassador expressing doubts as to the King's sincerity the Duke asserted
+that Henry was now seriously piqued with the Spaniard on account of the
+Conde business.  Otherwise Anhalt and the possessory princes and the
+affair of Cleve might have had as little effect in driving him into war
+as did the interests of the Netherlands in times past.  But the bold
+demonstration projected would make the "whole Spanish party bleed at the
+nose; a good result for the public peace."
+
+Therefore Sully sent word to Barneveld, although he wished his name
+concealed, that he ought to come himself, with full powers to do
+everything, without referring to any superiors or allowing any secrets to
+be divulged.  The King was too far committed to withdraw, unless coldness
+on part of the States should give him cause.  The Advocate must come
+prepared to answer all questions; to say how much in men and money the
+States would contribute, and whether they would go into the war with the
+King as their only ally.  He must come with the bridle on his neck.  All
+that Henry feared was being left in the lurch by the States; otherwise he
+was not afraid of Rome.  Sully was urgent that the Provinces should now
+go vigorously into the war without stumbling at any consideration.  Thus
+they would confirm their national power for all time, but if the
+opportunity were now lost, it would be their ruin, and posterity would
+most justly blame them.  The King of Spain was so stripped of troops and
+resources, so embarrassed by the Moors, that in ten months he would not
+be able to send one man to the Netherlands.
+
+Meantime the Nuncius in Paris was moving heaven and earth; storming,
+intriguing, and denouncing the course of the King in protecting heresy,
+when it would have been so easy to extirpate it, encouraging rebellion
+and disorder throughout Christendom, and embarking in an action against
+the Church and against his conscience.  A new legate was expected daily
+with the Pope's signature to the new league, and a demand upon the King
+to sign it likewise, and to pause in a career of which something was
+suspected, but very little accurately known.  The preachers in Paris and
+throughout the kingdom delivered most vehement sermons against the King,
+the government, and the Protestants, and seemed to the King to be such
+"trumpeters of sedition" that he ordered the seneschals and other
+officers to put a stop to these turbulent discourses, censure their
+authors, and compel them to stick to their texts.
+
+But the preparations were now so far advanced and going on so warmly that
+nothing more was wanting than, in the words of Aerssens, "to uncouple the
+dogs and let them run."  Recruits were pouring steadily to their places
+of rendezvous; their pay having begun to run from the 25th March at the
+rate of eight sous a day for the private foot soldier and ten sous for a
+corporal.  They were moved in small parties of ten, lodged in the wayside
+inns, and ordered, on pain of death, to pay for everything they consumed.
+
+It was growing difficult to wait much longer for the arrival of the
+special ambassadors, when at last they were known to be on their way.
+Aerssens obtained for their use the Hotel Gondy, formerly the residence
+of Don Pedro de Toledo, the most splendid private palace in Paris, and
+recently purchased by the Queen.  It was considered expedient that the
+embassy should make as stately an appearance as that of royal or imperial
+envoys.  He engaged an upholsterer by the King's command to furnish, at
+his Majesty's expense, the apartments, as the Baron de Gondy, he said,
+had long since sold and eaten up all the furniture.  He likewise laid in
+six pieces of wine and as many of beer, "tavern drinks" being in the
+opinion of the thrifty ambassador "both dear and bad."
+
+He bought a carriage lined with velvet for the commissioners, and another
+lined with broadcloth for the principal persons of their suite, and with
+his own coach as a third he proposed to go to Amiens to meet them.  They
+could not get on with fewer than these, he said, and the new carriages
+would serve their purpose in Paris.  He had paid 500 crowns for the two,
+and they could be sold, when done with, at a slight loss.  He bought
+likewise four dapple-grey horses, which would be enough, as nobody had
+more than two horses to a carriage in town, and for which he paid 312
+crowns--a very low price, he thought, at a season when every one was
+purchasing.  He engaged good and experienced coachmen at two crowns a
+month, and; in short, made all necessary arrangements for their comfort
+and the honour of the state.
+
+The King had been growing more and more displeased at the tardiness of
+the commission, petulantly ascribing it to a design on the part of the
+States to "excuse themselves from sharing in his bold conceptions," but
+said that "he could resolve on nothing without My Lords the States, who
+were the only power with which he could contract confidently, as mighty
+enough and experienced enough to execute the designs to be proposed to
+them; so that his army was lying useless on his hands until the
+commissioners arrived," and lamented more loudly than ever that Barneveld
+was not coming with them.  He was now rejoiced, however, to hear that
+they would soon arrive, and went in person to the Hotel Gondy to see that
+everything was prepared in a manner befitting their dignity and comfort.
+
+His anxiety had moreover been increased, as already stated, by the
+alarming reports from Utrecht and by his other private accounts from the
+Netherlands.
+
+De Russy expressed in his despatches grave doubts whether the States
+would join the king in a war against the King of Spain, because they
+feared the disapprobation of the King of Great Britain, "who had already
+manifested but too much jealousy of the power and grandeur of the
+Republic."  Pecquius asserted that the Archdukes had received assurances
+from the States that they would do nothing to violate the truce.  The
+Prince of Anhalt, who, as chief of the army of the confederated princes,
+was warm in his demonstrations for a general war by taking advantage of
+the Cleve expedition, was entirely at cross purposes with the States'
+ambassador in Paris, Aerssens maintaining that the forty-three years'
+experience in their war justified the States in placing no dependence on
+German princes except with express conventions.  They had no such
+conventions now, and if they should be attacked by Spain in consequence
+of their assistance in the Cleve business, what guarantee of aid had they
+from those whom Anhalt represented?  Anhalt was loud in expressions of
+sympathy with Henry's designs against Spain, but said that he and the
+States meant a war of thirty or forty years, while the princes would
+finish what they meant to do in one.
+
+A more erroneous expression of opinion, when viewed in the light of
+subsequent events, could hardly have been hazarded.  Villeroy made as
+good use as he could of these conversations to excite jealousy between
+the princes and the States for the furtherance of his own ends, while
+affecting warm interest in the success of the King's projects.
+
+Meantime Archduke Albert had replied manfully and distinctly to the
+menaces of the King and to the pathetic suggestions made by Villeroy to
+Pecquius as to a device for sending back the Princess.  Her stay at
+Brussels being the chief cause of the impending war, it would be better,
+he said, to procure a divorce or to induce the Constable to obtain the
+consent of the Prince to the return of his wife to her father's house.
+To further either of these expedients, the Archduke would do his best.
+"But if one expects by bravados and threats," he added, "to force us to
+do a thing against our promise, and therefore against reason, our
+reputation, and honour, resolutely we will do nothing of the kind.  And
+if the said Lord King decided on account of this misunderstanding for a
+rupture and to make war upon us, we will do our best to wage war on him.
+In such case, however, we shall be obliged to keep the Princess closer in
+our own house, and probably to send her to such parts as may be most
+convenient in order to remove from us an instrument of the infinite evils
+which this war will produce."
+
+Meantime the special commissioners whom we left at Arras had now entered
+the French kingdom.
+
+On the 17th April, Aerssens with his three coaches met them on their
+entrance into Amiens, having been waiting there for them eight days.  As
+they passed through the gate, they found a guard of soldiers drawn up to
+receive them with military honours, and an official functionary to
+apologize for the necessary absence of the governor, who had gone with
+most of the troops stationed in the town to the rendezvous in Champagne.
+He expressed regret, therefore, that the King's orders for their solemn
+reception could not be literally carried out.  The whole board of
+magistrates, however, in their costumes of ceremony, with sergeants
+bearing silver maces marching before them, came forth to bid the
+ambassadors welcome.  An advocate made a speech in the name of the city
+authorities, saying that they were expressly charged by the King to
+receive them as coming from his very best friends, and to do them all
+honour.  He extolled the sage government of their High Mightinesses and
+the valour of the Republic, which had become known to the whole world
+by the successful conduct of their long and mighty war.
+
+The commissioners replied in words of compliment, and the magistrates
+then offered them, according to ancient usage, several bottles of
+hippocras.
+
+Next day, sending back the carriages of the Prince of Orange, in which
+they had thus far performed the journey, they set forth towards Paris,
+reaching Saint-Denis at noon of the third day.  Here they were met by de
+Bonoeil, introducer of ambassadors, sent thither by the King to give them
+welcome, and to say that they would be received on the road by the Duke
+of Vendome, eldest of the legitimatized children of the King.
+Accordingly before reaching the Saint-Denis gate of Paris, a splendid
+cavalcade of nearly five hundred noblemen met them, the Duke at their
+head, accompanied by two marshals of France, de Brissac and Boisdaulphin.
+The three instantly dismounted, and the ambassadors alighted from their
+coach.  The Duke then gave them solemn and cordial welcome, saying that
+he had been sent by his father the King to receive them as befitted
+envoys of the best and most faithful friends he possessed in the world.
+
+The ambassadors expressed their thanks for the great and extraordinary
+honour thus conferred on them, and they were then requested to get into a
+royal carriage which had been sent out for that purpose.  After much
+ceremonious refusal they at last consented and, together with the Duke of
+Vendome, drove through Paris in that vehicle into the Faubourg Saint
+Germain.  Arriving at the Hotel Gondy, they were, notwithstanding all
+their protestations, escorted up the staircase into the apartments by the
+Duke.
+
+"This honour is notable," said the commissioners in their report to the
+States, "and never shown to anyone before, so that our ill-wishers are
+filled with spite."
+
+And Peter Pecquius was of the same opinion.  "Everyone is grumbling
+here," about the reception of the States' ambassadors, "because such
+honours were never paid to any ambassador whatever, whether from Spain,
+England, or any other country."
+
+And there were many men living and employed in great affairs of State,
+both in France and in the Republic--the King and Villeroy, Barneveld and
+Maurice--who could remember how twenty-six years before a solemn embassy
+from the States had proceeded from the Hague to France to offer the
+sovereignty of their country to Henry's predecessor, had been kept
+ignominiously and almost like prisoners four weeks long in Rouen, and
+had been thrust back into the Netherlands without being admitted even to
+one audience by the monarch.  Truly time, in the course of less than one
+generation of mankind, had worked marvellous changes in the fortunes of
+the Dutch Republic.
+
+President Jeannin came to visit them next day, with friendly proffers of
+service, and likewise the ambassador of Venice and the charge d'affaires
+of Great Britain.
+
+On the 22nd the royal carriages came by appointment to the Hotel Gondy,
+and took them for their first audience to the Louvre.  They were received
+at the gate by a guard of honour, drums beating and arms presented, and
+conducted with the greatest ceremony to an apartment in the palace.  Soon
+afterwards they were ushered into a gallery where the King stood,
+surrounded by a number of princes and distinguished officers of the
+crown.  These withdrew on the approach of the Netherlanders, leaving the
+King standing alone.  They made their reverence, and Henry saluted them
+all with respectful cordiality.  Begging them to put on their hats again,
+he listened attentively to their address.
+
+The language of the discourse now pronounced was similar in tenour to
+that almost contemporaneously held by the States' special envoys in
+London.  Both documents, when offered afterwards in writing, bore the
+unmistakable imprint of the one hand that guided the whole political
+machine.  In various passages the phraseology was identical, and, indeed,
+the Advocate had prepared and signed the instructions for both embassies
+on the same day.
+
+The commissioners acknowledged in the strongest possible terms the great
+and constant affection, quite without example, that Henry had manifested
+to the Netherlands during the whole course of their war.  They were at a
+loss to find language adequately to express their gratitude for that
+friendship, and the assistance subsequently afforded them in the
+negotiations for truce.  They apologized for the tardiness of the States
+in sending this solemn embassy of thanksgiving, partly on the ground of
+the delay in receiving the ratifications from Spain, partly by the
+protracted contraventions by the Archdukes of certain articles in the
+treaty, but principally by the terrible disasters occasioned throughout
+their country by the great inundations, and by the commotions in the city
+of Utrecht, which had now been "so prudently and happily pacified."
+
+They stated that the chief cause of their embassy was to express their
+respectful gratitude, and to say that never had prince or state treasured
+more deeply in memory benefits received than did their republic the
+favours of his Majesty, or could be more disposed to do their utmost to
+defend his Majesty's person, crown, or royal family against all attack.
+They expressed their joy that the King had with prudence, and heroic
+courage undertaken tha defence of the just rights of Brandenburg and
+Neuburg to the duchies of Cleve, Julich, and the other dependent
+provinces.  Thus had he put an end to the presumption of those who
+thought they could give the law to all the world.  They promised the co-
+operation of the States in this most important enterprise of their ally,
+notwithstanding their great losses in the war just concluded, and the
+diminution of revenue occasioned by the inundations by which they had
+been afflicted; for they were willing neither to tolerate so unjust an
+usurpation as that attempted by the Emperor nor to fail to second his
+Majesty in his generous designs.  They observed also that they had been
+instructed to enquire whether his Majesty would not approve the
+contracting of a strict league of mutual assistance between France,
+England, the United Provinces, and the princes of Germany.
+
+The King, having listened with close attention, thanked the envoys in
+words of earnest and vigorous cordiality for their expressions of
+affection to himself.  He begged them to remember that he had always been
+their good friend, and that he never would forsake them; that he had
+always hated the Spaniards, and should ever hate them; and that the
+affairs of Julich must be arranged not only for the present but for the
+future.  He requested them to deliver their propositions in writing to
+him, and to be ready to put themselves into communication with the
+members of his council, in order that they might treat with each
+other roundly and without reserve.  He should always deal with the
+Netherlanders as with his own people, keeping no back-door open, but
+pouring out everything as into the lap of his best and most trusty
+friends.
+
+After this interview conferences followed daily between the ambassadors
+and Villeroy, Sully, Jeannin, the Chancellor, and Puysieug.
+
+The King's counsellors, after having read the written paraphrase of
+Barneveld's instructions, the communication of which followed their oral
+statements, and which, among other specifications, contained a respectful
+remonstrance against the projected French East India Company, as likely
+to benefit the Spaniards only, while seriously injuring the States,
+complained that "the representations were too general, and that the paper
+seemed to contain nothing but compliments."
+
+The ambassadors, dilating on the various points and articles, maintained
+warmly that there was much more than compliments in their instructions.
+The ministers wished to know what the States practically were prepared to
+do in the affair of Cleve, which they so warmly and encouragingly
+recommended to the King.  They asked whether the States' army would march
+at once to Dusseldorf to protect the princes at the moment when the King
+moved from Mezieres, and they made many enquiries as to what amount of
+supplies and munitions they could depend upon from the States' magazines.
+
+The envoys said that they had no specific instructions on these points,
+and could give therefore no conclusive replies.  More than ever did Henry
+regret the absence of the great Advocate at this juncture.  If he could
+have come, with the bridle on his neck, as Henry had so repeatedly urged
+upon the resident ambassador, affairs might have marched more rapidly.
+The despotic king could never remember that Barneveld was not the
+unlimited sovereign of the United States, but only the seal-keeper of one
+of the seven provinces and the deputy of Holland to the General Assembly.
+His indirect power, however vast, was only great because it was so
+carefully veiled.
+
+It was then proposed by Villeroy and Sully, and agreed to by the
+commissioners, that M. de Bethune, a relative of the great financier,
+should be sent forthwith to the Hague, to confer privately with Prince
+Maurice and Barneveld especially, as to military details of the coming
+campaign.
+
+It was also arranged that the envoys should delay their departure until
+de Bethune's return.  Meantime Henry and the Nuncius had been exchanging
+plain and passionate language.  Ubaldini reproached the King with
+disregarding all the admonitions of his Holiness, and being about to
+plunge Christendom into misery and war for the love of the Princess of
+Conde.  He held up to him the enormity of thus converting the King of
+Spain and the Archdukes into his deadly enemies, and warned him that he
+would by such desperate measures make even the States-General and the
+King of Britain his foes, who certainly would never favour such schemes.
+The King replied that "he trusted to his own forces, not to those of his
+neighbours, and even if the Hollanders should not declare for him still
+he would execute his designs.  On the 15th of May most certainly he would
+put himself at the head of his army, even if he was obliged to put off
+the Queen's coronation till October, and he could not consider the King
+of Spain nor the Archdukes his friends unless they at once made him
+some demonstration of friendship.  Being asked by the Nuncius what
+demonstration he wished, he answered flatly that he wished the Princess
+to be sent back to the Constable her father, in which case the affair of
+Julich could be arranged amicably, and, at all events, if the war
+continued there, he need not send more than 4000 men."
+
+Thus, in spite of his mighty preparations, vehement demands for
+Barneveld, and profound combinations revealed to that statesman, to
+Aerssens, and to the Duke of Sully only, this wonderful monarch was ready
+to drop his sword on the spot, to leave his friends in the lurch, to
+embrace his enemies, the Archduke first of all, instead of bombarding
+Brussels the very next week, as he had been threatening to do, provided
+the beautiful Margaret could be restored to his arms through those of her
+venerable father.
+
+He suggested to the Nuncius his hope that the Archduke would yet be
+willing to wink at her escape, which he was now trying to arrange through
+de Preaux at Brussels, while Ubaldini, knowing the Archduke incapable of
+anything so dishonourable, felt that the war was inevitable.
+
+At the very same time too, Father Cotton, who was only too ready to
+betray the secrets of the confessional when there was an object to gain,
+had a long conversation with the Archduke's ambassador, in which the holy
+man said that the King had confessed to him that he made the war
+expressly to cause the Princess to be sent back to France, so that as
+there could be no more doubt on the subject the father-confessor begged
+Pecquius, in order to prevent so great an evil, to devise "some prompt
+and sudden means to induce his Highness the Archduke to order the
+Princess to retire secretly to her own country."  The Jesuit had
+different notions of honour, reputation, and duty from those which
+influenced the Archduke.  He added that "at Easter the King had been so
+well disposed to seek his salvation that he could easily have forgotten
+his affection for the Princess, had she not rekindled the fire by her
+letters, in which she caressed him with amorous epithets, calling him 'my
+heart,' 'my chevalier,' and similar terms of endearment."  Father Cotton
+also drew up a paper, which he secretly conveyed to Pecquius, "to prove
+that the Archduke, in terms of conscience and honour, might decide to
+permit this escape, but he most urgently implored the Ambassador that for
+the love of God and the public good he would influence his Serene
+Highness to prevent this from ever coming to the knowledge of the world,
+but to keep the secret inviolably."
+
+Thus, while Henry was holding high council with his own most trusted
+advisers, and with the most profound statesmen of Europe, as to the
+opening campaign within a fortnight of a vast and general war, he was
+secretly plotting with his father-confessor to effect what he avowed to
+be the only purpose of that war, by Jesuitical bird-lime to be applied to
+the chief of his antagonists.  Certainly Barneveld and his colleagues
+were justified in their distrust.  To move one step in advance of their
+potent but slippery ally might be a step off a precipice.
+
+On the 1st of May, Sully made a long visit to the commissioners.  He
+earnestly urged upon them the necessity of making the most of the present
+opportunity.  There were people in plenty, he said, who would gladly see
+the King take another course, for many influential persons about him were
+altogether Spanish in their inclinations.
+
+The King had been scandalized to hear from the Prince of Anhalt, without
+going into details, that on his recent passage through the Netherlands he
+had noticed some change of feeling, some coolness in their High
+Mightinesses.  The Duke advised that they should be very heedful, that
+they should remember how much more closely these matters regarded them
+than anyone else, that they should not deceive themselves, but be firmly
+convinced that unless they were willing to go head foremost into the
+business the French would likewise not commit themselves.  Sully spoke
+with much earnestness and feeling, for it was obvious that both he and
+his master had been disappointed at the cautious and limited nature of
+the instructions given to the ambassadors.
+
+An opinion had indeed prevailed, and, as we have seen, was to a certain
+extent shared in by Aerssens, and even by Sully himself, that the King's
+military preparations were after all but a feint, and that if the Prince
+of Conde, and with him the Princess, could be restored to France, the
+whole war cloud would evaporate in smoke.
+
+It was even asserted that Henry had made a secret treaty with the enemy,
+according to which, while apparently ready to burst upon the House of
+Austria with overwhelming force, he was in reality about to shake hands
+cordially with that power, on condition of being allowed to incorporate
+into his own kingdom the very duchies in dispute, and of receiving the
+Prince of Conde and his wife from Spain.  He was thus suspected of being
+about to betray his friends and allies in the most ignoble manner and for
+the vilest of motives.  The circulation of these infamous reports no
+doubt paralysed for a time the energy of the enemy who had made no
+requisite preparations against the threatened invasion, but it sickened
+his friends with vague apprehensions, while it cut the King himself to
+the heart and infuriated him to madness.
+
+He asked the Nuncius one day what people thought in Rome and Italy of the
+war about to be undertaken.  Ubaldini replied that those best informed
+considered the Princess of Conde as the principal subject of hostilities;
+they thought that he meant to have her back.  "I do mean to have her
+back," cried Henry, with a mighty oath, and foaming with rage, "and I
+shall have her back.  No one shall prevent it, not even the Lieutenant of
+God on earth."
+
+But the imputation of this terrible treason weighed upon his mind and
+embittered every hour.
+
+The commissioners assured Sully that they had no knowledge of any
+coolness or change such as Anhalt had reported on the part of their
+principals, and the Duke took his leave.
+
+It will be remembered that Villeroy had, it was thought, been making
+mischief between Anhalt and the States by reporting and misreporting
+private conversations between that Prince and the Dutch ambassador.
+
+As soon as Sully had gone, van der Myle waited upon Villeroy to ask, in
+name of himself and colleagues, for audience of leave-taking, the object
+of their mission having been accomplished.  The Secretary of State, too,
+like Sully, urged the importance of making the most of the occasion.  The
+affair of Cleve, he said, did not very much concern the King, but his
+Majesty had taken it to heart chiefly on account of the States and for
+their security.  They were bound, therefore, to exert themselves to the
+utmost, but more would not be required of them than it would be possible
+to fulfil.
+
+Van der Myle replied that nothing would be left undone by their High
+Mightinesses to support the King faithfully and according to their
+promise.
+
+On the 5th, Villeroy came to the ambassadors, bringing with him a letter
+from the King for the States-General, and likewise a written reply to the
+declarations made orally and in writing by the ambassadors to his
+Majesty.
+
+The letter of Henry to "his very dear and good friends, allies, and
+confederates," was chiefly a complimentary acknowledgment of the
+expressions of gratitude made to him on part of the States-General, and
+warm approbation of their sage resolve to support the cause of
+Brandenburg and Neuburg.  He referred them for particulars to the
+confidential conferences held between the commissioners and himself.
+They would state how important he thought it that this matter should be
+settled now so thoroughly as to require no second effort at any future
+time when circumstances might not be so propitious; and that he intended
+to risk his person, at the head of his army, to accomplish this result.
+
+To the ambassadors he expressed his high satisfaction at their assurances
+of affection, devotion, and gratitude on the part of the States.  He
+approved and commended their resolution to assist the Elector and the
+Palatine in the affair of the duchies.  He considered this a proof of
+their prudence and good judgment, as showing their conviction that they
+were more interested and bound to render this assistance than any other
+potentates or states, as much from the convenience and security to be
+derived from the neighbourhood of princes who were their friends as from
+dangers to be apprehended from other princes who were seeking to
+appropriate those provinces.  The King therefore begged the States to
+move forward as soon as possible the forces which they offered for this
+enterprise according to his Majesty's suggestion sent through de Bethune.
+The King on his part would do the same with extreme care and diligence,
+from the anxiety he felt to prevent My Lords the States from receiving
+detriment in places so vital to their preservation.
+
+He begged the States likewise to consider that it was meet not only to
+make a first effort to put the princes into entire possession of the
+duchies, but to provide also for the durable success of the enterprise;
+to guard against any invasions that might be made in the future to eject
+those princes.  Otherwise all their present efforts would be useless; and
+his Majesty therefore consented on this occasion to enter into the new
+league proposed by the States with all the princes and states mentioned
+in the memoir of the ambassadors for mutual assistance against all unjust
+occupations, attempts, and baneful intrigues.
+
+Having no special information as to the infractions by the Archdukes of
+the recent treaty of truce, the King declined to discuss that subject for
+the moment, although holding himself bound to all required of him as one
+of the guarantees of that treaty.
+
+In regard to the remonstrance made by the ambassadors concerning the
+trade of the East Indies, his Majesty disclaimed any intention of doing
+injury to the States in permitting his subjects to establish a company in
+his kingdom for that commerce.  He had deferred hitherto taking action in
+the matter only out of respect to the States, but he could no longer
+refuse the just claims of his subjects if they should persist in them as
+urgently as they had thus far been doing.  The right and liberty which
+they demanded was common to all, said the King, and he was certainly
+bound to have as great care for the interests of his subjects as for
+those of his friends and allies.
+
+Here, certainly, was an immense difference in tone and in terms towards
+the Republic adopted respectively by their great and good friends and
+allies the Kings of France and Great Britain.  It was natural enough that
+Henry, having secretly expressed his most earnest hope that the States
+would move at his side in his broad and general assault upon the House of
+Austria, should impress upon them his conviction, which was a just one,
+that no power in the world was more interested in keeping a Spanish and
+Catholic prince out of the duchies than they were themselves.  But while
+thus taking a bond of them as it were for the entire fulfilment of the
+primary enterprise, he accepted with cordiality, and almost with
+gratitude, their proposition of a close alliance of the Republic with
+himself and with the Protestant powers which James had so superciliously
+rejected.
+
+It would have been difficult to inflict a more petty and, more studied
+insult upon the Republic than did the King of Great Britain at that
+supreme moment by his preposterous claim of sovereign rights over the
+Netherlands.  He would make no treaty with them, he said, but should he
+find it worth while to treat with his royal brother of France, he should
+probably not shut the door in their faces.
+
+Certainly Henry's reply to the remonstrances of the ambassadors in regard
+to the India trade was as moderate as that of James had been haughty and
+peremptory in regard to the herring fishery.  It is however sufficiently
+amusing to see those excellent Hollanders nobly claiming that "the sea
+was as free as air" when the right to take Scotch pilchards was in
+question, while at the very same moment they were earnest for excluding
+their best allies and all the world besides from their East India
+monopoly.  But Isaac Le Maire and Jacques Le Roy had not lain so long
+disguised in Zamet's house in Paris for nothing, nor had Aerssens so
+completely "broke the neck of the French East India Company" as he
+supposed.  A certain Dutch freebooter, however, Simon Danzer by name, a
+native of Dordrecht, who had been alternately in the service of Spain,
+France, and the States, but a general marauder upon all powers, was
+exercising at that moment perhaps more influence on the East India trade
+than any potentate or commonwealth.
+
+He kept the seas just then with four swift-sailing and well-armed
+vessels, that potent skimmer of the ocean, and levied tribute upon
+Protestant and Catholic, Turk or Christian, with great impartiality.
+The King of Spain had sent him letters of amnesty and safe-conduct,
+with large pecuniary offers, if he would enter his service.  The King of
+France had outbid his royal brother and enemy, and implored him to sweep
+the seas under the white flag.
+
+The States' ambassador begged his masters to reflect whether this
+"puissant and experienced corsair" should be permitted to serve Spaniard
+or Frenchman, and whether they could devise no expedient for turning him
+into another track.  "He is now with his fine ships at Marseilles," said
+Aerssens.  "He is sought for in all quarters by the Spaniard and by the
+directors of the new French East India Company, private persons who equip
+vessels of war.  If he is not satisfied with this king's offers, he is
+likely to close with the King of Spain, who offers him 1000 crowns a
+month.  Avarice tickles him, but he is neither Spaniard nor Papist, and I
+fear will be induced to serve with his ships the East India Company, and
+so will return to his piracy, the evil of which will always fall on our
+heads.  If My Lords the States will send me letters of abolition for him,
+in imitation of the French king, on condition of his returning to his
+home in Zealand and quitting the sea altogether, something might be done.
+Otherwise he will be off to Marseilles again, and do more harm to us than
+ever.  Isaac Le Maire is doing as much evil as he can, and one holds
+daily council with him here."
+
+Thus the slippery Simon skimmed the seas from Marseilles to the Moluccas,
+from Java to Mexico, never to be held firmly by Philip, or Henry, or
+Barneveld.  A dissolute but very daring ship's captain, born in Zealand,
+and formerly in the service of the States, out of which he had been
+expelled for many evil deeds, Simon Danzer had now become a professional
+pirate, having his head-quarters chiefly at Algiers.  His English
+colleague Warde stationed himself mainly at Tunis, and both acted
+together in connivance with the pachas of the Turkish government.  They
+with their considerable fleet, one vessel of which mounted sixty guns,
+were the terror of the Mediterranean, extorted tribute from the commerce
+of all nations indifferently, and sold licenses to the greatest
+governments of Europe.  After growing rich with his accumulated booty,
+Simon was inclined to become respectable, a recourse which was always
+open to him--France, England, Spain, the United Provinces, vieing with
+each other to secure him by high rank and pay as an honoured member of
+their national marine.  He appears however to have failed in his plan of
+retiring upon his laurels, having been stabbed in Paris by a man whom he
+had formerly robbed and ruined.
+
+Villeroy, having delivered the letters with his own hands to the
+ambassadors, was asked by them when and where it would be convenient for
+the King to arrange the convention of close alliance.  The Secretary of
+State--in his secret heart anything but kindly disposed for this loving
+union with a republic he detested and with heretics whom he would have
+burned--answered briefly that his Majesty was ready at any time, and that
+it might take place then if they were provided with the necessary powers.
+He said in parting that the States should "have an eye to everything, for
+occasions like the present were irrecoverable."  He then departed, saying
+that the King would receive them in final audience on the following day.
+
+Next morning accordingly Marshal de Boisdaulphin and de Bonoeil came
+with royal coaches to the Hotel Gondy and escorted the ambassadors to the
+Louvre.  On the way they met de Bethune, who had returned solo from the
+Hague bringing despatches for the King and for themselves.  While in the
+antechamber, they had opportunity to read their letters from the States-
+General, his Majesty sending word that he was expecting them with
+impatience, but preferred that they should read the despatches before
+the audience.
+
+They found the King somewhat out of humour.  He expressed himself as
+tolerably well satisfied with the general tenour of the despatches
+brought by de Bethune, but complained loudly of the request now made by
+the States, that the maintenance and other expenses of 4000 French in the
+States' service should be paid in the coming campaign out of the royal
+exchequer.  He declared that this proposition was "a small manifestation
+of ingratitude," that my Lords the, States were "little misers," and that
+such proceedings were "little avaricious tricks" such as he had not
+expected of them.
+
+So far as England was concerned, he said there was a great difference.
+The English took away what he was giving.  He did cheerfully a great deal
+for his friends, he said, and was always ready doubly to repay what they
+did for him.  If, however, the States persisted in this course, he should
+call his troops home again.
+
+The King, as he went on, became more and more excited, and showed decided
+dissatisfaction in his language and manner.  It was not to be wondered
+at, for we have seen how persistently he had been urging that the
+Advocate should come in person with "the bridle on his neck," and now he
+had sent his son-in-law and two colleagues tightly tied up by stringent
+instructions.  And over an above all this, while he was contemplating a
+general war with intention to draw upon the States for unlimited
+supplies, behold, they were haggling for the support of a couple of
+regiments which were virtually their own troops.
+
+There were reasons, however, for this cautiousness besides those
+unfounded, although not entirely chimerical, suspicions as to the King's
+good faith, to which we have alluded.  It should not be forgotten that,
+although Henry had conversed secretly with the States' ambassador at full
+length on his far-reaching plans, with instructions that he should
+confidentially inform the Advocate and demand his co-operation, not a
+word of it had been officially propounded to the States-General, nor to
+the special embassy with whom he was now negotiating.  No treaty of
+alliance offensive or defensive existed between the Kingdom and the
+Republic or between the Republic and any power whatever.  It would have
+been culpable carelessness therefore at this moment for the prime
+minister of the States to have committed his government in writing to
+a full participation in a general assault upon the House of Austria; the
+first step in which would have been a breach of the treaty just concluded
+and instant hostilities with the Archdukes Albert and Isabella.
+
+That these things were in the immediate future was as plain as that night
+would follow day, but the hour had not yet struck for the States to throw
+down the gauntlet.
+
+Hardly two months before, the King, in his treaty with the princes at
+Hall, had excluded both the King of Great Britain and the States-General
+from participation in those arrangements, and it was grave matter for
+consideration, therefore, for the States whether they should allow such
+succour as they might choose to grant the princes to be included in the
+French contingent.  The opportunity for treating as a sovereign power
+with the princes and making friends with them was tempting, but it did
+not seem reasonable to the States that France should make use of them
+in this war without a treaty, and should derive great advantage from
+the alliance, but leave the expense to them.
+
+Henry, on the other hand, forgetting, when it was convenient to him, all
+about the Princess of Conde, his hatred of Spain, and his resolution to
+crush the House of Austria, chose to consider the war as made simply for
+the love of the States-General and to secure them for ever from danger.
+
+The ambassadors replied to the King's invectives with great respect,
+and endeavoured to appease his anger.  They had sent a special despatch
+to their government, they said, in regard to all those matters, setting
+forth all the difficulties that had been raised, but had not wished to
+trouble his Majesty with premature discussions of them.  They did not
+doubt, however, that their High Mightinesses would so conduct this great
+affair as to leave the King no ground of complaint.
+
+Henry then began to talk of the intelligence brought by de Bethune from
+the Hague, especially in regard to the sending of States' troops to
+Dusseldorf and the supply of food for the French army.  He did not
+believe, he said, that the Archdukes would refuse him the passage with
+his forces through their territory, inasmuch as the States' army would be
+on the way to meet him.  In case of any resistance, however, he declared
+his resolution to strike his blow and to cause people to talk of him.
+He had sent his quartermaster-general to examine the passes, who had
+reported that it would be impossible to prevent his Majesty's advance.
+He was also distinctly informed that Marquis Spinola, keeping his places
+garrisoned, could not bring more than 8000 men into the field.  The Duke
+of Bouillon, however, was sending advices that his communications were
+liable to be cut off, and that for this purpose Spinola could set on foot
+about 16,000 infantry and 4000 horse.
+
+If the passage should be allowed by the Archdukes, the King stated his
+intention of establishing magazines for his troops along the whole line
+of march through the Spanish Netherlands and neighbouring districts, and
+to establish and fortify himself everywhere in order to protect his
+supplies and cover his possible retreat.  He was still in doubt, he said,
+whether to demand the passage at once or to wait until he had began to
+move his army.  He was rather inclined to make the request instantly in
+order to gain time, being persuaded that he should receive no answer
+either of consent or refusal.
+
+Leaving all these details, the King then frankly observed that the affair
+of Cleve had a much wider outlook than people thought.  Therefore the
+States must consider well what was to be done to secure the whole work as
+soon as the Cleve business had been successfully accomplished.  Upon this
+subject it was indispensable that he should consult especially with his
+Excellency (Prince Maurice) and some members of the General Assembly,
+whom he wished that My Lords the States-General should depute to the
+army.
+
+"For how much good will it do," said the King, "if we drive off Archduke
+Leopold without establishing the princes in security for the future?
+Nothing is easier than to put the princes in possession.  Every one will
+yield or run away before our forces, but two months after we have
+withdrawn the enemy will return and drive the princes out again.  I
+cannot always be ready to spring out of my kingdom, nor to assemble such
+great armies.  I am getting old, and my army moreover costs me 400,000
+crowns a month, which is enough to exhaust all the treasures of France,
+Spain, Venice, and the States-General together."
+
+He added that, if the present occasion were neglected, the States would
+afterwards bitterly lament and never recover it.  The Pope was very much
+excited, and was sending out his ambassadors everywhere.  Only the
+previous Saturday the new nuncius destined for France had left Rome.
+If My Lords the States would send deputies to the camp with full powers,
+he stood there firm and unchangeable, but if they remained cool in the
+business, he warned them that they would enrage him.
+
+The States must seize the occasion, he repeated.  It was bald behind, and
+must be grasped by the forelock.  It was not enough to have begun well.
+One must end well.  "Finis coronat opus."  It was very easy to speak of a
+league, but a league was not to be made in order to sit with arms tied,
+but to do good work.  The States ought not to suffer that the Germans
+should prove themselves more energetic, more courageous, than themselves.
+
+And again the King vehemently urged the necessity of his Excellency and
+some deputies of the States coming to him "with absolute power" to treat.
+He could not doubt in that event of something solid being accomplished.
+
+"There are three things," he continued, "which cause me to speak freely.
+I am talking with my friends whom I hold dear--yes, dearer, perhaps, than
+they hold themselves.  I am a great king, and say what I choose to say.
+I am old, and know by experience the ways of this world's affairs.  I
+tell you, then, that it is most important that you should come to me
+resolved and firm on all points."
+
+He then requested the ambassadors to make full report of all that he had
+said to their masters, to make the journey as rapidly as possible, in
+order to encourage the States to the great enterprise and to meet his
+wishes.  He required from them, he said, not only activity of the body,
+but labour of the intellect.
+
+He was silent for a few moments, and then spoke again.  "I shall not
+always be here," he said, "nor will you always have Prince Maurice, and a
+few others whose knowledge of your commonwealth is perfect.  My Lords the
+States must be up and doing while they still possess them.  Nest Tuesday
+I shall cause the Queen to be crowned at Saint-Denis; the following
+Thursday she will make her entry into Paris.  Next day, Friday, I shall
+take my departure.  At the end of this month I shall cross the Meuse at
+Mezieres or in that neighbourhood."
+
+He added that he should write immediately to Holland, to urge upon his
+Excellency and the States to be ready to make the junction of their army
+with his forces without delay.  He charged the ambassadors to assure
+their High Mightinesses that he was and should remain their truest
+friend, their dearest neighbour.  He then said a few gracious and cordial
+words to each of them, warmly embraced each, and bade them all farewell.
+
+The next day was passed by the ambassadors in paying and receiving
+farewell visits, and on Saturday, the 8th, they departed from Paris,
+being escorted out of the gate by the Marshal de Boisdaulphin, with a
+cavalcade of noblemen.  They slept that night at Saint Denis, and then
+returned to Holland by the way of  Calais and Rotterdam, reaching the
+Hague on the 16th of May.
+
+I make no apology for the minute details thus given of the proceedings of
+this embassy, and especially of the conversations of Henry.
+
+The very words of those conversations were taken down on the spot by the
+commissioners who heard them, and were carefully embodied in their report
+made to the States-General on their return, from which I have transcribed
+them.
+
+It was a memorable occasion.  The great king--for great he was, despite
+his numerous vices and follies--stood there upon the threshold of a vast
+undertaking, at which the world, still half incredulous, stood gazing,
+half sick with anxiety.  He relied on his own genius and valour chiefly,
+and after these on the brain of Barneveld and the sword of Maurice.  Nor
+was his confidence misplaced.
+
+But let the reader observe the date of the day when those striking
+utterances were made, and which have never before been made public.  It
+was Thursday, the 6th May.  "I shall not always be here," said the King
+.  .  .  .  .  "I cannot be ready at any moment to spring out of my
+kingdom."  .  .  .  "Friday of next week I take my departure."
+
+How much of heroic pathos in Henry's attitude at this supreme moment!
+How mournfully ring those closing words of his address to the
+ambassadors!
+
+The die was cast.  A letter drawn up by the Duc de Sully was sent to
+Archduke Albert by the King.
+
+"My brother," he said; "Not being able to refuse my best allies and
+confederates the help which they have asked of me against those who wish
+to trouble them in the succession to the duchies and counties of Cleve,
+Julich, Mark, Berg, Ravensberg, and Ravenstein, I am advancing towards
+them with my army.  As my road leads me through your country, I desire to
+notify you thereof, and to know whether or not I am to enter as a friend
+or enemy."
+
+Such was the draft as delivered to the Secretary of State; "and as such
+it was sent," said Sully, "unless Villeroy changed it, as he had a great
+desire to do."
+
+Henry was mistaken in supposing that the Archduke would leave the letter
+without an answer.  A reply was sent in due time, and the permission
+demanded was not refused.  For although France was now full of military
+movement, and the regiments everywhere were hurrying hourly to the places
+of rendezvous, though the great storm at last was ready to burst, the
+Archdukes made no preparations for resistance, and lapped themselves in
+fatal security that nothing was intended but an empty demonstration.
+
+Six thousand Swiss newly levied, with 20,000 French infantry and 6000
+horse, were waiting for Henry to place himself at their head at Mezieres.
+Twelve thousand foot and 2000 cavalry, including the French and English
+contingents--a splendid army, led by Prince Maurice--were ready to march
+from Holland to Dusseldorf.  The army of the princes under Prince
+Christian of Anhalt numbered 10,000 men.  The last scruples of the
+usually unscrupulous Charles Emmanuel had been overcome, and the Duke was
+quite ready to act, 25,000 strong, with Marshal de Lesdiguieres, in the
+Milanese; while Marshal de la Force was already at the head of his forces
+in the Pyrenees, amounting to 12,000 foot and 2000 horse.
+
+Sully had already despatched his splendid trains of artillery to the
+frontier.  "Never was seen in France, and perhaps never will be seen
+there again, artillery more complete and better furnished,"  said the
+Duke, thinking probably that artillery had reached the climax of perfect
+destructiveness in the first decade of the seventeenth century.
+
+His son, the Marquis de Rosny, had received the post of grand master of
+artillery, and placed himself at its head.  His father was to follow as
+its chief, carrying with him as superintendent of finance a cash-box of
+eight millions.
+
+The King had appointed his wife, Mary de' Medici, regent, with an eminent
+council.
+
+The new nuncius had been requested to present himself with his letters
+of credence in the camp.  Henry was unwilling that he should enter Paris,
+being convinced that he came to do his best, by declamation, persuasion,
+and intrigue, to paralyse the enterprise.  Sully's promises to Ubaldini,
+the former nuncius, that his Holiness should be made king, however
+flattering to Paul V., had not prevented his representatives from
+vigorously denouncing Henry's monstrous scheme to foment heresy and
+encourage rebellion.
+
+The King's chagrin at the cautious limitations imposed upon the States'
+special embassy was, so he hoped, to be removed by full conferences in
+the camp.  Certainly he had shown in the most striking manner the respect
+he felt for the States, and the confidence he reposed in them.
+
+"In the reception of your embassy," wrote Aerssens to the Advocate,
+"certainly the King has so loosened the strap of his affection that he
+has reserved nothing by which he could put the greatest king in the world
+above your level."
+
+He warned the States, however, that Henry had not found as much in their
+propositions as the common interest had caused him to promise himself.
+"Nevertheless he informs me in confidence," said Aerssens, "that he will
+engage himself in nothing without you; nay, more, he has expressly told
+me that he could hardly accomplish his task without your assistance, and
+it was for our sakes alone that he has put himself into this position and
+incurred this great expense."
+
+Some days later he informed Barneveld that he would leave to van der Myle
+and his colleagues the task of describing the great dissatisfaction of
+the King at the letters brought by de Bethune.  He told him in confidence
+that the States must equip the French regiments and put them in marching
+order if they wished to preserve Henry's friendship.  He added that since
+the departure of the special embassy the King had been vehemently and
+seriously urging that Prince Maurice, Count Lewis William, Barneveld, and
+three or four of the most qualified deputies of the States-General,
+entirely authorized to treat for the common safety, should meet with him
+in the territory of Julich on a fixed day.
+
+The crisis was reached.  The King stood fully armed, thoroughly prepared,
+with trustworthy allies at his side, disposing of overwhelming forces
+ready to sweep down with irresistible strength upon the House of Austria,
+which, as he said and the States said, aspired to give the law to the
+whole world.  Nothing was left to do save, as the Ambassador said, to
+"uncouple the dogs of war and let them run."
+
+What preparations had Spain and the Empire, the Pope and the League,
+set on foot to beat back even for a moment the overwhelming onset?
+None whatever.  Spinola in the Netherlands, Fuentes in Milan, Bucquoy and
+Lobkowitz and Lichtenstein in Prague, had hardly the forces of a moderate
+peace establishment at their disposal, and all the powers save France and
+the States were on the verge of bankruptcy.
+
+Even James of Great Britain--shuddering at the vast thundercloud which
+had stretched itself over Christendom growing blacker and blacker,
+precisely at this moment, in which he had proved to his own satisfaction
+that the peace just made would perpetually endure--even James did not
+dare to traverse the designs of the king whom he feared, and the republic
+which he hated, in favour of his dearly loved Spain.  Sweden, Denmark,
+the Hanse Towns, were in harmony with France, Holland, Savoy, and the
+whole Protestant force of Germany--a majority both in population and
+resources of the whole empire.  What army, what combination, what device,
+what talisman, could save the House of Austria, the cause of Papacy, from
+the impending ruin?
+
+A sudden, rapid, conclusive victory for the allies seemed as predestined
+a result as anything could be in the future of human affairs.
+
+On the 14th or 15th day of May, as he had just been informing the States'
+ambassadors, Henry meant to place himself at the head of his army.  That
+was the moment fixed by himself for "taking his departure."
+
+And now the ides of May had come--but not gone.
+
+In the midst of all the military preparations with which Paris had been
+resounding, the arrangements for the Queen's coronation had been
+simultaneously going forward.  Partly to give check in advance to the
+intrigues which would probably at a later date be made by Conde,
+supported by the power of Spain, to invalidate the legitimacy of the
+Dauphin, but more especially perhaps to further and to conceal what the
+faithful Sully called the "damnable artifices" of the Queen's intimate
+councillors--sinister designs too dark to be even whispered at that
+epoch, and of which history, during the lapse of more than two centuries
+and a half, has scarcely dared to speak above its breath--it was deemed
+all important that the coronation should take place.
+
+A certain astrologer, Thomassin by name, was said to have bidden the King
+to beware the middle of the next month of May.  Henry had tweaked the
+soothsayer by the beard and made him dance twice or thrice about the
+room.  To the Duc de Vendome expressing great anxiety in regard to
+Thomassin, Henry replied, "The astrologer is an old fool, and you are a
+young fool."  A certain prophetess called Pasithea had informed the Queen
+that the King could not survive his fifty-seventh year.  She was much in
+the confidence of Mary de' Medici, who had insisted this year on her
+returning to Paris.  Henry, who was ever chafing and struggling to escape
+the invisible and dangerous net which he felt closing about him, and who
+connected the sorceress with all whom he most loathed among the intimate
+associates of the Queen, swore a mighty oath that she should not show her
+face again at court.  "My heart presages that some signal disaster will
+befall me on this coronation.  Concini and his wife are urging the Queen
+obstinately to send for this fanatic.  If she should come, there is no
+doubt that my wife and I shall squabble well about her.  If I discover
+more about these private plots of hers with Spain, I shall be in a mighty
+passion."  And the King then assured the faithful minister of his
+conviction that all the jealousy affected by the Queen in regard to the
+Princess of Conde was but a veil to cover dark designs.  It was necessary
+in the opinion of those who governed her, the vile Concini and his wife,
+that there should be some apparent and flagrant cause of quarrel.  The
+public were to receive payment in these pretexts for want of better coin.
+Henry complained that even Sully and all the world besides attributed to
+jealousy that which was really the effect of a most refined malice.
+
+And the minister sometimes pauses in the midst of these revelations made
+in his old age, and with self-imposed and shuddering silence intimates
+that there are things he could tell which are too odious and dreadful to
+be breathed.
+
+Henry had an invincible repugnance to that coronation on which the Queen
+had set her heart.  Nothing could be more pathetic than the isolated
+position in which he found himself, standing thus as he did on the
+threshold of a mighty undertaking in which he was the central figure,
+an object for the world to gaze upon with palpitating interest.  At his
+hearth in the Louvre were no household gods.  Danger lurked behind every
+tapestry in that magnificent old palace.  A nameless dread dogged his
+footsteps through those resounding corridors.
+
+And by an exquisite refinement in torture the possible father of several
+of his children not only dictated to the Queen perpetual outbreaks of
+frantic jealousy against her husband, but moved her to refuse with
+suspicion any food and drink offered her by his hands.  The Concini's
+would even with unparalleled and ingenious effrontery induce her to make
+use of the kitchen arrangements in their apartments for the preparation
+of her daily meals?
+
+Driven from house and home, Henry almost lived at the Arsenal.  There he
+would walk for hours in the long alleys of the garden, discussing with
+the great financier and soldier his vast, dreamy, impracticable plans.
+Strange combination of the hero, the warrior, the voluptuary, the sage,
+and the schoolboy--it would be difficult to find in the whole range of
+history a more human, a more attractive, a more provoking, a less
+venerable character.
+
+Haunted by omens, dire presentiments, dark suspicions with and without
+cause, he was especially averse from the coronation to which in a moment
+of weakness he had given his consent.
+
+Sitting in Sully's cabinet, in a low chair which the Duke had expressly
+provided for his use, tapping and drumming on his spectacle case, or
+starting up and smiting himself on the thigh, he would pour out his soul
+hours long to his one confidential minister.  "Ah, my friend, how this
+sacrament displeases me," he said; "I know not why it is, but my heart
+tells me that some misfortune is to befall me.  By God I shall die in
+this city, I shall never go out of it; I see very well that they are
+finding their last resource in my death.  Ah, accursed coronation!  thou
+wilt be the, cause of my death."
+
+So many times did he give utterance to these sinister forebodings that
+Sully implored him at last for leave to countermand the whole ceremony
+notwithstanding the great preparations which had been made for the
+splendid festival.  "Yes, yes," replied the King, "break up this
+coronation at once.  Let me hear no more of it.  Then I shall have my
+mind cured of all these impressions.  I shall leave the town and fear
+nothing."
+
+He then informed his friend that he had received intimations that he
+should lose his life at the first magnificent festival he should give,
+and that he should die in a carriage.  Sully admitted that he had often,
+when in a carriage with him, been amazed at his starting and crying out
+at the slightest shock, having so often seen him intrepid among guns and
+cannon, pikes and naked swords.
+
+The Duke went to the Queen three days in succession, and with passionate
+solicitations and arguments and almost upon his knees implored her to
+yield to the King's earnest desire, and renounce for the time at least
+the coronation.  In vain.  Mary de' Medici was obdurate as marble to his
+prayers.
+
+The coronation was fixed for Thursday, the 13th May, two days later than
+the time originally appointed when the King conversed with the States'
+ambassadors.  On the following Sunday was to be the splendid and solemn
+entrance of the crowned Queen.  On the Monday, Henry, postponing likewise
+for two days his original plan of departure, would leave for the army.
+
+Meantime there were petty annoyances connected with the details of the
+coronation.  Henry had set his heart on having his legitimatized
+children, the offspring of the fair Gabrielle, take their part in the
+ceremony on an equal footing with the princes of the blood.  They were
+not entitled to wear the lilies of France upon their garments, and the
+King was solicitous that "the Count"--as Soissons, brother of Prince
+Conti and uncle of Conde, was always called--should dispense with those
+ensigns for his wife upon this solemn occasion, and that the other
+princesses of the blood should do the same.  Thus there would be no
+appearance of inferiority on the part of the Duchess of Vendome.
+
+The Count protested that he would have his eyes torn out of his head
+rather than submit to an arrangement which would do him so much shame.
+He went to the Queen and urged upon her that to do this would likewise be
+an injury to her children, the Dukes of Orleans and of Anjou.  He refused
+flatly to appear or allow his wife to appear except in the costume
+befitting their station.  The King on his part was determined not to
+abandon his purpose.  He tried to gain over the Count by the most
+splendid proposals, offering him the command of the advance-guard of the
+army, or the lieutenancy-general of France in the absence of the King,
+30,000 crowns for his equipment and an increase of his pension if he
+would cause his wife to give up the fleurs-de-lys on this occasion.
+The alternative was to be that, if she insisted upon wearing them,
+his Majesty would never look upon him again with favourable eyes.
+
+The Count never hesitated, but left Paris, refusing to appear at the
+ceremony.  The King was in a towering passion, for to lose the presence
+of this great prince of the blood at a solemnity expressly intended as a
+demonstration against the designs hatching by the first of all the
+princes of the blood under patronage of Spain was a severe blow to his
+pride and a check to his policy.'
+
+Yet it was inconceivable that he could at such a moment commit so
+superfluous and unmeaning a blunder.  He had forced Conde into exile,
+intrigue with the enemy, and rebellion, by open and audacious efforts to
+destroy his domestic peace, and now he was willing to alienate one of his
+most powerful subjects in order to place his bastards on a level with
+royalty.  While it is sufficiently amusing to contemplate this proposed
+barter of a chief command in a great army or the lieutenancy-general of a
+mighty kingdom at the outbreak of a general European war against a bit of
+embroidery on the court dress of a lady, yet it is impossible not to
+recognize something ideal and chivalrous from his own point of view in
+the refusal of Soissons to renounce those emblems of pure and high
+descent, those haughty lilies of St. Louis, against any bribes of place
+and pelf however dazzling.
+
+The coronation took place on Thursday, 13th May, with the pomp and
+glitter becoming great court festivals; the more pompous and glittering
+the more the monarch's heart was wrapped in gloom.  The representatives
+of the great powers were conspicuous in the procession; Aerssens, the
+Dutch ambassador, holding a foremost place.  The ambassadors of Spain and
+Venice as usual squabbled about precedence and many other things, and
+actually came to fisticuffs, the fight lasting a long time and ending
+somewhat to the advantage of the Venetian.  But the sacrament was over,
+and Mary de' Medici was crowned Queen of France and Regent of the Kingdom
+during the absence of the sovereign with his army.
+
+Meantime there had been mysterious warnings darker and more distinct than
+the babble of the soothsayer Thomassin or the ravings of the lunatic
+Pasithea.  Count Schomberg, dining at the Arsenal with Sully, had been
+called out to converse with Mademoiselle de Gournay, who implored that a
+certain Madame d'Escomans might be admitted to audience of the King.
+That person, once in direct relations with the Marchioness of Verneuil,
+the one of Henry's mistresses who most hated him, affirmed that a man
+from the Duke of Epernon's country was in Paris, agent of a conspiracy
+seeking the King's life.
+
+The woman not enjoying a very reputable character found it impossible to
+obtain a hearing, although almost frantic with her desire to save her
+sovereign's life.  The Queen observed that it was a wicked woman, who was
+accusing all the world, and perhaps would accuse her too.
+
+The fatal Friday came.  Henry drove out, in his carriage to see the
+preparations making for the triumphal entrance of the Queen into Paris on
+the following Sunday.  What need to repeat the tragic, familiar tale?
+The coach was stopped by apparent accident in the narrow street de la
+Feronniere, and Francis Ravaillac, standing on the wheel, drove his knife
+through the monarch's heart.  The Duke of Epernon, sitting at his side,
+threw his cloak over the body and ordered the carriage back to the
+Louvre.
+
+"They have killed him, 'e ammazato,'" cried Concini (so says tradition),
+thrusting his head into the Queen's bedchamber.
+
+     [Michelet, 197.  It is not probable that the documents concerning
+     the trial, having been so carefully suppressed from the beginning,
+     especially the confession dictated to Voisin--who wrote it kneeling
+     on the ground, and was perhaps so appalled at its purport that he
+     was afraid to write it legibly--will ever see the light.  I add in
+     the Appendix some contemporary letters of persons, as likely as any
+     one to know what could be known, which show how dreadful were the
+     suspicions which men entertained, and which they hardly ventured to
+     whisper to each other].
+
+That blow had accomplished more than a great army could have done, and
+Spain now reigned in Paris.  The House of Austria, without making any
+military preparations, had conquered, and the great war of religion and
+politics was postponed for half a dozen years.
+
+This history has no immediate concern with solving the mysteries of that
+stupendous crime.  The woman who had sought to save the King's life now
+denounced Epernon as the chief murderer, and was arrested, examined,
+accused of lunacy, proved to be perfectly sane, and, persisting in her
+statements with perfect coherency, was imprisoned for life for her pains;
+the Duke furiously demanding her instant execution.
+
+The documents connected with the process were carefully suppressed.  The
+assassin, tortured and torn by four horses, was supposed to have revealed
+nothing and to have denied the existence of accomplices.
+
+The great accused were too omnipotent to be dealt with by humble accusers
+or by convinced but powerless tribunals.  The trial was all mystery,
+hugger-mugger, horror.  Yet the murderer is known to have dictated to the
+Greflier Voisin, just before expiring on the Greve, a declaration which
+that functionary took down in a handwriting perhaps purposely illegible.
+
+Two centuries and a half have passed away, yet the illegible original
+record is said to exist, to have been plainly read, and to contain the
+names of the Queen and the Duke of Epernon.
+
+Twenty-six years before, the pistol of Balthasar Gerard had destroyed the
+foremost man in Europe and the chief of a commonwealth just struggling
+into existence.  Yet Spain and Rome, the instigators and perpetrators of
+the crime, had not reaped the victory which they had the right to expect.
+The young republic, guided by Barneveld and loyal to the son of the
+murdered stadholder, was equal to the burthen suddenly descending upon
+its shoulders.  Instead of despair there had been constancy.  Instead of
+distracted counsels there had been heroic union of heart and hand.
+Rather than bend to Rome and grovel to Philip, it had taken its
+sovereignty in its hands, offered it successively, without a thought of
+self-aggrandizement on the part of its children, to the crowns of France
+and Great Britain, and, having been repulsed by both, had learned after
+fiery trials and incredible exertions to assert its own high and foremost
+place among the independent powers of the world.
+
+And now the knife of another priest-led fanatic, the wretched but
+unflinching instrument of a great conspiracy, had at a blow decapitated
+France.  No political revolution could be much more thorough than that
+which had been accomplished in a moment of time by Francis Ravaillac.
+
+On the 14th of May, France, while in spiritual matters obedient to the
+Pope, stood at the head of the forces of Protestantism throughout Europe,
+banded together to effect the downfall of the proud house of Austria,
+whose fortunes and fate were synonymous with Catholicism.  The Baltic
+powers, the majority of the Teutonic races, the Kingdom of Britain, the
+great Republic of the Netherlands, the northernmost and most warlike
+governments of Italy, all stood at the disposition of the warrior-king.
+Venice, who had hitherto, in the words of a veteran diplomatist, "shunned
+to look a league or a confederation in the face, if there was any
+Protestant element in it, as if it had been the head of Medusa," had
+formally forbidden the passage of troops northwards to the relief of the
+assailed power.  Savoy, after direful hesitations, had committed herself
+body and soul to the great enterprise.  Even the Pope, who feared the
+overshadowing personality of Henry, and was beginning to believe his
+house's private interests more likely to flourish under the protection of
+the French than the Spanish king, was wavering in his fidelity to Spain
+and tempted by French promises: If he should prove himself incapable of
+effecting a pause in the great crusade, it was doubtful on which side he
+would ultimately range himself; for it was at least certain that the new
+Catholic League, under the chieftainship of Maximilian of Bavaria, was
+resolved not to entangle its fortunes inextricably with those of the
+Austrian house.
+
+The great enterprise, first unfolding itself with the episode of Cleve
+and Berg and whimsically surrounding itself with the fantastic idyl of
+the Princess of Conde, had attained vast and misty proportions in the
+brain of its originator.  Few political visions are better known in
+history than the "grand design" of Henry for rearranging the map of the
+world at the moment when, in the middle of May, he was about to draw his
+sword.  Spain reduced to the Mediterranean and the Pyrenees, but
+presented with both the Indies, with all America and the whole Orient in
+fee; the Empire taken from Austria and given to Bavaria; a constellation
+of States in Italy, with the Pope for president-king; throughout the rest
+of Christendom a certain number of republics, of kingdoms, of religions--
+a great confederation of the world, in short--with the most Christian
+king for its dictator and protector, and a great Amphictyonic council to
+regulate all disputes by solemn arbitration, and to make war in the
+future impossible, such in little was his great design.
+
+Nothing could be more humane, more majestic, more elaborate, more
+utterly preposterous.  And all this gigantic fabric had passed away
+in an instant--at one stroke of a broken table knife sharpened on a
+carriage wheel.
+
+Most pitiful was the condition of France on the day after, and for years
+after, the murder of the King.  Not only was the kingdom for the, time
+being effaced from the roll of nations, so far as external relations were
+concerned, but it almost ceased to be a kingdom.  The ancient monarchy
+of Hugh Capet, of Saint-Louis, of Henry of France and Navarre, was
+transformed into a turbulent, self-seeking, quarrelsome, pillaging,
+pilfering democracy of grandees.  The Queen-Regent was tossed hither and
+thither at the sport of the winds and waves which shifted every hour in
+that tempestuous court.
+
+No man pretended to think of the State.  Every man thought only of
+himself.  The royal exchequer was plundered with a celerity and cynical
+recklessness such as have been rarely seen in any age or country.  The
+millions so carefully hoarded by Sully, and exhibited so dramatically
+by that great minister to the enraptured eyes of his sovereign; that
+treasure in the Bastille on which Henry relied for payment of the armies
+with which he was to transform the world, all disappeared in a few weeks
+to feed the voracious maw of courtiers, paramours, and partisans!
+
+The Queen showered gold like water upon her beloved Concini that he might
+purchase his Marquisate of Ancre, and the charge of first gentleman of
+the court from Bouillon; that he might fit himself for the government of
+Picardy; that he might elevate his marquisate into a dukedom.  Conde,
+having no further reason to remain in exile, received as a gift from the
+trembling Mary de' Medici the magnificent Hotel Gondy, where the Dutch
+ambassadors had so recently been lodged, for which she paid 65,000
+crowns, together with 25,000 crowns to furnish it, 50,000 crowns to pay
+his debts, 50,000 more as yearly pension.
+
+He claimed double, and was soon at sword's point with the Queen in spite
+of her lavish bounty.
+
+Epernon, the true murderer of Henry, trampled on courts of justice and
+councils of ministers, frightened the court by threatening to convert
+his possession of Metz into an independent sovereignty, as Balagny had
+formerly seized upon Cambray, smothered for ever the process of
+Ravaillac, caused those to be put to death or immured for life in
+dungeons who dared to testify to his complicity in the great crime,
+and strode triumphantly over friends and enemies throughout France,
+although so crippled by the gout that he could scarcely walk up stairs.
+
+There was an end to the triumvirate.  Sully's influence was gone for
+ever.  The other two dropped the mask.  The Chancellor and Villeroy
+revealed themselves to be what they secretly had always been--humble
+servants and stipendiaries of Spain.  The formal meetings of the council
+were of little importance, and were solemn, tearful, and stately; draped
+in woe for the great national loss.  In the private cabinet meetings in
+the entresol of the Louvre, where the Nuncius and the Spanish ambassador
+held counsel with Epernon and Villeroy and Jeannin and Sillery, the tone
+was merry and loud; the double Spanish marriage and confusion to the
+Dutch being the chief topics of consultation.
+
+But the anarchy grew day by day into almost hopeless chaos.  There was no
+satisfying the princes of the blood nor the other grandees.  Conde, whose
+reconciliation with the Princess followed not long after the death of
+Henry and his own return to France, was insatiable in his demands for
+money, power, and citadels of security.  Soissons, who might formerly
+have received the lieutenancy-general of the kingdom by sacrificing the
+lilies on his wife's gown, now disputed for that office with his elder
+brother Conti, the Prince claiming it by right of seniority, the Count
+denouncing Conti as deaf, dumb, and imbecile, till they drew poniards on
+each other in the very presence of the Queen;  while Conde on one
+occasion, having been refused the citadels which he claimed, Blaye and
+Chateau Trompette, threw his cloak over his nose and put on his hat while
+the Queen was speaking, and left the council in a fury, declaring that
+Villeroy and the chancellor were traitors, and that he would have them
+both soundly cudgelled.  Guise, Lorraine, Epernon, Bouillon, and other
+great lords always appeared in the streets of Paris at the head of three,
+four, or five hundred mounted and armed retainers; while the Queen in her
+distraction gave orders to arm the Paris mob to the number of fifty
+thousand, and to throw chains across the streets to protect herself and
+her son against the turbulent nobles.
+
+Sully, hardly knowing to what saint to burn his candle, being forced to
+resign his great posts, was found for a time in strange political
+combination with the most ancient foes of his party and himself.  The
+kaleidoscope whirling with exasperating quickness showed ancient Leaguers
+and Lorrainers banded with and protecting Huguenots against the Crown,
+while princes of the blood, hereditary patrons and chiefs of the
+Huguenots, became partisans and stipendiaries of Spain.
+
+It is easy to see that circumstances like these rendered the position of
+the Dutch commonwealth delicate and perilous.
+
+Sully informed Aerssens and van der Myle, who had been sent back to Paris
+on special mission very soon after the death of the King, that it took a
+hundred hours now to accomplish a single affair, whereas under Henry a
+hundred affairs were transacted in a single hour.  But Sully's sun had
+set, and he had few business conferences now with the ambassadors.
+
+Villeroy and the Chancellor had fed fat their ancient grudge to the once
+omnipotent minister, and had sworn his political ruin.  The old secretary
+of state had held now complete control of the foreign alliances and
+combinations of France, and the Dutch ambassadors could be under no
+delusion as to the completeness of the revolution.
+
+"You will find a passion among the advisers of the Queen," said Villeroy
+to Aerssens and van der Myle, "to move in diametrical opposition to the
+plans of the late king."  And well might the ancient Leaguer and present
+pensionary of Spain reveal this foremost fact in a policy of which he was
+in secret the soul.  He wept profusely when he first received Francis
+Aerssens, but after these "useless tears," as the Envoy called them, he
+soon made it manifest that there was no more to be expected of France, in
+the great project which its government had so elaborately set on foot.
+
+Villeroy was now sixty-six years of age, and had been secretary of state
+during forty-two years and under four kings.  A man of delicate health,
+frail body, methodical habits, capacity for routine, experience in
+political intrigue, he was not personally as greedy of money as many of
+his contemporaries, and was not without generosity; but he loved power,
+the Pope, and the House of Austria.  He was singularly reserved in
+public, practised successfully the talent of silence, and had at last
+arrived at the position he most coveted, the virtual presidency of the
+council, and saw the men he most hated beneath his feet.
+
+At the first interview of Aerssens with the Queen-Regent she was drowned
+in tears, and could scarcely articulate an intelligible sentence.  So far
+as could be understood she expressed her intention of carrying out the
+King's plans, of maintaining the old alliances, of protecting both
+religions.  Nothing, however, could be more preposterous than such
+phrases.  Villeroy, who now entirely directed the foreign affairs of the
+kingdom, assured the Ambassador that France was much more likely to apply
+to the States for assistance than render them aid in any enterprise
+whatever.  "There is no doubt," said Aerssens, "that the Queen is
+entirely in the hands of Spain and the priests."  Villeroy, whom Henry
+was wont to call the pedagogue of the council, went about sighing
+dismally, wishing himself dead, and perpetually ejaculating, "Ho! poor
+France, how much hast thou still to suffer!"  In public he spoke of
+nothing but of union, and of the necessity of carrying out the designs of
+the King, instructing the docile Queen to hold the same language.  In
+private he was quite determined to crush those designs for ever, and
+calmly advised the Dutch government to make an amicable agreement with
+the Emperor in regard to the Cleve affair as soon as possible; a treaty
+which would have been shameful for France and the possessory princes, and
+dangerous, if not disastrous, for the States-General.  "Nothing but
+feverish and sick counsels," he said, "could be expected from France,
+which had now lost its vigour and could do nothing but groan."
+
+Not only did the French council distinctly repudiate the idea of doing
+anything more for the princes than had been stipulated by the treaty of
+Hall--that is to say, a contingent of 8000 foot and 2000 horse--but many
+of them vehemently maintained that the treaty, being a personal one of
+the late king, was dead with him?  The duty of France was now in their
+opinion to withdraw from these mad schemes as soon as possible, to make
+peace with the House of Austria without delay, and to cement the
+friendship by the double marriages.
+
+Bouillon, who at that moment hated Sully as much as the most vehement
+Catholic could do, assured the Dutch envoy that the government was, under
+specious appearances, attempting to deceive the States; a proposition
+which it needed not the evidence of that most intriguing duke to make
+manifest to so astute a politician; particularly as there was none more
+bent on playing the most deceptive game than Bouillon.  There would be no
+troops to send, he said, and even if there were, there would be no
+possibility of agreeing on a chief.  The question of religion would at
+once arise.  As for himself, the Duke protested that he would not accept
+the command if offered him.  He would not agree to serve under the Prince
+of Anhalt, nor would he for any consideration in the world leave the
+court at that moment.  At the same time Aerssens was well aware that
+Bouillon, in his quality of first marshal of France, a Protestant and a
+prince having great possessions on the frontier, and the brother-in-law
+of Prince Maurice, considered himself entitled to the command of the
+troops should they really be sent, and was very indignant at the idea of
+its being offered to any one else.
+
+     [Aerssens worked assiduously, two hours long on one occasion, to
+     effect a reconciliation between the two great Protestant chiefs, but
+     found Bouillon's demands "so shameful and unreasonable" that he
+     felt obliged to renounce all further attempts.  In losing Sully from
+     the royal councils, the States' envoy acknowledged that the Republic
+     had lost everything that could be depended on at the French court.
+     "All the others are time-serving friends," he said, "or saints
+     without miracles."--Aerssens to Barneveld, 11 June, 1610. ]
+
+He advised earnestly therefore that the States should make a firm demand
+for money instead of men, specifying the amount that might be considered
+the equivalent of the number of troops originally stipulated.
+
+It is one of the most singular spectacles in history; France sinking into
+the background of total obscurity in an instant of time, at one blow of a
+knife, while the Republic, which she had been patronizing, protecting,
+but keeping always in a subordinate position while relying implicitly
+upon its potent aid, now came to the front, and held up on its strong
+shoulders an almost desperate cause.  Henry had been wont to call the
+States-General "his courage and his right arm," but he had always
+strictly forbidden them to move an inch in advance of him, but ever to
+follow his lead, and to take their directions from himself.  They were
+a part, and an essential one, in his vast designs; but France, or he
+who embodied France, was the great providence, the destiny, the all-
+directing, all-absorbing spirit, that was to remodel and control the
+whole world.  He was dead, and France and her policy were already in a
+state of rapid decomposition.
+
+Barneveld wrote to encourage and sustain the sinking state.  "Our courage
+is rising in spite and in consequence of the great misfortune," he said.
+He exhorted the Queen to keep her kingdom united, and assured her that My
+Lords the States would maintain themselves against all who dared to
+assail them.  He offered in their name the whole force of the Republic to
+take vengeance on those who had procured the assassination, and to defend
+the young king and the Queen-Mother against all who might make any
+attempt against their authority.  He further declared, in language not to
+be mistaken, that the States would never abandon the princes and their
+cause.
+
+This was the earliest indication on the part of the Advocate of the
+intention of the Republic--so long as it should be directed by his
+counsels--to support the cause of the young king, helpless and incapable
+as he was, and directed for the time being by a weak and wicked mother,
+against the reckless and depraved grandees, who were doing their best to
+destroy the unity and the independence of France, Cornelis van der Myle
+was sent back to Paris on special mission of condolence and comfort from
+the States-General to the sorely afflicted kingdom.
+
+On the 7th of June, accompanied by Aerssens, he had a long interview with
+Villeroy.  That minister, as usual, wept profusely, and said that in
+regard to Cleve it was impossible for France to carry out the designs of
+the late king.  He then listened to what the ambassadors had to urge, and
+continued to express his melancholy by weeping.  Drying his tears for a
+time, he sought by a long discourse to prove that France during this
+tender minority of the King would be incapable of pursuing the policy of
+his father.  It would be even too burthensome to fulfil the Treaty of
+Hall.  The friends of the crown, he said, had no occasion to further it,
+and it would be much better to listen to propositions for a treaty.
+Archduke Albert was content not to interfere in the quarrel if the Queen
+would likewise abstain; Leopold's forces were altogether too weak to make
+head against the army of the princes, backed by the power of My Lords the
+States, and Julich was neither strong nor well garrisoned.  He concluded
+by calmly proposing that the States should take the matter in hand by
+themselves alone, in order to lighten the burthen of France, whose vigour
+had been cut in two by that accursed knife.
+
+A more sneaking and shameful policy was never announced by the minister
+of a great kingdom.  Surely it might seem that Ravaillac had cut in twain
+not the vigour only but the honour and the conscience of France.  But the
+envoys, knowing in their hearts that they were talking not with a French
+but a Spanish secretary of state, were not disposed to be the dupes of
+his tears or his blandishments.
+
+They reminded him that the Queen-Regent and her ministers since the
+murder of the King had assured the States-General and the princes of
+their firm intention to carry out the Treaty of Hall, and they observed
+that they had no authority to talk of any negotiation.  The affair of the
+duchies was not especially the business of the States, and the Secretary
+was well aware that they had promised their succour on the express
+condition that his Majesty and his army should lead the way, and that
+they should follow.  This was very far from the plan now suggested, that
+they should do it all, which would be quite out of the question.  France
+had a strong army, they said, and it would be better to use it than to
+efface herself so pitiably.  The proposition of abstention on the part of
+the Archduke was a delusion intended only to keep France out of the
+field.
+
+Villeroy replied by referring to English affairs.  King James, he said,
+was treating them perfidiously.  His first letters after the murder had
+been good, but by the following ones England seemed to wish to put her
+foot on France's throat, in order to compel her to sue for an alliance.
+The British ministers had declared their resolve not to carry out that
+convention of alliance, although it had been nearly concluded in the
+lifetime of the late king, unless the Queen would bind herself to make
+good to the King of Great Britain that third part of the subsidies
+advanced by France to the States which had been furnished on English
+account!
+
+This was the first announcement of a grievance devised by the politicians
+now governing France to make trouble for the States with that kingdom and
+with Great Britain likewise.  According to a treaty made at Hampton Court
+by Sully during his mission to England at the accession of James, it had
+been agreed that one-third of the moneys advanced by France in aid of the
+United Provinces should be credited to the account of Great Britain, in
+diminution of the debt for similar assistance rendered by Elizabeth to
+Henry.  In regard to this treaty the States had not been at all
+consulted, nor did they acknowledge the slightest obligation in regard to
+it.  The subsidies in men and in money provided for them both by France
+and by England in their struggle for national existence had always been
+most gratefully acknowledged by the Republic, but it had always been
+perfectly understood that these expenses had been incurred by each
+kingdom out of an intelligent and thrifty regard for its own interest.
+Nothing could be more ridiculous than to suppose France and England
+actuated by disinterested sympathy and benevolence when assisting the
+Netherland people in its life-and-death struggle against the dire and
+deadly enemy of both crowns.  Henry protested that, while adhering to
+Rome in spiritual matters, his true alliances and strength had been found
+in the United Provinces, in Germany, and in Great Britain.  As for the
+States, he had spent sixteen millions of livres, he said, in acquiring a
+perfect benevolence on the part of the States to his person.  It was the
+best bargain he had ever made, and he should take care to preserve it at
+any cost whatever, for he considered himself able, when closely united
+with them, to bid defiance to all the kings in Europe together.
+
+Yet it was now the settled policy of the Queen-Regent's council,
+so far as the knot of politicians guided by the Nuncius and the Spanish
+ambassador in the entresols of the Louvre could be called a council, to
+force the States to refund that third, estimated at something between
+three and four million livres, which France had advanced them on account
+of Great Britain.
+
+Villeroy told the two ambassadors at this interview that, if Great
+Britain continued to treat the Queen-Regent in such fashion, she would be
+obliged to look about for other allies.  There could hardly be doubt as
+to the quarter in which Mary de' Medici was likely to look.  Meantime,
+the Secretary of State urged the envoys "to intervene at once to-mediate
+the difference."  There could be as little doubt that to mediate the
+difference was simply to settle an account which they did not owe.
+
+The whole object of the Minister at this first interview was to induce
+the States to take the whole Cleve enterprise upon their own shoulders,
+and to let France off altogether.  The Queen-Regent as then advised meant
+to wash her hands of the possessory princes once and for ever.  The
+envoys cut the matter short by assuring Villeroy that they would do
+nothing of the kind.  He begged them piteously not to leave the princes
+in the lurch, and at the same time not to add to the burthens of France
+at so disastrous a moment.
+
+So they parted.  Next day, however, they visited the Secretary again, and
+found him more dismal and flaccid than ever.
+
+He spoke feebly and drearily about the succour for the great enterprise,
+recounted all the difficulties in the way, and, having thrown down
+everything that the day before had been left standing, he tried to
+excuse an entire change of policy by the one miserable crime.
+
+He painted a forlorn picture of the council and of France.  "I can
+myself do nothing as I wish," added the undisputed controller of that
+government's policy, and then with a few more tears he concluded by
+requesting the envoys to address their demands to the Queen in writing.
+
+This was done with the customary formalities and fine speeches on both
+sides; a dull comedy by which no one was amused.
+
+Then Bouillon came again, and assured them that there had been a chance
+that the engagements of Henry, followed up by the promise of the Queen-
+Regent, would be carried out, but now the fact was not to be concealed
+that the continued battery of the Nuncius, of the ambassadors of Spain
+and of the Archdukes, had been so effective that nothing sure or solid
+was thenceforth to be expected; the council being resolved to accept the
+overtures of the Archduke for mutual engagement to abstain from the
+Julich enterprise.
+
+Nothing in truth could be more pitiable than the helpless drifting of the
+once mighty kingdom, whenever the men who governed it withdrew their
+attention for an instant from their private schemes of advancement and
+plunder to cast a glance at affairs of State.  In their secret heart they
+could not doubt that France was rushing on its ruin, and that in the
+alliance of the Dutch commonwealth, Britain, and the German Protestants,
+was its only safety.  But they trembled before the Pope, grown bold and
+formidable since the death of the dreaded Henry.  To offend his Holiness,
+the King of Spain, the Emperor, and the great Catholics of France, was to
+make a crusade against the Church.  Garnier, the Jesuit, preached from
+his pulpit that "to strike a blow in the Cleve enterprise was no less a
+sin than to inflict a stab in the body of our Lord."  The Parliament of
+Paris having ordered the famous treatise of the Jesuit Mariana--
+justifying the killing of excommunicated kings by their subjects--to be
+publicly burned before Notre Dame, the Bishop opposed the execution of
+the decree.  The Parliament of Paris, although crushed by Epernon in its
+attempts to fix the murder of the King upon himself as the true culprit,
+was at least strong enough to carry out this sentence upon a printed,
+volume recommending the deed, and the Queen's council could only do its
+best to mitigate the awakened wrath of the Jesuits at this exercise of
+legal authority.--At the same time, it found on the whole so many more
+difficulties in a cynical and shameless withdrawal from the Treaty of
+Hall than in a nominal and tardy fulfilment of its conditions that it
+resolved at last to furnish the 8000 foot and 2000 horse promised to the
+possessory princes.  The next best thing to abandoning entirely even this
+little shred, this pitiful remnant, of the splendid designs of Henry was
+to so arrange matters that the contingent should be feebly commanded, and
+set on foot in so dilatory a manner that the petty enterprise should on
+the part of France be purely perfunctory.  The grandees of the kingdom
+had something more important to do than to go crusading in Germany, with
+the help of a heretic republic, to set up the possessory princes.  They
+were fighting over the prostrate dying form of their common mother for
+their share of the spoils, stripping France before she was dead, and
+casting lots for her vesture.
+
+Soissons was on the whole in favour of the Cleve expedition.  Epernon was
+desperately opposed to it, and maltreated Villeroy in full council when
+he affected to say a word, insincere as the Duke knew it to be, in favour
+of executing agreements signed by the monarch, and sealed with the great
+seal of France.  The Duke of Guise, finding himself abandoned by the
+Queen, and bitterly opposed and hated by Soissons, took sides with his
+deaf and dumb and imbecile brother, and for a brief interval the Duke of
+Sully joined this strange combination of the House of Lorraine and chiefs
+of ancient Leaguers, who welcomed him with transport, and promised him
+security.
+
+Then Bouillon, potent by his rank, his possessions, and his authority
+among the Protestants, publicly swore that he would ruin Sully and change
+the whole order of the government.  What more lamentable spectacle, what
+more desolate future for the cause of religious equality, which for a
+moment had been achieved in France, than this furious alienation of the
+trusted leaders of the Huguenots, while their adversaries were carrying
+everything before them?  At the council board Bouillon quarrelled
+ostentatiously with Sully, shook his fist in his face, and but for the
+Queen's presence would have struck him.  Next day he found that the Queen
+was intriguing against himself as well as against Sully, was making a
+cat's-paw of him, and was holding secret councils daily from which he as
+well as Sully was excluded.  At once he made overtures of friendship to
+Sully, and went about proclaiming to the world that all Huguenots were to
+be removed from participation in affairs of state.  His vows of vengeance
+were for a moment hushed by the unanimous resolution of the council that,
+as first marshal of France, having his principality on the frontier, and
+being of the Reformed religion, he was the fittest of all to command the
+expedition.  Surely it might be said that the winds and tides were not
+more changeful than the politics of the Queen's government.  The Dutch
+ambassador was secretly requested by Villeroy to negotiate with Bouillon
+and offer him the command of the Julich expedition.  The Duke affected
+to make difficulties, although burning to obtain the post, but at last
+consented.  All was settled.  Aerssens communicated at once with
+Villeroy, and notice of Bouillon's acceptance was given to the Queen,
+when, behold, the very next day Marshal de la Chatre was appointed to
+the command expressly because he was a Catholic.  Of course the Duke
+of Bouillon, furious with Soissons and Epernon and the rest of the
+government, was more enraged than ever against the Queen.  His only hope
+was now in Conde, but Conde at the outset, on arriving at the Louvre,
+offered his heart to the Queen as a sheet of white paper.  Epernon and
+Soissons received him with delight, and exchanged vows of an eternal
+friendship of several weeks' duration.  And thus all the princes of the
+blood, all the cousins of Henry of Navarre, except the imbecile Conti,
+were ranged on the side of Spain, Rome, Mary de' Medici, and Concino
+Concini, while the son of the Balafre, the Duke of Mayenne, and all their
+adherents were making common cause with the Huguenots.  What better
+example had been seen before, even in that country of pantomimic changes,
+of the effrontery with which Religion was made the strumpet of Political
+Ambition?
+
+All that day and the next Paris was rife with rumours that there was to
+be a general massacre of the Huguenots to seal the new-born friendship of
+a Conde with a Medici.  France was to renounce all her old alliances and
+publicly to enter into treaties offensive and defensive with Spain.  A
+league like that of Bayonne made by the former Medicean Queen-Regent of
+France was now, at Villeroy's instigation, to be signed by Mary de'
+Medici.  Meantime, Marshal de la Chatre, an honest soldier and fervent
+Papist, seventy-three years of age, ignorant of the language, the
+geography, the politics of the country to which he was sent, and knowing
+the road thither about as well, according to Aerssens, who was requested
+to give him a little preliminary instruction, as he did the road to
+India, was to co-operate with Barneveld and Maurice of Nassau in the
+enterprise against the duchies.
+
+These were the cheerful circumstances amid which the first step in the
+dead Henry's grand design against the House of Austria and in support of
+Protestantism in half Europe and of religious equality throughout
+Christendom, was now to be ventured.
+
+Cornelis van der Myle took leave of the Queen on terminating his brief
+special embassy, and was fain to content himself with languid assurances
+from that corpulent Tuscan dame of her cordial friendship for the United
+Provinces.  Villeroy repeated that the contingent to be sent was
+furnished out of pure love to the Netherlands, the present government
+being in no wise bound by the late king's promises.  He evaded the
+proposition of the States for renewing the treaty of close alliance by
+saying that he was then negotiating with the British government on the
+subject, who insisted as a preliminary step on the repayment of the third
+part of the sums advanced to the States by the late king.
+
+He exchanged affectionate farewell greetings and good wishes with Jeannin
+and with the dropsical Duke of Mayenne, who was brought in his chair to
+his old fellow Leaguer's apartments at the moment of the Ambassador's
+parting interview.
+
+There was abundant supply of smooth words, in the plentiful lack of any
+substantial nutriment, from the representatives of each busy faction into
+which the Medicean court was divided.  Even Epernon tried to say a
+gracious word to the retiring envoy, assuring him that he would do as
+much for the cause as a good Frenchman and lover of his fatherland could
+do.  He added, in rather a surly way, that he knew very well how foully
+he had been described to the States, but that the devil was not as black
+as he was painted.  It was necessary, he said, to take care of one's own
+house first of all, and he knew very well that the States and all prudent
+persons would do the same thing.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+And now the knife of another priest-led fanatic
+As with his own people, keeping no back-door open
+At a blow decapitated France
+Conclusive victory for the allies seemed as predestined
+Epernon, the true murderer of Henry
+Father Cotton, who was only too ready to betray the secrets
+Great war of religion and politics was postponed
+Jesuit Mariana--justifying the killing of excommunicated kings
+No man pretended to think of the State
+Practised successfully the talent of silence
+Queen is entirely in the hands of Spain and the priests
+Religion was made the strumpet of Political Ambition
+Smooth words, in the plentiful lack of any substantial
+Stroke of a broken table knife sharpened on a carriage wheel
+The assassin, tortured and torn by four horses
+They have killed him, 'e ammazato,' cried Concini
+Things he could tell which are too odious and dreadful
+Uncouple the dogs and let them run
+Vows of an eternal friendship of several weeks' duration
+What could save the House of Austria, the cause of Papacy
+Wrath of the Jesuits at this exercise of legal authority
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext Life of John Barneveld, v3, Motley #88
+by John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND
+
+WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR
+
+By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+
+Life and Death of John of Barneveld, v4, 1610-12
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+     Interviews between the Dutch Commissioners and King James--Prince
+     Maurice takes command of the Troops--Surrender of Julich--Matthias
+     crowned King of Bohemia--Death of Rudolph--James's Dream of a
+     Spanish Marriage--Appointment of Vorstius in place of Arminius at
+     Leyden--Interview between Maurice and Winwood--Increased Bitterness
+     between Barneveld and Maurice--Projects of Spanish Marriages in
+     France.
+
+It is refreshing to escape from the atmosphere of self-seeking faction,
+feverish intrigue, and murderous stratagem in which unhappy France was
+stifling into the colder and calmer regions of Netherland policy.
+
+No sooner had the tidings of Henry's murder reached the States than
+they felt that an immense responsibility had fallen on their shoulders.
+It is to the eternal honour of the Republic, of Barneveld, who directed
+her councils, and of Prince Maurice, who wielded her sword, that she was
+equal to the task imposed upon her.
+
+There were open bets on the Exchange in Antwerp, after the death of
+Henry, that Maurice would likewise be killed within the month.  Nothing
+seemed more probable, and the States implored the Stadholder to take
+special heed to himself.  But this was a kind of caution which the Prince
+was not wont to regard.  Nor was there faltering, distraction, cowardice,
+or parsimony in Republican councils.
+
+We have heard the strong words of encouragement and sympathy addressed by
+the Advocate's instructions to the Queen-Regent and the leading statesmen
+of France.  We have seen their effects in that lingering sentiment of
+shame which prevented the Spanish stipendiaries who governed the kingdom
+from throwing down the mask as cynically as they were at first inclined
+to do.
+
+Not less manful and statesmanlike was the language held to the King of
+Great Britain and his ministers by the Advocate's directions.  The news
+of the assassination reached the special ambassadors in London at three
+o'clock of Monday, the 17th May.  James returned to Whitehall from a
+hunting expedition on the 21st, and immediately signified his intention
+of celebrating the occasion by inviting the high commissioners of the
+States to a banquet and festival at the palace.
+
+Meantime they were instructed by Barneveld to communicate the results of
+the special embassy of the States to the late king according to the
+report just delivered to the Assembly.  Thus James was to be informed of
+the common resolution and engagement then taken to support the cause of
+the princes.  He was now seriously and explicitly to be summoned to
+assist the princes not only with the stipulated 4000 men, but with a much
+greater force, proportionate to the demands for the security and welfare
+of Christendom, endangered by this extraordinary event.  He was assured
+that the States would exert themselves to the full measure of their
+ability to fortify and maintain the high interests of France, of the
+possessory princes, and of Christendom, so that the hopes of the
+perpetrators of the foul deed would be confounded.
+
+"They hold this to be the occasion," said the envoys, "to show to all the
+world that it is within your power to rescue the affairs of France,
+Germany, and of the United Provinces from the claws of those who imagine
+for themselves universal monarchy."
+
+They concluded by requesting the King to come to "a resolution on this
+affair royally, liberally, and promptly, in order to take advantage of
+the time, and not to allow the adversary to fortify himself in his
+position"; and they pledged the States-General to stand by and second
+him with all their power.
+
+The commissioners, having read this letter to Lord Salisbury before
+communicating it to the King, did not find the Lord Treasurer very prompt
+or sympathetic in his reply.  There had evidently been much jealousy at
+the English court of the confidential and intimate relations recently
+established with Henry, to which allusions were made in the documents
+read at the present conference.  Cecil, while expressing satisfaction in
+formal terms at the friendly language of the States, and confidence in
+the sincerity of their friendship for his sovereign, intimated very
+plainly that more had passed between the late king and the authorities of
+the Republic than had been revealed by either party to the King of Great
+Britain, or than could be understood from the letters and papers now
+communicated.  He desired further information from the commissioners,
+especially in regard to those articles of their instructions which
+referred to a general rupture.  They professed inability to give more
+explanations than were contained in the documents themselves.  If
+suspicion was felt, they said, that the French King had been proposing
+anything in regard to a general rupture, either on account of the retreat
+of Conde, the affair of Savoy, or anything else, they would reply that
+the ambassadors in France had been instructed to decline committing the
+States until after full communication and advice and ripe deliberation
+with his British Majesty and council, as well as the Assembly of the
+States-General; and it had been the intention of the late king to have
+conferred once more and very confidentially with Prince Maurice and Count
+Lewis William before coming to a decisive resolution.
+
+It was very obvious however to the commissioners that their statement
+gave no thorough satisfaction, and that grave suspicions remained of
+something important kept back by them.  Cecil's manner was constrained
+and cold, and certainly there were no evidences of profound sorrow at the
+English court for the death of Henry.
+
+"The King of France," said the High Treasurer, "meant to make a master-
+stroke--a coup de maistre--but he who would have all may easily lose all.
+Such projects as these should not have been formed or taken in hand
+without previous communication with his Majesty of Great Britain."
+
+All arguments on the part of the ambassadors to induce the Lord Treasurer
+or other members of the government to enlarge the succour intended for
+the Cleve affair were fruitless.  The English troops regularly employed
+in the States' service might be made use of with the forces sent by the
+Republic itself.  More assistance than this it was idle to expect, unless
+after a satisfactory arrangement with the present regency of France.  The
+proposition, too, of the States for a close and general alliance was
+coldly repulsed.  "No resolution can be taken as to that," said Cecil;
+"the death of the French king has very much altered such matters."
+
+At a little later hour on the same day the commissioners, according to
+previous invitation, dined with the King.
+
+No one sat at the table but his Majesty and themselves, and they all kept
+their hats on their heads.  The King was hospitable, gracious,
+discursive, loquacious, very theological.
+
+He expressed regret for the death of the King of France, and said
+that the pernicious doctrine out of which such vile crimes grew must be
+uprooted.  He asked many questions in regard to the United Netherlands,
+enquiring especially as to the late commotions at Utrecht, and the
+conduct of Prince Maurice on that occasion.  He praised the resolute
+conduct of the States-General in suppressing those tumults with force,
+adding, however, that they should have proceeded with greater rigour
+against the ringleaders of the riot.  He warmly recommended the Union of
+the Provinces.
+
+He then led the conversation to the religious controversies in the
+Netherlands, and in reply to his enquiries was informed that the points
+in dispute related to predestination and its consequences.
+
+"I have studied that subject," said James, "as well as anybody, and have
+come to the conclusion that nothing certain can be laid down in regard to
+it.  I have myself not always been of one mind about it, but I will bet
+that my opinion is the best of any, although I would not hang my
+salvation upon it.  My Lords the States would do well to order their
+doctors and teachers to be silent on this topic.  I have hardly ventured,
+moreover, to touch upon the matter of justification in my own writings,
+because that also seemed to hang upon predestination."
+
+Thus having spoken with the air of a man who had left nothing further to
+be said on predestination or justification, the King rose, took off his
+hat, and drank a bumper to the health of the States-General and his
+Excellency Prince Maurice, and success to the affair of Cleve.
+
+After dinner there was a parting interview in the gallery.  The King,
+attended by many privy councillors and high functionaries of state,
+bade the commissioners a cordial farewell, and, in order to show his
+consideration for their government, performed the ceremony of knighthood
+upon them, as was his custom in regard to the ambassadors of Venice.  The
+sword being presented to him by the Lord Chamberlain, James touched each
+of the envoys on the shoulder as he dismissed him.  "Out of respect to My
+Lords the States," said they in their report, "we felt compelled to allow
+ourselves to be burthened with this honour."
+
+Thus it became obvious to the States-General that there was but little to
+hope for from Great Britain or France.  France, governed by Concini and
+by Spain, was sure to do her best to traverse the designs of the
+Republic, and, while perfunctorily and grudgingly complying with the
+letter of the Hall treaty, was secretly neutralizing by intrigue the
+slender military aid which de la Chatre was to bring to Prince Maurice.
+The close alliance of France and Protestantism had melted into air.  On
+the other hand the new Catholic League sprang into full luxuriance out
+of the grave of Henry, and both Spain and the Pope gave their hearty
+adhesion to the combinations of Maximilian of Bavaria, now that the
+mighty designs of the French king were buried with him.  The Duke of
+Savoy, caught in the trap of his own devising, was fain to send his son
+to sue to Spain for pardon for the family upon his knees, and expiated
+by draining a deep cup of humiliation his ambitious designs upon the
+Milanese and the matrimonial alliance with France.  Venice recoiled in
+horror from the position she found herself in as soon as the glamour of
+Henry's seductive policy was dispelled, while James of Great Britain,
+rubbing his hands with great delight at the disappearance from the world
+of the man he so admired, bewailed, and hated, had no comfort to impart
+to the States-General thus left in virtual isolation.  The barren burthen
+of knighthood and a sermon on predestination were all he could bestow
+upon the high commissioners in place of the alliance which he eluded,
+and the military assistance which he point-blank refused.  The possessory
+princes, in whose cause the sword was drawn, were too quarrelsome and too
+fainthearted to serve for much else than an incumbrance either in the
+cabinet or the field.
+
+And the States-General were equal to the immense responsibility.
+Steadily, promptly, and sagaciously they confronted the wrath, the
+policy, and the power of the Empire, of Spain, and of the Pope.  Had the
+Republic not existed, nothing could have prevented that debateable and
+most important territory from becoming provinces of Spain, whose power
+thus dilated to gigantic proportions in the very face of England would
+have been more menacing than in the days of the Armada.  Had the Republic
+faltered, she would have soon ceased to exist.  But the Republic did not
+falter.
+
+On the 13th July, Prince Maurice took command of the States' forces,
+13,000 foot and 3000 horse, with thirty pieces of cannon, assembled at
+Schenkenschans.  The July English and French regiments in the regular
+service of the United Provinces were included in these armies, but there
+were no additions to them: "The States did seven times as much,"
+Barneveld justly averred, "as they had stipulated to do."  Maurice,
+moving with the precision and promptness which always marked his military
+operations, marched straight upon Julich, and laid siege to that
+important fortress.  The Archdukes at Brussels, determined to keep out
+of the fray as long as possible, offered no opposition to the passage of
+his supplies up the Rhine, which might have been seriously impeded by
+them at Rheinberg.  The details of the siege, as of all the Prince's
+sieges, possess no more interest to the general reader than the working
+out of a geometrical problem.  He was incapable of a flaw in his
+calculations, but it was impossible for him quite to complete the
+demonstration before the arrival of de la Chatre.  Maurice received with
+courtesy the Marshal, who arrived on the 18th August, at the head of his
+contingent of 8000 foot and a few squadrons of cavalry, and there was
+great show of harmony between them.  For any practical purposes, de la
+Chatre might as well have remained in France.  For political ends his
+absence would have been preferable to his presence.
+
+Maurice would have rejoiced, had the Marshal blundered longer along the
+road to the debateable land than he had done.  He had almost brought
+Julich to reduction.  A fortnight later the place surrendered.  The terms
+granted by the conqueror were equitable.  No change was to be made in the
+liberty of Roman Catholic worship, nor in the city magistracy.  The
+citadel and its contents were to be handed over to the Princes of
+Brandenburg and Neuburg.  Archduke Leopold and his adherents departed to
+Prague, to carry out as he best could his farther designs upon the crown
+of Bohemia, this first portion of them having so lamentably failed, and
+Sergeant-Major Frederick Pithan, of the regiment of Count Ernest Casimir
+of Nassau, was appointed governor of Julich in the interest of the
+possessory princes.
+
+Thus without the loss of a single life, the Republic, guided by her
+consummate statesman and unrivalled general, had gained an immense
+victory, had installed the Protestant princes in the full possession of
+those splendid and important provinces, and had dictated her decrees on
+German soil to the Emperor of Germany, and had towed, as it were, Great
+Britain and France along in her wake, instead of humbly following those
+powers, and had accomplished all that she had ever proposed to do, even
+in alliance with them both.
+
+The King of England considered that quite enough had been done, and was
+in great haste to patch up a reconciliation.  He thought his ambassador
+would soon "have as good occasion to employ his tongue and his pen as
+General Cecil and his soldiers have done their swords and their
+mattocks."
+
+He had no sympathy with the cause of Protestantism, and steadily refused
+to comprehend the meaning of the great movements in the duchies.  "I only
+wish that I may handsomely wind myself out of this quarrel, where the
+principal parties do so little for themselves," he said.
+
+De la Chatre returned with his troops to France within a fortnight after
+his arrival on the scene.  A mild proposition made by the French
+government through the Marshal, that the provinces should be held in
+seguestration by France until a decision as to the true sovereignty could
+be reached, was promptly declined.  Maurice of Nassau had hardly gained
+so signal a triumph for the Republic and for the Protestant cause only to
+hand it over to Concini and Villeroy for the benefit of Spain.  Julich
+was thought safer in the keeping of Sergeant Pithan.
+
+By the end of September the States' troops had returned to their own
+country.
+
+Thus the Republic, with eminent success, had accomplished a brief and
+brilliant campaign, but no statesman could suppose that the result was
+more than a temporary one.  These coveted provinces, most valuable in
+themselves and from their important position, would probably not be
+suffered peacefully to remain very long under the protection of the
+heretic States-General and in the 'Condominium' of two Protestant
+princes.  There was fear among the Imperialists, Catholics, and
+Spaniards, lest the baleful constellation of the Seven Provinces might be
+increased by an eighth star.  And this was a project not to be tolerated.
+It was much already that the upstart confederacy had defied Pope,
+Emperor, and King, as it were, on their own domains, had dictated
+arrangements in Germany directly in the teeth of its emperor, using
+France as her subordinate, and compelling the British king to acquiesce
+in what he most hated.
+
+But it was not merely to surprise Julich, and to get a foothold in the
+duchies, that Leopold had gone forth on his adventure.  His campaign, as
+already intimated, was part of a wide scheme in which he had persuaded
+his emperor-cousin to acquiesce.  Poor Rudolph had been at last goaded
+into a feeble attempt at revolt against his three brothers and his cousin
+Ferdinand.  Peace-loving, inert, fond of his dinner, fonder of his
+magnificent collections of gems and intagli, liking to look out of window
+at his splendid collection of horses, he was willing to pass a quiet
+life, afar from the din of battles and the turmoil of affairs.  As he
+happened to be emperor of half Europe, these harmless tastes could not
+well be indulged.  Moon-faced and fat, silent and slow, he was not
+imperial of aspect on canvas or coin, even when his brows were decorated
+with the conventional laurel wreath.  He had been stripped of his
+authority and all but discrowned by his more bustling brothers Matthias
+and Max, while the sombre figure of Styrian Ferdinand, pupil of the
+Jesuits, and passionate admirer of Philip II., stood ever in the
+background, casting a prophetic shadow over the throne and over Germany.
+
+The brothers were endeavouring to persuade Rudolph that he would find
+more comfort in Innsbruck than in Prague; that he required repose after
+the strenuous labours of government.  They told him, too, that it would
+be wise to confer the royal crown of Bohemia upon Matthias, lest, being
+elective and also an electorate, the crown and vote of that country might
+pass out of the family, and so both Bohemia and the Empire be lost to the
+Habsburgs.  The kingdom being thus secured to Matthias and his heirs, the
+next step, of course, was to proclaim him King of the Romans.  Otherwise
+there would be great danger and detriment to Hungary, and other
+hereditary states of that conglomerate and anonymous monarchy which owned
+the sway of the great Habsburg family.
+
+The unhappy emperor was much piqued.  He had been deprived by his brother
+of Hungary, Moravia, and Austria, while Matthias was now at Prague with
+an army, ostensibly to obtain ratification of the peace with Turkey, but
+in reality to force the solemn transfer of those realms and extort the
+promise of Bohemia.  Could there be a better illustration of the
+absurdities of such a system of Imperialism?
+
+And now poor Rudolph was to be turned out of the Hradschin, and sent
+packing with or without his collections to the Tyrol.
+
+The bellicose bishop of Strassburg and Passau, brother of Ferdinand, had
+little difficulty in persuading the downtrodden man to rise to vengeance.
+It had been secretly agreed between the two that Leopold, at the head of
+a considerable army of mercenaries which he had contrived to levy, should
+dart into Julich as the Emperor's representative, seize the debateable
+duchies, and hold them in sequestration until the Emperor should decide
+to whom they belonged, and, then, rushing back to Bohemia, should
+annihilate Matthias, seize Prague, and deliver Rudolph from bondage.  It
+was further agreed that Leopold, in requital of these services, should
+receive the crown of Bohemia, be elected King of the Romans, and declared
+heir to the Emperor, so far as Rudolph could make him his heir.
+
+The first point in the program he had only in part accomplished.  He had
+taken Julich, proclaimed the intentions of the Emperor, and then been
+driven out of his strong position by the wise policy of the States under
+the guidance of Barneveld and by the consummate strategy of Maurice.  It
+will be seen therefore that the Republic was playing a world's game at
+this moment, and doing it with skill and courage.  On the issue of the
+conflict which had been begun and was to be long protracted in the
+duchies, and to spread over nearly all Christendom besides, would depend
+the existence of the United Netherlands and the fate of Protestantism.
+
+The discomfited Leopold swept back at the head of his mercenaries, 9000
+foot and 3000 horse, through Alsace and along the Danube to Linz and so
+to Prague, marauding, harrying, and black-mailing the country as he went.
+He entered the city on the 15th of February 1611, fighting his way
+through crowds of exasperated burghers.  Sitting in full harness on
+horseback in the great square before the cathedral, the warlike bishop
+compelled the population to make oath to him as the Emperor's commissary.
+The street fighting went on however day by day, poor Rudolph meantime
+cowering in the Hradschin.  On the third day, Leopold, driven out of the
+town, took up a position on the heights, from which he commanded it with
+his artillery.  Then came a feeble voice from the Hradschin, telling all
+men that these Passau marauders and their episcopal chief were there by
+the Emperor's orders.  The triune city--the old, the new, and the Jew--
+was bidden to send deputies to the palace and accept the Imperial
+decrees.  No deputies came at the bidding.  The Bohemians, especially the
+Praguers, being in great majority Protestants knew very well that Leopold
+was fighting the cause of the Papacy and Spain in Bohemia as well as in
+the duchies.
+
+And now Matthias appeared upon the scene.  The Estates had already been
+in communication with him, better hopes, for the time at least, being
+entertained from him than from the flaccid Rudolph.  Moreover a kind of
+compromise had been made in the autumn between Matthias and the Emperor
+after the defeat of Leopold in the duchies.  The real king had fallen at
+the feet of the nominal one by proxy of his brother Maximilian.  Seven
+thousand men of the army of Matthias now came before Prague under command
+of Colonitz.  The Passauers, receiving three months pay from the Emperor,
+marched quietly off.  Leopold disappeared for the time.  His chancellor
+and counsellor in the duchies, Francis Teynagel, a Geldrian noble, taken
+prisoner and put to the torture, revealed the little plot of the Emperor
+in favour of the Bishop, and it was believed that the Pope, the King of
+Spain, and Maximilian of Bavaria were friendly to the scheme.  This was
+probable, for Leopold at last made no mystery of his resolve to fight
+Protestantism to the death, and to hold the duchies, if he could, for the
+cause of Rome and Austria.
+
+Both Rudolph and Matthias had committed themselves to the toleration of
+the Reformed religion.  The famous "Majesty-Letter," freshly granted by
+the Emperor (1609), and the Compromise between the Catholic and
+Protestant Estates had become the law of the land.  Those of the Bohemian
+confession, a creed commingled of Hussism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism,
+had obtained toleration.  In a country where nine-tenths of the
+population were Protestants it was permitted to Protestants to build
+churches and to worship God in them unmolested.  But these privileges
+had been extorted by force, and there was a sullen, dogged determination
+which might be easily guessed at to revoke them should it ever become
+possible.  The House of Austria, reigning in Spain, Italy, and Germany,
+was bound by the very law of their being to the Roman religion.
+Toleration of other worship signified in their eyes both a defeat and a
+crime.
+
+Thus the great conflict, to be afterwards known as the Thirty Years' War,
+had in reality begun already, and the Netherlands, in spite of the truce,
+were half unconsciously taking a leading part in it.  The odds at that
+moment in Germany seemed desperately against the House of Austria, so
+deep and wide was the abyss between throne and subjects which religious
+difference had created.  But the reserved power in Spain, Italy, and
+Southern Germany was sure enough to make itself felt sooner or later on
+the Catholic side.
+
+Meantime the Estates of Bohemia knew well enough that the Imperial house
+was bent on destroying the elective principle of the Empire, and on
+keeping the crown of Bohemia in perpetuity.  They had also discovered
+that Bishop-Archduke Leopold had been selected by Rudolph as chief of the
+reactionary movement against Protestantism.  They could not know at that
+moment whether his plans were likely to prove fantastic or dangerous.
+
+So Matthias came to Prague at the invitation of the Estates, entering the
+city with all the airs of a conqueror.  Rudolph received his brother with
+enforced politeness, and invited him to reside in the Hradschin. This
+proposal was declined by Matthias, who sent a colonel however, with six
+pieces of artillery, to guard and occupy that palace.  The Passau
+prisoners were pardoned and released, and there was a general
+reconciliation.  A month later, Matthias went in pomp to the chapel
+of the holy Wenceslaus, that beautiful and barbarous piece of mediaeval,
+Sclavonic architecture, with its sombre arches, and its walls encrusted
+with huge precious stones.  The Estates of Bohemia, arrayed in splendid
+Zchech costume, and kneeling on the pavement, were asked whether they
+accepted Matthias, King of Hungary, as their lawful king.  Thrice they
+answered Aye.  Cardinal Dietrichstein then put the historic crown of St.
+Wenceslaus on the King's head, and Matthias swore to maintain the laws
+and privileges of Bohemia, including the recent charters granting liberty
+of religion to Protestants.  Thus there was temporary, if hollow, truce
+between the religious parties, and a sham reconciliation between the
+Emperor and his brethren.  The forlorn Rudolph moped away the few months
+of life left to him in the Hradschin, and died 1612 soon after the new
+year.  The House of Austria had not been divided, Matthias succeeded his
+brother, Leopold's visions melted into air, and it was for the future to
+reveal whether the Majesty-Letter and the Compromise had been written on
+very durable material.
+
+And while such was the condition of affairs in Germany immediately
+following the Cleve and Julich campaign, the relations of the Republic
+both to England and France were become rapidly more dangerous than they
+ever had been.  It was a severe task for Barneveld, and enough to overtax
+the energies of any statesman, to maintain his hold on two such slippery
+governments as both had become since the death of their great monarchs.
+It had been an easier task for William the Silent to steer his course,
+notwithstanding all the perversities, short-comings, brow-beatings, and
+inconsistencies that he had been obliged to endure from Elizabeth and
+Henry.  Genius, however capricious and erratic at times, has at least
+vision, and it needed no elaborate arguments to prove to both those
+sovereigns that the severance of their policy from that of the
+Netherlands was impossible without ruin to the Republic and
+incalculable danger themselves.
+
+But now France and England were both tending towards Spain through a
+stupidity on the part of their rulers such as the gods are said to
+contend against in vain.  Barneveld was not a god nor a hero, but a
+courageous and wide-seeing statesman, and he did his best.  Obliged by
+his position to affect admiration, or at least respect, where no emotion
+but contempt was possible, his daily bread was bitter enough.  It was
+absolutely necessary to humour those whom knew to be traversing his
+policy and desiring his ruin, for there was no other way to serve his
+country and save it from impending danger.  So long as he was faithfully
+served by his subordinates, and not betrayed by those to whom he gave his
+heart, he could confront external enemies and mould the policy of
+wavering allies.
+
+Few things in history are more pitiable than the position of James in
+regard to Spain.  For seven long years he was as one entranced, the slave
+to one idea, a Spanish marriage for his son.  It was in vain that his
+counsellors argued, Parliament protested, allies implored.  Parliament
+was told that a royal family matter regarded himself alone, and that
+interference on their part was an impertinence.  Parliament's duty was a
+simple one, to give him advice if he asked it, and money when he required
+it, without asking for reasons.  It was already a great concession that
+he should ask for it in person.  They had nothing to do with his affairs
+nor with general politics.  The mystery of government was a science
+beyond their reach, and with which they were not to meddle.  "Ne sutor
+ultra crepidam," said the pedant.
+
+Upon that one point his policy was made to turn.  Spain held him in the
+hollow of her hand.  The Infanta, with two million crowns in dowry, was
+promised, withheld, brought forward again like a puppet to please or
+irritate a froward child.  Gondemar, the Spanish ambassador, held him
+spellbound.  Did he falter in his opposition to the States--did he cease
+to goad them for their policy in the duchies--did he express sympathy
+with Bohemian Protestantism, or, as time went on, did he dare to lift a
+finger or touch his pocket in behalf of his daughter and the unlucky
+Elector-Palatine; did he, in short, move a step in the road which England
+had ever trod and was bound to tread--the road of determined resistance
+to Spanish ambition--instantaneously the Infanta withheld, and James was
+on his knees again.  A few years later, when the great Raleigh returned
+from his trans-Alantic expedition, Gondemar fiercely denounced him to the
+King as the worst enemy of Spain.  The usual threat was made, the wand
+was waved, and the noblest head in England fell upon the block, in
+pursuance of an obsolete sentence fourteen years old.
+
+It is necessary to hold fast this single clue to the crooked and amazing
+entanglements of the policy of James.  The insolence, the meanness, and
+the prevarications of this royal toad-eater are only thus explained.
+
+Yet Philip III.  declared on his death-bed that he had never had a
+serious intention of bestowing his daughter on the Prince.
+
+The vanity and the hatreds of theology furnished the chief additional
+material in the policy of James towards the Provinces.  The diplomacy of
+his reign so far as the Republic was concerned is often a mere mass of
+controversial divinity, and gloomy enough of its kind.  Exactly at this
+moment Conrad Vorstius had been called by the University of Leyden to the
+professorship vacant by the death of Arminius, and the wrath of Peter
+Plancius and the whole orthodox party knew no bounds.  Born in Cologne,
+Vorstius had been a lecturer in Geneva, and beloved by Beza.  He had
+written a book against the Jesuit Belarmino, which he had dedicated to
+the States-General.  But he was now accused of Arminianism, Socianism,
+Pelagianism, Atheism--one knew not what.  He defended himself in writing
+against these various charges, and declared himself a believer in the
+Trinity, in the Divinity of Christ, in the Atonement.  But he had written
+a book on the Nature of God, and the wrath of Gomarus and Plancius and
+Bogerman was as nothing to the ire of James when that treatise was one
+day handed to him on returning from hunting.  He had scarcely looked into
+it before he was horror-struck, and instantly wrote to Sir Ralph Winwood,
+his ambassador at the Hague, ordering him to insist that this blasphemous
+monster should at once be removed from the country.  Who but James knew
+anything of the Nature of God, for had he not written a work in Latin
+explaining it all, so that humbler beings might read and be instructed.
+
+Sir Ralph accordingly delivered a long sermon to the States on the brief
+supplied by his Majesty, told them that to have Vorstius as successor to
+Arminius was to fall out of the frying-pan into the fire, and handed them
+a "catalogue" prepared by the King of the blasphemies, heresies, and
+atheisms of the Professor.  "Notwithstanding that the man in full
+assembly of the States of Holland," said the Ambassador with headlong and
+confused rhetoric, "had found the means to palliate and plaster the dung
+of his heresies, and thus to dazzle the eyes of good people," yet it was
+necessary to protest most vigorously against such an appointment, and to
+advise that "his works should be publicly burned in the open places of
+all the cities."
+
+The Professor never was admitted to perform his functions of theology,
+but he remained at Leyden, so Winwood complained, "honoured, recognized
+as a singularity and ornament to the Academy in place of the late Joseph
+Scaliger."--"The friendship of the King and the heresy of Vorstius arc
+quite incompatible," said the Envoy.
+
+Meantime the Advocate, much distressed at the animosity of England
+bursting forth so violently on occasion of the appointment of a divinity
+professor at Leyden, and at the very instant too when all the acuteness
+of his intellect was taxed to keep on good or even safe terms with
+France, did his best to stem these opposing currents.  His private
+letters to his old and confidential friend, Noel de Carom, States'
+ambassador in London, reveal the perplexities of his soul and the upright
+patriotism by which he was guided in these gathering storms.  And this
+correspondence, as well as that maintained by him at a little later
+period with the successor of Aerssens at Paris, will be seen subsequently
+to have had a direct and most important bearing upon the policy of the
+Republic and upon his own fate.  It is necessary therefore that the
+reader, interested in these complicated affairs which were soon to bring
+on a sanguinary war on a scale even vaster than the one which had been
+temporarily suspended, should give close attention to papers never before
+exhumed from the musty sepulchre of national archives, although
+constantly alluded to in the records of important state trials.  It is
+strange enough to observe the apparent triviality of the circumstances
+out of which gravest events seem to follow.  But the circumstances were
+in reality threads of iron which led down to the very foundations of the
+earth.
+
+"I wish to know," wrote the Advocate to Caron, "from whom the Archbishop
+of Canterbury received the advices concerning Vorstius in order to find
+out what is meant by all this."
+
+It will be remembered that Whitgift was of opinion that James was
+directly inspired by the Holy Ghost, and that as he affected to deem him
+the anointed High-priest of England, it was natural that he should
+encourage the King in his claims to be 'Pontifex maximus' for the
+Netherlands likewise.
+
+"We are busy here," continued Barneveld, "in examining all things for the
+best interests of the country and the churches.  I find the nobles and
+cities here well resolved in this regard, although there be some
+disagreements 'in modo.'  Vorstius, having been for many years professor
+and minister of theology at Steinfurt, having manifested his learning in
+many books written against the Jesuits, and proved himself pure and
+moderate in doctrine, has been called to the vacant professorship at
+Leyden.  This appointment is now countermined by various means.
+We are doing our best to arrange everything for the highest good of the
+Provinces and the churches.  Believe this and believe nothing else.  Pay
+heed to no other information.  Remember what took place in Flanders,
+events so well known to you.  It is not for me to pass judgment in these
+matters.  Do you, too, suspend your judgment."
+
+The Advocate's allusion was to the memorable course of affairs in
+Flanders at an epoch when many of the most inflammatory preachers and
+politicians of the Reformed religion, men who refused to employ a footman
+or a housemaid not certified to be thoroughly orthodox, subsequently
+after much sedition and disturbance went over to Spain and the Catholic
+religion.
+
+A few weeks later Barneveld sent copies to Caron of the latest harangues
+of Winwood in the Assembly and the reply of My Lords on the Vorstian
+business; that is to say, the freshest dialogue on predestination between
+the King and the Advocate.  For as James always dictated word for word
+the orations of his envoy, so had their Mightinesses at this period no
+head and no mouthpiece save Barneveld alone.  Nothing could be drearier
+than these controversies, and the reader shall be spared as much, as
+possible the infliction of reading them.  It will be necessary, however,
+for the proper understanding of subsequent events that he should be
+familiar with portions of the Advocate's confidential letters.
+
+"Sound well the gentleman you wot of," said Barneveld, "and other
+personages as to the conclusive opinions over there.  The course of the
+propositions does not harmonize with what I have myself heard out of the
+King's mouth at other times, nor with the reports of former ambassadors.
+I cannot well understand that the King should, with such preciseness,
+condemn all other opinions save those of Calvin and Beza.  It is
+important to the service of this country that one should know the
+final intention of his Majesty."
+
+And this was the misery of the position.  For it was soon to appear that
+the King's definite and final intentions, varied from day to day.  It was
+almost humorous to find him at that moment condemning all opinions but
+those of Calvin and Beza in Holland, while his course to the strictest
+confessors of that creed in England was so ferocious.
+
+But Vorstius was a rival author to his Majesty on subjects treated of by
+both, so that literary spite of the most venomous kind, stirred into
+theological hatred, was making a dangerous mixture.  Had a man with the
+soul and sense of the Advocate sat on the throne which James was
+regarding at that moment as a professor's chair, the world's history
+would have been changed.
+
+"I fear," continued Barneveld, "that some of our own precisians have been
+spinning this coil for us over there, and if the civil authority can be
+thus countermined, things will go as in Flanders in your time.  Pray
+continue to be observant, discreet, and moderate."
+
+The Advocate continued to use his best efforts to smooth the rising
+waves.  He humoured and even flattered the King, although perpetually
+denounced by Winwood in his letters to his sovereign as tyrannical,
+over-bearing, malignant, and treacherous.  He did his best to counsel
+moderation and mutual toleration, for he felt that these needless
+theological disputes about an abstract and insoluble problem of casuistry
+were digging an abyss in which the Republic might be swallowed up for
+ever.  If ever man worked steadily with the best lights of experience
+and inborn sagacity for the good of his country and in defence of a
+constitutional government, horribly defective certainly, but the only
+legal one, and on the whole a more liberal polity than any then existing,
+it was Barneveld.  Courageously, steadily, but most patiently, he stood
+upon that position so vital and daily so madly assailed; the defence of
+the civil authority against the priesthood.  He felt instinctively and
+keenly that where any portion of the subjects or citizens of a country
+can escape from the control of government and obey other head than the
+lawful sovereignty, whether monarchical or republican, social disorder
+and anarchy must be ever impending.
+
+"We are still tortured by ecclesiastical disputes," he wrote a few weeks
+later to Caron.  "Besides many libels which have appeared in print, the
+letters of his Majesty and the harangues of Winwood have been published;
+to what end you who know these things by experience can judge.  The truth
+of the matter of Vorstius is that he was legally called in July 1610,
+that he was heard last May before My Lords the States with six preachers
+to oppose him, and in the same month duly accepted and placed in office.
+He has given no public lectures as yet.  You will cause this to be known
+on fitting opportunity.  Believe and cause to be believed that his
+Majesty's letters and Sir R. Winwood's propositions have been and shall
+be well considered, and that I am working with all my strength to that
+end.  You know the constitution of our country, and can explain
+everything for the best.  Many pious and intelligent people in this State
+hold themselves assured that his Majesty according to his royal exceeding
+great wisdom, foresight, and affection for the welfare of this land will
+not approve that his letters and Winwood's propositions should be
+scattered by the press among the common people.  Believe and cause to
+be believed, to your best ability, that My Lords the States of Holland
+desire to maintain the true Christian, Reformed religion as well in the
+University of Leyden as in all their cities and villages.  The only
+dispute is on the high points of predestination and its adjuncts,
+concerning which moderation and a more temperate teaching is furthered
+by some amongst us.  Many think that such is the edifying practice in
+England.  Pray have the kindness to send me the English Confession of
+the year 1572, with the corrections and alterations up to this year."
+
+But the fires were growing hotter, fanned especially by Flemish
+ministers, a brotherhood of whom Barneveld had an especial distrust, and
+who certainly felt great animosity to him.  His moderate counsels were
+but oil to the flames.  He was already depicted by zealots and
+calumniators as false to the Reformed creed.
+
+"Be assured and assure others," he wrote again to Caron, "that in the
+matter of religion I am, and by God's grace shall remain, what I ever
+have been.  Make the same assurances as to my son-in-law and brother.
+We are not a little amazed that a few extraordinary Puritans, mostly
+Flemings and Frisians, who but a short time ago had neither property nor
+kindred in the country, and have now very little of either, and who have
+given but slender proofs of constancy or service to the fatherland, could
+through pretended zeal gain credit over there against men well proved in
+all respects.  We wonder the more because they are endeavouring, in
+ecclesiastical matters at least, to usurp an extraordinary authority,
+against which his Majesty, with very weighty reasons, has so many times
+declared his opinion founded upon God's Word and upon all laws and
+principles of justice."
+
+It was Barneveld's practice on this as on subsequent occasions very
+courteously to confute the King out of his own writings and speeches,
+and by so doing to be unconsciously accumulating an undying hatred
+against himself in the royal breast.  Certainly nothing could be easier
+than to show that James, while encouraging in so reckless a manner the
+emancipation of the ministers of an advanced sect in the Reformed Church
+from control of government, and their usurpation of supreme authority
+which had been destroyed in England, was outdoing himself in dogmatism
+and inconsistency.  A king-highpriest, who dictated his supreme will to
+bishops and ministers as well as to courts and parliaments, was
+ludicrously employed in a foreign country in enforcing the superiority
+of the Church to the State.
+
+"You will give good assurances," said the Advocate, "upon my word, that
+the conservation of the true Reformed religion is as warmly cherished
+here, especially by me, as at any time during the war."
+
+He next alluded to the charges then considered very grave against certain
+writings of Vorstius, and with equal fairness to his accusers as he had
+been to the Professor gave a pledge that the subject should be examined.
+
+"If the man in question," he said, "be the author, as perhaps falsely
+imputed, of the work 'De Filiatione Christi' or things of that sort, you
+may be sure that he shall have no furtherance here."  He complained,
+however, that before proof the cause was much prejudiced by the
+circulation through the press of letters on the subject from important
+personages in England.  His own efforts to do justice in the matter were
+traversed by such machinations.  If the Professor proved to be guilty of
+publications fairly to be deemed atheistical and blasphemous, he should
+be debarred from his functions, but the outcry from England was doing
+more harm than good.
+
+"The published extract from the letter of the Archbishop," he wrote,
+"to the effect that the King will declare My Lords the States to be his
+enemies if they are not willing to send the man away is doing much harm."
+
+Truly, if it had come to this--that a King of England was to go to war
+with a neighbouring and friendly republic because an obnoxious professor
+of theology was not instantly hurled from a university of which his
+Majesty was not one of the overseers--it was time to look a little
+closely into the functions of governments and the nature of public and
+international law.  Not that the sword of James was in reality very
+likely to be unsheathed, but his shriekings and his scribblings, pacific
+as he was himself, were likely to arouse passions which torrents of blood
+alone could satiate.
+
+"The publishing and spreading among the community," continued Barneveld,
+"of M. Winwood's protestations and of many indecent libels are also doing
+much mischief, for the nature of this people does not tolerate such
+things.  I hope, however, to obtain the removal according to his
+Majesty's desire.  Keep me well informed, and send me word what is
+thought in England by the four divines of the book of Vorstius, 'De Deo,'
+and of his declarations on the points sent here by his Majesty.  Let me
+know, too, if there has been any later confession published in England
+than that of the year 1562, and whether the nine points pressed in the
+year 1595 were accepted and published in 1603.  If so, pray send them,
+as they maybe made use of in settling our differences here."
+
+Thus it will be seen that the spirit of conciliation, of a calm but
+earnest desire to obtain a firm grasp of the most reasonable relations
+between Church and State through patient study of the phenomena exhibited
+in other countries, were the leading motives of the man.  Yet he was
+perpetually denounced in private as an unbeliever, an atheist, a tyrant,
+because he resisted dictation from the clergy within the Provinces and
+from kings outside them.
+
+"It was always held here to be one of the chief infractions of the laws
+and privileges of this country," he said, "that former princes had placed
+themselves in matter of religion in the tutelage of the Pope and the
+Spanish Inquisition, and that they therefore on complaint of their good
+subjects could take no orders on that subject.  Therefore it cannot be
+considered strange that we are not willing here to fall into the same
+obloquy.  That one should now choose to turn the magistrates, who were
+once so seriously summoned on their conscience and their office to adopt
+the Reformation and to take the matter of religion to heart, into
+ignorants, to deprive them of knowledge, and to cause them to see with
+other eyes than their own, cannot by many be considered right and
+reasonable.  'Intelligenti pauca.'"
+
+     [The interesting letter from which I have given these copious
+     extracts was ordered by its writer to be burned.  "Lecta vulcano"
+     was noted at the end of it, as was not unfrequently the case with
+     the Advocate.  It never was burned; but, innocent and reasonable as
+     it seems, was made use of by Barneveld's enemies with deadly effect.
+     J.L.M.]
+
+Meantime M. de Refuge, as before stated, was on his way to the Hague,
+to communicate the news of the double marriage.  He had fallen sick at
+Rotterdam, and the nature of his instructions and of the message he
+brought remained unknown, save from the previous despatches of Aerssens.
+But reports were rife that he was about to propose new terms of alliance
+to the States, founded on large concessions to the Roman Catholic
+religion.  Of course intense jealousy was excited at the English court,
+and calumny plumed her wings for a fresh attack upon the Advocate.  Of
+course he was sold to Spain, the Reformed religion was to be trampled out
+in the Provinces, and the Papacy and Holy Inquisition established on its
+ruins.  Nothing could be more diametrically the reverse of the fact than
+such hysterical suspicions as to the instructions of the ambassador
+extraordinary from France, and this has already appeared.  The Vorstian
+affair too was still in the same phase, the Advocate professing a
+willingness that justice should be done in the matter, while courteously
+but firmly resisting the arrogant pretensions of James to take the matter
+out of the jurisdiction of the States.
+
+"I stand amazed," he said, "at the partisanship and the calumnious
+representations which you tell me of, and cannot imagine what is thought
+nor what is proposed.  Should M. de Refuge make any such propositions as
+are feared, believe, and cause his Majesty and his counsellors to
+believe, that they would be of no effect.  Make assurances upon my word,
+notwithstanding all advices to the contrary, that such things would be
+flatly refused.  If anything is published or proven to the discredit of
+Vorstius, send it to me.  Believe that we shall not defend heretics nor
+schismatics against the pure Evangelical doctrine, but one cannot
+conceive here that the knowledge and judicature of the matter belongs
+anywhere else than to My Lords the States of Holland, in whose service he
+has legally been during four months before his Majesty made the least
+difficulty about it.  Called hither legally a year before, with the
+knowledge and by the order of his Excellency and the councillors of state
+of Holland, he has been countermined by five or six Flemings and
+Frisians, who, without recognizing the lawful authority of the
+magistrates, have sought assistance in foreign countries--in Germany
+and afterwards in England.  Yes, they have been so presumptuous as to
+designate one of their own men for the place.  If such a proceeding
+should be attempted in England, I leave it to those whose business it
+would be to deal with it to say what would be done.  I hope therefore
+that one will leave the examination and judgment of this matter freely to
+us, without attempting to make us--against the principles of the
+Reformation and the liberties and laws of the land--executors of the
+decrees of others, as the man here wishes to obtrude it upon us."
+
+He alluded to the difficulty in raising the ways and means; saying that
+the quota of Holland, as usual, which was more than half the whole, was
+ready, while other provinces were in arrears.  Yet they were protected,
+while Holland was attacked.
+
+"Methinks I am living in a strange world," he said, "when those who have
+received great honour from Holland, and who in their conscience know that
+they alone have conserved the Commonwealth, are now traduced with such
+great calumnies.  But God the Lord Almighty is just, and will in His own
+time do chastisement."
+
+The affair of Vorstius dragged its slow length along, and few things are
+more astounding at this epoch than to see such a matter, interesting
+enough certainly to theologians, to the University, and to the rising
+generation of students, made the topic of unceasing and embittered
+diplomatic controversy between two great nations, who had most pressing
+and momentous business on their hands.  But it was necessary to humour
+the King, while going to the verge of imprudence in protecting the
+Professor.  In March he was heard, three or four hours long, before the
+Assembly of Holland, in answer to various charges made against him, being
+warned that "he stood before the Lord God and before the sovereign
+authority of the States."  Although thought by many to have made a
+powerful defence, he was ordered to set it forth in writing, both in
+Latin and in the vernacular.  Furthermore it was ordained that he should
+make a complete refutation of all the charges already made or that might
+be made during the ensuing three months against him in speech, book, or
+letter in England, Germany, the Netherlands, or anywhere else.  He was
+allowed one year and a half to accomplish this work, and meantime was to
+reside not in Leyden, nor the Hague, but in some other town of Holland,
+not delivering lectures or practising his profession in any way.  It
+might be supposed that sufficient work had been thus laid out for the
+unfortunate doctor of divinity without lecturing or preaching.  The
+question of jurisdiction was saved.  The independence of the civil
+authority over the extreme pretensions of the clergy had been vindicated
+by the firmness of the Advocate.  James bad been treated with overflowing
+demonstrations of respect, but his claim to expel a Dutch professor from
+his chair and country by a royal fiat had been signally rebuked.
+Certainly if the Provinces were dependent upon the British king in
+regard to such a matter, it was the merest imbecility for them to affect
+independence.  Barneveld had carried his point and served his country
+strenuously and well in this apparently small matter which human folly
+had dilated into a great one.  But deep was the wrath treasured against
+him in consequence in clerical and royal minds.
+
+Returning from Wesel after the negotiations, Sir Ralph Winwood had
+an important interview at Arnheim with Prince Maurice, in which they
+confidentially exchanged their opinions in regard to the Advocate,
+and mutually confirmed their suspicions and their jealousies in
+regard to that statesman.
+
+The Ambassador earnestly thanked the Prince in the King's name for his
+"careful and industrious endeavours for the maintenance of the truth of
+religion, lively expressed in prosecuting the cause against Vorstius and
+his adherents."
+
+He then said:
+
+"I am expressly commanded that his Majesty conferring the present
+condition of affairs of this quarter of the world with those
+advertisements he daily receives from his ministers abroad, together
+with the nature and disposition of those men who have in their hands
+the managing of all business in these foreign parts, can make no other
+judgment than this.
+
+"There is a general ligue and confederation complotted far the subversion
+and ruin of religion upon the subsistence whereof his Majesty doth judge
+the main welfare of your realms and of these Provinces solely to consist.
+
+"Therefore his Majesty has given me charge out of the knowledge he
+has of your great worth and sufficiency," continued Winwood," and the
+confidence he reposes in your faith and affection, freely to treat with
+you on these points, and withal to pray you to deliver your opinion what
+way would be the most compendious and the most assured to contrequarr
+these complots, and to frustrate the malice of these mischievous
+designs."
+
+The Prince replied by acknowledging the honour the King had vouchsafed to
+do him in holding so gracious an opinion of him, wherein his Majesty
+should never be deceived.
+
+"I concur in judgment with his Majesty," continued the Prince, "that the
+main scope at which these plots and practices do aim, for instance, the
+alliance between France and Spain, is this, to root out religion, and by
+consequence to bring under their yoke all those countries in which
+religion is professed.
+
+"The first attempt," continued the Prince, "is doubtless intended against
+these Provinces.  The means to countermine and defeat these projected
+designs I take to be these: the continuance of his Majesty's constant
+resolution for the protection of religion, and then that the King would
+be pleased to procure a general confederation between the kings, princes,
+and commonwealths professing religion, namely, Denmark, Sweden, the
+German princes, the Protestant cantons of Switzerland, and our United
+Provinces.
+
+"Of this confederation, his Majesty must be not only the director, but
+the head and protector.
+
+"Lastly, the Protestants of France should be, if not supported, at least
+relieved from that oppression which the alliance of Spain doth threaten
+upon them.  This, I insist," repeated Maurice with great fervour, "is
+the only coupegorge of all plots whatever between France and Spain."
+
+He enlarged at great length on these points, which he considered so
+vital.
+
+"And what appearance can there be," asked Winwood insidiously and
+maliciously, "of this general confederation now that these Provinces,
+which heretofore have been accounted a principal member of the Reformed
+Church, begin to falter in the truth of religion?
+
+"He who solely governs the metropolitan province of Holland," continued
+the Ambassador, with a direct stab in the back at Barneveld, "is reputed
+generally, as your Excellency best knows, to be the only patron of
+Vorstius, and the protector of the schisms of Arminius.  And likewise,
+what possibility is there that the Protestants of France can expect
+favour from these Provinces when the same man is known to depend at the
+devotion of France?"
+
+The international, theological, and personal jealousy of the King against
+Holland's Advocate having been thus plainly developed, the Ambassador
+proceeded to pour into the Prince's ear the venom of suspicion, and to
+inflame his jealousy against his great rival.  The secret conversation
+showed how deeply laid was the foundation of the political hatred, both
+of James and of Maurice, against the Advocate, and certainly nothing
+could be more preposterous than to imagine the King as the director and
+head of the great Protestant League.  We have but lately seen him
+confidentially assuring his minister that his only aim was "to wind
+himself handsomely out of the whole business."  Maurice must have found
+it difficult to preserve his gravity when assigning such a part to
+"Master Jacques."
+
+"Although Monsieur Barneveld has cast off all care of religion," said
+Maurice, "and although some towns in Holland, wherein his power doth
+reign, are infected with the like neglect, yet so long as so many good
+towns in Holland stand sound, and all the other provinces of this
+confederacy, the proposition would at the first motion be cheerfully
+accepted.
+
+"I confess I find difficulty in satisfying your second question,"
+continued the Prince, "for I acknowledge that Barneveld is wholly devoted
+to the service of France.  During the truce negotiations, when some
+difference arose between him and myself, President Jeannin came to me,
+requiring me in the French king's name to treat Monsieur Barneveld well,
+whom the King had received into his protection.  The letters which the
+States' ambassador in France wrote to Barneveld (and to him all
+ambassadors address their despatches of importance), the very autographs
+themselves, he sent back into the hands of Villeroy."
+
+Here the Prince did not scruple to accuse the Advocate of doing the base
+and treacherous trick against Aerssens which he had expressly denied
+doing, and which had been done during his illness, as he solemnly avowed,
+by a subordinate probably for the sake of making mischief.
+
+Maurice then discoursed largely and vehemently of the suspicious
+proceedings of Barneveld, and denounced him as dangerous to the State.
+"When one man who has the conduct of all affairs in his sole power," he
+said, "shall hold underhand intelligence with the ministers of Spain and
+the Archduke, and that without warrant, thereby he may have the means so
+to carry the course of affairs that, do what they will, these Provinces
+must fall or stand at the mercy and discretion of Spain.  Therefore some
+good resolutions must be taken in time to hold up this State from a
+sudden downfall, but in this much moderation and discretion must be
+used."
+
+The Prince added that he had invited his cousin Lewis William to appear
+at the Hague at May day, in order to consult as to the proper means to
+preserve the Provinces from confusion under his Majesty's safeguard, and
+with the aid of the Englishmen in the States' service whom Maurice
+pronounced to be "the strength and flower of his army."
+
+Thus the Prince developed his ideas at great length, and accused the
+Advocate behind his back, and without the faintest shadow of proof, of
+base treachery to his friends and of high-treason.  Surely Barneveld was
+in danger, and was walking among pitfalls.  Most powerful and deadly
+enemies were silently banding themselves together against him.  Could he
+long maintain his hold on the slippery heights of power, where he was so
+consciously serving his country, but where he became day by day a mere
+shining mark for calumny and hatred?
+
+The Ambassador then signified to the Prince that he had been instructed
+to carry to him the King's purpose to confer on him the Order of the
+Garter.
+
+"If his Majesty holds me worthy of so great honour," said the Prince, "I
+and my family shall ever remain bound to his service and that of his
+royal posterity.
+
+"That the States should be offended I see no cause, but holding the
+charge I do in their service, I could not accept the honour without first
+acquainting them and receiving their approbation."
+
+Winwood replied that, as the King knew the terms on which the Prince
+lived with the States, he doubted not his Majesty would first notify them
+and say that he honoured the mutual amity between his realms and these
+Provinces by honouring the virtues of their general, whose services, as
+they had been most faithful and affectionate, so had they been
+accompanied with the blessings of happiness and prosperous success.
+
+Thus said Winwood to the King: "Your Majesty may plaster two walls with
+one trowel ('una fidelia duos dealbare parietes'), reverse the designs of
+them who to facilitate their own practices do endeavour to alienate your
+affections from the good of these Provinces, and oblige to your service
+the well-affected people, who know that there is no surety for
+themselves, their wives and children, but under the protection of your
+Majesty's favour.  Perhaps, however, the favourers of Vorstius and
+Arminius will buzz into the ears of their associates that your Majesty
+would make a party in these Provinces by maintaining the truth of
+religion and also by gaining unto you the affections of their chief
+commander.  But your Majesty will be pleased to pass forth whose worthy
+ends will take their place, which is to honour virtue where you find it,
+and the suspicious surmises of malice and envy in one instant will vanish
+into smoke."
+
+Winwood made no scruple in directly stating to the English government
+that Barneveld's purpose was to "cause a divorce between the King's
+realms and the Provinces, the more easily to precipitate them into the
+arms of Spain."  He added that the negotiation with Count Maurice then on
+foot was to be followed, but with much secrecy, on account of the place
+he held in the State.
+
+Soon after the Ambassador's secret conversation with Maurice he had an
+interview with Barneveld.  He assured the Advocate that no contentment
+could be given to his Majesty but by the banishment of Vorstius.  "If the
+town of Leyden should understand so much," replied Barneveld, "I fear the
+magistrates would retain him still in their town."
+
+"If the town of Leyden should retain Vorstius," answered Winwood, "to
+brave or despight his Majesty, the King has the means, if it pleases him
+to use them, and that without drawing sword, to range them to reason, and
+to make the magistrates on their knees demand his pardon, and I say as
+much of Rotterdam."
+
+Such insolence on the part of an ambassador to the first minister of a
+great republic was hard to bear.  Barneveld was not the man to brook it.
+He replied with great indignation.  "I was born in liberty," he said with
+rising choler, "I cannot digest this kind of language.  The King of Spain
+himself never dared to speak in so high a style."
+
+"I well understand that logic," returned the Ambassador with continued
+insolence.  "You hold your argument to be drawn 'a majori ad minus;' but
+I pray you to believe that the King of Great Britain is peer and
+companion to the King of Spain, and that his motto is, 'Nemo me impune
+lacessit.'"
+
+And so they parted in a mutual rage; Winwood adding on going out of the
+room, "Whatsoever I propose to you in his Majesty's name can find with
+you neither goust nor grace."
+
+He then informed Lord Rochester that "the man was extremely distempered
+and extremely distasted with his Majesty.
+
+"Some say," he added, "that on being in England when his Majesty first
+came to the throne he conceived some offence, which ever since hath
+rankled in his heart, and now doth burst forth with more violent malice."
+
+Nor was the matter so small as it superficially appeared.  Dependence of
+one nation upon the dictation of another can never be considered
+otherwise than grave.  The subjection of all citizens, clerical or lay,
+to the laws of the land, the supremacy of the State over the Church,
+were equally grave subjects.  And the question of sovereignty now raised
+for the first time, not academically merely, but practically, was the
+gravest one of all.  It was soon to be mooted vigorously and passionately
+whether the United Provinces were a confederacy or a union; a league of
+sovereign and independent states bound together by treaty for certain
+specified purposes or an incorporated whole.  The Advocate and all the
+principal lawyers in the country had scarcely a doubt on the subject.
+Whether it were a reasonable system or an absurd one, a vigorous or an
+imbecile form of government, they were confident that the Union of
+Utrecht, made about a generation of mankind before, and the only tie by
+which the Provinces were bound together at all, was a compact between
+sovereigns.
+
+Barneveld styled himself always the servant and officer of the States of
+Holland.  To them was his allegiance, for them he spoke, wrought, and
+thought, by them his meagre salary was paid.  At the congress of the
+States-General, the scene of his most important functions, he was the
+ambassador of Holland, acting nominally according to their instructions,
+and exercising the powers of minister of foreign affairs and, as it were,
+prime minister for the other confederates by their common consent.  The
+system would have been intolerable, the great affairs of war and peace
+could never have been carried on so triumphantly, had not the
+preponderance of the one province Holland, richer, more powerful,
+more important in every way than the other six provinces combined,
+given to the confederacy illegally, but virtually, many of the attributes
+of union.  Rather by usucaption than usurpation Holland had in many
+regards come to consider herself and be considered as the Republic
+itself.  And Barneveld, acting always in the name of Holland and with the
+most modest of titles and appointments, was for a long time in all civil
+matters the chief of the whole country.  This had been convenient during
+the war, still more convenient during negotiations for peace, but it was
+inevitable that there should be murmurs now that the cessation from
+military operations on a large scale had given men time to look more
+deeply into the nature of a constitution partly inherited and partly
+improvised, and having many of the defects usually incident to both
+sources of government.
+
+The military interest, the ecclesiastical power, and the influence of
+foreign nations exerted through diplomatic intrigue, were rapidly
+arraying themselves in determined hostility to Barneveld and to what was
+deemed his tyrannous usurpation.  A little later the national spirit, as
+opposed to provincial and municipal patriotism, was to be aroused against
+him, and was likely to prove the most formidable of all the elements of
+antagonism.
+
+It is not necessary to anticipate here what must be developed on a
+subsequent page.  This much, however, it is well to indicate for the
+correct understanding of passing events.  Barneveld did not consider
+himself the officer or servant of their High Mightinesses the States-
+General, while in reality often acting as their master, but the vassal
+and obedient functionary of their Great Mightinesses the States of
+Holland, whom he almost absolutely controlled.
+
+His present most pressing business was to resist the encroachments of the
+sacerdotal power and to defend the magistracy.  The casuistical questions
+which were fast maddening the public mind seemed of importance to him
+only as enclosing within them a more vital and practical question of
+civil government.
+
+But the anger of his opponents, secret and open, was rapidly increasing.
+Envy, jealousy, political and clerical hate, above all, that deadliest
+and basest of malignant spirits which in partisan warfare is bred out of
+subserviency to rising and rival power, were swarming about him and
+stinging him at every step.  No parasite of Maurice could more
+effectively pay his court and more confidently hope for promotion or
+reward than by vilipending Barneveld.  It would be difficult to
+comprehend the infinite extent and power of slander without a study of
+the career of the Advocate of Holland.
+
+"I thank you for your advices," he wrote to Carom' "and I wish from my
+heart that his Majesty, according to his royal wisdom and clemency
+towards the condition of this country, would listen only to My Lords the
+States or their ministers, and not to his own or other passionate persons
+who, through misunderstanding or malice, furnish him with information and
+so frequently flatter him.  I have tried these twenty years to deserve
+his Majesty's confidence, and have many letters from him reaching through
+twelve or fifteen years, in which he does me honour and promises his
+royal favour.  I am the more chagrined that through false and passionate
+reports and information--because I am resolved to remain good and true to
+My Lords the States, to the fatherland, and to the true Christian
+religion--I and mine should now be so traduced.  I hope that God Almighty
+will second my upright conscience, and cause his Majesty soon to see the
+injustice done to me and mine.  To defend the resolutions of My Lords the
+States of Holland is my office, duty, and oath, and I assure you that
+those resolutions are taken with wider vision and scope than his Majesty
+can believe.  Let this serve for My Lords' defence and my own against
+indecent calumny, for my duty allows me to pursue no other course."
+
+He again alluded to the dreary affair of Vorstius, and told the Envoy
+that the venation caused by it was incredible.  "That men unjustly defame
+our cities and their regents is nothing new," he said; "but I assure you
+that it is far more damaging to the common weal than the defamers
+imagine."
+
+Some of the private admirers of Arminius who were deeply grieved at
+so often hearing him "publicly decried as the enemy of God" had been
+defending the great heretic to James, and by so doing had excited the
+royal wrath not only against the deceased doctor and themselves, but
+against the States of Holland who had given them no commission.
+
+On the other hand the advanced orthodox party, most bitter haters of
+Barneveld, and whom in his correspondence with England he uniformly and
+perhaps designedly called the Puritans, knowing that the very word was a
+scarlet rag to James, were growing louder and louder in their demands.
+"Some thirty of these Puritans," said he, "of whom at least twenty are
+Flemings or other foreigners equally violent, proclaim that they and the
+like of them mean alone to govern the Church.  Let his Majesty compare
+this proposal with his Royal Present, with his salutary declaration at
+London in the year 1603 to Doctor Reynolds and his associates, and with
+his admonition delivered to the Emperor, kings, sovereigns, and
+republics, and he will best understand the mischievous principles of
+these people, who are now gaining credit with him to the detriment of the
+freedom and laws of these Provinces."
+
+A less enlightened statesman than Barneveld would have found it easy
+enough to demonstrate the inconsistency of the King in thus preaching
+subserviency of government to church and favouring the rule of Puritans
+over both.  It needed but slender logic to reduce such a policy on his
+part to absurdity, but neither kings nor governments are apt to value
+themselves on their logic.  So long as James could play the pedagogue to
+emperors, kings, and republics, it mattered little to him that the
+doctrines which he preached in one place he had pronounced flat
+blasphemy in another.
+
+That he would cheerfully hang in England the man whom he would elevate to
+power in Holland might be inconsistency in lesser mortals; but what was
+the use of his infallibility if he was expected to be consistent?
+
+But one thing was certain.  The Advocate saw through him as if he had
+been made of glass, and James knew that he did.  This fatal fact
+outweighed all the decorous and respectful phraseology under which
+Barneveld veiled his remorseless refutations.  It was a dangerous thing
+to incur the wrath of this despot-theologian.
+
+Prince Maurice, who had originally joined in the invitation given by the
+overseers of Leyden to Vorstius, and had directed one of the deputies and
+his own "court trumpeter," Uytenbogaert, to press him earnestly to grant
+his services to the University, now finding the coldness of Barneveld to
+the fiery remonstrances of the King, withdrew his protection of the
+Professor.
+
+"The Count Maurice, who is a wise and understanding prince," said
+Winwood, "and withal most affectionate to his Majesty's service, doth
+foresee the miseries into which these countries are likely to fall, and
+with grief doth pine away."
+
+It is probable that the great stadholder had never been more robust, or
+indeed inclining to obesity, than precisely at this epoch; but Sir Ralph
+was of an imaginative turn.  He had discovered, too, that the Advocate's
+design was "of no other nature than so to stem the course of the State
+that insensibly the Provinces shall fall by relapse into the hands of
+Spain."
+
+A more despicable idea never entered a human brain.  Every action, word,
+and thought, of Barneveld's life was a refutation of it.  But he was
+unwilling, at the bidding of a king, to treat a professor with contumely
+who had just been solemnly and unanimously invited by the great
+university, by the States of Holland, and by the Stadholder to an
+important chair; and that was enough for the diplomatist and courtier.
+"He, and only he," said Winwood passionately, "hath opposed his Majesty's
+purposes with might and main."  Formerly the Ambassador had been full of
+complaints of "the craving humour of Count Maurice," and had censured him
+bitterly in his correspondence for having almost by his inordinate
+pretensions for money and other property brought the Treaty of Truce to a
+standstill.  And in these charges he was as unjust and as reckless as he
+was now in regard to Barneveld.
+
+The course of James and his agents seemed cunningly devised to sow
+discord in the Provinces, to inflame the growing animosity of the
+Stadholder to the Advocate, and to paralyse the action of the Republic in
+the duchies.  If the King had received direct instructions from the
+Spanish cabinet how to play the Spanish game, he could hardly have done
+it with more docility.  But was not Gondemar ever at his elbow, and the
+Infanta always in the perspective?
+
+And it is strange enough that, at the same moment, Spanish marriages were
+in France as well as England the turning-point of policy.
+
+Henry had been willing enough that the Dauphin should espouse a Spanish
+infanta, and that one of the Spanish princes should be affianced to one
+of his daughters.  But the proposition from Spain had been coupled with a
+condition that the friendship between France and the Netherlands should
+be at once broken off, and the rebellious heretics left to their fate.
+And this condition had been placed before him with such arrogance that
+he had rejected the whole scheme.  Henry was not the man to do anything
+dishonourable at the dictation of another sovereign.  He was also not the
+man to be ignorant that the friendship of the Provinces was necessary to
+him, that cordial friendship between France and Spain was impossible, and
+that to allow Spain to reoccupy that splendid possession between his own
+realms and Germany, from which she had been driven by the Hollanders in
+close alliance with himself, would be unworthy of the veriest schoolboy
+in politics.  But Henry was dead, and a Medici reigned in his place,
+whose whole thought was to make herself agreeable to Spain.
+
+Aerssens, adroit, prying, experienced, unscrupulous, knew very well
+that these double Spanish marriages were resolved upon, and that the
+inevitable condition refused by the King would be imposed upon his widow.
+He so informed the States-General, and it was known to the French
+government that he had informed them.  His position soon became almost
+untenable, not because he had given this information, but because the
+information and the inference made from it were correct.
+
+It will be observed that the policy of the Advocate was to preserve
+friendly relations between France and England, and between both and the
+United Provinces.  It was for this reason that he submitted to the
+exhortations and denunciations of the English ambassadors.  It was for
+this that he kept steadily in view the necessity of dealing with and
+supporting corporate France, the French government, when there were many
+reasons for feeling sympathy with the internal rebellion against that
+government.  Maurice felt differently.  He was connected by blood or
+alliance with more than one of the princes now perpetually in revolt.
+Bouillon was his brother-in-law, the sister of Conde was his brother's
+wife.  Another cousin, the Elector-Palatine, was already encouraging
+distant and extravagant hopes of the Imperial crown.  It was not
+unnatural that he should feel promptings of ambition and sympathy
+difficult to avow even to himself, and that he should feel resentment
+against the man by whom this secret policy was traversed in the well-
+considered interest of the Republican government.
+
+Aerssens, who, with the keen instinct of self-advancement was already
+attaching himself to Maurice as to the wheels of the chariot going
+steadily up the hill, was not indisposed to loosen his hold upon the man
+through whose friendship he had first risen, and whose power was now
+perhaps on the decline.  Moreover, events had now caused him to hate the
+French government with much fervour.  With Henry IV. he had been all-
+powerful.  His position had been altogether exceptional, and he had
+wielded an influence at Paris more than that exerted by any foreign
+ambassador.  The change naturally did not please him, although he well
+knew the reasons.  It was impossible for the Dutch ambassador to be
+popular at a court where Spain ruled supreme.  Had he been willing to eat
+humiliation as with a spoon, it would not have sufficed.  They knew him,
+they feared him, and they could not doubt that his sympathies would ever
+be with the malcontent princes.  At the same time he did not like to lose
+his hold upon the place, nor to have it known, as yet, to the world that
+his power was diminished.
+
+"The Queen commands me to tell you," said the French ambassador de Russy
+to the States-General, "that the language of the Sieur Aerssens has not
+only astonished her, but scandalized her to that degree that she could
+not refrain from demanding if it came from My Lords the States or from
+himself.  He having, however, affirmed to her Majesty that he had express
+charge to justify it by reasons so remote from the hope and the belief
+that she had conceived of your gratitude to the Most Christian King and
+herself, she is constrained to complain of it, and with great frankness."
+
+Some months later than this Aerssens communicated to the States-General
+the project of the Spanish marriage, "which," said he, "they have
+declared to me with so many oaths to be false."  He informed them that
+M. de Refuge was to go on special mission to the Hague, "having been
+designated to that duty before Aerssens' discovery of the marriage
+project."  He was to persuade their Mightinesses that the marriages were
+by no means concluded, and that, even if they were, their Mightinesses
+were not interested therein, their Majesties intending to remain by the
+old maxims and alliances of the late king.  Marriages, he would be
+instructed to say, were mere personal conventions, which remained
+of no consideration when the interests of the crown were touched.
+"Nevertheless, I know very well," said Aerssens, "that in England
+these negotiations are otherwise understood, and that the King has
+uttered great complaints about them, saying that such a negotiation as
+this ought not to have been concealed from him.  He is pressing more than
+ever for reimbursement of the debt to him, and especially for the moneys
+pretended to have been furnished to your Mightinesses in his Majesty's
+name."
+
+Thus it will be seen how closely the Spanish marriages were connected
+with the immediate financial arrangements of France, England, and the
+States, without reference to the wider political consequences
+anticipated.
+
+"The princes and most gentlemen," here continued the Ambassador, "believe
+that these reciprocal and double marriages will bring about great changes
+in Christendom if they take the course which the authors of them intend,
+however much they may affect to believe that no novelties are impending.
+The marriages were proposed to the late king, and approved by him, during
+the negotiations for the truce, and had Don Pedro do Toledo been able to
+govern himself, as Jeannin has just been telling me, the United Provinces
+would have drawn from it their assured security.  What he means by that,
+I certainly cannot conceive, for Don Pedro proposed the marriage of the
+Dauphin (now Louis XIII.) with the Infanta on the condition that Henry
+should renounce all friendship with your Mightinesses, and neither openly
+nor secretly give you any assistance.  You were to be entirely abandoned,
+as an example for all who throw off the authority of their lawful prince.
+But his Majesty answered very generously that he would take no
+conditions; that he considered your Mightinesses as his best friends,
+whom he could not and would not forsake.  Upon this Don Pedro broke off
+the negotiation.  What should now induce the King of Spain to resume the
+marriage negotiations but to give up the conditions, I am sure I don't
+know, unless, through the truce, his designs and his ambition have grown
+flaccid.  This I don't dare to hope, but fear, on the contrary, that he
+will so manage the irresolution, weakness, and faintheartedness of this
+kingdom as through the aid of his pensioned friends here to arrive at all
+his former aims."
+
+Certainly the Ambassador painted the condition of France in striking and
+veracious colours, and he was quite right in sending the information
+which he was first to discover, and which it was so important for the
+States to know.  It was none the less certain in Barneveld's mind that
+the best, not the worst, must be made of the state of affairs, and that
+France should not be assisted in throwing herself irrecoverably into the
+arms of Spain.
+
+"Refuge will tell you," said Aerssens, a little later, "that these
+marriages will not interfere with the friendship of France for you nor
+with her subsidies, and that no advantage will be given to Spain in the
+treaty to your detriment or that of her other allies.  But whatever fine
+declarations they may make, it is sure to be detrimental.  And all the
+princes, gentlemen, and officers here have the same conviction.  Those of
+the Reformed religion believe that the transaction is directed solely
+against the religion which your Mightinesses profess, and that the next
+step will be to effect a total separation between the two religions and
+the two countries."
+
+Refuge arrived soon afterwards, and made the communication to the States-
+General of the approaching nuptials between the King of France and the
+Infanta of Spain; and of the Prince of Spain with Madame, eldest daughter
+of France, exactly as Aerssens had predicted four months before.  There
+was a great flourish of compliments, much friendly phrase-making, and
+their Mightinesses were informed that the communication of the marriages
+was made to them before any other power had been notified, in proof of
+the extraordinary affection entertained for them by France.  "You are
+so much interested in the happiness of France," said Refuge, "that this
+treaty by which it is secured will be for your happiness also.  He did
+not indicate, however, the precise nature of the bliss beyond the
+indulgence of a sentimental sympathy, not very refreshing in the
+circumstances, which was to result to the Confederacy from this close
+alliance between their firmest friend and their ancient and deadly enemy.
+He would have found it difficult to do so.
+
+"Don Rodrigo de Calderon, secretary of state, is daily expected from
+Spain," wrote, Aerssens once more.  "He brings probably the articles of
+the marriages, which have hitherto been kept secret, so they say.  'Tis a
+shrewd negotiator; and in this alliance the King's chief design is to
+injure your Mightinesses, as M. de Villeroy now confesses, although he
+says that this will not be consented to on this side.  It behoves your
+Mightinesses to use all your ears and eyes.  It is certain these are much
+more than private conventions.  Yes, there is nothing private about them,
+save the conjunction of the persons whom they concern.  In short, all
+the conditions regard directly the state, and directly likewise, or by
+necessary consequence, the state of your Mightinesses' Provinces.
+I reserve explanations until it shall please your Mightinesses to
+hear me by word of mouth."
+
+For it was now taken into consideration by the States' government whether
+Aerssens was to remain at his post or to return.  Whether it was his wish
+to be relieved of his embassy or not was a question.  But there was no
+question that the States at this juncture, and in spite of the dangers
+impending from the Spanish marriages, must have an ambassador ready to do
+his best to keep France from prematurely sliding into positive hostility
+to them.  Aerssens was enigmatical in his language, and Barneveld was
+somewhat puzzled.
+
+"I have according to your reiterated requests," wrote the Advocate to the
+Ambassador, "sounded the assembly of My Lords the States as to your
+recall; but I find among some gentlemen the opinion that if earnestly
+pressed to continue you would be willing to listen to the proposal.  This
+I cannot make out from your letters.  Please to advise me frankly as to
+your wishes, and assure yourself in everything of my friendship."
+
+Nothing could be more straightforward than this language, but the Envoy
+was less frank than Barneveld, as will subsequently appear.  The subject
+was a most important one, not only in its relation to the great affairs
+of state, but to momentous events touching the fate of illustrious
+personages.
+
+Meantime a resolution was passed by the States of Holland "in regard to
+the question whether Ambassador Aerssens should retain his office, yes
+or no?"  And it was decided by a majority of votes "to leave it to his
+candid opinion if in his free conscience he thinks he can serve the
+public cause there any longer.  If yes, he may keep his office one year
+more.  If no, he may take leave and come home.  In no case is his salary
+to be increased."
+
+Surely the States, under the guidance of the Advocate, had thus acted
+with consummate courtesy towards a diplomatist whose position from no
+apparent fault of his own but by the force of circumstances--and rather
+to his credit than otherwise--was gravely compromised.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Advanced orthodox party-Puritans
+Atheist, a tyrant, because he resisted dictation from the clergy
+Give him advice if he asked it, and money when he required
+He was not imperial of aspect on canvas or coin
+He who would have all may easily lose all
+King's definite and final intentions, varied from day to day
+Neither kings nor governments are apt to value logic
+Outdoing himself in dogmatism and inconsistency
+Small matter which human folly had dilated into a great one
+The defence of the civil authority against the priesthood
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext Life of John Barneveld, v4, Motley #89
+by John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND
+
+WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR
+
+By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+
+The Life of John of Barneveld, v5, 1609-14
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+     Establishment of the Condominium in the Duchies--Dissensions between
+     the Neuburgers and Brandenburgers--Occupation of Julich by the
+     Brandenburgers assisted by the States-General--Indignation in Spain
+     and at the Court of the Archdukes--Subsidy despatched to Brussels
+     Spinola descends upon Aix-la-Chapelle and takes possession of Orsoy
+     and other places--Surrender of Wesel--Conference at Xanten--Treaty
+     permanently dividing the Territory between Brandenburg and Neuburg--
+     Prohibition from Spain--Delays and Disagreements.
+
+Thus the 'Condominium' had been peaceably established.
+
+Three or four years passed away in the course of which the evils of a
+joint and undivided sovereignty of two rival houses over the same
+territory could not fail to manifest themselves.  Brandenburg, Calvinist
+in religion, and for other reasons more intimately connected with and
+more favoured by the States' government than his rival, gained ground in
+the duchies.  The Palatine of Neuburg, originally of Lutheran faith like
+his father, soon manifested Catholic tendencies, which excited suspicion
+in the Netherlands.  These suspicions grew into certainties at the moment
+when he espoused the sister of Maximilian of Bavaria and of the Elector
+of Cologne.  That this close connection with the very heads of the
+Catholic League could bode no good to the cause of which the States-
+General were the great promoters was self-evident.  Very soon afterwards
+the Palatine, a man of mature age and of considerable talents, openly
+announced his conversion to the ancient church.  Obviously the sympathies
+of the States could not thenceforth fail to be on the side of
+Brandenburg.  The Elector's brother died and was succeeded in the
+governorship of the Condeminium by the Elector's brother, a youth of
+eighteen.  He took up his abode in Cleve, leaving Dusseldorf to be the
+sole residence of his co-stadholder.
+
+Rivalry growing warmer, on account of this difference of religion,
+between the respective partisans of Neuburg and Brandenburg, an attempt
+was made in Dusseldorf by a sudden entirely unsuspected rising of the
+Brandenburgers to drive their antagonist colleagues and their portion of
+the garrison out of the city.  It failed, but excited great anger.  A
+more successful effort was soon afterwards made in Julich; the Neuburgers
+were driven out, and the Brandenburgers remained in sole possession of
+the town and citadel, far the most important stronghold in the whole
+territory.  This was partly avenged by the Neuburgers, who gained
+absolute control of Dusseldorf.  Here were however no important
+fortifications, the place being merely an agreeable palatial residence
+and a thriving mart.  The States-General, not concealing their
+predilection for Brandenburg, but under pretext of guarding the peace
+which they had done so much to establish, placed a garrison of 1400
+infantry and a troop or two of horse in the citadel of Julich.
+
+Dire was the anger not unjustly excited in Spain when the news of this
+violation of neutrality reached that government.  Julich, placed midway
+between Liege and Cologne, and commanding those fertile plains which make
+up the opulent duchy, seemed virtually converted into a province of the
+detested heretical republic.  The German gate of the Spanish Netherlands
+was literally in the hands of its most formidable foe.
+
+The Spaniards about the court of the Archduke did not dissemble their
+rage.  The seizure of Julich was a stain upon his reputation, they cried.
+Was it not enough, they asked, for the United Provinces to have made a
+truce to the manifest detriment and discredit of Spain, and to have
+treated her during all the negotiation with such insolence?  Were they
+now to be permitted to invade neutral territory, to violate public faith,
+to act under no responsibility save to their own will?  What was left for
+them to do except to set up a tribunal in Holland for giving laws to the
+whole of Northern Europe?  Arrogating to themselves absolute power over
+the controverted states of Cleve, Julich, and the dependencies, they now
+pretended to dispose of them at their pleasure in order at the end
+insolently to take possession of them for themselves.
+
+These were the egregious fruits of the truce, they said tauntingly to the
+discomfited Archduke.  It had caused a loss of reputation, the very soul
+of empires, to the crown of Spain.  And now, to conclude her abasement,
+the troops in Flanders had been shaven down with such parsimony as to
+make the monarch seem a shopkeeper, not a king.  One would suppose the
+obedient Netherlands to be in the heart of Spain rather than outlying
+provinces surrounded by their deadliest enemies.  The heretics had gained
+possession of the government at Aix-la-Chapelle; they had converted the
+insignificant town of Mulheim into a thriving and fortified town in
+defiance of Cologne and to its manifest detriment, and in various other
+ways they had insulted the Catholics throughout those regions.  And who
+could wonder at such insolence, seeing that the army in Flanders,
+formerly the terror of heretics, had become since the truce so weak as to
+be the laughing-stock of the United Provinces?  If it was expensive to
+maintain these armies in the obedient Netherlands, let there be economy
+elsewhere, they urged.
+
+From India came gold and jewels.  From other kingdoms came ostentation
+and a long series of vain titles for the crown of Spain.  Flanders was
+its place of arms, its nursery of soldiers, its bulwark in Europe, and so
+it should be preserved.
+
+There was ground for these complaints.  The army at the disposition of
+the Archduke had been reduced to 8000 infantry and a handful of cavalry.
+The peace establishment of the Republic amounted to 20,000 foot, 3000
+horse, besides the French and English regiments.
+
+So soon as the news of the occupation of Julich was officially
+communicated to the Spanish cabinet, a subsidy of 400,000 crowns was at
+once despatched to Brussels.  Levies of Walloons and Germans were made
+without delay by order of Archduke Albert and under guidance of Spinola,
+so that by midsummer the army was swollen to 18,000 foot and 3000 horse.
+With these the great Genoese captain took the field in the middle of
+August.  On the 22nd of that month the army was encamped on some plains
+mid-way between Maestricht and Aachen.  There was profound mystery both
+at Brussels and at the Hague as to the objective point of these military
+movements.  Anticipating an attack upon Julich, the States had meantime
+strengthened the garrison of that important place with 3000 infantry and
+a regiment of horse.  It seemed scarcely probable therefore that Spinola
+would venture a foolhardy blow at a citadel so well fortified and
+defended.  Moreover, there was not only no declaration of war, but strict
+orders had been given by each of the apparent belligerents to their
+military commanders to abstain from all offensive movements against the
+adversary.  And now began one of the strangest series of warlike
+evolution's that were ever recorded.  Maurice at the head of an army of
+14,000 foot and 3000 horse manoeuvred in the neighbourhood of his great
+antagonist and professional rival without exchanging a blow.  It was a
+phantom campaign, the prophetic rehearsal of dreadful marches and tragic
+histories yet to be, and which were to be enacted on that very stage and
+on still wider ones during a whole generation of mankind.  That cynical
+commerce in human lives which was to become one of the chief branches of
+human industry in the century had already begun.
+
+Spinola, after hovering for a few days in the neighbourhood, descended
+upon the Imperial city of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle).  This had been one of
+the earliest towns in Germany to embrace the Reformed religion, and up to
+the close of the sixteenth century the control of the magistracy had been
+in the hands of the votaries of that creed.  Subsequently the Catholics
+had contrived to acquire and keep the municipal ascendency, secretly
+supported by Archduke Albert, and much oppressing the Protestants with
+imprisonments, fines, and banishment, until a new revolution which had
+occurred in the year 1610, and which aroused the wrath of Spinola.
+Certainly, according to the ideas of that day, it did not seem unnatural
+in a city where a very large majority of the population were Protestants
+that Protestants should have a majority in the town council.  It seemed,
+however, to those who surrounded the Archduke an outrage which could no
+longer be tolerated, especially as a garrison of 600 Germans, supposed to
+have formed part of the States' army, had recently been introduced into
+the town.  Aachen, lying mostly on an extended plain, had but very slight
+fortifications, and it was commanded by a neighbouring range of hills.
+It had no garrison but the 600 Germans.  Spinola placed a battery or
+two on the hills, and within three days the town surrendered.  The
+inhabitants expected a scene of carnage and pillage, but not a life was
+lost.  No injury whatever was inflicted on person or property, according
+to the strict injunctions of the Archduke.  The 600 Germans were driven
+out, and 1200 other Germans then serving under Catholic banners were put
+in their places to protect the Catholic minority, to whose keeping the
+municipal government was now confided.
+
+Spinola, then entering the territory of Cleve, took session of Orsoy, an
+important place on the Rhine, besides Duren, Duisburg, Kaster,
+Greevenbroek and Berchem.  Leaving garrisons in these places, he razed
+the fortifications of Mulheim, much to the joy of the Archbishop and his
+faithful subjects of Cologne, then crossed the Rhine at Rheinberg, and
+swooped down upon Wesel.  This flourishing and prosperous city had
+formerly belonged to the Duchy of Cleve.  Placed at the junction of the
+Rhine and Lippe and commanding both rivers, it had become both powerful
+and Protestant, and had set itself up as a free Imperial city,
+recognising its dukes no longer as sovereigns, but only as protectors.
+So fervent was it in the practice of the Reformed religion that it was
+called the Rhenish Geneva, the cradle of German Calvinism.  So important
+was its preservation considered to the cause of Protestantism that the
+States-General had urged its authorities to accept from them a garrison.
+They refused.  Had they complied, the city would have been saved, because
+it was the rule in this extraordinary campaign that the belligerents made
+war not upon each other, nor in each others territory, but against
+neutrals and upon neutral soil.  The Catholic forces under Spinola or his
+lieutenants, meeting occasionally and accidentally with the Protestants
+under Maurice or his generals, exchanged no cannon shots or buffets, but
+only acts of courtesy; falling away each before the other, and each
+ceding to the other with extreme politeness the possession of towns which
+one had preceded the other in besieging.
+
+The citizens of Wesel were amazed at being attacked, considering
+themselves as Imperial burghers.  They regretted too late that they had
+refused a garrison from Maurice, which would have prevented Spinola from
+assailing them.  They had now nothing for it but to surrender, which they
+did within three days.  The principal condition of the capitulation was
+that when Julich should be given up by the States Wesel should be
+restored to its former position.  Spinola then took and garrisoned the
+city of Xanten, but went no further.  Having weakened his army
+sufficiently by the garrisons taken from it for the cities captured by
+him, he declined to make any demonstration upon the neighbouring and
+important towns of Emmerich and Rees.  The Catholic commander falling
+back, the Protestant moved forward.  Maurice seized both Emmerich and
+Rees, and placed garrisons within them, besides occupying Goch,
+Kranenburg, Gennip, and various places in the County of Mark.  This
+closed the amicable campaign.
+
+Spinola established himself and his forces near Wesel.  The Prince
+encamped near Rees.  The two armies were within two hours' march of each
+other.  The Duke of Neuburg--for the Palatine had now succeeded on his
+father's death to the ancestral dukedom and to his share of the
+Condominium of the debateable provinces--now joined Spinola with an army
+of 4000 foot and 400 horse.  The young Prince of Brandenburg came to
+Maurice with 800 cavalry and an infantry regiment of the Elector-
+Palatine.
+
+Negotiations destined to be as spectral and fleeting as the campaign had
+been illusory now began.  The whole Protestant world was aflame with
+indignation at the loss of Wesel.  The States' government had already
+proposed to deposit Julich in the hands of a neutral power if the
+Archduke would abstain from military movements.  But Albert, proud of
+his achievements in Aachen, refused to pause in his career.  Let them
+make the deposit first, he said.
+
+Both belligerents, being now satiated with such military glory as could
+flow from the capture of defenceless cities belonging to neutrals, agreed
+to hold conferences at Xanten.  To this town, in the Duchy of Cleve, and
+midway between the rival camps, came Sir Henry Wotton and Sir Dudley
+Carleton, ambassadors of Great Britain; de Refuge and de Russy, the
+special and the resident ambassador of France at the Hague; Chancellor
+Peter Pecquius and Counsellor Visser, to represent the Archdukes; seven
+deputies from the United Provinces, three from the Elector of Cologne,
+three from Brandenburg, three from Neuburg, and two from the Elector-
+Palatine, as representative of the Protestant League.
+
+In the earlier conferences the envoys of the Archduke and of the Elector
+of Cologne were left out, but they were informed daily of each step in
+the negotiation.  The most important point at starting was thought to be
+to get rid of the 'Condominium.'  There could be no harmony nor peace in
+joint possession.  The whole territory should be cut provisionally in
+halves, and each possessory prince rule exclusively within the portion
+assigned to him.  There might also be an exchange of domain between the
+two every six months.  As for Wesel and Julich, they could remain
+respectively in the hands then holding them, or the fortifications of
+Julich might be dismantled and Wesel restored to the status quo.  The
+latter alternative would have best suited the States, who were growing
+daily more irritated at seeing Wesel, that Protestant stronghold, with an
+exclusively Calvinistic population, in the hands of Catholics.
+
+The Spanish ambassador at Brussels remonstrated, however, at the thought
+of restoring his precious conquest, obtained without loss of time, money,
+or blood, into the hands of heretics, at least before consultation with
+the government at Madrid and without full consent of the King.
+
+"How important to your Majesty's affairs in Flanders," wrote Guadaleste
+to Philip, "is the acquisition of Wesel may be seen by the manifest grief
+of your enemies.  They see with immense displeasure your royal ensigns
+planted on the most important place on the Rhine, and one which would
+become the chief military station for all the armies of Flanders to
+assemble in at any moment.
+
+"As no acquisition could therefore be greater, so your Majesty should
+never be deprived of it without thorough consideration of the case.  The
+Archduke fears, and so do his ministers, that if we refuse to restore
+Wesel, the United Provinces would break the truce.  For my part I
+believe, and there are many who agree with me, that they would on the
+contrary be more inclined to stand by the truce, hoping to obtain by
+negotiation that which it must be obvious to them they cannot hope to
+capture by force.  But let Wesel be at once restored.  Let that be done
+which is so much desired by the United Provinces and other great enemies
+and rivals of your Majesty, and what security will there be that the same
+Provinces will not again attempt the same invasion?  Is not the example
+of Julich fresh?  And how much more important is Wesel!  Julich was after
+all not situate on their frontiers, while Wesel lies at their principal
+gates.  Your Majesty now sees the good and upright intentions of those
+Provinces and their friends.  They have made a settlement between
+Brandenburg and Neuburg, not in order to breed concord but confusion
+between those two, not tranquillity for the country, but greater
+turbulence than ever before.  Nor have they done this with any other
+thought than that the United Provinces might find new opportunities to
+derive the same profit from fresh tumults as they have already done so
+shamelessly from those which are past.  After all I don't say that Wesel
+should never be restored, if circumstances require it, and if your
+Majesty, approving the Treaty of Xanten, should sanction the measure.
+But such a result should be reached only after full consultation with
+your Majesty, to whose glorious military exploits these splendid results
+are chiefly owing."
+
+The treaty finally decided upon rejected the principle of alternate
+possession, and established a permanent division of the territory in
+dispute between Brandenburg and Neuburg.
+
+The two portions were to be made as equal as possible, and lots were to
+be thrown or drawn by the two princes for the first choice.  To the one
+side were assigned the Duchy of Cleve, the County of Mark, and the
+Seigniories of Ravensberg and Ravenstein, with some other baronies and
+feuds in Brabant and Flanders; to the other the Duchies of Julich and
+Berg with their dependencies.  Each prince was to reside exclusively
+within the territory assigned to him by lot.  The troops introduced by
+either party were to be withdrawn, fortifications made since the
+preceding month of May to be razed, and all persons who had been
+expelled, or who had emigrated, to be restored to their offices,
+property, or benefices.  It was also stipulated that no place within the
+whole debateable territory should be put in the hands of a third power.
+
+These articles were signed by the ambassadors of France and England, by
+the deputies of the Elector-Palatine and of the United Provinces, all
+binding their superiors to the execution of the treaty.  The arrangement
+was supposed to refer to the previous conventions between those two
+crowns, with the Republic, and the Protestant princes and powers.  Count
+Zollern, whom we have seen bearing himself so arrogantly as envoy from
+the Emperor Rudolph to Henry IV., was now despatched by Matthias on as
+fruitless a mission to the congress at Xanten, and did his best to
+prevent the signature of the treaty, except with full concurrence of the
+Imperial government.  He likewise renewed the frivolous proposition that
+the Emperor should hold all the provinces in sequestration until the
+question of rightful sovereignty should be decided.  The "proud and
+haggard" ambassador was not more successful in this than in the
+diplomatic task previously entrusted to him, and he then went to
+Brussels, there to renew his remonstrances, menaces, and intrigues.
+
+For the treaty thus elaborately constructed, and in appearance a
+triumphant settlement of questions so complicated and so burning as to
+threaten to set Christendom at any moment in a blaze, was destined to an
+impotent and most unsatisfactory conclusion.
+
+The signatures were more easily obtained than the ratifications.
+Execution was surrounded with insurmountable difficulties which in
+negotiation had been lightly skipped over at the stroke of a pen.
+At the very first step, that of military evacuation, there was a stumble.
+Maurice and Spinola were expected to withdraw their forces, and to
+undertake to bring in no troops in the future, and to make no invasion of
+the disputed territory.
+
+But Spinola construed this undertaking as absolute; the Prince as only
+binding in consequence of, with reference to, and for the duration of;
+the Treaty of Xanten.  The ambassadors and other commissioners, disgusted
+with the long controversy which ensued, were making up their minds to
+depart when a courier arrived from Spain, bringing not a ratification but
+strict prohibition of the treaty.  The articles were not to be executed,
+no change whatever was to be made, and, above all, Wesel was not to be
+restored without fresh negotiations with Philip, followed by his explicit
+concurrence.
+
+Thus the whole great negotiation began to dissolve into a shadowy,
+unsatisfactory pageant.  The solid barriers which were to imprison the
+vast threatening elements of religious animosity and dynastic hatreds,
+and to secure a peaceful future for Christendom, melted into films of
+gossamer, and the great war of demons, no longer to be quelled by the
+commonplaces of diplomatic exorcism, revealed its close approach.  The
+prospects of Europe grew blacker than ever.
+
+The ambassadors, thoroughly disheartened and disgusted, all took their
+departure from Xanten, and the treaty remained rather a by-word than a
+solution or even a suggestion.
+
+"The accord could not be prevented," wrote Archduke Albert to Philip,
+"because it depended alone on the will of the signers.  Nor can the
+promise to restore Wesel be violated, should Julich be restored.  Who can
+doubt that such contravention would arouse great jealousies in France,
+England, the United Provinces, and all the members of the heretic League
+of Germany?  Who can dispute that those interested ought to procure the
+execution of the treaty?  Suspicions will not remain suspicions, but they
+light up the flames of public evil and disturbance.  Either your Majesty
+wishes to maintain the truce, in which case Wesel must be restored, or to
+break the truce, a result which is certain if Wesel be retained.  But the
+reasons which induced your Majesty to lay down your arms remain the same
+as ever.  Our affairs are not looking better, nor is the requisition of
+Wesel of so great importance as to justify our involving Flanders in a
+new and more atrocious war than that which has so lately been suspended.
+The restitution is due to the tribunal of public faith.  It is a great
+advantage when actions done for the sole end of justice are united to
+that of utility.  Consider the great successes we have had.  How well the
+affairs of Aachen and Mulbeim have been arranged; those of the Duke of
+Neuburg how completely re-established.  The Catholic cause, always
+identical with that of the House of Austria, remains in great superiority
+to the cause of the heretics.  We should use these advantages well, and
+to do so we should not immaturely pursue greater ones.  Fortune changes,
+flies when we most depend on her, and delights in making her chief sport
+of the highest quality of mortals."
+
+Thus wrote the Archduke sensibly, honourably from his point of view, and
+with an intelligent regard to the interests of Spain and the Catholic
+cause.  After months of delay came conditional consent from Madrid to the
+conventions, but with express condition that there should be absolute
+undertaking on the part of the United Provinces never to send or maintain
+troops in the duchies.  Tedious and futile correspondence followed
+between Brussels, the Hague, London, Paris.  But the difficulties grew
+every moment.  It was a Penelope's web of negotiation, said one of the
+envoys.  Amid pertinacious and wire-drawn subtleties, every trace of
+practical business vanished.  Neuburg departed to look after his
+patrimonial estates; leaving his interests in the duchies to be watched
+over by the Archduke.  Even Count Zollern, after six months of wrangling
+in Brussels, took his departure.  Prince Maurice distributed his army in
+various places within the debateable land, and Spinola did the same,
+leaving a garrison of 3000 foot and 300 horse in the important city of
+Wesel.  The town and citadel of Julich were as firmly held by Maurice for
+the Protestant cause.  Thus the duchies were jointly occupied by the
+forces of Catholicism and Protestantism, while nominally possessed and
+administered by the princes of Brandenburg and Neuburg.  And so they
+were destined to remain until that Thirty Years' War, now so near its
+outbreak, should sweep over the earth, and bring its fiery solution at
+last to all these great debates.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+     Proud Position of the Republic--France obeys her--Hatred of Carleton
+     --Position and Character of Aerssens--Claim for the "Third"--Recall
+     of Aerssens--Rivalry between Maurice and Barneveld, who always
+     sustains the separate Sovereignties of the Provinces--Conflict
+     between Church and State added to other Elements of Discord in the
+     Commonwealth--Religion a necessary Element in the Life of all
+     Classes.
+
+Thus the Republic had placed itself in as proud a position as it was
+possible for commonwealth or kingdom to occupy.  It had dictated the
+policy and directed the combined military movements of Protestantism.
+It had gathered into a solid mass the various elements out of which
+the great Germanic mutiny against Rome, Spain, and Austria had been
+compounded.  A breathing space of uncertain duration had come to
+interrupt and postpone the general and inevitable conflict.
+Meantime the Republic was encamped upon the enemy's soil.
+
+France, which had hitherto commanded, now obeyed.  England, vacillating
+and discontented, now threatening and now cajoling, saw for the time at
+least its influence over the councils of the Netherlands neutralized by
+the genius of the great statesman who still governed the Provinces,
+supreme in all but name.  The hatred of the British government towards
+the Republic, while in reality more malignant than at any previous
+period, could now only find vent in tremendous, theological pamphlets,
+composed by the King in the form of diplomatic instructions, and hurled
+almost weekly at the heads of the States-General, by his ambassador,
+Dudley Carleton.
+
+Few men hated Barneveld more bitterly than did Carleton.  I wish to
+describe as rapidly, but as faithfully, as I can the outline at least of
+the events by which one of the saddest and most superfluous catastrophes
+in modern history was brought about.  The web was a complex one, wrought
+apparently of many materials; but the more completely it is unravelled
+the more clearly we shall detect the presence of the few simple but
+elemental fibres which make up the tissue of most human destinies,
+whether illustrious or obscure, and out of which the most moving
+pictures of human history are composed.
+
+The religious element, which seems at first view to be the all pervading
+and controlling one, is in reality rather the atmosphere which surrounds
+and colours than the essence which constitutes the tragedy to be
+delineated.
+
+Personal, sometimes even paltry, jealousy; love of power, of money, of
+place; rivalry between civil and military ambition for predominance in a
+free state; struggles between Church and State to control and oppress
+each other; conflict between the cautious and healthy, but provincial and
+centrifugal, spirit on the one side, and the ardent centralizing,
+imperial, but dangerous, instinct on the other, for ascendancy in a
+federation; mortal combat between aristocracy disguised in the plebeian
+form of trading and political corporations and democracy sheltering
+itself under a famous sword and an ancient and illustrious name;--all
+these principles and passions will be found hotly at work in the
+melancholy five years with which we are now to be occupied, as they have
+entered, and will always enter, into every political combination in the
+great tragi-comedy which we call human history.  As a study, a lesson,
+and a warning, perhaps the fate of Barneveld is as deserving of serious
+attention as most political tragedies of the last few centuries.
+
+Francis Aerssens, as we have seen, continued to be the Dutch ambassador
+after the murder of Henry IV.  Many of the preceding pages of this volume
+have been occupied with his opinions, his pictures, his conversations,
+and his political intrigues during a memorable epoch in the history of
+the Netherlands and of France.  He was beyond all doubt one of the ablest
+diplomatists in Europe.  Versed in many languages, a classical student,
+familiar with history and international law, a man of the world and
+familiar with its usages, accustomed to associate with dignity and tact
+on friendliest terms with sovereigns, eminent statesmen, and men of
+letters; endowed with a facile tongue, a fluent pen, and an eye and ear
+of singular acuteness and delicacy; distinguished for unflagging industry
+and singular aptitude for secret and intricate affairs;--he had by the
+exercise of these various qualities during a period of nearly twenty
+years at the court of Henry the Great been able to render inestimable
+services to the Republic which he represented.  Of respectable but not
+distinguished lineage, not a Hollander, but a Belgian by birth, son of
+Cornelis Aerssens, Grefter of the States-General, long employed in that
+important post, he had been brought forward from a youth by Barneveld and
+early placed by him in the diplomatic career, of which through his favour
+and his own eminent talents he had now achieved the highest honours.
+
+He had enjoyed the intimacy and even the confidence of Henry IV., so far
+as any man could be said to possess that monarch's confidence, and his
+friendly relations and familiar access to the King gave him political
+advantages superior to those of any of his colleagues at the same court.
+
+Acting entirely and faithfully according to the instructions of the
+Advocate of Holland, he always gratefully and copiously acknowledged the
+privilege of being guided and sustained in the difficult paths he had to
+traverse by so powerful and active an intellect.  I have seldom alluded
+in terms to the instructions and despatches of the chief, but every
+position, negotiation, and opinion of the envoy--and the reader has seen
+many of them--is pervaded by their spirit.  Certainly the correspondence
+of Aerssens is full to overflowing of gratitude, respect, fervent
+attachment to the person and exalted appreciation of the intellect and
+high character of the Advocate.
+
+There can be no question of Aerssen's consummate abilities.  Whether his
+heart were as sound as his head, whether his protestations of devotion
+had the ring of true gold or not, time would show.  Hitherto Barneveld
+had not doubted him, nor had he found cause to murmur at Barneveld.
+
+But the France of Henry IV., where the Dutch envoy was so all-powerful,
+had ceased to exist.  A duller eye than that of Aerssens could have seen
+at a glance that the potent kingdom and firm ally of the Republic had
+been converted, for a long time to come at least, into a Spanish
+province.  The double Spanish marriages (that of the young Louis XIII.
+with the Infanta Anna, and of his sister with the Infante, one day to be
+Philip IV.), were now certain, for it was to make them certain that the
+knife of Ravaillac had been employed.  The condition precedent to those
+marriages had long been known.  It was the renunciation of the alliance
+between France and Holland.  It was the condemnation to death, so far as
+France had the power to condemn her to death, of the young Republic.  Had
+not Don Pedro de Toledo pompously announced this condition a year and a
+half before?  Had not Henry spurned the bribe with scorn?  And now had
+not Francis Aerssens been the first to communicate to his masters the
+fruit which had already ripened upon Henry's grave?  As we have seen,
+he had revealed these intrigues long before they were known to the world,
+and the French court knew that he had revealed them.  His position had
+become untenable.  His friendship for Henry could not be of use to him
+with the delicate-featured, double-chinned, smooth and sluggish
+Florentine, who had passively authorized and actively profited by her
+husband's murder.
+
+It was time for the Envoy to be gone.  The Queen-Regent and Concini
+thought so.  And so did Villeroy and Sillery and the rest of the old
+servants of the King, now become pensionaries of Spain.  But Aerssens did
+not think so.  He liked his position, changed as it was.  He was deep in
+the plottings of Bouillon and Conde and the other malcontents against the
+Queen-Regent.  These schemes, being entirely personal, the rank growth of
+the corruption and apparent disintegration of France, were perpetually
+changing, and could be reduced to no principle.  It was a mere struggle
+of the great lords of France to wrest places, money, governments,
+military commands from the Queen-Regent, and frantic attempts on her part
+to save as much as possible of the general wreck for her lord and master
+Concini.
+
+It was ridiculous to ascribe any intense desire on the part of the Duc de
+Bouillon to aid the Protestant cause against Spain at that moment, acting
+as he was in combination with Conde, whom we have just seen employed by
+Spain as the chief instrument to effect the destruction of France and the
+bastardy of the Queen's children.  Nor did the sincere and devout
+Protestants who had clung to the cause through good and bad report, men
+like Duplessis-Mornay, for example, and those who usually acted with him,
+believe in any of these schemes for partitioning France on pretence of
+saving Protestantism.  But Bouillon, greatest of all French fishermen in
+troubled waters, was brother-in-law of Prince Maurice of Nassau, and
+Aerssens instinctively felt that the time had come when he should anchor
+himself to firm holding ground at home.
+
+The Ambassador had also a personal grievance.  Many of his most secret
+despatches to the States-General in which he expressed himself very
+freely, forcibly, and accurately on the general situation in France,
+especially in regard to the Spanish marriages and the Treaty of Hampton
+Court, had been transcribed at the Hague and copies of them sent to the
+French government.  No baser act of treachery to an envoy could be
+imagined.  It was not surprising that Aerssens complained bitterly of the
+deed.  He secretly suspected Barneveld, but with injustice, of having
+played him this evil turn, and the incident first planted the seeds of
+the deadly hatred which was to bear such fatal fruit.
+
+"A notable treason has been played upon me," he wrote to Jacques de
+Maldere, "which has outraged my heart.  All the despatches which I have
+been sending for several months to M. de Barneveld have been communicated
+by copy in whole or in extracts to this court.  Villeroy quoted from them
+at our interview to-day, and I was left as it were without power of
+reply.  The despatches were long, solid, omitting no particularity for
+giving means to form the best judgment of the designs and intrigues of
+this court.  No greater damage could be done to me and my usefulness.
+All those from whom I have hitherto derived information, princes and
+great personages, will shut themselves up from me .  .  .  .  What can be
+more ticklish than to pass judgment on the tricks of those who are
+governing this state?  This single blow has knocked me down completely.
+For I was moving about among all of them, making my profit of all,
+without any reserve.  M. de Barneveld knew by this means the condition of
+this kingdom as well as I do.  Certainly in a well-ordered republic it
+would cost the life of a man who had thus trifled with the reputation of
+an ambassador.  I believe M. de Barneveld will be sorry, but this will
+never restore to me the confidence which I have lost.  If one was jealous
+of my position at this court, certainly I deserved rather pity from those
+who should contemplate it closely.  If one wished to procure my downfall
+in order to raise oneself above me, there was no need of these tricks.
+I have been offering to resign my embassy this long time, which will now
+produce nothing but thorns for me.  How can I negotiate after my private
+despatches have been read?  L'Hoste, the clerk of Villeroy, was not so
+great a criminal as the man who revealed my despatches; and L'Hoste was
+torn by four horses after his death.  Four months long I have been
+complaining of this to M. de Barneveld.  .  .  .  Patience!  I am
+groaning without being able to hope for justice.  I console myself, for
+my term of office will soon arrive.  Would that my embassy could have
+finished under the agreeable and friendly circumstances with which it
+began.  The man who may succeed me will not find that this vile trick
+will help him much .  .  .  .  Pray find out whence and from whom this
+intrigue has come."
+
+Certainly an envoy's position could hardly be more utterly compromised.
+Most unquestionably Aerssens had reason to be indignant, believing as he
+did that his conscientious efforts in the service of his government had
+been made use of by his chief to undermine his credit and blast his
+character.  There was an intrigue between the newly appointed French
+minister, de Russy, at the Hague and the enemies of Aerssens to represent
+him to his own government as mischievous, passionate, unreasonably
+vehement in supporting the claims and dignity of his own country at the
+court to which he was accredited.  Not often in diplomatic history has
+an ambassador of a free state been censured or removed for believing and
+maintaining in controversy that his own government is in the right.  It
+was natural that the French government should be disturbed by the vivid
+light which he had flashed upon their pernicious intrigues with Spain to
+the detriment of the Republic, and at the pertinacity with which he
+resisted their preposterous claim to be reimbursed for one-third of the
+money which the late king had advanced as a free subsidy towards the war
+of the Netherlands for independence.  But no injustice could be more
+outrageous than for the Envoy's own government to unite with the foreign
+State in damaging the character of its own agent for the crime of
+fidelity to itself.
+
+Of such cruel perfidy Aerssens had been the victim, and he most
+wrongfully suspected his chief as its real perpetrator.
+
+The claim for what was called the "Third" had been invented after the
+death of Henry.  As already explained, the "Third" was not a gift from
+England to the Netherlands.  It was a loan from England to France, or
+more properly a consent to abstain from pressing for payment for this
+proportion of an old debt.  James, who was always needy, had often
+desired, but never obtained, the payment of this sum from Henry.  Now
+that the King was dead, he applied to the Regent's government, and the
+Regent's government called upon the Netherlands, to pay the money.
+
+Aerssens, as the agent of the Republic, protested firmly against such
+claim.  The money had been advanced by the King as a free gift, as his
+contribution to a war in which he was deeply interested, although he was
+nominally at peace with Spain.  As to the private arrangements between
+France and England, the Republic, said the Dutch envoy, was in no sense
+bound by them.  He was no party to the Treaty of Hampton Court, and knew
+nothing of its stipulations.
+
+Courtiers and politicians in plenty at the French court, now that Henry
+was dead, were quite sure that they had heard him say over and over again
+that the Netherlands had bound themselves to pay the Third.  They
+persuaded Mary de' Medici that she likewise had often heard him say so,
+and induced her to take high ground on the subject in her interviews with
+Aerssens.  The luckless queen, who was always in want of money to satisfy
+the insatiable greed of her favourites, and to buy off the enmity of the
+great princes, was very vehement--although she knew as much of those
+transactions as of the finances of Prester John or the Lama of Thibet
+--in maintaining this claim of her government upon the States.
+
+"After talking with the ministers," said Aerssens, "I had an interview
+with the Queen.  I knew that she had been taught her lesson, to insist on
+the payment of the Third.  So I did not speak at all of the matter, but
+talked exclusively and at length of the French regiments in the States'
+service.  She was embarrassed, and did not know exactly what to say.
+At last, without replying a single word to what I had been saying, she
+became very red in the face, and asked me if I were not instructed to
+speak of the money due to England.  Whereupon I spoke in the sense
+already indicated.  She interrupted me by saying she had a perfect
+recollection that the late king intended and understood that we were to
+pay the Third to England, and had talked with her very seriously on the
+subject.  If he were living, he would think it very strange, she said,
+that we refused; and so on.
+
+"Soissons, too, pretends to remember perfectly that such were the King's
+intentions.  'Tis a very strange thing, Sir.  Every one knows now the
+secrets of the late king, if you are willing to listen.  Yet he was not
+in the habit of taking all the world into his confidence.  The Queen
+takes her opinions as they give them to her.  'Tis a very good princess,
+but I am sorry she is so ignorant of affairs.  As she says she remembers,
+one is obliged to say one believes her.  But I, who knew the King so
+intimately, and saw him so constantly, know that he could only have said
+that the Third was paid in acquittal of his debts to and for account of
+the King of England, and not that we were to make restitution thereof.
+The Chancellor tells me my refusal has been taken as an affront by the
+Queen, and Puysieux says it is a contempt which she can't swallow."
+
+Aerssens on his part remained firm; his pertinacity being the greater
+as he thoroughly understood the subject which he was talking about, an
+advantage which was rarely shared in by those with whom he conversed.
+The Queen, highly scandalized by his demeanour, became from that time
+forth his bitter enemy, and, as already stated, was resolved to be rid
+of him.
+
+Nor was the Envoy at first desirous of remaining.  He had felt after
+Henry's death and Sully's disgrace, and the complete transformation of
+the France which he had known, that his power of usefulness was gone.
+"Our enemies," he said, "have got the advantage which I used to have in
+times past, and I recognize a great coldness towards us, which is
+increasing every day."  Nevertheless, he yielded reluctantly to
+Barneveld's request that he should for the time at least remain at his
+post.  Later on, as the intrigues against him began to unfold themselves,
+and his faithful services were made use of at home to blacken his
+character and procure his removal, he refused to resign, as to do so
+would be to play into the hands of his enemies, and by inference at
+least to accuse himself of infidelity to his trust.
+
+But his concealed rage and his rancor grew more deadly every day.  He was
+fully aware of the plots against him, although he found it difficult to
+trace them to their source.
+
+"I doubt not," he wrote to Jacques de Maldere, the distinguished
+diplomatist and senator, who had recently returned from his embassy to
+England, "that this beautiful proposition of de Russy has been sent to
+your Province of Zealand.  Does it not seem to you a plot well woven as
+well in Holland as at this court to remove me from my post with
+disreputation?  What have I done that should cause the Queen to
+disapprove my proceedings?  Since the death of the late king I have
+always opposed the Third, which they have been trying to fix upon the
+treasury, on the ground that Henry never spoke to me of restitution, that
+the receipts given were simple ones, and that the money given was spent
+for the common benefit of France and the States under direction of the
+King's government.  But I am expected here to obey M. de Villeroy, who
+says that it was the intention of the late king to oblige us to make the
+payment.  I am not accustomed to obey authority if it be not supported by
+reason.  It is for my masters to reply and to defend me.  The Queen has
+no reason to complain.  I have maintained the interests of my superiors.
+But this is not the cause of the complaints.  My misfortune is that all
+my despatches have been sent from Holland in copy to this court.  Most of
+them contained free pictures of the condition and dealings of those who
+govern here.  M. de Villeroy has found himself depicted often, and now
+under pretext of a public negotiation he has found an opportunity of
+revenging himself .  .  .  .  Besides this cause which Villeroy has found
+for combing my head, Russy has given notice here that I have kept my
+masters in the hopes of being honourably exempted from the claims of this
+government.  The long letter which I wrote to M. de Barneveld justifies
+my proceedings."
+
+It is no wonder that the Ambassador was galled to the quick by the
+outrage which those concerned in the government were seeking to put
+upon him.  How could an honest man fail to be overwhelmed with rage
+and anguish at being dishonoured before the world by his masters for
+scrupulously doing his duty, and for maintaining the rights and dignity
+of his own country?  He knew that the charges were but pretexts, that the
+motives of his enemies were as base as the intrigues themselves, but he
+also knew that the world usually sides with the government against the
+individual, and that a man's reputation is rarely strong enough to
+maintain itself unsullied in a foreign land when his own government
+stretches forth its hand not to, shield, but to stab him.
+
+     [See the similarity of Aerssens position to that of Motley 250 years
+     later, in the biographical sketch of Motley by Oliver Wendell
+     Holmes. D.W.]
+
+"I know," he said, "that this plot has been woven partly in Holland and
+partly here by good correspondence, in order to drive me from my post
+with disreputation.  To this has tended the communication of my
+despatches to make me lose my best friends.  This too was the object of
+the particular imparting to de Russy of all my propositions, in order to
+draw a complaint against me from this court.
+
+"But as I have discovered this accurately, I have resolved to offer to my
+masters the continuance of my very humble service for such time and under
+such conditions as they may think good to prescribe.  I prefer forcing my
+natural and private inclinations to giving an opportunity for the
+ministers of this kingdom to discredit us, and to my enemies to succeed
+in injuring me, and by fraud and malice to force me from my post .  .  .
+I am truly sorry, being ready to retire, wishing to have an honourable
+testimony in recompense of my labours, that one is in such hurry to take
+advantage of my fall.  I cannot believe that my masters wish to suffer
+this.  They are too prudent, and cannot be ignorant of the treachery
+which has been practised on me.  I have maintained their cause.  If they
+have chosen to throw down the fruits of my industry, the blame should be
+imputed to those who consider their own ambition more than the interests
+of the public .  .  .  .  What envoy will ever dare to speak with vigour
+if he is not sustained by the government at home?  .  .  .  .  .  .
+My enemies have misrepresented my actions, and my language as passionate,
+exaggerated, mischievous, but I have no passion except for the service of
+my superiors.  They say that I have a dark and distrustful disposition,
+but I have been alarmed at the alliance now forming here with the King of
+Spain, through the policy of M. de Villeroy.  I was the first to discover
+this intrigue, which they thought buried in the bosom of the Triumvirate.
+I gave notice of it to My Lords the States as in duty bound.  It all came
+back to the government in the copies furnished of my secret despatches.
+This is the real source of the complaints against me.  The rest of the
+charges, relating to the Third and other matters, are but pretexts.
+To parry the blow, they pretend that all that is said and done with the
+Spaniard is but feigning.  Who is going to believe that?  Has not the
+Pope intervened in the affair?  .  .  .  I tell you they are furious here
+because I have my eyes open.  I see too far into their affairs to suit
+their purposes.  A new man would suit them better."
+
+His position was hopelessly compromised.  He remained in Paris, however,
+month after month, and even year after year, defying his enemies both at
+the Queen's court and in Holland, feeding fat the grudge he bore to
+Barneveld as the supposed author of the intrigue against him, and drawing
+closer the personal bands which united him to Bouillon and through him to
+Prince Maurice.
+
+The wrath of the Ambassador flamed forth without disguise against
+Barneveld and all his adherents when his removal, as will be related on
+a subsequent page, was at last effected.  And his hatred was likely to
+be deadly.  A man with a shrewd, vivid face, cleanly cut features and a
+restless eye; wearing a close-fitting skull cap, which gave him something
+the lock of a monk, but with the thoroughbred and facile demeanour of
+one familiar with the world; stealthy, smooth, and cruel, a man coldly
+intellectual, who feared no one, loved but few, and never forgot or
+forgave; Francis d'Aerssens, devoured by ambition and burning with
+revenge, was a dangerous enemy.
+
+Time was soon to show whether it was safe to injure him.  Barneveld, from
+well-considered motives of public policy, was favouring his honourable
+recall.  But he allowed a decorous interval of more than three years to
+elapse in which to terminate his affairs, and to take a deliberate
+departure from that French embassy to which the Advocate had originally
+promoted him, and in which there had been so many years of mutual benefit
+and confidence between the two statesmen.  He used no underhand means.
+He did not abuse the power of the States-General which he wielded to cast
+him suddenly and brutally from the distinguished post which he occupied,
+and so to attempt to dishonour him before the world.  Nothing could be
+more respectful and conciliatory than the attitude of the government from
+first to last towards this distinguished functionary.  The Republic
+respected itself too much to deal with honourable agents whose services
+it felt obliged to dispense with as with vulgar malefactors who had been
+detected in crime.  But Aerssens believed that it was the Advocate who
+had caused copies of his despatches to be sent to the French court, and
+that he had deliberately and for a fixed purpose been undermining his
+influence at home and abroad and blackening his character.  All his
+ancient feelings of devotion, if they had ever genuinely existed towards
+his former friend and patron, turned to gall.  He was almost ready to
+deny that he had ever respected Barneveld, appreciated his public
+services, admired his intellect, or felt gratitude for his guidance.
+
+A fierce controversy--to which at a later period it will be necessary to
+call the reader's attention, because it is intimately connected with dark
+scenes afterwards to be enacted--took place between the late ambassador
+and Cornelis van der Myle.  Meantime Barneveld pursued the policy which
+he had marked out for the States-General in regard to France.
+
+Certainly it was a difficult problem.  There could be no doubt that
+metamorphosed France could only be a dangerous ally for the Republic.
+It was in reality impossible that she should be her ally at all.
+And this Barneveld knew.  Still it was better, so he thought, for the
+Netherlands that France should exist than that it should fall into utter
+decomposition.  France, though under the influence of Spain, and doubly
+allied by marriage contracts to Spain, was better than Spain itself in
+the place of France.  This seemed to be the only choice between two
+evils.  Should the whole weight of the States-General be thrown into the
+scale of the malcontent and mutinous princes against the established but
+tottering government of France, it was difficult to say how soon Spain
+might literally, as well as inferentially, reign in Paris.
+
+Between the rebellion and the legitimate government, therefore, Barneveld
+did not hesitate.  France, corporate France, with which the Republic had
+bean so long in close and mutually advantageous alliance, and from whose
+late monarch she had received such constant and valuable benefits, was in
+the Advocate's opinion the only power to be recognised, Papal and Spanish
+though it was.  The advantage of an alliance with the fickle, self-
+seeking, and ever changing mutiny, that was seeking to make use of
+Protestantism to effect its own ends, was in his eyes rather specious
+than real.
+
+By this policy, while making the breach irreparable with Aerssens and as
+many leading politicians as Aerssens could influence, he first brought on
+himself the stupid accusation of swerving towards Spain.  Dull murmurs
+like these, which were now but faintly making themselves heard against
+the reputation of the Advocate, were destined ere long to swell into a
+mighty roar; but he hardly listened now to insinuations which seemed
+infinitely below his contempt.  He still effectually ruled the nation
+through his influence in the States of Holland, where he reigned supreme.
+Thus far Barneveld and My Lords the States-General were one personage.
+
+But there was another great man in the State who had at last grown
+impatient of the Advocate's power, and was secretly resolved to brook it
+no longer.  Maurice of Nassau had felt himself too long rebuked by the
+genius of the Advocate.  The Prince had perhaps never forgiven him for
+the political guardianship which he had exercised over him ever since the
+death of William the Silent.  He resented the leading strings by which
+his youthful footstep had been sustained, and which he seemed always to
+feel about his limbs so long as Barneveld existed.  He had never
+forgotten the unpalatable advice given to him by the Advocate through the
+Princess-Dowager.
+
+The brief campaign in Cleve and Julich was the last great political
+operation in which the two were likely to act in even apparent harmony.
+But the rivalry between the two had already pronounced itself
+emphatically during the negotiations for the truce.  The Advocate had
+felt it absolutely necessary for the Republic to suspend the war at the
+first moment when she could treat with her ancient sovereign on a footing
+of equality.  Spain, exhausted with the conflict, had at last consented
+to what she considered the humiliation of treating with her rebellious
+provinces as with free states over which she claimed no authority.  The
+peace party, led by Barneveld, had triumphed, notwithstanding the steady
+opposition of Prince Maurice and his adherents.
+
+Why had Maurice opposed the treaty?  Because his vocation was over,
+because he was the greatest captain of the age, because his emoluments,
+his consideration, his dignity before the world, his personal power, were
+all vastly greater in war than in his opinion they could possibly be in
+peace.  It was easy for him to persuade himself that what was manifestly
+for his individual interest was likewise essential to the prosperity of
+the country.
+
+The diminution in his revenues consequent on the return to peace was made
+good to him, his brother, and his cousin, by most munificent endowments
+and pensions.  And it was owing to the strenuous exertions of the
+Advocate that these large sums were voted.  A hollow friendship was
+kept up between the two during the first few years of the truce,
+but resentment and jealousy lay deep in Maurice's heart.
+
+At about the period of the return of Aerssens from his French embassy,
+the suppressed fire was ready to flame forth at the first fanning by that
+artful hand.  It was impossible, so Aerssens thought and whispered, that
+two heads could remain on one body politic.  There was no room in the
+Netherlands for both the Advocate and the Prince.  Barneveld was in all
+civil affairs dictator, chief magistrate, supreme judge; but he occupied
+this high station by the force of intellect, will, and experience, not
+through any constitutional provision.  In time of war the Prince was
+generalissimo, commander-in-chief of all the armies of the Republic.
+Yet constitutionally he was not captain-general at all.  He was only
+stadholder of five out of seven provinces.
+
+Barneveld suspected him of still wishing to make himself sovereign of the
+country.  Perhaps his suspicions were incorrect.  Yet there was every
+reason why Maurice should be ambitious of that position.  It would have
+been in accordance with the openly expressed desire of Henry IV. and
+other powerful allies of the Netherlands.  His father's assassination had
+alone prevented his elevation to the rank of sovereign Count of Holland.
+The federal policy of the Provinces had drifted into a republican form
+after their renunciation of their Spanish sovereign, not because the
+people, or the States as representing the people, had deliberately chosen
+a republican system, but because they could get no powerful monarch to
+accept the sovereignty.  They had offered to become subjects of
+Protestant England and of Catholic France.  Both powers had refused the
+offer, and refused it with something like contumely.  However deep the
+subsequent regret on the part of both, there was no doubt of the fact.
+But the internal policy in all the provinces, and in all the towns, was
+republican.  Local self-government existed everywhere.  Each city
+magistracy was a little republic in itself.  The death of William the
+Silent, before he had been invested with the sovereign power of all seven
+provinces, again left that sovereignty in abeyance.  Was the supreme
+power of the Union, created at Utrecht in 1579, vested in the States-
+General?
+
+They were beginning theoretically to claim it, but Barneveld denied the
+existence of any such power either in law or fact.  It was a league of
+sovereignties, he maintained; a confederacy of seven independent states,
+united for certain purposes by a treaty made some thirty years before.
+Nothing could be more imbecile, judging by the light of subsequent events
+and the experience of centuries, than such an organization.  The
+independent and sovereign republic of Zealand or of Groningen, for
+example, would have made a poor figure campaigning, or negotiating, or
+exhibiting itself on its own account before the world.  Yet it was
+difficult to show any charter, precedent, or prescription for the
+sovereignty of the States-General.  Necessary as such an incorporation
+was for the very existence of the Union, no constitutional union had ever
+been enacted.  Practically the Province of Holland, representing more
+than half the population, wealth, strength, and intellect of the whole
+confederation, had achieved an irregular supremacy in the States-General.
+But its undeniable superiority was now causing a rank growth of envy,
+hatred, and jealousy throughout the country, and the great Advocate of
+Holland, who was identified with the province, and had so long wielded
+its power, was beginning to reap the full harvest of that malice.
+
+Thus while there was so much of vagueness in theory and practice as to
+the sovereignty, there was nothing criminal on the part of Maurice if he
+was ambitious of obtaining the sovereignty himself.  He was not seeking
+to compass it by base artifice or by intrigue of any kind.  It was very
+natural that he should be restive under the dictatorship of the Advocate.
+If a single burgher and lawyer could make himself despot of the
+Netherlands, how much more reasonable that he--with the noblest blood of
+Europe in his veins, whose direct ancestor three centuries before had
+been emperor not only of those provinces, but of all Germany and half
+Christendom besides, whose immortal father had under God been the creator
+and saviour of the new commonwealth, had made sacrifices such as man
+never made for a people, and had at last laid down his life in its
+defence; who had himself fought daily from boyhood upwards in the great
+cause, who had led national armies from victory to victory till he had
+placed his country as a military school and a belligerent power foremost
+among the nations, and had at last so exhausted and humbled the great
+adversary and former tyrant that he had been glad of a truce while the
+rebel chief would have preferred to continue the war--should aspire to
+rule by hereditary right a land with which his name and his race were
+indelibly associated by countless sacrifices and heroic achievements.
+
+It was no crime in Maurice to desire the sovereignty.  It was still less
+a crime in Barneveld to believe that he desired it.  There was no special
+reason why the Prince should love the republican form of government
+provided that an hereditary one could be legally substituted for it.
+He had sworn allegiance to the statutes, customs, and privileges of each
+of the provinces of which he had been elected stadholder, but there would
+have been no treason on his part if the name and dignity of stadholder
+should be changed by the States themselves for those of King or sovereign
+Prince.
+
+Yet it was a chief grievance against the Advocate on the part of the
+Prince that Barneveld believed him capable of this ambition.
+
+The Republic existed as a fact, but it had not long existed, nor had it
+ever received a formal baptism.  So undefined was its constitution, and
+so conflicting were the various opinions in regard to it of eminent men,
+that it would be difficult to say how high-treason could be committed
+against it.  Great lawyers of highest intellect and learning believed the
+sovereign power to reside in the separate states, others found that
+sovereignty in the city magistracies, while during a feverish period of
+war and tumult the supreme function had without any written constitution,
+any organic law, practically devolved upon the States-General, who had
+now begun to claim it as a right.  The Republic was neither venerable by
+age nor impregnable in law.  It was an improvised aristocracy of lawyers,
+manufacturers, bankers, and corporations which had done immense work and
+exhibited astonishing sagacity and courage, but which might never have
+achieved the independence of the Provinces unaided by the sword of
+Orange-Nassau and the magic spell which belonged to that name.
+
+Thus a bitter conflict was rapidly developing itself in the heart of the
+Commonwealth.  There was the civil element struggling with the military
+for predominance; sword against gown; states' rights against central
+authority; peace against war; above all the rivalry of one prominent
+personage against another, whose mutual hatred was now artfully inflamed
+by partisans.
+
+And now another element of discord had come, more potent than all the
+rest: the terrible, never ending, struggle of Church against State.
+Theological hatred which forty years long had found vent in the exchange
+of acrimony between the ancient and the Reformed churches was now
+assuming other shapes.  Religion in that age and country was more than
+has often been the case in history the atmosphere of men's daily lives.
+But during the great war for independence, although the hostility between
+the two religious forces was always intense, it was modified especially
+towards the close of the struggle by other controlling influences.  The
+love of independence and the passion for nationality, the devotion to
+ancient political privileges, was often as fervid and genuine in Catholic
+bosoms as in those of Protestants, and sincere adherents of the ancient
+church had fought to the death against Spain in defence of chartered
+rights.
+
+At that very moment it is probable that half the population of the United
+Provinces was Catholic.  Yet it would be ridiculous to deny that the
+aggressive, uncompromising; self-sacrificing, intensely believing,
+perfectly fearless spirit of Calvinism had been the animating soul, the
+motive power of the great revolt.  For the Provinces to have encountered
+Spain and Rome without Calvinism, and relying upon municipal enthusiasm
+only, would have been to throw away the sword and fight with the
+scabbard.
+
+But it is equally certain that those hot gospellers who had suffered so
+much martyrdom and achieved so many miracles were fully aware of their
+power and despotic in its exercise.  Against the oligarchy of commercial
+and juridical corporations they stood there the most terrible aristocracy
+of all: the aristocracy of God's elect, predestined from all time and to
+all eternity to take precedence of and to look down upon their inferior
+and lost fellow creatures.  It was inevitable that this aristocracy,
+which had done so much, which had breathed into a new-born commonwealth
+the breath of its life, should be intolerant, haughty, dogmatic.
+
+The Church of Rome, which had been dethroned after inflicting such
+exquisite tortures during its period of power, was not to raise its head.
+Although so large a proportion of the inhabitants of the country were
+secretly or openly attached to that faith, it was a penal offence to
+participate openly in its rites and ceremonies.  Religious equality,
+except in the minds of a few individuals, was an unimaginable idea.
+There was still one Church which arrogated to itself the sole possession
+of truth, the Church of Geneva.  Those who admitted the possibility of
+other forms and creeds were either Atheists or, what was deemed worse
+than Atheists, Papists, because Papists were assumed to be traitors also,
+and desirous of selling the country to Spain.  An undevout man in that
+land and at that epoch was an almost unknown phenomenon.  Religion was
+as much a recognized necessity of existence as food or drink.  It were
+as easy to find people about without clothes as without religious
+convictions.
+
+The Advocate, who had always adhered to the humble spirit of his
+ancestral device, "Nil scire tutissima fedes," and almost alone among
+his fellow citizens (save those immediate apostles and pupils of his who
+became involved in his fate) in favour of religious toleration, began to
+be suspected of treason and Papacy because, had he been able to give the
+law, it was thought he would have permitted such horrors as the public
+exercise of the Roman Catholic religion.
+
+The hissings and screamings of the vulgar against him as he moved forward
+on his stedfast course he heeded less than those of geese on a common.
+But there was coming a time when this proud and scornful statesman,
+conscious of the superiority conferred by great talents and unparalleled
+experience, would find it less easy to treat the voice of slanderers,
+whether idiots or powerful and intellectual enemies, with contempt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+     Schism in the Church a Public Fact--Struggle for Power between the
+     Sacerdotal and Political Orders--Dispute between Arminius and
+     Gomarus--Rage of James I. at the Appointment of Voratius--Arminians
+     called Remonstrants--Hague Conference--Contra-Remonstrance by
+     Gomarites of Seven Points to the Remonstrants' Five--Fierce
+     Theological Disputes throughout the Country--Ryswyk Secession--
+     Maurice wishes to remain neutral, but finds himself the Chieftain of
+     the Contra-Remonstrant Party--The States of Holland Remonstrant by a
+     large Majority--The States-General Contra-Remonstrant--Sir Ralph
+     Winwood leaves the Hague--Three Armies to take the Field against
+     Protestantism.
+
+Schism in the Church had become a public fact, and theological hatred was
+in full blaze throughout the country.
+
+The great practical question in the Church had been as to the appointment
+of preachers, wardens, schoolmasters, and other officers.  By the
+ecclesiastical arrangements of 1591 great power was conceded to the civil
+authority in church matters, especially in regard to such appointments,
+which were made by a commission consisting of four members named by the
+churches and four by the magistrates in each district.
+
+Barneveld, who above all things desired peace in the Church, had wished
+to revive this ordinance, and in 1612 it had been resolved by the States
+of Holland that each city or village should, if the magistracy approved,
+provisionally conform to it.  The States of Utrecht made at the same time
+a similar arrangement.
+
+It was the controversy which has been going on since the beginning of
+history and is likely to be prolonged to the end of time--the struggle
+for power between the sacerdotal and political orders; the controversy
+whether priests shall control the state or the state govern the priests.
+
+This was the practical question involved in the fierce dispute as to
+dogma.  The famous duel between Arminius and Gomarus; the splendid
+theological tournaments which succeeded; six champions on a side armed in
+full theological panoply and swinging the sharpest curtal axes which
+learning, passion, and acute intellect could devise, had as yet produced
+no beneficent result.  Nobody had been convinced by the shock of
+argument, by the exchange of those desperate blows.  The High Council
+of the Hague had declared that no difference of opinion in the Church
+existed sufficient to prevent fraternal harmony and happiness.  But
+Gomarus loudly declared that, if there were no means of putting down the
+heresy of Arminius, there would before long be a struggle such as would
+set province against province, village against village, family against
+family, throughout the land.  He should be afraid to die in such
+doctrine.  He shuddered that any one should dare to come before God's
+tribunal with such blasphemies.  Meantime his great adversary, the
+learned and eloquent, the musical, frolicsome, hospitable heresiarch was
+no more.  Worn out with controversy, but peaceful and happy in the
+convictions which were so bitterly denounced by Gomarus and a large
+proportion of both preachers and laymen in the Netherlands, and convinced
+that the schism which in his view had been created by those who called
+themselves the orthodox would weaken the cause of Protestantism
+throughout Europe, Arminius died at the age of forty-nine.
+
+The magistrates throughout Holland, with the exception of a few cities,
+were Arminian, the preachers Gomarian; for Arminius ascribed to the
+civil authority the right to decide upon church matters, while Gomarus
+maintained that ecclesiastical affairs should be regulated in
+ecclesiastical assemblies.  The overseers of Leyden University appointed
+Conrad Vorstius to be professor of theology in place of Arminius.  The
+selection filled to the brim the cup of bitterness, for no man was more
+audaciously latitudinarian than he.  He was even suspected of
+Socinianism.  There came a shriek from King James, fierce and shrill
+enough to rouse Arminius from his grave.  James foamed to the mouth at
+the insolence of the overseers in appointing such a monster of infidelity
+to the professorship.  He ordered his books to be publicly burned in St.
+Paul's Churchyard and at both Universities, and would have burned the
+Professor himself with as much delight as Torquemada or Peter Titelman
+ever felt in roasting their victims, had not the day for such festivities
+gone by.  He ordered the States of Holland on pain of for ever forfeiting
+his friendship to exclude Vorstius at once from the theological chair and
+to forbid him from "nestling anywhere in the country."
+
+He declared his amazement that they should tolerate such a pest as Conrad
+Vorstius.  Had they not had enough of the seed sown by that foe of God,
+Arminius?  He ordered the States-General to chase the blasphemous monster
+from the land, or else he would cut off all connection with their false
+and heretic churches and make the other Reformed churches of Europe do
+the same, nor should the youth of England ever be allowed to frequent the
+University of Leyden.
+
+In point of fact the Professor was never allowed to qualify, to preach,
+or to teach; so tremendous was the outcry of Peter Plancius and many
+orthodox preachers, echoing the wrath of the King.  He lived at Gouda
+in a private capacity for several years, until the Synod of Dordrecht
+at last publicly condemned his opinions and deprived him of his
+professorship.
+
+Meantime, the preachers who were disciples of Arminius had in a private
+assembly drawn up what was called a Remonstrance, addressed to the States
+of Holland, and defending themselves from the reproach that they were
+seeking change in the Divine service and desirous of creating tumult and
+schism.
+
+This Remonstrance, set forth by the pen of the famous Uytenbogaert, whom
+Gomarus called the Court Trumpeter, because for a long time he had been
+Prince Maurice's favourite preacher, was placed in the hands of
+Barneveld, for delivery to the States of Holland.  Thenceforth the
+Arminians were called Remonstrants.
+
+The Hague Conference followed, six preachers on a side, and the States of
+Holland exhorted to fraternal compromise.  Until further notice, they
+decreed that no man should be required to believe more than had been laid
+down in the Five Points:
+
+I.  God has from eternity resolved to choose to eternal life those who
+through his grace believe in Jesus Christ, and in faith and obedience so
+continue to the end, and to condemn the unbelieving and unconverted to
+eternal damnation.
+
+II.  Jesus Christ died for all; so, nevertheless, that no one actually
+except believers is redeemed by His death.
+
+III.  Man has not the saving belief from himself, nor out of his free
+will, but he needs thereto God's grace in Christ.
+
+IV.  This grace is the beginning, continuation, and completion of man's
+salvation; all good deeds must be ascribed to it, but it does not work
+irresistibly.
+
+V.  God's grace gives sufficient strength to the true believers to
+overcome evil; but whether they cannot lose grace should be more closely
+examined before it should be taught in full security.
+
+Afterwards they expressed themselves more distinctly on this point, and
+declared that a true believer, through his own fault, can fall away from
+God and lose faith.
+
+
+Before the conference, however, the Gomarite preachers had drawn up a
+Contra-Remonstrance of Seven Points in opposition to the Remonstrants'
+five.
+
+They demanded the holding of a National Synod to settle the difference
+between these Five and Seven Points, or the sending of them to foreign
+universities for arbitration, a mutual promise being given by the
+contending parties to abide by the decision.
+
+Thus much it has been necessary to state concerning what in the
+seventeenth century was called the platform of the two great parties:
+a term which has been perpetuated in our own country, and is familiar
+to all the world in the nineteenth.
+
+These were the Seven Points:
+
+I.  God has chosen from eternity certain persons out of the human race,
+which in and with Adam fell into sin and has no more power to believe and
+Convert itself than a dead man to restore himself to life, in order to
+make them blessed through Christ; while He passes by the rest through His
+righteous judgment, and leaves them lying in their sins.
+
+II.  Children of believing parents, as well as full-grown believers, are
+to be considered as elect so long as they with action do not prove the
+contrary.
+
+III.  God in His election has not looked at the belief and the repentance
+of the elect; but, on the contrary, in His eternal and unchangeable
+design, has resolved to give to the elect faith and stedfastness, and
+thus to make them blessed.
+
+IV.  He, to this end, in the first place, presented to them His only
+begotten Son, whose sufferings, although sufficient for the expiation of
+all men's sins, nevertheless, according to God's decree, serves alone to
+the reconciliation of the elect.
+
+V.  God causest he Gospel to be preached to them, making the same through
+the Holy Ghost, of strength upon their minds; so that they not merely
+obtain power to repent and to believe, but also actually and voluntarily
+do repent and believe.
+
+VI.  Such elect, through the same power of the Holy Ghost through which
+they have once become repentant and believing, are kept in such wise that
+they indeed through weakness fall into heavy sins; but can never wholly
+and for always lose the true faith.
+
+VII.  True believers from this, however, draw no reason for fleshly
+quiet, it being impossible that they who through a true faith were
+planted in Christ should bring forth no fruits of thankfulness; the
+promises of God's help and the warnings of Scripture tending to make
+their salvation work in them in fear and trembling, and to cause them
+more earnestly to desire help from that spirit without which they can
+do nothing.
+
+
+There shall be no more setting forth of these subtle and finely wrought
+abstractions in our pages.  We aspire not to the lofty heights of
+theological and supernatural contemplation, where the atmosphere becomes
+too rarefied for ordinary constitutions.  Rather we attempt an objective
+and level survey of remarkable phenomena manifesting themselves on the
+earth; direct or secondary emanations from those distant spheres.
+
+For in those days, and in that land especially, theology and politics
+were one.  It may be questioned at least whether this practical fusion
+of elements, which may with more safety to the Commonwealth be kept
+separate, did not tend quite as much to lower and contaminate the
+religious sentiments as to elevate the political idea.  To mix habitually
+the solemn phraseology which men love to reserve for their highest and
+most sacred needs with the familiar slang of politics and trade seems
+to our generation not a very desirable proceeding.
+
+The aroma of doubly distilled and highly sublimated dogma is more
+difficult to catch than to comprehend the broader and more practical
+distinctions of every-day party strife.
+
+King James was furious at the thought that common men--the vulgar, the
+people in short--should dare to discuss deep problems of divinity which,
+as he confessed, had puzzled even his royal mind.  Barneveld modestly
+disclaimed the power of seeing with absolute clearness into things beyond
+the reach of the human intellect.  But the honest Netherlanders were not
+abashed by thunder from the royal pulpit, nor perplexed by hesitations
+which darkened the soul of the great Advocate.
+
+In burghers' mansions, peasants' cottages, mechanics' back-parlours, on
+board herring smacks, canal boats, and East Indiamen; in shops, counting-
+rooms, farmyards, guard-rooms, ale-houses; on the exchange, in the
+tennis-court, on the mall; at banquets, at burials, christenings, or
+bridals; wherever and whenever human creatures met each other, there
+was ever to be found the fierce wrangle of Remonstrant and Contra-
+Remonstrant, the hissing of red-hot theological rhetoric, the pelting of
+hostile texts.  The blacksmith's iron cooled on the anvil, the tinker
+dropped a kettle half mended, the broker left a bargain unclinched, the
+Scheveningen fisherman in his wooden shoes forgot the cracks in his
+pinkie, while each paused to hold high converse with friend or foe on
+fate, free will, or absolute foreknowledge; losing himself in wandering
+mazes whence there was no issue.  Province against province, city against
+city, family against family; it was one vast scene of bickering,
+denunciation, heart-burnings, mutual excommunication and hatred.
+
+Alas! a generation of mankind before, men had stood banded together to
+resist, with all the might that comes from union, the fell spirit of the
+Holy Inquisition, which was dooming all who had wandered from the ancient
+fold or resisted foreign tyranny to the axe, the faggot, the living
+grave.  There had been small leisure then for men who fought for
+Fatherland, and for comparative liberty of conscience, to tear each
+others' characters in pieces, and to indulge in mutual hatreds and
+loathing on the question of predestination.
+
+As a rule the population, especially of the humbler classes, and a great
+majority of the preachers were Contra-Remonstrant; the magistrates, the
+burgher patricians, were Remonstrant.  In Holland the controlling
+influence was Remonstrant; but Amsterdam and four or five other cities of
+that province held to the opposite doctrine.  These cities formed
+therefore a small minority in the States Assembly of Holland sustained by
+a large majority in the States-General.  The Province of Utrecht was
+almost unanimously Remonstrant.  The five other provinces were decidedly
+Contra-Remonstrant.
+
+It is obvious therefore that the influence of Barneveld, hitherto so all-
+controlling in the States-General, and which rested on the complete
+submission of the States of Holland to his will, was tottering.  The
+battle-line between Church and State was now drawn up; and it was at the
+same time a battle between the union and the principles of state
+sovereignty.
+
+It had long since been declared through the mouth of the Advocate, but
+in a solemn state manifesto, that My Lords the States-General were the
+foster-fathers and the natural protectors of the Church, to whom supreme
+authority in church matters belonged.
+
+The Contra-Remonstrants, on the other hand, maintained that all the
+various churches made up one indivisible church, seated above the States,
+whether Provincial or General, and governed by the Holy Ghost acting
+directly upon the congregations.
+
+As the schism grew deeper and the States-General receded from the
+position which they had taken up under the lead of the Advocate, the
+scene was changed.  A majority of the Provinces being Contra-Remonstrant,
+and therefore in favour of a National Synod, the States-General as a body
+were of necessity for the Synod.
+
+It was felt by the clergy that, if many churches existed, they would all
+remain subject to the civil authority.  The power of the priesthood would
+thus sink before that of the burgher aristocracy.  There must be one
+church--the Church of Geneva and Heidelberg--if that theocracy which the
+Gomarites meant to establish was not to vanish as a dream.  It was
+founded on Divine Right, and knew no chief magistrate but the Holy Ghost.
+A few years before the States-General had agreed to a National Synod, but
+with a condition that there should be revision of the Netherland
+Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism.
+
+Against this the orthodox infallibilists had protested and thundered,
+because it was an admission that the vile Arminian heresy might perhaps
+be declared correct.  It was now however a matter of certainty that the
+States-General would cease to oppose the unconditional Synod, because the
+majority sided with the priesthood.
+
+The magistrates of Leyden had not long before opposed the demand for a
+Synod on the ground that the war against Spain was not undertaken to
+maintain one sect; that men of various sects and creeds had fought with
+equal valour against the common foe; that religious compulsion was
+hateful, and that no synod had a right to claim Netherlanders as slaves.
+
+To thoughtful politicians like Barneveld, Hugo Grotius, and men who acted
+with them, fraught with danger to the state, that seemed a doctrine by
+which mankind were not regarded as saved or doomed according to belief
+or deeds, but as individuals divided from all eternity into two classes
+which could never be united, but must ever mutually regard each other as
+enemies.
+
+And like enemies Netherlanders were indeed beginning to regard each
+other.  The man who, banded like brothers, had so heroically fought for
+two generations long for liberty against an almost superhuman despotism,
+now howling and jeering against each other like demons, seemed determined
+to bring the very name of liberty into contempt.
+
+Where the Remonstrants were in the ascendant, they excited the hatred and
+disgust of the orthodox by their overbearing determination to carry their
+Five Points.  A broker in Rotterdam of the Contra-Remonstrant persuasion,
+being about to take a wife, swore he had rather be married by a pig than
+a parson.  For this sparkling epigram he was punished by the Remonstrant
+magistracy with loss of his citizenship for a year and the right to
+practise his trade for life.  A casuistical tinker, expressing himself
+violently in the same city against the Five Points, and disrespectfully
+towards the magistrates for tolerating them, was banished from the town.
+A printer in the neighbourhood, disgusted with these and similar efforts
+of tyranny on the part of the dominant party, thrust a couple of lines of
+doggrel into the lottery:
+
+    "In name of the Prince of Orange, I ask once and again,
+     What difference between the Inquisition of Rotterdam and Spain?"
+
+For this poetical effort the printer was sentenced to forfeit the prize
+that he had drawn in the lottery, and to be kept in prison on bread and
+water for a fortnight.
+
+Certainly such punishments were hardly as severe as being beheaded or
+burned or buried alive, as would have been the lot of tinkers and
+printers and brokers who opposed the established church in the days of
+Alva, but the demon of intolerance, although its fangs were drawn, still
+survived, and had taken possession of both parties in the Reformed
+Church.  For it was the Remonstrants who had possession of the churches
+at Rotterdam, and the printer's distich is valuable as pointing out that
+the name of Orange was beginning to identify itself with the Contra-
+Remonstrant faction.  At this time, on the other hand, the gabble that
+Barneveld had been bought by Spanish gold, and was about to sell his
+country to Spain, became louder than a whisper.  Men were not ashamed,
+from theological hatred, to utter such senseless calumnies against a
+venerable statesman whose long life had been devoted to the cause of his
+country's independence and to the death struggle with Spain.
+
+As if because a man admitted the possibility of all his fellow-creatures
+being saved from damnation through repentance and the grace of God, he
+must inevitably be a traitor to his country and a pensionary of her
+deadliest foe.
+
+And where the Contra-Remonstrants held possession of the churches and the
+city governments, acts of tyranny which did not then seem ridiculous were
+of everyday occurrence.  Clergymen, suspected of the Five Points, were
+driven out of the pulpits with bludgeons or assailed with brickbats at
+the church door.  At Amsterdam, Simon Goulart, for preaching the doctrine
+of universal salvation and for disputing the eternal damnation of young
+children, was forbidden thenceforth to preach at all.
+
+But it was at the Hague that the schism in religion and politics first
+fatally widened itself.  Henry Rosaeus, an eloquent divine, disgusted
+with his colleague Uytenbogaert, refused all communion with him, and was
+in consequence suspended.  Excluded from the Great Church, where he had
+formerly ministered, he preached every Sunday at Ryswyk, two or three
+miles distant.  Seven hundred Contra-Remonstrants of the Hague followed
+their beloved pastor, and, as the roads to Ryswyk were muddy and sloppy
+in winter, acquired the unsavoury nickname of the "Mud Beggars."  The
+vulgarity of heart which suggested the appellation does not inspire
+to-day great sympathy with the Remonstrant party, even if one were
+inclined to admit, what is not the fact, that they represented the cause
+of religious equality.  For even the illustrious Grotius was at that very
+moment repudiating the notion that there could be two religions in one
+state.  "Difference in public worship," he said, "was in kingdoms
+pernicious, but in free commonwealths in the highest degree destructive."
+
+It was the struggle between Church and State for supremacy over the whole
+body politic.  "The Reformation," said Grotius, "was not brought about by
+synods, but by kings, princes, and magistrates."  It was the same eternal
+story, the same terrible two-edged weapon, "Cujus reggio ejus religio,"
+found in the arsenal of the first Reformers, and in every politico-
+religious arsenal of history.
+
+"By an eternal decree of God," said Gomarus in accordance with Calvin,
+"it has been fixed who are to be saved and who damned.  By His decree
+some are drawn to faith and godliness, and, being drawn, can never fall
+away.  God leaves all the rest in the general corruption of human nature
+and their own misdeeds."
+
+"God has from eternity made this distinction in the fallen human race,"
+said Arminius, "that He pardons those who desist from their sins and put
+their faith in Christ, and will give them eternal life, but will punish
+those who remain impenitent.  Moreover, it is pleasanter to God that all
+men should repent, and, coming to knowledge of truth, remain therein, but
+He compels none."
+
+This was the vital difference of dogma.  And it was because they could
+hold no communion with those who believed in the efficacy of repentance
+that Rosaeus and his followers had seceded to Ryswyk, and the Reformed
+Church had been torn into two very unequal parts.  But it is difficult to
+believe that out of this arid field of controversy so plentiful a harvest
+of hatred and civil convulsion could have ripened.  More practical than
+the insoluble problems, whether repentance could effect salvation, and
+whether dead infants were hopelessly damned, was the question who should
+rule both Church and State.
+
+There could be but one church.  On that Remonstrants and Contra-
+Remonstrants were agreed.  But should the five Points or the Seven
+Points obtain the mastery?  Should that framework of hammered iron, the
+Confession and Catechism, be maintained in all its rigidity around the
+sheepfold, or should the disciples of the arch-heretic Arminius, the
+salvation-mongers, be permitted to prowl within it?
+
+Was Barneveld, who hated the Reformed religion (so men told each other),
+and who believed in nothing, to continue dictator of the whole Republic
+through his influence over one province, prescribing its religious dogmas
+and laying down its laws; or had not the time come for the States-General
+to vindicate the rights of the Church, and to crush for ever the
+pernicious principle of State sovereignty and burgher oligarchy?
+
+The abyss was wide and deep, and the wild waves were raging more madly
+every hour.  The Advocate, anxious and troubled, but undismayed, did his
+best in the terrible emergency.  He conferred with Prince Maurice on the
+subject of the Ryswyk secession, and men said that he sought to impress
+upon him, as chief of the military forces, the necessity of putting down
+religious schism with the armed hand.
+
+The Prince had not yet taken a decided position.  He was still under the
+influence of John Uytenbogaert, who with Arminius and the Advocate made
+up the fateful three from whom deadly disasters were deemed to have come
+upon the Commonwealth.  He wished to remain neutral.  But no man can be
+neutral in civil contentions threatening the life of the body politic any
+more than the heart can be indifferent if the human frame is sawn in two.
+
+"I am a soldier," said Maurice, "not a divine.  These are matters of
+theology which I don't understand, and about which I don't trouble
+myself."
+
+On another occasion he is reported to have said, "I know nothing of
+predestination, whether it is green or whether it is blue; but I do know
+that the Advocate's pipe and mine will never play the same tune."
+
+It was not long before he fully comprehended the part which he must
+necessarily play.  To say that he was indifferent to religious matters
+was as ridiculous as to make a like charge against Barneveld.  Both
+were religious men.  It would have been almost impossible to find an
+irreligious character in that country, certainly not among its highest-
+placed and leading minds.  Maurice had strong intellectual powers.  He
+was a regular attendant on divine worship, and was accustomed to hear
+daily religious discussions.  To avoid them indeed, he would have been
+obliged not only to fly his country, but to leave Europe.  He had a
+profound reverence for the memory of his father, Calbo y Calbanista, as
+William the Silent had called himself.  But the great prince had died
+before these fierce disputes had torn the bosom of the Reformed Church,
+and while Reformers still were brethren.  But if Maurice were a religious
+man, he was also a keen politician; a less capable politician, however,
+than a soldier, for he was confessedly the first captain of his age.
+He was not rapid in his conceptions, but he was sure in the end to
+comprehend his opportunity.
+
+The Church, the people, the Union--the sacerdotal, the democratic,
+and the national element--united under a name so potent to conjure
+with as the name of Orange-Nassau, was stronger than any other possible
+combination.  Instinctively and logically therefore the Stadholder found
+himself the chieftain of the Contra-Remonstrant party, and without the
+necessity of an apostasy such as had been required of his great
+contemporary to make himself master of France.
+
+The power of Barneveld and his partisans was now put to a severe strain.
+His efforts to bring back the Hague seceders were powerless.  The
+influence of Uytenbogaert over the Stadholder steadily diminished.  He
+prayed to be relieved from his post in the Great Church of the Hague,
+especially objecting to serve with a Contra-Remonstrant preacher whom
+Maurice wished to officiate there in place of the seceding Rosaeus.  But
+the Stadholder refused to let him go, fearing his influence in other
+places.  "There is stuff in him," said Maurice, "to outweigh half a dozen
+Contra-Remonstrant preachers."  Everywhere in Holland  the opponents of
+the Five Points refused to go to the churches, and set up tabernacles for
+themselves in barns, outhouses, canal-boats.  And the authorities in town
+and village nailed up the barn-doors, and dispersed the canal boat
+congregations, while the populace pelted them with stones.  The seceders
+appealed to the Stadholder, pleading that at least they ought to be
+allowed to hear the word of God as they understood it without being
+forced into churches where they were obliged to hear Arminian blasphemy.
+At least their barns might be left them.  "Barns," said Maurice, "barns
+and outhouses!  Are we to preach in barns?  The churches belong to us,
+and we mean to have them too."
+
+Not long afterwards the Stadholder, clapping his hand on his sword hilt,
+observed that these differences could only be settled by force of arms.
+An ominous remark and a dreary comment on the forty years' war against
+the Inquisition.
+
+And the same scenes that were enacting in Holland were going on in
+Overyssel and Friesland and Groningen; but with a difference.  Here it
+was the Five Points men who were driven into secession, whose barns were
+nailed up, and whose preachers were mobbed.  A lugubrious spectacle, but
+less painful certainly than the hangings and drownings and burnings alive
+in the previous century to prevent secession from the indivisible church.
+
+It is certain that stadholders and all other magistrates ever since the
+establishment of independence were sworn to maintain the Reformed
+religion and to prevent a public divine worship under any other form.  It
+is equally certain that by the 13th Article of the Act of Union--the
+organic law of the confederation made at Utrecht in 1579--each province
+reserved for itself full control of religious questions.  It would indeed
+seem almost unimaginable in a country where not only every province, but
+every city, every municipal board, was so jealous of its local privileges
+and traditional rights that the absolute disposition over the highest,
+gravest, and most difficult questions that can inspire and perplex
+humanity should be left to a general government, and one moreover which
+had scarcely come into existence.
+
+Yet into this entirely illogical position the Commonwealth was steadily
+drifting.  The cause was simple enough.  The States of Holland, as
+already observed, were Remonstrant by a large majority.  The States-
+General were Contra-Remonstrant by a still greater majority.  The Church,
+rigidly attached to the Confession and Catechism, and refusing all change
+except through decree of a synod to be called by the general government
+which it controlled, represented the national idea.  It thus identified
+itself with the Republic, and was in sympathy with a large majority of
+the population.
+
+Logic, law, historical tradition were on the side of the Advocate and
+the States' right party.  The instinct of national self-preservation,
+repudiating the narrow and destructive doctrine of provincial
+sovereignty, were on the side of the States-General and the Church.
+
+Meantime James of Great Britain had written letters both to the States of
+Holland and the States-General expressing his satisfaction with the Five
+Points, and deciding that there was nothing objectionable in the doctrine
+of predestination therein set forth.  He had recommended unity and peace
+in Church and Assembly, and urged especially that these controverted
+points should not be discussed in the pulpit to the irritation and
+perplexity of the common people.
+
+The King's letters had produced much satisfaction in the moderate party.
+Barneveld and his followers were then still in the ascendant, and it
+seemed possible that the Commonwealth might enjoy a few moments of
+tranquillity.  That James had given a new exhibition of his astounding
+inconsistency was a matter very indifferent to all but himself, and he
+was the last man to trouble himself for that reproach.
+
+It might happen, when be should come to realize how absolutely he had
+obeyed the tuition of the Advocate and favoured the party which he had
+been so vehemently opposing, that he might regret and prove willing to
+retract.  But for the time being the course of politics had seemed
+running smoother.  The acrimony of the relations between the English
+government and dominant party at the Hague was sensibly diminished.  The
+King seemed for an instant to have obtained a true insight into the
+nature of the struggle in the States.  That it was after all less a
+theological than a political question which divided parties had at last
+dawned upon him.
+
+"If you have occasion to write on the subject," said Barneveld, "it is
+above all necessary to make it clear that ecclesiastical persons and
+their affairs must stand under the direction of the sovereign authority,
+for our preachers understand that the disposal of ecclesiastical persons
+and affairs belongs to them, so that they alone are to appoint preachers,
+elders, deacons, and other clerical persons, and to regulate the whole
+ecclesiastical administration according to their pleasure or by a popular
+government which they call the community."
+
+"The Counts of Holland from all ancient times were never willing under
+the Papacy to surrender their right of presentation to the churches and
+control of all spiritual and ecclesiastical benefices.  The Emperor
+Charles and King Philip even, as Counts of Holland, kept these rights to
+themselves, save that they in enfeoffing more than a hundred gentlemen,
+of noble and ancient families with seigniorial manors, enfeoffed them
+also with the right of presentation to churches and benefices on their
+respective estates.  Our preachers pretend to have won this right against
+the Countship, the gentlemen, nobles, and others, and that it belongs to
+them."
+
+It is easy to see that this was a grave, constitutional, legal, and
+historical problem not to be solved offhand by vehement citations from
+Scripture, nor by pragmatical dissertations from the lips of foreign
+ambassadors.
+
+"I believe this point," continued Barneveld, "to be the most difficult
+question of all, importing far more than subtle searchings and
+conflicting sentiments as to passages of Holy Writ, or disputations
+concerning God's eternal predestination and other points thereupon
+depending.  Of these doctrines the Archbishop of Canterbury well observed
+in the Conference of 1604 that one ought to teach them ascendendo and not
+descendendo."
+
+The letters of the King had been very favourably received both in the
+States-General and in the Assembly of Holland.  "You will present the
+replies," wrote Barneveld to the ambassador in London, "at the best
+opportunity and with becoming compliments.  You may be assured and assure
+his Majesty that they have been very agreeable to both assemblies.  Our
+commissioners over there on the East Indian matter ought to know nothing
+of these letters."
+
+This statement is worthy of notice, as Grotius was one of those
+commissioners, and, as will subsequently appear, was accused of being
+the author of the letters.
+
+"I understand from others," continued the Advocate, "that the gentleman
+well known to you--[Obviously Francis Aerssens]--is not well pleased
+that through other agency than his these letters have been written and
+presented.  I think too that the other business is much against his
+grain, but on the whole since your departure he has accommodated himself
+to the situation."
+
+But if Aerssens for the moment seemed quiet, the orthodox clergy were
+restive.
+
+"I know," said Barneveld, "that some of our ministers are so audacious
+that of themselves, or through others, they mean to work by direct or
+indirect means against these letters.  They mean to show likewise that
+there are other and greater differences of doctrine than those already
+discussed.  You will keep a sharp eye on the sails and provide against
+the effect of counter-currents.  To maintain the authority of their Great
+Mightinesses over ecclesiastical matters is more than necessary for the
+conservation of the country's welfare and of the true Christian religion.
+As his Majesty would not allow this principle to be controverted in his
+own realms, as his books clearly prove, so we trust that he will not find
+it good that it should be controverted in our state as sure to lead to a
+very disastrous and inequitable sequel."
+
+And a few weeks later the Advocate and the whole party of toleration
+found themselves, as is so apt to be the case, between two fires.  The
+Catholics became as turbulent as the extreme Calvinists, and already
+hopes were entertained by Spanish emissaries and spies that this rapidly
+growing schism in the Reformed Church might be dexterously made use of to
+bring the Provinces, when they should become fairly distracted, back to
+the dominion of Spain.
+
+"Our precise zealots in the Reformed religion, on the one side," wrote
+Barneveld, "and the Jesuits on the other, are vigorously kindling the
+fire of discord.  Keep a good lookout for the countermine which is now
+working against the good advice of his Majesty for mutual toleration.
+The publication of the letters was done without order, but I believe with
+good intent, in the hope that the vehemence and exorbitance of some
+precise Puritans in our State should thereby be checked.  That which is
+now doing against us in printed libels is the work of the aforesaid
+Puritans and a few Jesuits.  The pretence in those libels, that there are
+other differences in the matter of doctrine, is mere fiction designed to
+make trouble and confusion."
+
+In the course of the autumn, Sir Ralph Winwood departed from the Hague,
+to assume soon afterwards in England the position of secretary of state
+for foreign affairs.  He did not take personal farewell of Barneveld, the
+Advocate being absent in North Holland at the moment, and detained there
+by indisposition.  The leave-taking was therefore by letter.  He had done
+much to injure the cause which the Dutch statesman held vital to the
+Republic, and in so doing he had faithfully carried out the instructions
+of his master.  Now that James had written these conciliatory letters to
+the States, recommending toleration, letters destined to be famous,
+Barneveld was anxious that the retiring ambassador should foster the
+spirit of moderation, which for a moment prevailed at the British court.
+But he was not very hopeful in the matter.
+
+"Mr. Winwood is doubtless over there now," he wrote to Caron.  "He has
+promised in public and private to do all good offices.  The States-
+General made him a present on his departure of the value of L4000.  I
+fear nevertheless that he, especially in religious matters, will not do
+the best offices.  For besides that he is himself very hard and precise,
+those who in this country are hard and precise have made a dead set at
+him, and tried to make him devoted to their cause, through many
+fictitious and untruthful means."
+
+The Advocate, as so often before, sent assurances to the King that "the
+States-General, and especially the States of Holland, were resolved to
+maintain the genuine Reformed religion, and oppose all novelties and
+impurities conflicting with it," and the Ambassador was instructed to see
+that the countermine, worked so industriously against his Majesty's
+service and the honour and reputation of the Provinces, did not prove
+successful.
+
+"To let the good mob play the master," he said, "and to permit hypocrites
+and traitors in the Flemish manner to get possession of the government of
+the provinces and cities, and to cause upright patriots whose faith and
+truth has so long been proved, to be abandoned, by the blessing of God,
+shall never be accomplished.  Be of good heart, and cause these Flemish
+tricks to be understood on every occasion, and let men know that we mean
+to maintain, with unchanging constancy, the authority of the government,
+the privileges and laws of the country, as well as the true Reformed
+religion."
+
+The statesman was more than ever anxious for moderate counsels in the
+religious questions, for it was now more important than ever that there
+should be concord in the Provinces, for the cause of Protestantism, and
+with it the existence of the Republic, seemed in greater danger than at
+any moment since the truce.  It appeared certain that the alliance
+between France and Spain had been arranged, and that the Pope, Spain, the
+Grand-duke of Tuscany, and their various adherents had organized a strong
+combination, and were enrolling large armies to take the field in the
+spring, against the Protestant League of the princes and electors in
+Germany.  The great king was dead.  The Queen-Regent was in the hand of
+Spain, or dreamed at least of an impossible neutrality, while the priest
+who was one day to resume the part of Henry, and to hang upon the sword
+of France the scales in which the opposing weights of Protestantism and
+Catholicism in Europe were through so many awful years to be balanced,
+was still an obscure bishop.
+
+The premonitory signs of the great religious war in Germany were not to
+be mistaken.  In truth, the great conflict had already opened in the
+duchies, although few men as yet comprehended the full extent of that
+movement.  The superficial imagined that questions of hereditary
+succession, like those involved in the dispute, were easily to be settled
+by statutes of descent, expounded by doctors of law, and sustained, if
+needful, by a couple of comparatively bloodless campaigns.  Those who
+looked more deeply into causes felt that the limitations of Imperial
+authority, the ambition of a great republic, suddenly starting into
+existence out of nothing, and the great issues of the religious
+reformation, were matters not so easily arranged.  When the scene
+shifted, as it was so soon to do, to the heart of Bohemia, when
+Protestantism had taken the Holy Roman Empire by the beard in its
+ancient palace, and thrown Imperial stadholders out of window, it would
+be evident to the blindest that something serious was taking place.
+
+Meantime Barneveld, ever watchful of passing events, knew that great
+forces of Catholicism were marshalling in the south.  Three armies were
+to take the field against Protestantism at the orders of Spain and the
+Pope.  One at the door of the Republic, and directed especially against
+the Netherlands, was to resume the campaign in the duchies, and to
+prevent any aid going to Protestant Germany from Great Britain or from
+Holland.  Another in the Upper Palatinate was to make the chief movement
+against the Evangelical hosts.  A third in Austria was to keep down the
+Protestant party in Bohemia, Hungary, Austria, Moravia, and Silesia.  To
+sustain this movement, it was understood that all the troops then in
+Italy were to be kept all the winter on a war footing.'
+
+Was this a time for the great Protestant party in the Netherlands to tear
+itself in pieces for a theological subtlety, about which good Christians
+might differ without taking each other by the throat?
+
+"I do not lightly believe or fear," said the Advocate, in communicating a
+survey of European affairs at that moment to Carom "but present advices
+from abroad make me apprehend dangers."
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Aristocracy of God's elect
+Determined to bring the very name of liberty into contempt
+Disputing the eternal damnation of young children
+Fate, free will, or absolute foreknowledge
+Louis XIII.
+No man can be neutral in civil contentions
+No synod had a right to claim Netherlanders as slaves
+Philip IV.
+Priests shall control the state or the state govern the priests
+Schism in the Church had become a public fact
+That cynical commerce in human lives
+The voice of slanderers
+Theological hatred was in full blaze throughout the country
+Theology and politics were one
+To look down upon their inferior and lost fellow creatures
+Whether dead infants were hopelessly damned
+Whether repentance could effect salvation
+Whose mutual hatred was now artfully inflamed by partisans
+Work of the aforesaid Puritans and a few Jesuits
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext Life of John Barneveld, v5, Motley #90
+by John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND
+
+WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR
+
+By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+
+
+Life of John of Barneveld, 1613-15
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+     Aerssens remains Two Years longer in France--Derives many Personal
+     Advantages from his Post--He visits the States-General--Aubery du
+     Maurier appointed French Ambassador--He demands the Recall of
+     Aerssens--Peace of Sainte-Menehould--Asperen de Langerac appointed
+     in Aerssens' Place.
+
+Francis Aerssens had remained longer at his post than had been intended
+by the resolution of the States of Holland, passed in May 1611.
+
+It is an exemplification of the very loose constitutional framework of
+the United Provinces that the nomination of the ambassador to France
+belonged to the States of Holland, by whom his salary was paid, although,
+of course, he was the servant of the States-General, to whom his public
+and official correspondence was addressed.  His most important despatches
+were however written directly to Barneveld so long as he remained in
+power, who had also the charge of the whole correspondence, public or
+private, with all the envoys of the States.
+
+Aerssens had, it will be remembered, been authorized to stay one year
+longer in France if he thought he could be useful there.  He stayed two
+years, and on the whole was not useful.  He had too many eyes and too
+many ears.  He had become mischievous by the very activity of his
+intelligence.  He was too zealous.  There were occasions in France at
+that moment in which it was as well to be blind and deaf.  It was
+impossible for the Republic, unless driven to it by dire necessity, to
+quarrel with its great ally.  It had been calculated by Duplessis-Mornay
+that France had paid subsidies to the Provinces amounting from first to
+last to 200 millions of livres.  This was an enormous exaggeration.  It
+was Barneveld's estimate that before the truce the States had received
+from France eleven millions of florins in cash, and during the truce up
+to the year 1613, 3,600,000 in addition, besides a million still due,
+making a total of about fifteen millions.  During the truce France kept
+two regiments of foot amounting to 4200 soldiers and two companies of
+cavalry in Holland at the service of the States, for which she was bound
+to pay yearly 600,000 livres.  And the Queen-Regent had continued all the
+treaties by which these arrangements were secured, and professed sincere
+and continuous friendship for the States.  While the French-Spanish
+marriages gave cause for suspicion, uneasiness, and constant watchfulness
+in the States, still the neutrality of France was possible in the coming
+storm.  So long as that existed, particularly when the relations of
+England with Holland through the unfortunate character of King James were
+perpetually strained to a point of imminent rupture, it was necessary to
+hold as long as it vas possible to the slippery embrace of France.
+
+But Aerssens was almost aggressive in his attitude.  He rebuked the
+vacillations, the shortcomings, the imbecility, of the Queen's government
+in offensive terms.  He consorted openly with the princes who were on the
+point of making war upon the Queen-Regent.  He made a boast to the
+Secretary of State Villeroy that he had unravelled all his secret plots
+against the Netherlands.  He declared it to be understood in France,
+since the King's death, by the dominant and Jesuitical party that the
+crown depended temporally as well as spiritually on the good pleasure of
+the Pope.
+
+No doubt he was perfectly right in many of his opinions.  No ruler or
+statesman in France worthy of the name would hesitate, in the impending
+religious conflict throughout Europe and especially in Germany, to
+maintain for the kingdom that all controlling position which was its
+splendid privilege.  But to preach this to Mary de' Medici was waste of
+breath.  She was governed by the Concini's, and the Concini's were
+governed by Spain.  The woman who was believed to have known beforehand
+of the plot to murder her great husband, who had driven the one powerful
+statesman on whom the King relied, Maximilian de Bethune, into
+retirement, and whose foreign affairs were now completely in the hands
+of the ancient Leaguer Villeroy--who had served every government in the
+kingdom for forty years--was not likely to be accessible to high views
+of public policy.
+
+Two years had now elapsed since the first private complaints against the
+Ambassador, and the French government were becoming impatient at his
+presence.  Aerssens had been supported by Prince Maurice, to whom he had
+long paid his court.  He was likewise loyally protected by Barneveld,
+whom he publicly flattered and secretly maligned.  But it was now
+necessary that he should be gone if peaceful relations with France were
+to be preserved.
+
+After all, the Ambassador had not made a bad business of his embassy from
+his own point of view.  A stranger in the Republic, for his father the
+Greffier was a refugee from Brabant, he had achieved through his own
+industry and remarkable talents, sustained by the favour of Barneveld--
+to whom he owed all his diplomatic appointments--an eminent position in
+Europe.  Secretary to the legation to France in 1594, he had been
+successively advanced to the post of resident agent, and when the
+Republic had been acknowledged by the great powers, to that of
+ambassador.  The highest possible functions that representatives of
+emperors and kings could enjoy had been formally recognized in the person
+of the minister of a new-born republic.  And this was at a moment when,
+with exception of the brave but insignificant cantons of Switzerland, the
+Republic had long been an obsolete idea.
+
+In a pecuniary point of view, too, he had not fared badly during his
+twenty years of diplomatic office.  He had made much money in various
+ways.  The King not long before his death sent him one day 20,000 florins
+as a present, with a promise soon to do much more for him.
+
+Having been placed in so eminent a post, he considered it as due to
+himself to derive all possible advantage from it.  "Those who serve at
+the altar," he said a little while after his return, "must learn to live
+by it.  I served their High Mightinesses at the court of a great king,
+and his Majesty's liberal and gracious favours were showered upon me.  My
+upright conscience and steady obsequiousness greatly aided me.  I did not
+look upon opportunity with folded arms, but seized it and made my profit
+by it.  Had I not met with such fortunate accidents, my office would not
+have given me dry bread."
+
+Nothing could exceed the frankness and indeed the cynicism with which the
+Ambassador avowed his practice of converting his high and sacred office
+into merchandise.  And these statements of his should be scanned closely,
+because at this very moment a cry was distantly rising, which at a later
+day was to swell into a roar, that the great Advocate had been bribed and
+pensioned.  Nothing had occurred to justify such charges, save that at
+the period of the truce he had accepted from the King of France a fee of
+20,000 florins for extra official and legal services rendered him a dozen
+years before, and had permitted his younger son to hold the office of
+gentleman-in-waiting at the French court with the usual salary attached
+to it.  The post, certainly not dishonourable in itself, had been
+intended by the King as a kindly compliment to the leading statesman
+of his great and good ally the Republic.  It would be difficult to
+say why such a favour conferred on the young man should be held more
+discreditable to the receiver than the Order of the Garter recently
+bestowed upon the great soldier of the Republic by another friendly
+sovereign.  It is instructive however to note the language in which
+Francis Aerssens spoke of favours and money bestowed by a foreign monarch
+upon himself, for Aerssens had come back from his embassy full of gall
+and bitterness against Barneveld.  Thenceforth he was to be his evil
+demon.
+
+"I didn't inherit property," said this diplomatist.  "My father and
+mother, thank God, are yet living.  I have enjoyed the King's liberality.
+It was from an ally, not an enemy, of our country.  Were every man
+obliged to give a reckoning of everything he possesses over and above his
+hereditary estates, who in the government would pass muster?  Those who
+declare that they have served their country in her greatest trouble, and
+lived in splendid houses and in service of princes and great companies
+and the like on a yearly salary of 4000 florins, may not approve these
+maxims."
+
+It should be remembered that Barneveld, if this was a fling at the
+Advocate, had acquired a large fortune by marriage, and, although
+certainly not averse from gathering gear, had, as will be seen on a
+subsequent page, easily explained the manner in which his property had
+increased.  No proof was ever offered or attempted of the anonymous
+calumnies levelled at him in this regard.
+
+"I never had the management of finances," continued Aerssens.  "My
+profits I have gained in foreign parts.  My condition of life is without
+excess, and in my opinion every means are good so long as they are
+honourable and legal.  They say my post was given me by the Advocate.
+Ergo, all my fortune comes from the Advocate.  Strenuously to have
+striven to make myself agreeable to the King and his counsellors, while
+fulfilling my office with fidelity and honour, these are the arts by
+which I have prospered, so that my splendour dazzles the eyes of the
+envious.  The greediness of those who believe that the sun should shine
+for them alone was excited, and so I was obliged to resign the embassy."
+
+So long as Henry lived, the Dutch ambassador saw him daily, and at all
+hours, privately, publicly, when he would.  Rarely has a foreign envoy
+at any court, at any period of history, enjoyed such privileges of being
+useful to his government.  And there is no doubt that the services of
+Aerssens had been most valuable to his country, notwithstanding his
+constant care to increase his private fortune through his public
+opportunities.  He was always ready to be useful to Henry likewise.
+When that monarch same time before the truce, and occasionally during
+the preliminary negotiations for it, had formed a design to make himself
+sovereign of the Provinces, it was Aerssens who charged himself with the
+scheme, and would have furthered it with all his might, had the project
+not met with opposition both from the Advocate and the Stadholder.
+Subsequently it appeared probable that Maurice would not object to the
+sovereignty himself, and the Ambassador in Paris, with the King's
+consent, was not likely to prove himself hostile to the Prince's
+ambition.
+
+"There is but this means alone," wrote Jeannini to Villeroy, "that can
+content him, although hitherto he has done like the rowers, who never
+look toward the place whither they wish to go."  The attempt of the
+Prince to sound Barneveld on this subject through the Princess-Dowager
+has already been mentioned, and has much intrinsic probability.
+Thenceforward, the republican form of government, the municipal
+oligarchies, began to consolidate their power.  Yet although the people
+as such were not sovereigns, but subjects, and rarely spoken of by the
+aristocratic magistrates save with a gentle and patronizing disdain, they
+enjoyed a larger liberty than was known anywhere else in the world.
+Buzenval was astonished at the "infinite and almost unbridled freedom"
+which he witnessed there during his embassy, and which seemed to him
+however "without peril to the state."
+
+The extraordinary means possessed by Aerssens to be important and useful
+vanished with the King's death.  His secret despatches, painting in
+sombre and sarcastic colours the actual condition of affairs at the
+French court, were sent back in copy to the French court itself.  It was
+not known who had played the Ambassador this vilest of tricks, but it was
+done during an illness of Barneveld, and without his knowledge.  Early in
+the year 1613 Aerssens resolved, not to take his final departure, but to
+go home on leave of absence.  His private intention was to look for some
+substantial office of honour and profit at home.  Failing of this, he
+meant to return to Paris.  But with an eye to the main chance as usual,
+he ingeniously caused it to be understood at court, without making
+positive statements to that effect, that his departure was final.  On his
+leavetaking, accordingly, he received larger presents from the crown than
+had been often given to a retiring ambassador.  At least 20,000 florins
+were thus added to the frugal store of profits on which he prided
+himself.  Had he merely gone away on leave of absence, he would have
+received no presents whatever.  But he never went back.  The Queen-Regent
+and her ministers were so glad to get rid of him, and so little disposed,
+in the straits in which they found themselves, to quarrel with the
+powerful republic, as to be willing to write very complimentary public
+letters to the States, concerning the character and conduct of the man
+whom they so much detested.
+
+Pluming himself upon these, Aerssens made his appearance in the Assembly
+of the States-General, to give account by word of mouth of the condition
+of affairs, speaking as if he had only come by permission of their
+Mightinesses for temporary purposes.  Two months later he was summoned
+before the Assembly, and ordered to return to his post.
+
+Meantime a new French ambassador had arrived at the Hague, in the spring
+of 1613.  Aubery du Maurier, a son of an obscure country squire, a
+Protestant, of moderate opinions, of a sincere but rather obsequious
+character, painstaking, diligent, and honest, had been at an earlier day
+in the service of the turbulent and intriguing Due de Bouillon.  He had
+also been employed by Sully as an agent in financial affairs between
+Holland and France, and had long been known to Villeroy.  He was living
+on his estate, in great retirement from all public business, when
+Secretary Villeroy suddenly proposed him the embassy to the Hague.
+There was no more important diplomatic post at that time in Europe.
+Other countries were virtually at peace, but in Holland, notwithstanding
+the truce, there vas really not much more than an armistice, and great
+armies lay in the Netherlands, as after a battle, sleeping face to face
+with arms in their hands.  The politics of Christendom were at issue in
+the open, elegant, and picturesque village which was the social capital
+of the United Provinces.  The gentry from Spain, Italy, the south of
+Europe, Catholic Germany, had clustered about Spinola at Brussels, to
+learn the art of war in his constant campaigning against Maurice.
+English and Scotch officers, Frenchmen, Bohemians, Austrians, youths from
+the Palatinate and all Protestant countries in Germany, swarmed to the
+banners of the prince who had taught the world how Alexander Farnese
+could be baffled, and the great Spinola outmanoeuvred.  Especially there
+was a great number of Frenchmen of figure and quality who thronged to the
+Hague, besides the officers of the two French regiments which formed a
+regular portion of the States' army.  That army was the best appointed
+and most conspicuous standing force in Europe.  Besides the French
+contingent there were always nearly 30,000 infantry and 3000 cavalry on a
+war footing, splendidly disciplined, experienced, and admirably armed.
+The navy, consisting of thirty war ships, perfectly equipped and manned,
+was a match for the combined marine forces of all Europe, and almost as
+numerous.
+
+When the Ambassador went to solemn audience of the States-General, he was
+attended by a brilliant group of gentlemen and officers, often to the
+number of three hundred, who volunteered to march after him on foot to
+honour their sovereign in the person of his ambassador; the Envoy's
+carriage following empty behind.  Such were the splendid diplomatic
+processions often received by the stately Advocate in his plain civic
+garb, when grave international questions were to be publicly discussed.
+
+There was much murmuring in France when the appointment of a personage
+comparatively so humble to a position so important was known.  It was
+considered as a blow aimed directly at the malcontent princes of the
+blood, who were at that moment plotting their first levy of arms against
+the Queen.  Du Maurier had been ill-treated by the Due de Bouillon, who
+naturally therefore now denounced the man whom he had injured to the
+government to which he was accredited.  Being the agent of Mary de'
+Medici, he was, of course, described as a tool of the court and a secret
+pensioner of Spain.  He was to plot with the arch traitor Barneveld as to
+the best means for distracting the Provinces and bringing them back into
+Spanish subjection.  Du Maurier, being especially but secretly charged to
+prevent the return of Francis Aerssens to Paris, incurred of course the
+enmity of that personage and of the French grandees who ostentatiously
+protected him.  It was even pretended by Jeannin that the appointment of
+a man so slightly known to the world, so inexperienced in diplomacy, and
+of a parentage so little distinguished, would be considered an affront by
+the States-General.
+
+But on the whole, Villeroy had made an excellent choice.  No safer man
+could perhaps have been found in France for a post of such eminence, in
+circumstances so delicate, and at a crisis so grave.  The man who had
+been able to make himself agreeable and useful, while preserving his
+integrity, to characters so dissimilar as the refining, self-torturing,
+intellectual Duplessis-Mornay, the rude, aggressive, and straightforward
+Sully, the deep-revolving, restlessly plotting Bouillon, and the smooth,
+silent, and tortuous Villeroy--men between whom there was no friendship,
+but, on the contrary, constant rancour--had material in him to render
+valuable services at this particular epoch.  Everything depended on
+patience, tact, watchfulness in threading the distracting, almost
+inextricable, maze which had been created by personal rivalries,
+ambitions, and jealousies in the state he represented and the one to
+which he was accredited.  "I ascribe it all to God," he said, in his
+testament to his children, "the impenetrable workman who in His goodness
+has enabled me to make myself all my life obsequious, respectful, and
+serviceable to all, avoiding as much as possible, in contenting some, not
+to discontent others."  He recommended his children accordingly to
+endeavour "to succeed in life by making themselves as humble,
+intelligent, and capable as possible."
+
+This is certainly not a very high type of character, but a safer one for
+business than that of the arch intriguer Francis Aerssens.  And he had
+arrived at the Hague under trying circumstances.  Unknown to the foreign
+world he was now entering, save through the disparaging rumours
+concerning him, sent thither in advance by the powerful personages
+arrayed against his government, he might have sunk under such a storm at
+the outset, but for the incomparable kindness and friendly aid of the
+Princess-Dowager, Louise de Coligny.  "I had need of her protection and
+recommendation as much as of life," said du Maurier; "and she gave them
+in such excess as to annihilate an infinity of calumnies which envy had
+excited against me on every side."  He had also a most difficult and
+delicate matter to arrange at the very moment of his arrival.
+
+For Aerssens had done his best not only to produce a dangerous division
+in the politics of the Republic, but to force a rupture between the
+French government and the States.  He had carried matters before the
+assembly with so high a hand as to make it seem impossible to get rid of
+him without public scandal.  He made a parade of the official letters
+from the Queen-Regent and her ministers, in which he was spoken of in
+terms of conventional compliment.  He did not know, and Barneveld wished,
+if possible, to spare him the annoyance of knowing, that both Queen and
+ministers, so soon as informed that there was a chance of coming back
+to them, had written letters breathing great repugnance to him and
+intimating that he would not be received.  Other high personages of state
+had written to express their resentment at his duplicity, perpetual
+mischief-making, and machinations against the peace of the kingdom, and
+stating the impossibility of his resuming the embassy at Paris.  And at
+last the queen wrote to the States-General to say that, having heard
+their intention to send him back to a post "from which he had taken leave
+formally and officially," she wished to prevent such a step.  "We should
+see M. Aerssens less willingly than comports with our friendship for you
+and good neighbourhood.  Any other you could send would be most welcome,
+as M. du Maurier will explain to you more amply."
+
+And to du Maurier himself she wrote distinctly, "Rather than suffer the
+return of the said Aerssens, you will declare that for causes which
+regard the good of our affairs and our particular satisfaction we cannot
+and will not receive him in the functions which he has exercised here,
+and we rely too implicitly upon the good friendship of My Lords the
+States to do anything in this that would so much displease us."
+
+And on the same day Villeroy privately wrote to the Ambassador, "If, in
+spite of all this, Aerssens should endeavour to return, he will not be
+received, after the knowledge we have of his factious spirit, most
+dangerous in a public personage in a state such as ours and in the
+minority of the King."
+
+Meantime Aerssens had been going about flaunting letters in everybody's
+face from the Duc de Bouillon insisting on the necessity of his return!
+The fact in itself would have been sufficient to warrant his removal, for
+the Duke was just taking up arms against his sovereign.  Unless the
+States meant to interfere officially and directly in the civil war about
+to break out in France, they could hardly send a minister to the
+government on recommendation of the leader of the rebellion.
+
+It had, however, become impossible to remove him without an explosion.
+Barneveld, who, said du Maurier, "knew the man to his finger nails," had
+been reluctant to "break the ice," and wished for official notice in the
+matter from the Queen.  Maurice protected the troublesome diplomatist.
+"'Tis incredible," said the French ambassador "how covertly Prince
+Maurice is carrying himself, contrary to his wont, in this whole affair.
+I don't know whether it is from simple jealousy to Barneveld, or if there
+is some mystery concealed below the surface."
+
+Du Maurier had accordingly been obliged to ask his government for
+distinct and official instructions.  "He holds to his place," said he,
+"by so slight and fragile a root as not to require two hands to pluck him
+up, the little finger being enough.  There is no doubt that he has been
+in concert with those who are making use of him to re-establish their
+credit with the States, and to embark Prince Maurice contrary to his
+preceding custom in a cabal with them."
+
+Thus a question of removing an obnoxious diplomatist could hardly be
+graver, for it was believed that he was doing his best to involve the
+military chief of his own state in a game of treason and rebellion
+against the government to which he was accredited.  It was not the first
+nor likely to be the last of Bouillon's deadly intrigues.  But the man
+who had been privy to Biron's conspiracy against the crown and life of
+his sovereign was hardly a safe ally for his brother-in-law, the
+straightforward stadholder.
+
+The instructions desired by du Maurier and by Barneveld had, as we have
+seen, at last arrived.  The French ambassador thus fortified appeared
+before the Assembly of the States-General and officially demanded the
+recall of Aerssens.  In a letter addressed privately and confidentially
+to their Mightinesses, he said, "If in spite of us you throw him at our
+feet, we shall fling him back at your head."
+
+At last Maurice yielded to, the representations of the French envoy, and
+Aerssens felt obliged to resign his claims to the post.  The States-
+General passed a resolution that it would be proper to employ him in some
+other capacity in order to show that his services had been agreeable to
+them, he having now declared that he could no longer be useful in France.
+Maurice, seeing that it was impossible to save him, admitted to du
+Maurier his unsteadiness and duplicity, and said that, if possessed of
+the confidence of a great king, he would be capable of destroying the
+state in less than a year.
+
+But this had not always been the Prince's opinion, nor was it likely to
+remain unchanged.  As for Villeroy, he denied flatly that the cause of
+his displeasure had been that Aerssens had penetrated into his most
+secret affairs.  He protested, on the contrary, that his annoyance with
+him had partly proceeded from the slight acquaintance he had acquired of
+his policy, and that, while boasting to be better informed than any one,
+he was in the habit of inventing and imagining things in order to get
+credit for himself.
+
+It was highly essential that the secret of this affair should be made
+clear; for its influence on subsequent events was to be deep and wide.
+For the moment Aerssens remained without employment, and there was no
+open rupture with Barneveld.  The only difference of opinion between the
+Advocate and himself, he said, was whether he had or had not definitely
+resigned his post on leaving Paris.
+
+Meantime it was necessary to fix upon a successor for this most important
+post.  The war soon after the new year had broken out in France.  Conde,
+Bouillon, and the other malcontent princes with their followers had taken
+possession of the fortress of Mezieres, and issued a letter in the name
+of Conde to the Queen-Regent demanding an assembly of the States-General
+of the kingdom and rupture of the Spanish marriages.  Both parties, that
+of the government and that of the rebellion, sought the sympathy and
+active succour of the States.  Maurice, acting now in perfect accord
+with the Advocate, sustained the Queen and execrated the rebellion of
+his relatives with perfect frankness.  Conde, he said, had got his head
+stuffed full of almanacs whose predictions he wished to see realized.
+He vowed he would have shortened by a head the commander of the garrison
+who betrayed Mezieres, if he had been under his control.  He forbade on
+pain of death the departure of any officer or private of the French
+regiments from serving the rebels, and placed the whole French force at
+the disposal of the Queen, with as many Netherland regiments as could be
+spared.  One soldier was hanged and three others branded with the mark of
+a gibbet on the face for attempting desertion.  The legal government was
+loyally sustained by the authority of the States, notwithstanding all the
+intrigues of Aerssens with the agents of the princes to procure them
+assistance.  The mutiny for the time was brief, and was settled on the
+15th of May 1614, by the peace of Sainte-Menehould, as much a caricature
+of a treaty as the rising had been the parody of a war. Van der Myle,
+son-in-law of Barneveld, who had been charged with a special and
+temporary mission to France, brought back the terms, of the convention to
+the States-General.  On the other hand, Conde and his confederates sent a
+special agent to the Netherlands to give their account of the war and the
+negotiation, who refused to confer either with du Maurier or Barneveld,
+but who held much conference with Aerssens.
+
+It was obvious enough that the mutiny of the princes would become
+chronic.  In truth, what other condition was possible with two characters
+like Mary de' Medici and the Prince of Conde respectively at the head of
+the government and the revolt?  What had France to hope for but to remain
+the bloody playground for mischievous idiots, who threw about the
+firebrands and arrows of reckless civil war in pursuit of the paltriest
+of personal aims?
+
+Van der Myle had pretensions to the vacant place of Aerssens.  He had
+some experience in diplomacy.  He had conducted skilfully enough the
+first mission of the States to Venice, and had subsequently been employed
+in matters of moment.  But he was son-in-law to Barneveld, and although
+the Advocate was certainly not free from the charge of nepotism, he
+shrank from the reproach of having apparently removed Aerssens to make a
+place for one of his own family.
+
+Van der Myle remained to bear the brunt of the late ambassador's malice,
+and to engage at a little later period in hottest controversy with him,
+personal and political.  "Why should van der Myle strut about, with his
+arms akimbo like a peacock?" complained Aerssens one day in confused
+metaphor.  A question not easy to answer satisfactorily.
+
+The minister selected was a certain Baron Asperen de Langerac, wholly
+unversed in diplomacy or other public affairs, with abilities not above
+the average.  A series of questions addressed by him to the Advocate, the
+answers to which, scrawled on the margin of the paper, were to serve for
+his general instructions, showed an ingenuousness as amusing as the
+replies of Barneveld were experienced and substantial.
+
+In general he was directed to be friendly and respectful to every one, to
+the Queen-Regent and her counsellors especially, and, within the limits
+of becoming reverence for her, to cultivate the good graces of the Prince
+of Conde and the other great nobles still malcontent and rebellious, but
+whose present movement, as Barneveld foresaw, was drawing rapidly to a
+close.  Langerac arrived in Paris on the 5th of April 1614.
+
+Du Maurier thought the new ambassador likely to "fall a prey to the
+specious language and gentle attractions of the Due de Bouillon."  He
+also described him as very dependent upon Prince Maurice.  On the other
+hand Langerac professed unbounded and almost childlike reverence for
+Barneveld,  was devoted to his person, and breathed as it were only
+through his inspiration.  Time would show whether those sentiments would
+outlast every possible storm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+     Weakness of the Rulers of France and England--The Wisdom of
+     Barneveld inspires Jealousy--Sir Dudley Carleton succeeds Winwood--
+     Young Neuburg under the Guidance of Maximilian--Barneveld strives to
+     have the Treaty of Xanten enforced--Spain and the Emperor wish to
+     make the States abandon their Position with regard to the Duchies--
+     The French Government refuses to aid the States--Spain and the
+     Emperor resolve to hold Wesel--The great Religious War begun--The
+     Protestant Union and Catholic League both wish to secure the Border
+     Provinces--Troubles in Turkey--Spanish Fleet seizes La Roche--Spain
+     places large Armies on a War Footing.
+
+Few things are stranger in history than the apathy with which the wide
+designs of the Catholic party were at that moment regarded.  The
+preparations for the immense struggle which posterity learned to call the
+Thirty Years' War, and to shudder when speaking of it, were going forward
+on every side.  In truth the war had really begun, yet those most deeply
+menaced by it at the outset looked on with innocent calmness because
+their own roofs were not quite yet in a blaze.  The passage of arms in
+the duchies, the outlines of which have just been indicated, and which
+was the natural sequel of the campaign carried out four years earlier on
+the same territory, had been ended by a mockery.  In France, reduced
+almost to imbecility by the absence of a guiding brain during a long
+minority, fallen under the distaff of a dowager both weak and wicked,
+distracted by the intrigues and quarrels of a swarm of self-seeking
+grandees, and with all its offices, from highest to lowest, of court,
+state, jurisprudence, and magistracy, sold as openly and as cynically as
+the commonest wares, there were few to comprehend or to grapple with the
+danger.  It should have seemed obvious to the meanest capacity in the
+kingdom that the great house of Austria, reigning supreme in Spain and in
+Germany, could not be allowed to crush the Duke of Savoy on the one side,
+and Bohemia, Moravia, and the Netherlands on the other without danger of
+subjection for France.  Yet the aim of the Queen-Regent was to cultivate
+an impossible alliance with her inevitable foe.
+
+And in England, ruled as it then was with no master mind to enforce
+against its sovereign the great lessons of policy, internal and external,
+on which its welfare and almost its imperial existence depended, the only
+ambition of those who could make their opinions felt was to pursue the
+same impossibility, intimate alliance with the universal foe.
+
+Any man with slightest pretensions to statesmanship knew that the liberty
+for Protestant worship in Imperial Germany, extorted by force, had been
+given reluctantly, and would be valid only as long as that force
+could still be exerted or should remain obviously in reserve.
+The "Majesty-Letter" and the "Convention" of the two religions would
+prove as flimsy as the parchment on which they were engrossed, the
+Protestant churches built under that sanction would be shattered like
+glass, if once the Catholic rulers could feel their hands as clear as
+their consciences would be for violating their sworn faith to heretics.
+Men knew, even if the easy-going and uxorious emperor, into which
+character the once busy and turbulent Archduke Matthias had subsided,
+might be willing to keep his pledges, that Ferdinand of Styria, who would
+soon succeed him, and Maximilian of Bavaria were men who knew their own
+minds, and had mentally never resigned one inch of the ground which
+Protestantism imagined itself to have conquered.
+
+These things seem plain as daylight to all who look back upon them
+through the long vista of the past; but the sovereign of England did not
+see them or did not choose to see them.  He saw only the Infanta and her
+two millions of dowry, and he knew that by calling Parliament together
+to ask subsidies for an anti-Catholic war he should ruin those golden
+matrimonial prospects for his son, while encouraging those "shoemakers,"
+his subjects, to go beyond their "last," by consulting the
+representatives of his people on matters pertaining to the mysteries of
+government.  He was slowly digging the grave of the monarchy and building
+the scaffold of his son; but he did his work with a laborious and
+pedantic trifling, when really engaged in state affairs, most amazing to
+contemplate.  He had no penny to give to the cause in which his nearest
+relatives mere so deeply involved and for which his only possible allies
+were pledged; but he was ready to give advice to all parties, and with
+ludicrous gravity imagined himself playing the umpire between great
+contending hosts, when in reality he was only playing the fool at the
+beck of masters before whom he quaked.
+
+"You are not to vilipend my counsel," said he one day to a foreign envoy.
+"I am neither a camel nor an ass to take up all this work on my
+shoulders.  Where would you find another king as willing to do
+it as I am?"
+
+The King had little time and no money to give to serve his own family and
+allies and the cause of Protestantism, but he could squander vast sums
+upon worthless favourites, and consume reams of paper on controverted
+points of divinity.  The appointment of Vorstius to the chair of theology
+in Leyden aroused more indignation in his bosom, and occupied more of his
+time, than the conquests of Spinola in the duchies, and the menaces of
+Spain against Savoy and Bohemia.  He perpetually preached moderation to
+the States in the matter of the debateable territory, although moderation
+at that moment meant submission to the House of Austria.  He chose to
+affect confidence in the good faith of those who were playing a comedy
+by which no statesman could be deceived, but which had secured the
+approbation of the Solomon of the age.
+
+But there was one man who was not deceived.  The warnings and the
+lamentations of Barneveld sound to us out of that far distant time like
+the voice of an inspired prophet.  It is possible that a portion of the
+wrath to come might have been averted had there been many men in high
+places to heed his voice.  I do not wish to exaggerate the power and
+wisdom of the man, nor to set him forth as one of the greatest heroes of
+history.  But posterity has done far less than justice to a statesman and
+sage who wielded a vast influence at a most critical period in the fate
+of Christendom, and uniformly wielded it to promote the cause of
+temperate human liberty, both political and religious.  Viewed by the
+light of two centuries and a half of additional experience, he may appear
+to have made mistakes, but none that were necessarily disastrous or even
+mischievous.  Compared with the prevailing idea of the age in which he
+lived, his schemes of polity seem to dilate into large dimensions, his
+sentiments of religious freedom, however limited to our modern ideas,
+mark an epoch in human progress, and in regard to the general
+commonwealth of Christendom, of which he was so leading a citizen, the
+part he played was a lofty one.  No man certainly understood the tendency
+of his age more exactly, took a broader and more comprehensive view than
+he did of the policy necessary to preserve the largest portion of the
+results of the past three-quarters of a century, or had pondered the
+relative value of great conflicting forces more skilfully.  Had his
+counsels been always followed, had illustrious birth placed him virtually
+upon a throne, as was the case with William the Silent, and thus allowed
+him occasionally to carry out the designs of a great mind with almost
+despotic authority, it might have been better for the world.  But in that
+age it was royal blood alone that could command unflinching obedience
+without exciting personal rivalry.  Men quailed before his majestic
+intellect, but hated him for the power which was its necessary result.
+They already felt a stupid delight in cavilling at his pedigree.  To
+dispute his claim to a place among the ancient nobility to which he was
+an honour was to revenge themselves for the rank he unquestionably
+possessed side by side in all but birth with the kings and rulers of the
+world.  Whether envy and jealousy be vices more incident to the
+republican form of government than to other political systems may be an
+open question.  But it is no question whatever that Barneveld's every
+footstep from this period forward was dogged by envy as patient as it was
+devouring.  Jealousy stuck to him like his shadow.  We have examined the
+relations which existed between Winwood and himself; we have seen that
+ambassador, now secretary of state for James, never weary in denouncing
+the Advocate's haughtiness and grim resolution to govern the country
+according to its laws rather than at the dictate of a foreign sovereign,
+and in flinging forth malicious insinuations in regard to his relations
+to Spain.  The man whose every hour was devoted in spite of a thousand
+obstacles strewn by stupidity, treachery, and apathy, as well as by envy,
+hatred, and bigotry--to the organizing of a grand and universal league of
+Protestantism against Spain, and to rolling up with strenuous and
+sometimes despairing arms a dead mountain weight, ever ready to fall back
+upon and crush him, was accused in dark and mysterious whispers, soon to
+grow louder and bolder, of a treacherous inclination for Spain.
+
+There is nothing less surprising nor more sickening for those who observe
+public life, and wish to retain faith in the human species, than the
+almost infinite power of the meanest of passions.
+
+The Advocate was obliged at the very outset of Langerac's mission to
+France to give him a warning on this subject.
+
+"Should her Majesty make kindly mention of me," he said, "you will say
+nothing of it in your despatches as you did in your last, although I am
+sure with the best intentions.  It profits me not, and many take umbrage
+at it; wherefore it is wise to forbear."
+
+But this was a trifle.  By and by there would be many to take umbrage at
+every whisper in his favour, whether from crowned heads or from the
+simplest in the social scale.  Meantime he instructed the Ambassador,
+without paying heed to personal compliments to his chief, to do his best
+to keep the French government out of the hands of Spain, and with that
+object in view to smooth over the differences between the two great
+parties in the kingdom, and to gain the confidence, if possible, of Conde
+and Nevers and Bouillon, while never failing in straightforward respect
+and loyal friendship to the Queen-Regent and her ministers, as the
+legitimate heads of the government.
+
+From England a new ambassador was soon to take the place of Winwood.
+Sir Dudley Carleton was a diplomatist of respectable abilities, and well
+trained to business and routine.  Perhaps on the whole there was none
+other, in that epoch of official mediocrity, more competent than he to
+fill what was then certainly the most important of foreign posts.  His
+course of life had in no wise familiarized him with the intricacies of
+the Dutch constitution, nor could the diplomatic profession, combined
+with a long residence at Venice, be deemed especially favourable for deep
+studies of the mysteries of predestination.  Yet he would be found ready
+at the bidding of his master to grapple with Grotius and Barneveld on the
+field of history and law, and thread with Uytenbogaert or Taurinus all
+the subtleties of Arminianism and Gomarism as if he had been half his
+life both a regular practitioner at the Supreme Court of the Hague and
+professor of theology at the University of Leyden.  Whether the triumphs
+achieved in such encounters were substantial and due entirely to his own
+genius might be doubtful.  At all events he had a sovereign behind him
+who was incapable of making a mistake on any subject.
+
+"You shall not forget," said James in his instructions to Sir Dudley,
+"that you are the minister of that master whom God hath made the sole
+protector of his religion .  .  .  .  .  and you may let fall how hateful
+the maintaining of erroneous opinions is to the majesty of God and how
+displeasing to us."
+
+The warlike operations of 1614 had been ended by the abortive peace
+of Xanten.  The two rival pretenders to the duchies were to halve the
+territory, drawing lots for the first choice, all foreign troops were
+to be withdrawn, and a pledge was to be given that no fortress should
+be placed in the hands of any power.  But Spain at the last moment had
+refused to sanction the treaty, and everything was remitted to what might
+be exactly described as a state of sixes and sevens.  Subsequently it was
+hoped that the States' troops might be induced to withdraw simultaneously
+with the Catholic forces on an undertaking by Spinola that there should
+be no re-occupation of the disputed territory either by the Republic or
+by Spain.  But Barneveld accurately pointed out that, although the
+Marquis was a splendid commander and, so long as he was at the head of
+the armies, a most powerful potentate, he might be superseded at any
+moment.  Count Bucquoy, for example, might suddenly appear in his place
+and refuse to be bound by any military arrangement of his predecessor.
+Then the Archduke proposed to give a guarantee that in case of a mutual
+withdrawal there should be no return of the troops, no recapture of
+garrisons.  But Barneveld, speaking for the States, liked not the
+security.  The Archduke was but the puppet of Spain, and Spain had no
+part in the guarantee.  She held the strings, and might cause him at any
+moment to play what pranks she chose.  It would be the easiest thing in
+the world for despotic Spain, so the Advocate thought, to reappear
+suddenly in force again at a moment's notice after the States' troops had
+been withdrawn and partially disbanded, and it would be difficult for the
+many-headed and many-tongued republic to act with similar promptness.
+To withdraw without a guarantee from Spain to the Treaty of Xanten, which
+had once been signed, sealed, and all but ratified, would be to give up
+fifty points in the game.  Nothing but disaster could ensue.  The
+Advocate as leader in all these negotiations and correspondence was
+ever actuated by the favourite quotation of William the Silent from
+Demosthenes, that the safest citadel against an invader and a tyrant is
+distrust.  And he always distrusted in these dealings, for he was sure
+the Spanish cabinet was trying to make fools of the States, and there
+were many ready to assist it in the task.  Now that one of the
+pretenders, temporary master of half the duchies, the Prince of Neuburg,
+had espoused both Catholicism and the sister of the Archbishop of Cologne
+and the Duke of Bavaria, it would be more safe than ever for Spain to
+make a temporary withdrawal.  Maximilian of Bavaria was beyond all
+question the ablest and most determined leader of the Catholic party in
+Germany, and the most straightforward and sincere.  No man before or
+since his epoch had, like him, been destined to refuse, and more than
+once refuse, the Imperial crown.
+
+Through his apostasy the Prince of Neuburg was in danger of losing his
+hereditary estates, his brothers endeavouring to dispossess him on the
+ground of the late duke's will, disinheriting any one of his heirs who
+should become a convert to Catholicism.  He had accordingly implored aid
+from the King of Spain.  Archduke Albert had urged Philip to render such
+assistance as a matter of justice, and the Emperor had naturally declared
+that the whole right as eldest son belonged, notwithstanding the will,
+to the Prince.
+
+With the young Neuburg accordingly under the able guidance of Maximilian,
+it was not likely that the grasp of the Spanish party upon these all-
+important territories would be really loosened.  The Emperor still
+claimed the right to decide among the candidates and to hold the
+provinces under sequestration till the decision should be made--that was
+to say, until the Greek Kalends.  The original attempt to do this through
+Archduke Leopold had been thwarted, as we have seen, by the prompt
+movements of Maurice sustained by the policy of Barneveld.  The Advocate
+was resolved that the Emperor's name should not be mentioned either in
+the preamble or body of the treaty.  And his course throughout the
+simulations, which were never negotiations, was perpetually baffled as
+much by the easiness and languor of his allies as the ingenuity of the
+enemy.
+
+He was reproached with the loss of Wesel, that Geneva of the Rhine,
+which would never be abandoned by Spain if it was not done forthwith.
+Let Spain guarantee the Treaty of Xanten, he said, and then she cannot
+come back.  All else is illusion.  Moreover, the Emperor had given
+positive orders that Wesel should not be given up.  He was assured by
+Villeroy that France would never put on her harness for Aachen, that
+cradle of Protestantism.  That was for the States-General to do, whom it
+so much more nearly concerned.  The whole aim of Barneveld was not to
+destroy the Treaty of Xanten, but to enforce it in the only way in which
+it could be enforced, by the guarantee of Spain.  So secured, it would be
+a barrier in the universal war of religion which he foresaw was soon to
+break out.  But it was the resolve of Spain, instead of pledging herself
+to the treaty, to establish the legal control of the territory in the
+hand of the Emperor.  Neuburg complained that Philip in writing to him
+did not give him the title of Duke of Julich and Cleve, although be had
+been placed in possession of those estates by the arms of Spain.  Philip,
+referring to Archduke Albert for his opinion on this subject, was advised
+that, as the Emperor had not given Neuburg the investiture of the
+duchies, the King was quite right in refusing him the title.  Even
+should the Treaty of Xanten be executed, neither he nor the Elector of
+Brandenburg would be anything but administrators until the question of
+right was decided by the Emperor.
+
+Spain had sent Neuburg the Order of the Golden Fleece as a reward for his
+conversion, but did not intend him to be anything but a man of straw in
+the territories which he claimed by sovereign right.  They were to form a
+permanent bulwark to the Empire, to Spain, and to Catholicism.
+
+Barneveld of course could never see the secret letters passing between
+Brussels and Madrid, but his insight into the purposes of the enemy was
+almost as acute as if the correspondence of Philip and Albert had been in
+the pigeonholes of his writing-desk in the Kneuterdyk.
+
+The whole object of Spain and the Emperor, acting through the Archduke,
+was to force the States to abandon their positions in the duchies
+simultaneously with the withdrawal of the Spanish troops, and to be
+satisfied with a bare convention between themselves and Archduke Albert
+that there should be no renewed occupation by either party.  Barneveld,
+finding it impossible to get Spain upon the treaty, was resolved that at
+least the two mediating powers, their great allies, the sovereigns of
+Great Britain and France, should guarantee the convention, and that the
+promises of the Archduke should be made to them.  This was steadily
+refused by Spain; for the Archduke never moved an inch in the matter
+except according to the orders of Spain, and besides battling and
+buffeting with the Archduke, Barneveld was constantly deafened with the
+clamour of the English king, who always declared Spain to be in the right
+whatever she did, and forced to endure with what patience he might the
+goading of that King's envoy.  France, on the other hand, supported the
+States as firmly as could have been reasonably expected.
+
+"We proposed," said the Archduke, instructing an envoy whom he was
+sending to Madrid with detailed accounts of these negotiations, "that
+the promise should be made to each other as usual in treaties.  But the
+Hollanders said the promise should be made to the Kings of France and
+England, at which the Emperor would have been deeply offended, as if
+in the affair he was of no account at all.  At any moment by this
+arrangement in concert with France and England the Hollanders might walk
+in and do what they liked."
+
+Certainly there could have been no succincter eulogy of the policy
+steadily recommended, as we shall have occasion to see, by Barneveld.
+Had he on this critical occasion been backed by England and France
+combined, Spain would have been forced to beat a retreat, and
+Protestantism in the great general war just beginning would have had
+an enormous advantage in position.  But the English Solomon could not
+see the wisdom of this policy.  "The King of England says we are right,"
+continued the Archduke, "and has ordered his ambassador to insist on our
+view.  The French ambassador here says that his colleague at the Hague
+has similar instructions, but admits that he has not acted up to them.
+There is not much chance of the Hollanders changing.  It would be well
+that the King should send a written ultimatum that the Hollanders should
+sign the convention which we propose.  If they don't agree, the world at
+least will see that it is not we who are in fault."
+
+The world would see, and would never have forgiven a statesman in
+the position of Barneveld, had he accepted a bald agreement from a
+subordinate like the Archduke, a perfectly insignificant personage in
+the great drama then enacting, and given up guarantees both from the
+Archduke's master and from the two great allies of the Republic.  He
+stood out manfully against Spain and England at every hazard, and under a
+pelting storm of obloquy, and this was the man whose designs the English
+secretary of state had dared to describe "as of no other nature than to
+cause the Provinces to relapse into the hands of Spain."
+
+It appeared too a little later that Barneveld's influence with the French
+government, owing to his judicious support of it so long as it was a
+government, had been decidedly successful.  Drugged as France was by the
+Spanish marriage treaty, she was yet not so sluggish nor spell-bound as
+the King of Great Britain.
+
+"France will not urge upon the Hollanders to execute the proposal as we
+made it," wrote the Archduke to the King, "so negotiations are at a
+standstill.  The Hollanders say it is better that each party should
+remain with what each possesses.  So that if it does not come to blows,
+and if these insolences go on as they have done, the Hollanders will be
+gaining and occupying more territory every day."
+
+Thus once more the ancient enemies and masters of the Republic were
+making the eulogy of the Dutch statesman.  It was impossible at present
+for the States to regain Wesel, nor that other early stronghold of the
+Reformation, the old Imperial city of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle).  The
+price to be paid was too exorbitant.
+
+The French government had persistently refused to assist the States and
+possessory princes in the recovery of this stronghold.  The Queen-Regent
+was afraid of offending Spain, although her government had induced the
+citizens of the place to make the treaty now violated by that country.
+The Dutch ambassador had been instructed categorically to enquire whether
+their Majesties meant to assist Aachen and the princes if attacked by the
+Archdukes.  "No," said Villeroy; "we are not interested in Aachen, 'tis
+too far off.  Let them look for assistance to those who advised their
+mutiny."
+
+To the Ambassador's remonstrance that France was both interested in and
+pledged to them, the Secretary of State replied, "We made the treaty
+through compassion and love, but we shall not put on harness for Aachen.
+Don't think it.  You, the States and the United Provinces, may assist
+them if you like."
+
+The Envoy then reminded the Minister that the States-General had always
+agreed to go forward evenly in this business with the Kings of Great
+Britain and France and the united princes, the matter being of equal
+importance to all.  They had given no further pledge than this to the
+Union.
+
+It was plain, however, that France was determined not to lift a finger at
+that moment.  The Duke of Bouillon and those acting with him had tried
+hard to induce their Majesties "to write seriously to the Archduke in
+order at least to intimidate him by stiff talk," but it was hopeless.
+They thought it was not a time then to quarrel with their neighbour and
+give offence to Spain.
+
+So the stiff talk was omitted, and the Archduke was not intimidated.  The
+man who had so often intimidated him was in his grave, and his widow was
+occupied in marrying her son to the Infanta.  "These are the first-
+fruits," said Aerssens, "of the new negotiations with Spain."
+
+Both the Spanish king and the Emperor were resolved to hold Wesel to the
+very last.  Until the States should retire from all their positions on
+the bare word of the Archduke, that the Spanish forces once withdrawn
+would never return, the Protestants of those two cities must suffer.
+There was no help for it.  To save them would be to abandon all.  For
+no true statesman could be so ingenuous as thus to throw all the cards
+on the table for the Spanish and Imperial cabinet to shuffle them at
+pleasure for a new deal.  The Duke of Neuburg, now Catholic and
+especially protected by Spain, had become, instead of a pretender with
+more or less law on his side, a mere standard-bearer and agent of the
+Great Catholic League in the debateable land.  He was to be supported at
+all hazard by the Spanish forces, according to the express command of
+Philip's government, especially now that his two brothers with the
+countenance of the States were disputing his right to his hereditary
+dominions in Germany.
+
+The Archduke was sullen enough at what he called the weak-mindedness of
+France.  Notwithstanding that by express orders from Spain he had sent
+5000 troops under command of Juan de Rivas to the Queen's assistance just
+before the peace of Sainte-Menehould, he could not induce her government
+to take the firm part which the English king did in browbeating the
+Hollanders.
+
+"'Tis certain," he complained, "that if, instead of this sluggishness on
+the part of France, they had done us there the same good services we have
+had from England, the Hollanders would have accepted the promise just as
+it was proposed by us."  He implored the King, therefore, to use his
+strongest influence with the French government that it should strenuously
+intervene with the Hollanders, and compel them to sign the proposal which
+they rejected.  "There is no means of composition if France does not
+oblige them to sign," said Albert rather piteously.
+
+But it was not without reason that Barneveld had in many of his letters
+instructed the States' ambassador, Langerac, "to caress the old
+gentleman" (meaning and never naming Villeroy), for he would prove to be
+in spite of all obstacles a good friend to the States, as he always had
+been.  And Villeroy did hold firm.  Whether the Archduke was right or
+not in his conviction, that, if France would only unite with England in
+exerting a strong pressure on the Hollanders, they would evacuate the
+duchies, and so give up the game, the correspondence of Barneveld shows
+very accurately.  But the Archduke, of course, had not seen that
+correspondence.
+
+The Advocate knew what was plotting, what was impending, what was
+actually accomplished, for he was accustomed to sweep the whole horizon
+with an anxious and comprehensive glance.  He knew without requiring to
+read the secret letters of the enemy that vast preparations for an
+extensive war against the Reformation were already completed.  The
+movements in the duchies were the first drops of a coming deluge.
+The great religious war which was to last a generation of mankind had
+already begun; the immediate and apparent pretext being a little
+disputed succession to some petty sovereignties, the true cause being
+the necessity for each great party--the Protestant Union and the Catholic
+League--to secure these border provinces, the possession of which would
+be of such inestimable advantage to either.  If nothing decisive occurred
+in the year 1614, the following year would still be more convenient for
+the League.  There had been troubles in Turkey.  The Grand Vizier had
+been murdered.  The Sultan was engaged in a war with Persia.  There was
+no eastern bulwark in Europe to the ever menacing power of the Turk and
+of Mahometanism in Europe save Hungary alone.  Supported and ruled as
+that kingdom was by the House of Austria, the temper of the populations
+of Germany had become such as to make it doubtful in the present conflict
+of religious opinions between them and their rulers whether the Turk or
+the Spaniard would be most odious as an invader.  But for the moment,
+Spain and the Emperor had their hands free.  They were not in danger of
+an attack from below the Danube.  Moreover, the Spanish fleet had been
+achieving considerable successes on the Barbary coast, having seized La
+Roche, and one or two important citadels, useful both against the
+corsairs and against sudden attacks by sea from the Turk.  There were at
+least 100,000 men on a war footing ready to take the field at command of
+the two branches of the House of Austria, Spanish and German.  In the
+little war about Montserrat, Savoy was on the point of being crushed,
+and Savoy was by position and policy the only possible ally, in the
+south, of the Netherlands and of Protestant Germany.
+
+While professing the most pacific sentiments towards the States, and a
+profound anxiety to withdraw his troops from their borders, the King of
+Spain, besides daily increasing those forces, had just raised 4,000,000
+ducats, a large portion of which was lodged with his bankers in Brussels.
+Deeds like those were of more significance than sugared words.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Almost infinite power of the meanest of passions
+Ludicrous gravity
+Safest citadel against an invader and a tyrant is distrust
+Their own roofs were not quite yet in a blaze
+Therefore now denounced the man whom he had injured
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext Life of John Barneveld, v6, Motley #91
+by John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS, ENTIRE JOHN OF BARNEVELD 1609-1615:
+
+Abstinence from inquisition into consciences and private parlour
+Advanced orthodox party-Puritans
+Allowed the demon of religious hatred to enter into its body
+Almost infinite power of the meanest of passions
+And now the knife of another priest-led fanatic
+Aristocracy of God's elect
+As with his own people, keeping no back-door open
+At a blow decapitated France
+Atheist, a tyrant, because he resisted dictation from the clergy
+Behead, torture, burn alive, and bury alive all heretics
+Christian sympathy and a small assistance not being sufficient
+Conclusive victory for the allies seemed as predestined
+Contained within itself the germs of a larger liberty
+Could not be both judge and party in the suit
+Covered now with the satirical dust of centuries
+Deadly hatred of Puritans in England and Holland
+Determined to bring the very name of liberty into contempt
+Disputing the eternal damnation of young children
+Doctrine of predestination in its sternest and strictest sense
+Emperor of Japan addressed him as his brother monarch
+Epernon, the true murderer of Henry
+Estimating his character and judging his judges
+Everybody should mind his own business
+Fate, free will, or absolute foreknowledge
+Father Cotton, who was only too ready to betray the secrets
+Give him advice if he asked it, and money when he required
+Great war of religion and politics was postponed
+He was not imperial of aspect on canvas or coin
+He was a sincere bigot
+He who would have all may easily lose all
+He who spreads the snare always tumbles into the ditch himself
+Impatience is often on the part of the non-combatants
+Intense bigotry of conviction
+International friendship, the self-interest of each
+It was the true religion, and there was none other
+James of England, who admired, envied, and hated Henry
+Jealousy, that potent principle
+Jesuit Mariana--justifying the killing of excommunicated kings
+King's definite and final intentions, varied from day to day
+Language which is ever living because it is dead
+Louis XIII.
+Ludicrous gravity
+More fiercely opposed to each other than to Papists
+Most detestable verses that even he had ever composed
+Neither kings nor governments are apt to value logic
+No man can be neutral in civil contentions
+No synod had a right to claim Netherlanders as slaves
+No man pretended to think of the State
+None but God to compel me to say more than I choose to say
+Outdoing himself in dogmatism and inconsistency
+Philip IV.
+Power the poison of which it is so difficult to resist
+Practised successfully the talent of silence
+Presents of considerable sums of money to the negotiators made
+Priests shall control the state or the state govern the priests
+Princes show what they have in them at twenty-five  or never
+Putting the cart before the oxen
+Queen is entirely in the hands of Spain and the priests
+Religion was made the strumpet of Political Ambition
+Religious toleration, which is a phrase of insult
+Safest citadel against an invader and a tyrant is distrust
+Schism in the Church had become a public fact
+Secure the prizes of war without the troubles and dangers
+Senectus edam maorbus est
+She declined to be his procuress
+Small matter which human folly had dilated into a great one
+Smooth words, in the plentiful lack of any substantial
+So much in advance of his time as to favor religious equality
+Stroke of a broken table knife sharpened on a carriage wheel
+That cynical commerce in human lives
+The defence of the civil authority against the priesthood
+The assassin, tortured and torn by four horses
+The truth in shortest about matters of importance
+The voice of slanderers
+The Catholic League and the Protestant Union
+The vehicle is often prized more than the freight
+Their own roofs were not quite yet in a blaze
+Theological hatred was in full blaze throughout the country
+Theology and politics were one
+There was no use in holding language of authority to him
+There was but one king in Europe, Henry the Bearnese
+Therefore now denounced the man whom he had injured
+They have killed him, 'e ammazato,' cried Concini
+Things he could tell which are too odious and dreadful
+Thirty Years' War tread on the heels of the forty years
+To look down upon their inferior and lost fellow creatures
+Uncouple the dogs and let them run
+Unimaginable outrage as the most legitimate industry
+Vows of an eternal friendship of several weeks' duration
+What could save the House of Austria, the cause of Papacy
+Whether repentance could effect salvation
+Whether dead infants were hopelessly damned
+Whose mutual hatred was now artfully inflamed by partisans
+Wish to appear learned in matters of which they are ignorant
+Work of the aforesaid Puritans and a few Jesuits
+Wrath of the Jesuits at this exercise of legal authority
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext Entire John of Barneveld 1609-15
+by John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND
+
+WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR
+
+By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+
+
+MOTLEY'S HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS, Project Gutenberg Edition, Volume 98
+
+Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Complete, 1614-23
+
+
+
+
+Life and Death of John of Barneveld, v7, 1614-17
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+     The Advocate sounds the Alarm in Germany--His Instructions to
+     Langerac and his Forethought--The Prince--Palatine and his Forces
+     take Aachen, Mulheim, and other Towns--Supineness of the
+     Protestants--Increased Activity of Austria and the League--Barneveld
+     strives to obtain Help from England--Neuburg departs for Germany--
+     Barneveld the Prime Minister of Protestantism--Ernest Mansfield
+     takes service under Charles Emmanuel--Count John of Nassau goes to
+     Savoy--Slippery Conduct of King James in regard to the New Treaty
+     proposed--Barneveld's Influence greater in France than in England--
+     Sequestration feared--The Elector of Brandenburg cited to appear
+     before the Emperor at Prague--Murder of John van Wely--Uytenbogaert
+     incurs Maurice's Displeasure--Marriage of the King of France with
+     Anne of Austria--Conference between King James and Caron concerning
+     Piracy, Cloth Trade and Treaty of Xanten--Barneveld's Survey of the
+     Condition of Europe--His Efforts to avert the impending general War.
+
+I have thus purposely sketched the leading features of a couple of
+momentous, although not eventful, years--so far as the foreign policy of
+the Republic is concerned--in order that the reader may better understand
+the bearings and the value of the Advocate's actions and writings at that
+period.  This work aims at being a political study.  I would attempt to
+exemplify the influence of individual humours and passions--some of them
+among the highest and others certainly the basest that agitate humanity-
+upon the march of great events, upon general historical results at
+certain epochs, and upon the destiny of eminent personages.  It may also
+be not uninteresting to venture a glance into the internal structure and
+workings of a republican and federal system of government, then for the
+first time reproduced almost spontaneously upon an extended scale.
+
+Perhaps the revelation of some of its defects, in spite of the faculty
+and vitality struggling against them, may not be without value for our
+own country and epoch.  The system of Switzerland was too limited and
+homely, that of Venice too purely oligarchical, to have much moral for
+us now, or to render a study of their pathological phenomena especially
+instructive.  The lessons taught us by the history of the Netherland
+confederacy may have more permanent meaning.
+
+Moreover, the character of a very considerable statesman at an all-
+important epoch, and in a position of vast responsibility, is always an
+historical possession of value to mankind.  That of him who furnishes the
+chief theme for these pages has been either overlooked and neglected or
+perhaps misunderstood by posterity.  History has not too many really
+important and emblematic men on its records to dispense with the memory
+of Barneveld, and the writer therefore makes no apology for dilating
+somewhat fully upon his lifework by means of much of his entirely
+unpublished and long forgotten utterances.
+
+The Advocate had ceaselessly been sounding the alarm in Germany.  For the
+Protestant Union, fascinated, as it were, by the threatening look of the
+Catholic League, seemed relapsing into a drowse.
+
+"I believe," he said to one of his agents in that country, "that the
+Evangelical electors and princes and the other estates are not alive to
+the danger.  I am sure that it is not apprehended in Great Britain.
+France is threatened with troubles.  These are the means to subjugate the
+religion, the laws and liberties of Germany.  Without an army the troops
+now on foot in Italy cannot be kept out of Germany.  Yet we do not hear
+that the Evangelicals are making provision of troops, money, or any other
+necessaries.  In this country we have about one hundred places occupied
+with our troops, among whom are many who could destroy a whole army.  But
+the maintenance of these places prevents our being very strong in the
+field, especially outside our frontiers.  But if in all Germany there be
+many places held by the Evangelicals which would disperse a great army is
+very doubtful.  Keep a watchful eye.  Economy is a good thing, but the
+protection of a country and its inhabitants must be laid to heart.  Watch
+well if against these Provinces, and against Bohemia, Austria, and other
+as it is pretended rebellious states, these plans are not directed.  Look
+out for the movements of the Italian and Bavarian troops against Germany.
+You see how they are nursing the troubles and misunderstandings in
+France, and turning them to account."
+
+He instructed the new ambassador in Paris to urge upon the French
+government the absolute necessity of punctuality in furnishing the
+payment of their contingent in the Netherlands according to convention.
+The States of Holland themselves had advanced the money during three
+years' past, but this anticipation was becoming very onerous.  It was
+necessary to pay the troops every month regularly, but the funds from
+Paris were always in arrear.  England contributed about one-half as much
+in subsidy, but these moneys went in paying the garrisons of Brielle,
+Flushing, and Rammekens, fortresses pledged to that crown.  The
+Ambassador was shrewdly told not to enlarge on the special employment of
+the English funds while holding up to the Queen's government that she was
+not the only potentate who helped bear burthens for the Provinces, and
+insisted on a continuation of this aid.  "Remember and let them
+remember," said the Advocate, "that the reforms which they are pretending
+to make there by relieving the subjects of contributions tends to
+enervate the royal authority and dignity both within and without, to
+diminish its lustre and reputation, and in sum to make the King unable
+to gratify and assist his subjects, friends, and allies.  Make them
+understand that the taxation in these Provinces is ten times higher than
+there, and that My Lords the States hitherto by the grace of God and good
+administration have contrived to maintain it in order to be useful to
+themselves and their friends.  Take great pains to have it well
+understood that this is even more honourable and more necessary for a
+king of France, especially in his minority, than for a republic 'hoc
+turbato seculo.'  We all see clearly how some potentates in Europe are
+keeping at all time under one pretext or another strong forces well armed
+on a war footing.  It therefore behoves his Majesty to be likewise
+provided with troops, and at least with a good exchequer and all the
+requirements of war, as well for the security of his own state as for
+the maintenance of the grandeur and laudable reputation left to him by
+the deceased king."
+
+Truly here was sound and substantial advice, never and nowhere more
+needed than in France.  It was given too with such good effect as to bear
+fruit even upon stoniest ground, and it is a refreshing spectacle to see
+this plain Advocate of a republic, so lately sprung into existence out of
+the depths of oppression and rebellion, calmly summoning great kings as
+it were before him and instructing them in those vital duties of
+government in discharge of which the country he administered already
+furnished a model.  Had England and France each possessed a Barneveld at
+that epoch, they might well have given in exchange for him a wilderness
+of Epernons and Sillerys, Bouillons and Conde's; of Winwoods, Lakes,
+Carrs, and Villierses.  But Elizabeth with her counsellors was gone, and
+Henry was gone, and Richelieu had not come; while in England James and
+his minions were diligently opening an abyss between government and
+people which in less than half a lifetime more should engulph the
+kingdom.
+
+Two months later he informed the States' ambassador of the communications
+made by the Prince of Conde and the Dukes of Nevers and Bouillon to
+the government at the Hague now that they had effected a kind of
+reconciliation with the Queen.  Langerac was especially instructed to
+do his best to assist in bringing about cordial relations, if that
+were possible, between the crown and the rebels, and meantime he was
+especially directed to defend du Maurier against the calumnious
+accusations brought against him, of which Aerssens had been the
+secret sower.
+
+"You will do your best to manage," he said, "that no special ambassador
+be sent hither, and that M. du Maurier may remain with us, he being a
+very intelligent and moderate person now well instructed as to the state
+of our affairs, a professor of the Reformed religion, and having many
+other good qualities serviceable to their Majesties and to us.
+
+"You will visit the Prince, and other princes and officers of the crown
+who are coming to court again, and do all good offices as well for the
+court as for M. du Maurier, in order that through evil plots and
+slanderous reports no harm may come to him.
+
+"Take great pains to find out all you can there as to the designs of the
+King of Spain, the Archdukes, and the Emperor, in the affair of Julich.
+You are also to let it be known that the change of religion on the part
+of the Prince-Palatine of Neuburg will not change our good will and
+affection for him, so far as his legal claims are concerned."
+
+So long as it was possible for the States to retain their hold on
+both the claimants, the Advocate, pursuant to his uniform policy of
+moderation, was not disposed to help throw the Palatine into the hands
+of the Spanish party.  He was well aware, however, that Neuburg by his
+marriage and his conversion was inevitably to become the instrument of
+the League and to be made use of in the duchies at its pleasure, and that
+he especially would be the first to submit with docility to the decree of
+the Emperor.  The right to issue such decree the States under guidance of
+Barneveld were resolved to resist at all hazards.
+
+"Work diligently, nevertheless," said he, "that they permit nothing there
+directly or indirectly that may tend to the furtherance of the League, as
+too prejudicial to us and to all our fellow religionists.  Tell them too
+that the late king, the King of Great Britain, the united electors and
+princes of Germany, and ourselves, have always been resolutely opposed to
+making the dispute about the succession in the duchies depend on the will
+of the Emperor and his court.  All our movements in the year 1610 against
+the attempted sequestration under Leopold were to carry out that purpose.
+Hold it for certain that our present proceedings for strengthening and
+maintaining the city and fortress of Julich are considered serviceable
+and indispensable by the British king and the German electors and
+princes.  Use your best efforts to induce the French government to pursue
+the same policy--if it be not possible openly, then at least secretly.
+My conviction is that, unless the Prince-Palatine is supported by, and
+his whole designs founded upon, the general league against all our
+brethren of the religion, affairs may be appeased."
+
+The Envoy was likewise instructed to do his best to further the
+matrimonial alliance which had begun to be discussed between the Prince
+of Wales and the second daughter of France.  Had it been possible at that
+moment to bring the insane dream of James for a Spanish alliance to
+naught, the States would have breathed more freely.  He was also to urge
+payment of the money for the French regiments, always in arrears since
+Henry's death and Sully's dismissal, and always supplied by the exchequer
+of Holland.  He was informed that the Republic had been sending some war
+ships to the Levant, to watch the armada recently sent thither by Spain,
+and other armed vessels into the Baltic, to pursue the corsairs with whom
+every sea was infested.  In one year alone he estimated the loss to Dutch
+merchants by these pirates at 800,000 florins.  "We have just captured
+two of the rovers, but the rascally scum is increasing," he said.
+
+Again alluding to the resistance to be made by the States to the Imperial
+pretensions, he observed, "The Emperor is about sending us a herald in
+the Julich matter, but we know how to stand up to him."
+
+And notwithstanding the bare possibility which he had admitted, that the
+Prince of Neuburg might not yet have wholly sold himself, body and soul,
+to the Papists, he gave warning a day or two afterwards in France that
+all should be prepared for the worst.
+
+"The Archdukes and the Prince of Neuburg appear to be taking the war
+earnestly in hand," he said.  "We believe that the Papistical League is
+about to make a great effort against all the co-religionists.  We are
+watching closely their movements.  Aachen is first threatened, and the
+Elector-Palatine likewise.  France surely, for reasons of state, cannot
+permit that they should be attacked.  She did, and helped us to do, too
+much in the Julich campaign to suffer the Spaniards to make themselves
+masters there now."
+
+It has been seen that the part played by France in the memorable campaign
+of 1610 was that of admiring auxiliary to the States' forces; Marshal de
+la Chatre having in all things admitted the superiority of their army and
+the magnificent generalship of Prince Maurice.  But the government of the
+Dowager had been committed by that enterprise to carry out the life-long
+policy of Henry, and to maintain his firm alliance with the Republic.
+Whether any of the great king's acuteness and vigour in countermining
+and shattering the plans of the House of Austria was left in the French
+court, time was to show.  Meantime Barneveld was crying himself hoarse
+with warnings into the dull ears of England and France.
+
+A few weeks later the Prince of Neuburg had thrown off the mask.  Twelve
+thousand foot and 1500 horse had been raised in great haste, so the
+Advocate informed the French court, by Spain and the Archdukes, for the
+use of that pretender.  Five or six thousand Spaniards were coming by sea
+to Flanders, and as many Italians were crossing the mountains, besides a
+great number mustering for the same purpose in Germany and Lorraine.
+Barneveld was constantly receiving most important intelligence of
+military plans and movements from Prague, which he placed daily before
+the eyes of governments wilfully blind.
+
+"I ponder well at this crisis," he said to his friend Caron, "the
+intelligence I received some months back from Ratisbon, out of the
+cabinet of the Jesuits, that the design of the Catholic or Roman League
+is to bring this year a great army into the field, in order to make
+Neuburg, who was even then said to be of the Roman profession and League,
+master of Julich and the duchies; to execute the Imperial decree against
+Aachen and Mulheim, preventing any aid from being sent into Germany by
+these Provinces, or by Great Britain, and placing the Archduke and
+Marquis Spinola in command of the forces; to put another army on the
+frontiers of Austria, in order to prevent any succour coming from
+Hungary, Bohemia, Austria, Moravia, and Silesia into Germany; to keep
+all these disputed territories in subjection and devotion to the Emperor,
+and to place the general conduct of all these affairs in the hands of
+Archduke Leopold and other princes of the House of Austria.  A third army
+is to be brought into the Upper Palatinate, under command of the Duke of
+Bavaria and others of the League, destined to thoroughly carry out its
+designs against the Elector-Palatine, and the other electors, princes,
+and estates belonging to the religion."
+
+This intelligence, plucked by Barneveld out of the cabinet of the
+Jesuits, had been duly communicated by him months before to those whom
+it most concerned, and as usual it seemed to deepen the lethargy of the
+destined victims and their friends.  Not only the whole Spanish campaign
+of the present year had thus been duly mapped out by the Advocate, long
+before it occurred, but this long buried and forgotten correspondence of
+the statesman seems rather like a chronicle of transactions already past,
+so closely did the actual record, which posterity came to know too well,
+resemble that which he saw, and was destined only to see, in prophetic
+vision.
+
+Could this political seer have cast his horoscope of the Thirty Years'
+War at this hour of its nativity for the instruction of such men as
+Walsingham or Burleigh, Henry of Navarre or Sully, Richelieu or Gustavus
+Adolphus, would the course of events have been modified?  These very
+idlest of questions are precisely those which inevitably occur as one
+ponders the seeming barrenness of an epoch in reality so pregnant.
+
+"One would think," said Barneveld, comparing what was then the future
+with the real past, "that these plans in Prague against the Elector-
+Palatine are too gross for belief; but when I reflect on the intense
+bitterness of these people, when I remember what was done within living
+men's memory to the good elector Hans Frederic of Saxony for exactly
+the same reasons, to wit, hatred of our religion, and determination to
+establish Imperial authority, I have great apprehension.  I believe that
+the Roman League will use the present occasion to carry out her great
+design; holding France incapable of opposition to her, Germany in too
+great division, and imagining to themselves that neither the King of
+Great Britain nor these States are willing or able to offer effectual and
+forcible resistance.  Yet his Majesty of Great Britain ought to be able
+to imagine how greatly the religious matter in general concerns himself
+and the electoral house of the Palatine, as principal heads of the
+religion, and that these vast designs should be resisted betimes, and
+with all possible means and might.  My Lords the States have good will,
+but not sufficient strength, to oppose these great forces single-handed.
+One must not believe that without great and prompt assistance in force
+from his Majesty and other fellow religionists My Lords the States can
+undertake so vast an affair.  Do your uttermost duty there, in order
+that, ere it be too late, this matter be taken to heart by his Majesty,
+and that his authority and credit be earnestly used with other kings,
+electors, princes, and republics, that they do likewise.  The promptest
+energy, good will, and affection may be reckoned on from us."
+
+Alas! it was easy for his Majesty to take to heart the matter of Conrad
+Vorstius, to spend reams of diplomatic correspondence, to dictate whole
+volumes for orations brimming over with theological wrath, for the
+edification of the States-General, against that doctor of divinity.
+But what were the special interests of his son-in-law, what the danger
+to all the other Protestant electors and kings, princes and republics,
+what the imperilled condition of the United Provinces, and, by necessary
+consequence, the storm gathering over his own throne, what the whole
+fate of Protestantism, from Friesland to Hungary, threatened by the
+insatiable, all-devouring might of the double house of Austria, the
+ancient church, and the Papistical League, what were hundred thousands of
+men marching towards Bohemia, the Netherlands, and the duchies, with the
+drum beating for mercenary recruits in half the villages of Spain, Italy,
+and Catholic Germany, compared with the danger to Christendom from an
+Arminian clergyman being appointed to the theological professorship at
+Leyden?
+
+The world was in a blaze, kings and princes were arming, and all the time
+that the monarch of the powerful, adventurous, and heroic people of Great
+Britain could spare from slobbering over his minions, and wasting the
+treasures of the realm to supply their insatiate greed, was devoted to
+polemical divinity, in which he displayed his learning, indeed, but
+changed his positions and contradicted himself day by day.  The magnitude
+of this wonderful sovereign's littleness oppresses the imagination.
+
+Moreover, should he listen to the adjurations of the States and his
+fellow religionists, should he allow himself to be impressed by the
+eloquence of Barneveld and take a manly and royal decision in the great
+emergency, it would be indispensable for him to come before that odious
+body, the Parliament of Great Britain, and ask for money.  It would be
+perhaps necessary for him to take them into his confidence, to degrade
+himself by speaking to them of the national affairs.  They might not be
+satisfied with the honour of voting the supplies at his demand, but were
+capable of asking questions as to their appropriation.  On the whole it
+was more king-like and statesman-like to remain quiet, and give advice.
+Of that, although always a spendthrift, he had an inexhaustible supply.
+
+Barneveld had just hopes from the Commons of Great Britain, if the King
+could be brought to appeal to Parliament.  Once more he sounded the bugle
+of alarm.  "Day by day the Archdukes are making greater and greater
+enrolments of riders and infantry in ever increasing mass," he cried,
+"and therewith vast provision of artillery and all munitions of war.
+Within ten or twelve days they will be before Julich in force.  We are
+sending great convoys to reinforce our army there.  The Prince of Neuburg
+is enrolling more and more troops every day.  He will soon be master of
+Mulheim.  If the King of Great Britain will lay this matter earnestly to
+heart for the preservation of the princes, electors, and estates of the
+religion, I cannot doubt that Parliament would cooperate well with his
+Majesty, and this occasion should be made use of to redress the whole
+state of affairs."
+
+It was not the Parliament nor the people of Great Britain that would be
+in fault when the question arose of paying in money and in blood for the
+defence of civil and religious liberty.  But if James should venture
+openly to oppose Spain, what would the Count of Gondemar say, and what
+would become of the Infanta and the two millions of dowry?
+
+It was not for want of some glimmering consciousness in the mind of James
+of the impending dangers to Northern Europe and to Protestantism from the
+insatiable ambition of Spain, and the unrelenting grasp of the Papacy
+upon those portions of Christendom which were slipping from its control,
+that his apathy to those perils was so marked.  We have seen his leading
+motives for inaction, and the world was long to feel its effects.
+
+"His Majesty firmly believes," wrote Secretary Winwood, "that the
+Papistical League is brewing great and dangerous plots.  To obviate them
+in everything that may depend upon him, My Lords the States will find him
+prompt.  The source of all these entanglements comes from Spain.  We do
+not think that the Archduke will attack Julich this year, but rather fear
+for Mulheim and Aix-la-Chapelle."
+
+But the Secretary of State, thus acknowledging the peril, chose to be
+blind to its extent, while at the same time undervaluing the powers by
+which it might be resisted.  "To oppose the violence of the enemy," he
+said, "if he does resort to violence, is entirely impossible.  It would
+be furious madness on our part to induce him to fall upon the Elector-
+Palatine, for this would be attacking Great Britain and all her friends
+and allies.  Germany is a delicate morsel, but too much for the throat
+of Spain to swallow all at once.  Behold the evil which troubles the
+conscience of the Papistical League.  The Emperor and his brothers are
+all on the brink of their sepulchre, and the Infants of Spain are too
+young to succeed to the Empire.  The Pope would more willingly permit its
+dissolution than its falling into the hands of a prince not of his
+profession.  All that we have to do in this conjuncture is to attend the
+best we can to our own affairs, and afterwards to strengthen the good
+alliance existing among us, and not to let ourselves be separated by the
+tricks and sleights of hand of our adversaries.  The common cause can
+reckon firmly upon the King of Great Britain, and will not find itself
+deceived."
+
+Excellent commonplaces, but not very safe ones.  Unluckily for the
+allies, to attend each to his own affairs when the enemy was upon them,
+and to reckon firmly upon a king who thought it furious madness to resist
+the enemy, was hardly the way to avert the danger.  A fortnight later,
+the man who thought it possible to resist, and time to resist, before the
+net was over every head, replied to the Secretary by a picture of the
+Spaniards' progress.
+
+"Since your letter," he said, "you have seen the course of Spinola with
+the army of the King and the Archdukes.  You have seen the Prince-
+Palatine of Neuburg with his forces maintained by the Pope and other
+members of the Papistical League.  On the 29th of August they forced
+Aachen, where the magistrates and those of the Reformed religion have
+been extremely maltreated.  Twelve hundred soldiers are lodged in the
+houses there of those who profess our religion.  Mulheim is taken and
+dismantled, and the very houses about to be torn down.  Duren, Castre,
+Grevenborg, Orsoy, Duisburg, Ruhrort, and many other towns, obliged to
+receive Spanish garrisons.  On the 4th of September they invested Wesel.
+On the 6th it was held certain that the cities of Cleve, Emmerich, Rees,
+and others in that quarter, had consented to be occupied.  The States
+have put one hundred and thirty-five companies of foot (about 14,000 men)
+and 4000 horse and a good train of artillery in the field, and sent out
+some ships of war.  Prince Maurice left the Hague on the 4th of September
+to assist Wesel, succour the Prince of Brandenburg, and oppose the
+hostile proceedings of Spinola and the Palatine of Neuburg .  .  .  .
+Consider, I pray you, this state of things, and think how much heed they
+have paid to the demands of the Kings of Great Britain and France to
+abstain from hostilities.  Be sure that without our strong garrison in
+Julich they would have snapped up every city in Julich, Cleve, and Berg.
+But they will now try to make use of their slippery tricks, their
+progress having been arrested by our army.  The Prince of Neuburg is
+sending his chancellor here 'cum mediis componendae pacis,' in appearance
+good and reasonable, in reality deceptive .  .  .  .  If their Majesties,
+My Lords the States, and the princes of the Union, do not take an
+energetic resolution for making head against their designs, behold their
+League in full vigour and ours without soul.  Neither the strength nor
+the wealth of the States are sufficient of themselves to withstand their
+ambitious and dangerous designs.  We see the possessory princes treated
+as enemies upon their own estates, and many thousand souls of the
+Reformed religion cruelly oppressed by the Papistical League.  For myself
+I am confirmed in my apprehensions and believe that neither our religion
+nor our Union can endure such indignities.  The enemy is making use of
+the minority in France and the divisions among the princes of Germany to
+their great advantage .  .  .  .  I believe that the singular wisdom of
+his Majesty will enable him to apply promptly the suitable remedies, and
+that your Parliament will make no difficulty in acquitting itself well in
+repairing those disorders."
+
+The year dragged on to its close.  The supineness of the Protestants
+deepened in direct proportion to the feverish increase of activity on the
+part of Austria and the League.  The mockery of negotiation in which
+nothing could be negotiated, the parade of conciliation when war of
+extermination was intended, continued on the part of Spain and Austria.
+Barneveld was doing his best to settle all minor differences between the
+States and Great Britain, that these two bulwarks of Protestantism might
+stand firmly together against the rising tide.  He instructed the
+Ambassador to exhaust every pacific means of arrangement in regard to
+the Greenland fishery disputes, the dyed cloth question, and like causes
+of ill feeling.  He held it more than necessary, he said, that the
+inhabitants of the two countries should now be on the very best terms
+with each other.  Above all, he implored the King through the Ambassador
+to summon Parliament in order that the kingdom might be placed in
+position to face the gathering danger.
+
+"I am amazed and distressed," he said, "that the statesmen of England do
+not comprehend the perils with which their fellow religionists are
+everywhere threatened, especially in Germany and in these States.
+To assist us with bare advice and sometimes with traducing our actions,
+while leaving us to bear alone the burthens, costs, and dangers, is not
+serviceable to us."  Referring to the information and advice which he had
+sent to England and to France fifteen months before, he now gave
+assurance that the Prince of Neuburg and Spinola were now in such force,
+both foot and cavalry, with all necessary munitions, as to hold these
+most important territories as a perpetual "sedem bedli," out of which to
+attack Germany at their pleasure and to cut off all possibility of aid
+from England and the States.  He informed the court of St. James that
+besides the forces of the Emperor and the House of Austria, the Duke of
+Bavaria and Spanish Italy, there were now several thousand horse and foot
+under the Bishop of Wurzburg, 8000 or 9000 under the Bishop-Elector of
+Mayence, and strong bodies of cavalry under Count Vaudemont in Lorraine,
+all mustering for the war.  The pretext seems merely to reduce Frankfurt
+to obedience, even as Donauworth had previously been used as a colour for
+vast designs.  The real purpose was to bring the Elector-Palatine and the
+whole Protestant party in Germany to submission.  "His Majesty," said the
+Advocate, "has now a very great and good subject upon which to convoke
+Parliament and ask for a large grant.  This would be doubtless consented
+to if Parliament receives the assurance that the money thus accorded
+shall be applied to so wholesome a purpose.  You will do your best to
+further this great end.  We are waiting daily to hear if the Xanten
+negotiation is broken off or not.  I hope and I fear.  Meantime we bear
+as heavy burthens as if we were actually at war."
+
+He added once more the warning, which it would seem superfluous to repeat
+even to schoolboys in diplomacy, that this Xanten treaty, as proposed by
+the enemy, was a mere trap.
+
+Spinola and Neuburg, in case of the mutual disbanding, stood ready at an
+instant's warning to re-enlist for the League not only all the troops
+that the Catholic army should nominally discharge, but those which would
+be let loose from the States' army and that of Brandenburg as well.  They
+would hold Rheinberg, Groll, Lingen, Oldenzaal, Wachtendonk, Maestricht,
+Aachen, and Mulheim with a permanent force of more than 20,000 men.  And
+they could do all this in four days' time.
+
+A week or two later all his prophesies had been fulfilled.  "The Prince
+of Neuburg," he said, "and Marquis Spinola have made game of us most
+impudently in the matter of the treaty.  This is an indignity for us,
+their Majesties, and the electors and princes.  We regard it as
+intolerable.  A despatch came from Spain forbidding a further step in the
+negotiation without express order from the King.  The Prince and Spinola
+are gone to Brussels, the ambassadors have returned to the Hague, the
+armies are established in winter-quarters.  The cavalry are ravaging
+the debateable land and living upon the inhabitants at their discretion.
+M. de Refuge is gone to complain to the Archdukes of the insult thus put
+upon his sovereign.  Sir Henry Wotton is still here.  We have been
+plunged into an immensity of extraordinary expense, and are amazed that
+at this very moment England should demand money from us when we ought to
+be assisted by a large subsidy by her.  We hope that now at least his
+Majesty will take a vigorous resolution and not suffer his grandeur and
+dignity to be vilipended longer.  If the Spaniard is successful in this
+step, he is ready for greater ones, and will believe that mankind is
+ready to bear and submit to everything.  His Majesty is the first
+king of the religion.  He bears the title of Defender of the Faith.
+His religion, his only daughter, his son-in-law, his grandson are all
+especially interested besides his own dignity, besides the common weal."
+
+He then adverted to the large subsidies from Queen Elizabeth many years
+before, guaranteed, it was true, by the cautionary towns, and to the
+gallant English regiments, sent by that great sovereign, which had been
+fighting so long and so splendidly in the Netherlands for the common
+cause of Protestantism and liberty.  Yet England was far weaker then, for
+she had always her northern frontier to defend against Scotland, ever
+ready to strike her in the back.  "But now his Majesty," said Barneveld,
+"is King of England and Scotland both.  His frontier is free.  Ireland is
+at peace.  He possesses quietly twice as much as the Queen ever did.  He
+is a king.  Her Majesty was a woman.  The King has children and heirs.
+His nearest blood is engaged in this issue.  His grandeur and dignity
+have been wronged.  Each one of these considerations demands of itself a
+manly resolution.  You will do your best to further it."
+
+The almost ubiquitous power of Spain, gaining after its exhaustion new
+life through the strongly developed organization of the League, and the
+energy breathed into that mighty conspiracy against human liberty by the
+infinite genius of the "cabinet of Jesuits," was not content with
+overshadowing Germany, the Netherlands, and England, but was threatening
+Savoy with 40,000 men, determined to bring Charles Emmanuel either to
+perdition or submission.
+
+Like England, France was spell-bound by the prospect of Spanish
+marriages, which for her at least were not a chimera, and looked on
+composedly while Savoy was on point of being sacrificed by the common
+invader of independent nationality whether Protestant or Catholic.
+Nothing ever showed more strikingly the force residing in singleness of
+purpose with breadth and unity of design than all these primary movements
+of the great war now beginning.  The chances superficially considered
+were vastly in favour of the Protestant cause.  In the chief lands, under
+the sceptre of the younger branch of Austria, the Protestants outnumbered
+the Catholics by nearly ten to one.  Bohemia, the Austrias, Moravia,
+Silesia, Hungary were filled full of the spirit of Huss, of Luther, and
+even of Calvin.  If Spain was a unit, now that the Moors and Jews had
+been expelled, and the heretics of Castille and Aragon burnt into
+submission, she had a most lukewarm ally in Venice, whose policy was
+never controlled by the Church, and a dangerous neighbour in the
+warlike, restless, and adventurous House of Savoy, to whom geographical
+considerations were ever more vital than religious scruples.  A sincere
+alliance of France, the very flower of whose nobility and people inclined
+to the Reformed religion, was impossible, even if there had been fifty
+infantes to espouse fifty daughters of France.  Great Britain, the
+Netherlands, and the united princes of Germany seemed a solid and serried
+phalanx of Protestantism, to break through which should be hopeless.  Yet
+at that moment, so pregnant with a monstrous future, there was hardly a
+sound Protestant policy anywhere but in Holland.  How long would that
+policy remain sound and united?  How long would the Republic speak
+through the imperial voice of Barneveld?  Time was to show and to teach
+many lessons.  The united princes of Germany were walking, talking,
+quarrelling in their sleep; England and France distracted and bedrugged,
+while Maximilian of Bavaria and Ferdinand of Gratz, the cabinets of
+Madrid and the Vatican, were moving forward to their aims slowly,
+steadily, relentlessly as Fate.  And Spain was more powerful than she
+had been since the Truce began.  In five years she had become much more
+capable of aggression.  She had strengthened her positions in the
+Mediterranean by the acquisition and enlargement of considerable
+fortresses in Barbary and along a large sweep of the African coast,
+so as to be almost supreme in Africa.  It was necessary for the States,
+the only power save Turkey that could face her in those waters, to
+maintain a perpetual squadron of war ships there to defend their commerce
+against attack from the Spaniard and from the corsairs, both Mahometan
+and Christian, who infested every sea.  Spain was redoubtable everywhere,
+and the Turk, engaged in Persian campaigns, was offering no diversion
+against Hungary and Vienna.
+
+"Reasons of state worthy of his Majesty's consideration and wisdom," said
+Barneveld, "forbid the King of Great Britain from permitting the Spaniard
+to give the law in Italy.  He is about to extort obedience and
+humiliation from the Duke of Savoy, or else with 40,000 men to mortify
+and ruin him, while entirely assuring himself of France by the double
+marriages.  Then comes the attack on these Provinces, on Protestant
+Germany, and all other states and realms of the religion."
+
+With the turn of the year, affairs were growing darker and darker.  The
+League was rolling up its forces in all directions; its chiefs proposed
+absurd conditions of pacification, while war was already raging, and yet
+scarcely any government but that of the Netherlands paid heed to the
+rising storm.  James, fatuous as ever, listened to Gondemar, and wrote
+admonitory letters to the Archduke.  It was still gravely proposed by the
+Catholic party that there should be mutual disbanding in the duchies,
+with a guarantee from Marquis Spinola that there should be no more
+invasion of those territories.  But powers and pledges from the King of
+Spain were what he needed.
+
+To suppose that the Republic and her allies would wait quietly, and not
+lift a finger until blows were actually struck against the Protestant
+electors or cities of Germany, was expecting too much ingenuousness on
+the part of statesmen who had the interests of Protestantism at heart.
+What they wanted was the signed, sealed, ratified treaty faithfully
+carried out.  Then if the King of Spain and the Archdukes were willing to
+contract with the States never to make an attempt against the Holy German
+Empire, but to leave everything to take its course according to the
+constitutions, liberties, and traditions and laws of that empire, under
+guidance of its electors, princes, estates, and cities, the United
+Provinces were ready, under mediation of the two kings, their allies and
+friends, to join in such an arrangement.  Thus there might still be peace
+in Germany, and religious equality as guaranteed by the "Majesty-Letter,"
+and the "Compromise" between the two great churches, Roman and Reformed,
+be maintained.  To bring about this result was the sincere endeavour of
+Barneveld, hoping against hope.  For he knew that all was hollowness and
+sham on the part of the great enemy.  Even as Walsingham almost alone
+had suspected and denounced the delusive negotiations by which Spain
+continued to deceive Elizabeth and her diplomatists until the Armada was
+upon her coasts, and denounced them to ears that were deafened and souls
+that were stupified by the frauds practised upon them, so did Barneveld,
+who had witnessed all that stupendous trickery of a generation before,
+now utter his cries of warning that Germany might escape in time from her
+impending doom.
+
+"Nothing but deceit is lurking in the Spanish proposals," he said.
+"Every man here wonders that the English government does not comprehend
+these malversations.  Truly the affair is not to be made straight by new
+propositions, but by a vigorous resolution of his Majesty.  It is in
+the highest degree necessary to the salvation of Christendom, to the
+conservation of his Majesty's dignity and greatness, to the service of
+the princes and provinces, and of all Germany, nor can this vigorous
+resolution be longer delayed without enormous disaster to the common weal
+.  .  .  .  .  I have the deepest affection for the cause of the Duke of
+Savoy, but I cannot further it so long as I cannot tell what his Majesty
+specifically is resolved to do, and what hope is held out from Venice,
+Germany, and other quarters.  Our taxes are prodigious, the ordinary and
+extraordinary, and we have a Spanish army at our front door."
+
+The armaments, already so great, had been enlarged during the last month
+of the year.  Vaudemont was at the head of a further force of 2000
+cavalry and 8000 foot, paid for by Spain and the Pope; 24,000 additional
+soldiers, riders and infantry together, had been gathered by Maximilian
+of Bavaria at the expense of the League.  Even if the reports were
+exaggerated, the Advocate thought it better to be too credulous than
+as apathetic as the rest of the Protestants.
+
+"We receive advices every day," he wrote to Caron, "that the Spaniards
+and the Roman League are going forward with their design.  They are
+trying to amuse the British king and to gain time, in order to be able to
+deal the heavier blows.  Do all possible duty to procure a timely and
+vigorous resolution there.  To wait again until we are anticipated will
+be fatal to the cause of the Evangelical electors and princes of Germany
+and especially of his Electoral Highness of Brandenburg.  We likewise
+should almost certainly suffer irreparable damage, and should again bear
+our cross, as men said last year in regard to Aachen, Wesel, and so many
+other places.  The Spaniard is sly, and has had a long time to contrive
+how he can throw the net over the heads of all our religious allies.
+Remember all the warnings sent from here last year, and how they were
+all tossed to the winds, to the ruin of so many of our co-religionists.
+If it is now intended over there to keep the Spaniards in check merely by
+speeches or letters, it would be better to say so clearly to our friends.
+So long as Parliament is not convoked in order to obtain consents and
+subsidies for this most necessary purpose, so long I fail to believe that
+this great common cause of Christendom, and especially of Germany, is
+taken to heart by England."
+
+He adverted with respectfully subdued scorn to King James's proposition
+that Spinola should give a guarantee.  "I doubt if he accepts the
+suggestion," said Barneveld, "unless as a notorious trick, and if he did,
+what good would the promise of Spinola do us?  We consider Spinola a
+great commander having the purses and forces of the Spaniards and the
+Leaguers in his control; but should they come into other hands, he would
+not be a very considerable personage for us.  And that may happen any
+day.  They don't seem in England to understand the difference between
+Prince Maurice in his relations to our state and that of Marquis Spinola
+to his superiors.  Try to make them comprehend it.  A promise from
+the Emperor, King of Spain, and the princes of the League, such as
+his Majesty in his wisdom has proposed to Spinola, would be most
+tranquillizing for all the Protestant princes and estates of the Empire,
+especially for the Elector and Electress Palatine, and for ourselves.
+In such a case no difficulty would be made on our side."
+
+After expressing his mind thus freely in regard to James and his policy,
+he then gave the Ambassador a word of caution in characteristic fashion.
+"Cogita," he said, "but beware of censuring his Majesty's projects.  I do
+not myself mean to censure them, nor are they publicly laughed at here,
+but look closely at everything that comes from Brussels, and let me know
+with diligence."
+
+And even as the Advocate was endeavouring with every effort of his skill
+and reason to stir the sluggish James into vigorous resolution in behalf
+of his own children, as well as of the great cause of Protestantism and
+national liberty, so was he striving to bear up on his strenuous
+shoulders the youthful king of France, and save him from the swollen
+tides of court intrigue and Jesuitical influence fast sweeping him to
+destruction.
+
+He had denounced the recent and paltry proposition made on the part of
+the League, and originally suggested by James, as a most open and
+transparent trap, into which none but the blind would thrust themselves.
+The Treaty of Xanten, carried out as it had been signed and guaranteed by
+the great Catholic powers, would have brought peace to Christendom.  To
+accept in place of such guarantee the pledge of a simple soldier, who
+to-morrow might be nothing, was almost too ridiculous a proposal to be
+answered gravely.  Yet Barneveld through the machinations of the Catholic
+party was denounced both at the English and French courts as an obstacle
+to peace, when in reality his powerful mind and his immense industry were
+steadily directed to the noblest possible end--to bring about a solemn
+engagement on the part of Spain, the Emperor, and the princes of the
+League, to attack none of the Protestant powers of Germany, especially
+the Elector-Palatine, but to leave the laws, liberties, and privileges of
+the States within the Empire in their original condition.  And among
+those laws were the great statutes of 1609 and 1610, the "Majesty-Letter"
+and the "Compromise," granting full right of religious worship to the
+Protestants of the Kingdom of Bohemia.  If ever a policy deserved to be
+called truly liberal and truly conservative, it was the policy thus
+steadily maintained by Barneveld.
+
+Adverting to the subterfuge by which the Catholic party had sought
+to set aside the treaty of Xanten, he instructed Langerac, the States'
+ambassador in Paris, and his own pupils to make it clear to the French
+government that it was impossible that in such arrangements the Spanish
+armies would not be back again in the duchies at a moment's notice.
+It could not be imagined even that they were acting sincerely.
+
+"If their upright intention," he said, "is that no actual, hostile,
+violent attack shall be made upon the duchies, or upon any of the
+princes, estates, or cities of the Holy Empire, as is required for the
+peace and tranquillity of Christendom, and if all the powers interested
+therein will come into a good and solid convention to that effect.  My
+Lords the States will gladly join in such undertaking and bind themselves
+as firmly as the other powers.  If no infraction of the laws and
+liberties of the Holy Empire be attempted, there will be peace for
+Germany and its neighbours.  But the present extravagant proposition can
+only lead to chicane and quarrels.  To press such a measure is merely to
+inflict a disgrace upon us.  It is an attempt to prevent us from helping
+the Elector-Palatine and the other Protestant princes of Germany and
+coreligionists everywhere against hostile violence.  For the Elector-
+Palatine can receive aid from us and from Great Britain through the
+duchies only.  It is plainly the object of the enemy to seclude us from
+the Palatine and the rest of Protestant Germany.  It is very suspicious
+that the proposition of Prince Maurice, supported by the two kings and
+the united princes of Germany, has been rejected."
+
+The Advocate knew well enough that the religious franchises granted by
+the House of Habsburg at the very moment in which Spain signed her peace
+with the Netherlands, and exactly as the mad duke of Cleve was expiring
+--with a dozen princes, Catholic and Protestant, to dispute his
+inheritance--would be valuable just so long as they could be maintained
+by the united forces of Protestantism and of national independence and no
+longer.  What had been extorted from the Catholic powers by force would
+be retracted by force whenever that force could be concentrated.  It had
+been necessary for the Republic to accept a twelve years' truce with
+Spain in default of a peace, while the death of John of Cleve, and
+subsequently of Henry IV., had made the acquisition of a permanent
+pacification between Catholicism and Protestantism, between the League
+and the Union, more difficult than ever.  The so-called Thirty Years'
+War--rather to be called the concluding portion of the Eighty Years' War
+--had opened in the debateable duchies exactly at the moment when its
+forerunner, the forty years' war of the Netherlands, had been temporarily
+and nominally suspended.  Barneveld was perpetually baffled in his
+efforts to obtain a favourable peace for Protestant Europe, less by the
+open diplomacy and military force of the avowed enemies of Protestantism
+than by the secret intrigues and faintheartedness of its nominal friends.
+He was unwearied in his efforts simultaneously to arouse the courts of
+England and France to the danger to Europe from the overshadowing power
+of the House of Austria and the League, and he had less difficulty in
+dealing with the Catholic Lewis and his mother than with Protestant
+James.  At the present moment his great designs were not yet openly
+traversed by a strong Protestant party within the very republic which he
+administered.
+
+"Look to it with earnestness and grave deliberation," he said to
+Langerac, "that they do not pursue us there with vain importunity to
+accept something so notoriously inadmissible and detrimental to the
+common weal.  We know that from the enemy's side every kind of
+unseemly trick is employed, with the single object of bringing about
+misunderstanding between us and the King of France.  A prompt and
+vigorous resolution on the part of his Majesty, to see the treaty which
+we made duly executed, would be to help the cause.  Otherwise, not.  We
+cannot here believe that his Majesty, in this first year of his majority,
+will submit to such a notorious and flagrant affront, or that he will
+tolerate the oppression of the Duke of Savoy.  Such an affair in the
+beginning of his Majesty's reign cannot but have very great and
+prejudicial consequences, nor can it be left to linger on in uncertainty
+and delay.  Let him be prompt in this.  Let him also take a most
+Christian--kingly, vigorous resolution against the great affront put upon
+him in the failure to carry out the treaty.  Such a resolve on the part
+of the two kings would restore all things to tranquillity and bring the
+Spaniard and his adherents 'in terminos modestiae.  But so long as France
+is keeping a suspicious eye upon England, and England upon France,
+everything will run to combustion, detrimental to their Majesties and to
+us, and ruinous to all the good inhabitants."
+
+To the Treaty of Xanten faithfully executed he held as to an anchor in
+the tempest until it was torn away, not by violence from without, but by
+insidious mutiny within.  At last the government of James proposed that
+the pledges on leaving the territory should be made to the two allied
+kings as mediators and umpires.  This was better than the naked promises
+originally suggested, but even in this there was neither heartiness nor
+sincerity.  Meantime the Prince of Neuburg, negotiations being broken
+off, departed for Germany, a step which the Advocate considered ominous.
+Soon afterwards that prince received a yearly pension of 24,000 crowns
+from Spain, and for this stipend his claims on the sovereignty of the
+duchies were supposed to be surrendered.
+
+"If this be true," said Barneveld, "we have been served with covered
+dishes."
+
+The King of England wrote spirited and learned letters to the Elector-
+Palatine, assuring him of his father-in-law's assistance in case he
+should be attacked by the League.  Sir Henry Wotton, then on special
+mission at the Hague, showed these epistles to Barneveld.
+
+"When I hear that Parliament has been assembled and has granted great
+subsidies," was the Advocate's comment, "I shall believe that effects may
+possibly follow from all these assurances."
+
+It was wearisome for the Advocate thus ever to be foiled; by the
+pettinesses and jealousies of those occupying the highest earthly
+places, in his efforts to stem the rising tide of Spanish and Catholic
+aggression, and to avert the outbreak of a devastating war to which he
+saw Europe doomed.  It may be wearisome to read the record.  Yet it is
+the chronicle of Christendom during one of the most important and fateful
+epochs of modern history.  No man can thoroughly understand the
+complication and precession of phenomena attending the disastrous dawn of
+the renewed war, on an even more awful scale than the original conflict
+in the Netherlands, without studying the correspondence of Barneveld.
+The history of Europe is there.  The fate of Christendom is there.
+The conflict of elements, the crash of contending forms of religion and
+of nationalities, is pictured there in vivid if homely colours.  The
+Advocate, while acting only in the name of a slender confederacy, was
+in truth, so long as he held his place, the prime minister of European
+Protestantism.  There was none other to rival him, few to comprehend him,
+fewer still to sustain him.  As Prince Maurice was at that moment the
+great soldier of Protestantism without clearly scanning the grandeur of
+the field in which he was a chief actor, or foreseeing the vastness of
+its future, so the Advocate was its statesman and its prophet.  Could the
+two have worked together as harmoniously as they had done at an earlier
+day, it would have been a blessing for the common weal of Europe.  But,
+alas! the evil genius of jealousy, which so often forbids cordial
+relations between soldier and statesman, already stood shrouded in the
+distance, darkly menacing the strenuous patriot, who was wearing his life
+out in exertions for what he deemed the true cause of progress and
+humanity.
+
+Nor can the fate of the man himself, his genuine character, and the
+extraordinary personal events towards which he was slowly advancing,
+be accurately unfolded without an attempt by means of his letters to lay
+bare his inmost thoughts.  Especially it will be seen at a later moment
+how much value was attached to this secret correspondence with the
+ambassadors in London and Paris.
+
+The Advocate trusted to the support of France, Papal and Medicean as the
+court of the young king was, because the Protestant party throughout the
+kingdom was too powerful, warlike, and numerous to be trifled with, and
+because geographical considerations alone rendered a cordial alliance
+between Spain and France very difficult.  Notwithstanding the Spanish
+marriages, which he opposed so long as opposition was possible, he knew
+that so long as a statesman remained in the kingdom, or a bone for one
+existed, the international policy of Henry, of Sully, and of Jeannin
+could not be wholly abandoned.
+
+He relied much on Villeroy, a political hack certainly, an ancient
+Leaguer, and a Papist, but a man too cool, experienced, and wily to be
+ignorant of the very hornbook of diplomacy, or open to the shallow
+stratagems by which Spain found it so easy to purchase or to deceive.  So
+long as he had a voice in the council, it was certain that the Netherland
+alliance would not be abandoned, nor the Duke of Savoy crushed.  The old
+secretary of state was not especially in favour at that moment, but
+Barneveld could not doubt his permanent place in French affairs until
+some man of real power should arise there.  It was a dreary period of
+barrenness and disintegration in that kingdom while France was mourning
+Henry and waiting for Richelieu.
+
+The Dutch ambassador at Paris was instructed accordingly to maintain.
+good relations with Villeroy, who in Barneveld's opinion had been a
+constant and sincere friend to the Netherlands.  "Don't forget to caress
+the old gentleman you wot of," said the Advocate frequently, but
+suppressing his name, "without troubling yourself with the reasons
+mentioned in your letter.  I am firmly convinced that he will overcome
+all difficulties.  Don't believe either that France will let the Duke of
+Savoy be ruined.  It is against every reason of State."  Yet there were
+few to help Charles Emmanuel in this Montferrat war, which was destined
+to drag feebly on, with certain interludes of negotiations, for two years
+longer.  The already notorious condottiere Ernest Mansfeld, natural son
+of old prince Peter Ernest, who played so long and so high a part in
+command of the Spanish armies in the Netherlands, had, to be sure, taken
+service under the Duke.  Thenceforth he was to be a leader and a master
+in that wild business of plunder, burning, blackmailing, and murder,
+which was opening upon Europe, and was to afford occupation for many
+thousands of adventurers of high and low degree.
+
+Mansfeld, reckless and profligate, had already changed his banner more
+than once.  Commanding a company under Leopold in the duchies, he had
+been captured by the forces of the Union, and, after waiting in vain to
+be ransomed by the Archduke, had gone secretly over to the enemy.  Thus
+recovering his liberty, he had enlisted a regiment under Leopold's name
+to fight the Union, and had then, according to contract, transferred
+himself and most of his adventurers to the flag of the Union.  The
+military operations fading away in the duchies without being succeeded by
+permanent peace, the Count, as he was called, with no particular claim to
+such title, had accepted a thousand florins a year as retainer from the
+Union and had found occupation under Charles Emmanuel.  Here the Spanish
+soldier of a year or two before found much satisfaction and some profit
+in fighting Spanish soldiers.  He was destined to reappear in the
+Netherlands, in France, in Bohemia, in many places where there were
+villages to be burned, churches to be plundered, cities to be sacked,
+nuns and other women to be outraged, dangerous political intrigues to
+be managed.  A man in the prime of his age, fair-haired, prematurely
+wrinkled, battered, and hideous of visage, with a hare-lip and a
+humpback; slovenly of dress, and always wearing an old grey hat without a
+band to it; audacious, cruel, crafty, and licentious--such was Ernest
+Mansfeld, whom some of his contemporaries spoke of as Ulysses Germanicus,
+others as the new Attila, all as a scourge to the human race.  The
+cockneys of Paris called him "Machefer," and nurses long kept children
+quiet by threatening them with that word.  He was now enrolled on the
+Protestant side, although at the moment serving Savoy against Spain in a
+question purely personal.  His armies, whether in Italy or in Germany,
+were a miscellaneous collection of adventurers of high and low degree, of
+all religions, of all countries, unfrocked priests and students, ruined
+nobles, bankrupt citizens, street vagabonds--earliest type perhaps of the
+horrible military vermin which were destined to feed so many years long
+on the unfortunate dismembered carcass of Germany.
+
+Many demands had been made upon the States for assistance to Savoy,--as
+if they and they alone were to bear the brunt and pay the expense of all
+the initiatory campaigns against Spain.
+
+"We are much importuned," said the Advocate, "to do something for the
+help of Savoy .  .  .  .  We wish and we implore that France, Great
+Britain, the German princes, the Venetians, and the Swiss would join us
+in some scheme of effective assistance.  But we have enough on our
+shoulders at this moment."
+
+They had hardly money enough in their exchequer, admirably ordered as it
+was, for enterprises so far from home when great Spanish armies were
+permanently encamped on their border.
+
+Partly to humour King James and partly from love of adventure, Count John
+of Nassau had gone to Savoy at the head of a small well disciplined body
+of troops furnished by the States.
+
+"Make use of this piece of news," said Barneveld, communicating the fact
+to Langerac, "opportunely and with discretion.  Besides the wish to
+give some contentment to the King of Great Britain, we consider it
+inconsistent with good conscience and reasons of state to refuse help to
+a great prince against oppression by those who mean to give the law to
+everybody; especially as we have been so earnestly and frequently
+importuned to do so."
+
+And still the Spaniards and the League kept their hold on the duchies,
+while their forces, their munitions, their accumulation of funds waged
+hourly.  The war of chicane was even more deadly than an actual campaign,
+for when there was no positive fighting the whole world seemed against
+the Republic.  And the chicane was colossal.
+
+"We cannot understand," said Barneveld, "why M. de Prevaulx is coming
+here on special mission.  When a treaty is signed and sealed, it only
+remains to execute it.  The Archduke says he is himself not known in the
+treaty, and that nothing can be demanded of him in relation to it.  This
+he says in his letters to the King of Great Britain.  M. de Refuge knows
+best whether or not Marquis Spinola, Ottavio Visconti, Chancellor
+Pecquius, and others, were employed in the negotiation by the Archduke.
+We know very well here that the whole business was conducted by them.
+The Archduke is willing to give a clean and sincere promise not to re-
+occupy, and asks the same from the States.  If he were empowered by the
+Emperor, the King of Spain, and the League, and acted in such quality,
+something might be done for the tranquillity of Germany.  But he promises
+for himself only, and Emperor, King, or League, may send any general to
+do what they like to-morrow.  What is to prevent it?
+
+"And so My Lords the States, the Elector of Brandenburg, and others
+interested are cheated and made fools of.  And we are as much troubled by
+these tricks as by armed force.  Yes, more; for we know that great
+enterprises are preparing this year against Germany and ourselves, that
+all Neuburg's troops have been disbanded and re-enlisted under the
+Spanish commanders, and that forces are levying not only in Italy and
+Spain, but in Germany, Lorraine, Luxemburg, and Upper Burgundy, and that
+Wesel has been stuffed full of gunpowder and other munitions, and very
+strongly fortified."
+
+For the States to agree to a treaty by which the disputed duchies should
+be held jointly by the Princes of Neuburg and of Brandenburg, and the
+territory be evacuated by all foreign troops; to look quietly on while
+Neuburg converted himself to Catholicism, espoused the sister of
+Maximilian of Bavaria, took a pension from Spain, resigned his claims in
+favour of Spain, and transferred his army to Spain; and to expect that
+Brandenburg and all interested in Brandenburg, that is to say, every
+Protestant in Europe, should feel perfectly easy under such arrangement
+and perfectly protected by the simple promise of a soldier of fortune
+against Catholic aggression, was a fantastic folly hardly worthy of a
+child.  Yet the States were asked to accept this position, Brandenburg
+and all Protestant Germany were asked to accept it, and Barneveld was
+howled at by his allies as a marplot and mischief-maker, and denounced
+and insulted by diplomatists daily, because he mercilessly tore away the
+sophistries of the League and of the League's secret friend, James
+Stuart.
+
+The King of Spain had more than 100,000 men under arms, and was enlisting
+more soldiers everywhere and every day, had just deposited 4,000,000
+crowns with his Antwerp bankers for a secret purpose, and all the time
+was exuberant in his assurances of peace.  One would have thought that
+there had never been negotiations in Bourbourg, that the Spanish Armada
+had never sailed from Coruna.
+
+"You are wise and prudent in France," said the Advocate, "but we are used
+to Spanish proceedings, and from much disaster sustained are filled with
+distrust.  The King of England seems now to wish that the Archduke should
+draw up a document according to his good pleasure, and that the States
+should make an explanatory deed, which the King should sign also and ask
+the King of France to do the same.  But this is very hazardous.
+
+"We do not mean to receive laws from the King of Spain, nor the Archduke
+.  .  .  .  The Spanish proceedings do not indicate peace but war.
+One must not take it ill of us that we think these matters of grave
+importance to our friends and ourselves.  Affairs have changed very much
+in the last four months.  The murder of the first vizier of the Turkish
+emperor and his designs against Persia leave the Spanish king and the
+Emperor free from attack in that quarter, and their armaments are far
+greater than last year .  .  .  .  I cannot understand why the treaty of
+Xanten, formerly so highly applauded, should now be so much disapproved.
+.  .  .  The King of Spain and the Emperor with their party have a vast
+design to give the law to all Christendom, to choose a Roman king
+according to their will, to reduce the Evangelical electors, princes,
+and estates of Germany to obedience, to subject all Italy, and, having
+accomplished this, to proceed to triumph over us and our allies, and by
+necessary consequence over France and England.  They say they have
+established the Emperor's authority by means of Aachen and Mulheim,
+will soon have driven us out of Julich, and have thus arranged matters
+entirely to their heart's content.  They can then, in name of the
+Emperor, the League, the Prince of Neuburg, or any one else, make
+themselves in eight days masters of the places which they are now
+imaginarily to leave as well as of those which we are actually to
+surrender, and by possession of which we could hold out a long time
+against all their power."
+
+Those very places held by the States--Julich, Emmerich, and others--had
+recently been fortified at much expense, under the superintendence of
+Prince Maurice, and by advice of the Advocate.  It would certainly be an
+act of madness to surrender them on the terms proposed.  These warnings
+and forebodings of Barneveld sound in our ears like recorded history,
+yet they were far earlier than the actual facts.  And now to please the
+English king, the States had listened to his suggestion that his name
+and that of the King of France should be signed as mediators to a new
+arrangement proposed in lieu of the Xanten treaty.  James had suggested
+this, Lewis had agreed to it.  Yet before the ink had dried in James's
+pen, he was proposing that the names of the mediating sovereigns should
+be omitted from the document?  And why?  Because Gondemar was again
+whispering in his ear.  "They are renewing the negotiations in England,"
+said the Advocate, "about the alliance between the Prince of Wales and
+the second daughter of Spain; and the King of Great Britain is seriously
+importuning us that the Archdukes and My Lords the States should make
+their pledges 'impersonaliter' and not to the kings."  James was also
+willing that the name of the Emperor should appear upon it.  To prevent
+this, Barneveld would have had himself burned at the stake.  It would be
+an ignominious and unconditional surrender of the whole cause.
+
+"The Archduke will never be contented," said the Advocate, "unless his
+Majesty of Great Britain takes a royal resolution to bring him to reason.
+That he tries to lay the fault on us is pure malice.  We have been ready
+and are still ready to execute the treaty of Xanten.  The Archduke is the
+cause of the dispute concerning the act.  We approved the formularies of
+their Majesties, and have changed them three times to suit the King of
+Great Britain.  Our Provincial States have been notified in the matter,
+so that we can no longer digest the Spanish impudence, and are amazed
+that his Majesty can listen any more to the Spanish ministers.  We fear
+that those ministers are working through many hands, in order by one
+means or another to excite quarrels between his Majesty, us, and the
+respective inhabitants of the two countries .  .  .  .  .  Take every
+precaution that no attempt be made there to bring the name of the
+Emperor into the act.  This would be contrary to their Majesties' first
+resolution, very prejudicial to the Elector of Brandenburg, to the
+duchies, and to ourselves.  And it is indispensable that the promise be
+made to the two kings as mediators, as much for their reputation and
+dignity as for the interests of the Elector, the territories, and
+ourselves.  Otherwise too the Spaniards will triumph over us as
+if they had driven us by force of arms into this promise."
+
+The seat of war, at the opening of the apparently inevitable conflict
+between the Catholic League and the Protestant Union, would be those
+debateable duchies, those border provinces, the possession of which was
+of such vital importance to each of the great contending parties, and
+the populations of which, although much divided, were on the whole more
+inclined to the League than to the Union.  It was natural enough that the
+Dutch statesman should chafe at the possibility of their being lost to
+the Union through the adroitness of the Catholic managers and the
+supineness of the great allies of the Republic.
+
+Three weeks later than these last utterances of the Advocate, he was
+given to understand that King James was preparing to slide away from the
+position which had been three times changed to make it suitable for him.
+His indignation was hot.
+
+"Sir Henry Wotton," he said, "has communicated to me his last despatches
+from Newmarket.  I am in the highest degree amazed that after all our
+efforts at accommodation, with so much sacrifice to the electors, the
+provinces, and ourselves, they are trying to urge us there to consent
+that the promise be not made to the Kings of France and Great Britain as
+mediators, although the proposition came from the Spanish side.  After we
+had renounced, by desire of his Majesty, the right to refer the promise
+to the Treaty of Xanten, it was judged by both kings to be needful and
+substantial that the promise be made to their Majesties.  To change this
+now would be prejudicial to the kings, to the electors, the duchies, and
+to our commonwealth; to do us a wrong and to leave us naked.  France
+maintains her position as becoming and necessary.  That Great Britain
+should swerve from it is not to be digested here.  You will do your
+utmost according to my previous instructions to prevent any pressure to
+this end.  You will also see that the name of the Emperor is mentioned
+neither in the preamble nor the articles of the treaty.  It would be
+contrary to all our policy since 1610.  You may be firmly convinced that
+malice is lurking under the Emperor's name, and that he and the King of
+Spain and their adherents, now as before, are attempting a sequestration.
+This is simply a pretext to bring those principalities and provinces into
+the hands of the Spaniards, for which they have been labouring these
+thirty years.  We are constantly cheated by these Spanish tricks.  Their
+intention is to hold Wesel and all the other places until the conclusion
+of the Italian affair, and then to strike a great blow."
+
+Certainly were never words more full of sound statesmanship, and of
+prophecy too soon to be fulfilled, than these simple but pregnant
+warnings.  They awakened but little response from the English government
+save cavils and teasing reminders that Wesel had been the cradle of
+German Calvinism, the Rhenish Geneva, and that it was sinful to leave
+it longer in the hands of Spain.  As if the Advocate had not proved to
+demonstration that to stock hands for a new deal at that moment was to
+give up the game altogether.
+
+His influence in France was always greater than in England, and this had
+likewise been the case with William the Silent.  And even now that the
+Spanish matrimonial alliance was almost a settled matter at the French
+court, while with the English king it was but a perpetual will-o'the-wisp
+conducting to quagmires ineffable, the government at Paris sustained the
+policy of the Advocate with tolerable fidelity, while it was constantly
+and most capriciously traversed by James.
+
+Barneveld sighed over these approaching nuptials, but did not yet
+despair.  "We hope that the Spanish-French marriages," he said, "may be
+broken up of themselves; but we fear that if we should attempt to delay
+or prevent them authoritatively, or in conjunction with others, the
+effort would have the contrary effect."
+
+In this certainly he was doomed to disappointment.
+
+He had already notified the French court of the absolute necessity of the
+great points to be insisted upon in the treaty, and there he found more
+docility than in London or Newmarket.
+
+All summer he was occupied with this most important matter, uttering
+Cassandra-like warnings into ears wilfully deaf.  The States had gone as
+far as possible in concession.  To go farther would be to wreck the great
+cause upon the very quicksands which he had so ceaselessly pointed out.
+"We hope that nothing further will be asked of us, no scruples be felt as
+to our good intentions," he said, "and that if Spain and the Archdukes
+are not ready now to fulfil the treaty, their Majesties will know how to
+resent this trifling with their authority and dignity, and how to set
+matters to rights with their own hands in the duchies.  A new treaty,
+still less a sequestration, is not to be thought of for a moment."
+
+Yet the month of August came and still the names of the mediating kings
+were not on the treaty, and still the spectre of sequestration had not
+been laid.  On the contrary, the peace of Asti, huddled up between
+Spain and Savoy, to be soon broken again, had caused new and painful
+apprehensions of an attempt at sequestration, for it was established by
+several articles in that treaty that all questions between Savoy and
+Mantua should be referred to the Emperor's decision.  This precedent was
+sure to be followed in the duchies if not resisted by force, as it had
+been so successfully resisted five years before by the armies of the
+States associated with those of France.  Moreover the first step at
+sequestration had been actually taken.  The Emperor had peremptorily
+summoned the Elector of Brandenburg and all other parties interested to
+appear before him on the 1st of August in Prague.  There could be but one
+object in this citation, to drive Brandenburg and the States out of the
+duchies until the Imperial decision as to the legitimate sovereignty
+should be given.  Neuburg being already disposed of and his claims ceded
+to the Emperor, what possibility was there in such circumstances of
+saving one scrap of the territory from the clutch of the League?  None
+certainly if the Republic faltered in its determination, and yielded to
+the cowardly advice of James.  "To comply with the summons," said
+Barneveld, "and submit to its consequences will be an irreparable injury
+to the electoral house of Brandenburg, to the duchies, and to our co-
+religionists everywhere, and a very great disgrace to both their
+Majesties and to us."
+
+He continued, through the ambassador in London, to hold up to the King,
+in respectful but plain language, the shamelessness of his conduct in
+dispensing the enemy from his pledge to the mediators, when the Republic
+expressly, in deference to James, had given up the ampler guarantees of
+the treaty.  The arrangement had been solemnly made, and consented to by
+all the provinces, acting in their separate and sovereign capacity.  Such
+a radical change, even if it were otherwise permissible, could not be
+made without long debates, consultations, and votes by the several
+states.  What could be more fatal at such a crisis than this childish
+and causeless delay.  There could be no doubt in any statesman's eyes
+that the Spanish party meant war and a preparatory hoodwinking.  And it
+was even worse for the government of the Republic to be outwitted in
+diplomacy than beaten in the field.
+
+"Every man here," said the Advocate, "has more apprehension of fraud than
+of force.  According to the constitution of our state, to be overcome by
+superior power must be endured, but to be overreached by trickery is a
+reproach to the government."
+
+The summer passed away.  The States maintained their positions in the
+duchies, notwithstanding the objurgations of James, and Barneveld
+remained on his watch-tower observing every movement of the fast-
+approaching war, and refusing at the price of the whole territory in
+dispute to rescue Wesel and Aix-la-Chapelle from the grasp of the League.
+
+Caron came to the Hague to have personal consultations with the States-
+General, the Advocate, and Prince Maurice, and returned before the close
+of the year.  He had an audience of the King at the palace of Whitehall
+early in November, and found him as immovable as ever in his apathetic
+attitude in regard to the affairs of Germany.  The murder of Sir Thomas
+Overbury and the obscene scandals concerning the King's beloved Carr and
+his notorious bride were then occupying the whole attention of the
+monarch, so that he had not even time for theological lucubrations, still
+less for affairs of state on which the peace of Christendom and the fate
+of his own children were hanging.
+
+The Ambassador found him sulky and dictatorial, but insisted on
+expressing once more to him the apprehensions felt by the States-General
+in regard to the trickery of the Spanish party in the matter of Cleve and
+Julich.  He assured his Majesty that they had no intention of maintaining
+the Treaty of Xanten, and respectfully requested that the King would no
+longer urge the States to surrender the places held by them.  It was a
+matter of vital importance to retain them, he said.
+
+"Sir Henry Wotton told me," replied James, "that the States at his
+arrival were assembled to deliberate on this matter, and he had no doubt
+that they would take a resolution in conformity with my intention.  Now I
+see very well that you don't mean to give up the places.  If I had known
+that before, I should not have warned the Archduke so many times, which I
+did at the desire of the States themselves.  And now that the Archdukes
+are ready to restore their cities, you insist on holding yours.  That is
+the dish you set before me."
+
+And upon this James swore a mighty oath, and beat himself upon the
+breast.
+
+"Now and nevermore will I trouble myself about the States' affairs, come
+what come will," he continued.  "I have always been upright in my words
+and my deeds, and I am not going to embark myself in a wicked war because
+the States have plunged themselves into one so entirely unjust.  Next
+summer the Spaniard means to divide himself into two or three armies in
+order to begin his enterprises in Germany."
+
+Caron respectfully intimated that these enterprises would be most
+conveniently carried on from the very advantageous positions which be
+occupied in the duchies.  "No," said the King, "he must restore them on
+the same day on which you make your surrender, and he will hardly come
+back in a hurry."
+
+"Quite the contrary," said the Ambassador, "they will be back again in a
+twinkling, and before we have the slightest warning of their intention."
+
+But it signified not the least what Caron said.  The King continued to
+vociferate that the States had never had any intention of restoring the
+cities.
+
+"You mean to keep them for yourselves," he cried, "which is the greatest
+injustice that could be perpetrated.  You have no right to them, and they
+belong to other people."
+
+The Ambassador reminded him that the Elector of Brandenburg was well
+satisfied that they should be occupied by the States for his greater
+security and until the dispute should be concluded.
+
+"And that will never be," said James; "never, never.  The States are
+powerful enough to carry on the war all alone and against all the world."
+
+And so he went on, furiously reiterating the words with which he had
+begun the conversation, "without accepting any reasons whatever in
+payment," as poor Caron observed.
+
+"It makes me very sad," said the Ambassador, "to find your Majesty so
+impatient and so resolved.  If the names of the kings are to be omitted
+from the document, the Treaty of Xanten should at least be modified
+accordingly."
+
+"Nothing of the kind," said James; "I don't understand it so at all.  I
+speak plainly and without equivocation.  It must be enough for the States
+that I promise them, in case the enemy is cheating or is trying to play
+any trick whatever, or is seeking to break the Treaty of Xanten in a
+single point, to come to their assistance in person."
+
+And again the warlike James swore a big oath and smote his breast,
+affirming that he meant everything sincerely; that he cheated no one,
+but always spoke his thoughts right on, clearly and uprightly.
+
+It was certainly not a cheerful prospect for the States.  Their chief
+ally was determined that they should disarm, should strip themselves
+naked, when the mightiest conspiracy against the religious freedom and
+international independence of Europe ever imagined was perfecting itself
+before their eyes, and when hostile armies, more numerous than ever
+before known, were at their very door.  To wait until the enemy was at
+their throat, and then to rely upon a king who trembled at the sight of a
+drawn sword, was hardly the highest statesmanship.  Even if it had been
+the chivalrous Henry instead of the pacific James that had held out the
+promise of help, they would have been mad to follow such counsel.
+
+The conversation lasted more than an hour.  It was in vain that Caron
+painted in dark colours the cruel deeds done by the Spaniards in Mulheim
+and Aachen, and the proceedings of the Archbishop of Cologne in Rees.
+The King was besotted, and no impression could be made upon him.
+
+"At any rate," said the Envoy, "the arrangement cannot be concluded
+without the King of France."
+
+"What excuse is that?"  said James.  "Now that the King is entirely
+Spanish, you are trying to excuse your delays by referring to him.
+You have deferred rescuing the poor city of Wesel from the hands of the
+Spaniard long enough.  I am amazed to have heard never a word from you
+on that subject since your departure.  I had expressed my wish to you
+clearly enough that you should inform the States of my intention to give
+them any assurance they chose to demand."
+
+Caron was much disappointed at the humour of his Majesty.  Coming freshly
+as he did from the council of the States, and almost from the seat of
+war, he had hoped to convince and content him.  But the King was very
+angry with the States for putting him so completely in the wrong.  He had
+also been much annoyed at their having failed to notify him of their
+military demonstration in the Electorate of Cologne to avenge the
+cruelties practised upon the Protestants there.  He asked Caron if he was
+instructed to give him information regarding it.  Being answered in the
+negative, he said he had thought himself of sufficient importance to the
+States and enough in their confidence to be apprised of their military
+movements.  It was for this, he said, that his ambassador sat in their
+council.  Caron expressed the opinion that warlike enterprises of the
+kind should be kept as secret as possible in order to be successful.
+This the King disputed, and loudly declared his vexation at being left in
+ignorance of the matter.  The Ambassador excused himself as well as he
+could, on the ground that he had been in Zealand when the troops were
+marching, but told the King his impression that they had been sent to
+chastise the people of Cologne for their cruelty in burning and utterly
+destroying the city of Mulheim.
+
+"That is none of your affair," said the King.
+
+"Pardon me, your Majesty," replied Caron, "they are our fellow
+religionists, and some one at least ought to resent the cruelty
+practised upon them."
+
+The King admitted that the destruction of the city had been an unheard--
+of cruelty, and then passed on to speak of the quarrel between the Duke
+and City of Brunswick, and other matters.  The interview ended, and the
+Ambassador, very downhearted, went to confer with the Secretary of State
+Sir Ralph Winwood, and Sir Henry Wotton.
+
+He assured these gentlemen that without fully consulting the French
+government these radical changes in the negotiations would never be
+consented to by the States.  Winwood promised to confer at once with the
+French ambassador, admitting it to be impossible for the King to take up
+this matter alone.  He would also talk with the Archduke's ambassador
+next day noon at dinner, who was about leaving for Brussels, and "he
+would put something into his hand that he might take home with him."
+
+"When he is fairly gone," said Caron, "it is to be hoped that the King's
+head will no longer be so muddled about these things.  I wish it with all
+my heart."
+
+It was a dismal prospect for the States.  The one ally on whom they had
+a right to depend, the ex-Calvinist and royal Defender of the Faith, in
+this mortal combat of Protestantism with the League, was slipping out of
+their grasp with distracting lubricity.  On the other hand, the Most
+Christian King, a boy of fourteen years, was still in the control of a
+mother heart and soul with the League--so far as she had heart or soul--
+was betrothed to the daughter of Spain, and saw his kingdom torn to
+pieces and almost literally divided among themselves by rebellious
+princes, who made use of the Spanish marriages as a pretext for unceasing
+civil war.
+
+The Queen-Mother was at that moment at Bordeaux, and an emissary from the
+princes was in London.  James had sent to offer his mediation between
+them and the Queen.  He was fond of mediation.  He considered it his
+special mission in the world to mediate.  He imagined himself as looked
+up to by the nations as the great arbitrator of Christendom, and was wont
+to issue his decrees as if binding in force and infallible by nature.  He
+had protested vigorously against the Spanish-French marriages, and
+declared that the princes were justified in formalizing an opposition to
+them, at least until affairs in France were restored to something like
+order.  He warned the Queen against throwing the kingdom "into the
+combustion of war without necessity," and declared that, if she would
+trust to his guidance, she might make use of him as if her affairs were
+his own.  An indispensable condition for much assistance, however, would
+be that the marriages should be put off.
+
+As James was himself pursuing a Spanish marriage for his son as the chief
+end and aim of his existence, there was something almost humorous in this
+protest to the Queen-Dowager and in his encouragement of mutiny in France
+in order to prevent a catastrophe there which he desired at home.
+
+The same agent of the princes, de Monbaran by name, was also privately
+accredited by them to the States with instructions to borrow 200,000
+crowns of them if he could.  But so long as the policy of the Republic
+was directed by Barneveld, it was not very probable that, while
+maintaining friendly and even intimate relations with the legitimate
+government, she would enter into negotiations with rebels against it,
+whether princes or plebeians, and oblige them with loans.  "He will call
+on me soon, no doubt," said Caron, "but being so well instructed as to
+your Mightinesses intentions in this matter, I hope I shall keep him away
+from you."  Monbaran was accordingly kept away, but a few weeks later
+another emissary of Conde and Bouillon made his appearance at the Hague,
+de Valigny by name.  He asked for money and for soldiers to reinforce
+Bouillon's city of Sedan, but he was refused an audience of the States-
+General.  Even the martial ardour of Maurice and his sympathy for his
+relatives were cooled by this direct assault on his pocket.  "The
+Prince," wrote the French ambassador, du Maurier, "will not furnish him
+or his adherents a thousand crowns, not if they had death between their
+teeth.  Those who think it do not know how he loves his money."
+
+In the very last days of the year (1615) Caron had another interview with
+the King in which James was very benignant.  He told the Ambassador that
+he should wish the States to send him some special commissioners to make
+a new treaty with him, and to treat of all unsettled affairs which were
+daily arising between the inhabitants of the respective countries.  He
+wished to make a firmer union and accord between Great Britain and the
+Netherlands.  He was very desirous of this, "because," said he, "if we
+can unite with and understand each other, we have under God no one what
+ever to fear, however mighty they may be."
+
+Caron duly notified Barneveld of these enthusiastic expressions of his
+Majesty.  The Advocate too was most desirous of settling the troublesome
+questions about the cloth trade, the piracies, and other matters, and was
+in favour of the special commission.  In regard to a new treaty of
+alliance thus loosely and vaguely suggested, he was not so sanguine
+however.  He had too much difficulty in enforcing the interests of
+Protestantism in the duchies against the infatuation of James in regard
+to Spain, and he was too well aware of the Spanish marriage delusion,
+which was the key to the King's whole policy, to put much faith in these
+casual outbursts of eternal friendship with the States.  He contented
+himself therefore with cautioning Caron to pause before committing
+himself to any such projects.  He had frequently instructed him, however,
+to bring the disputed questions to his Majesty's notice as often as
+possible with a view to amicable arrangement.
+
+This preventive policy in regard to France was highly approved by
+Barneveld, who was willing to share in the blame profusely heaped upon
+such sincere patriots and devoted Protestants as Duplessis-Mornay and
+others, who saw small advantage to the great cause from a mutiny against
+established government, bad as it was, led by such intriguers as Conde
+and Bouillon.  Men who had recently been in the pay of Spain, and one of
+whom had been cognizant of Biron's plot against the throne and life of
+Henry IV., to whom sedition was native atmosphere and daily bread, were
+not likely to establish a much more wholesome administration than that
+of Mary de' Medici.  Prince Maurice sympathized with his relatives by
+marriage, who were leading the civil commotions in France and
+endeavouring to obtain funds in the Netherlands.  It is needless to say
+that Francis Aerssens was deep in their intrigues, and feeding full the
+grudge which the Stadholder already bore the Advocate for his policy on
+this occasion.
+
+The Advocate thought it best to wait until the young king should himself
+rise in mutiny against his mother and her minions.  Perhaps the downfall
+of the Concini's and their dowager and the escape of Lewis from thraldom
+might not be so distant as it seemed.  Meantime this was the legal
+government, bound to the States by treaties of friendship and alliance,
+and it would be a poor return for the many favours and the constant aid
+bestowed by Henry IV. on the Republic, and an imbecile mode of avenging
+his murder to help throw his kingdom into bloodshed and confusion before
+his son was able to act for himself.  At the same time he did his best to
+cultivate amicable relations with the princes, while scrupulously
+abstaining from any sympathy with their movements.  "If the Prince and
+the other gentlemen come to court," he wrote to Langerac, "you will treat
+them with all possible caresses so far as can be done without disrespect
+to the government."
+
+While the British court was occupied with the foul details of the
+Overbury murder and its consequences, a crime of a more commonplace
+nature, but perhaps not entirely without influence on great political
+events, had startled the citizens of the Hague.  It was committed in the
+apartments of the Stadholder and almost under his very eyes.  A jeweller
+of Amsterdam, one John van Wely, had come to the court of Maurice to lay
+before him a choice collection of rare jewellery.  In his caskets were
+rubies and diamonds to the value of more than 100,000 florins, which
+would be the equivalent of perhaps ten times as much to-day.  In the
+Prince's absence the merchant was received by a confidential groom of the
+chambers, John of Paris by name, and by him, with the aid of a third
+John, a soldier of his Excellency's guard, called Jean de la Vigne,
+murdered on the spot.  The deed was done in the Prince's private study.
+The unfortunate jeweller was shot, and to make sure was strangled with
+the blue riband of the Order of the Garter recently conferred upon
+Maurice, and which happened to be lying conspicuously in the room.
+
+The ruffians had barely time to take possession of the booty, to thrust
+the body behind the tapestry of the chamber, and to remove the more
+startling evidences of the crime, when the Prince arrived.  He supped
+soon afterwards in the same room, the murdered jeweller still lying
+behind the arras.  In the night the valet and soldier carried the corpse
+away from the room, down the stairs, and through the great courtyard,
+where, strange to say, no sentinels were on duty, and threw it into an
+ashpit.
+
+A deed so bloody, audacious, and stupid was of course soon discovered and
+the murderers arrested and executed.  Nothing would remove the incident
+from the catalogue of vulgar crimes, or even entitle it to a place in
+history save a single circumstance.  The celebrated divine John
+Uytenbogaert, leader among the Arminians, devoted friend of Barneveld,
+and up to that moment the favorite preacher of Maurice, stigmatized
+indeed, as we have seen, by the orthodox as "Court Trumpeter," was
+requested by the Prince to prepare the chief criminal for death.  He did
+so, and from that day forth the Stadholder ceased to be his friend,
+although regularly listening to his preaching in the French chapel of the
+court for more than a year longer.  Some time afterwards the Advocate
+informed Uytenbogaert that the Prince was very much embittered against
+him.  "I knew it well," says the clergyman in his memoirs, "but not the
+reasons for it, nor do I exactly comprehend them to this day.  Truly I
+have some ideas relating to certain things which I was obliged to do in
+discharge of my official duty, but I will not insist upon them, nor will
+I reveal them to any man."
+
+These were mysterious words, and the mystery is said to have been
+explained; for it would seem that the eminent preacher was not so
+entirely reticent among his confidential friends as before the public.
+Uytenbogaert--so ran the tale--in the course of his conversation with the
+condemned murderer, John of Paris, expressed a natural surprise that
+there should have been no soldiers on guard in the court on the evening
+when the crime was committed and the body subsequently removed.  The
+valet informed him that he had for a long time been empowered by the
+Prince to withdraw the sentinels from that station, and that they had
+been instructed to obey his orders--Maurice not caring that they should
+be witnesses to the equivocal kind of female society that John of Paris
+was in the habit of introducing of an evening to his master's apartments.
+The valet had made use of this privilege on the night in question to rid
+himself of the soldiers who would have been otherwise on guard.
+
+The preacher felt it his duty to communicate these statements to the
+Prince, and to make perhaps a somewhat severe comment upon them.  Maurice
+received the information sullenly, and, as soon as Uytenbogaert was gone,
+fell into a violent passion, throwing his hat upon the floor, stamping
+upon it, refusing to eat his supper, and allowing no one to speak to him.
+Next day some courtiers asked the clergyman what in the world he had been
+saying to the Stadholder.
+
+From that time forth his former partiality for the divine, on whose
+preaching he had been a regular attendant, was changed to hatred; a
+sentiment which lent a lurid colour to subsequent events.
+
+The attempts of the Spanish party by chicane or by force to get
+possession of the coveted territories continued year after year, and were
+steadily thwarted by the watchfulness of the States under guidance of
+Barneveld.  The martial stadholder was more than ever for open war, in
+which he was opposed by the Advocate, whose object was to postpone and,
+if possible, to avert altogether the dread catastrophe which he foresaw
+impending over Europe.  The Xanten arrangement seemed hopelessly thrown
+to the winds, nor was it destined to be carried out; the whole question
+of sovereignty and of mastership in those territories being swept
+subsequently into the general whirlpool of the Thirty Years' War.  So
+long as there was a possibility of settlement upon that basis, the
+Advocate was in favour of settlement, but to give up the guarantees and
+play into the hands of the Catholic League was in his mind to make the
+Republic one of the conspirators against the liberties of Christendom.
+
+"Spain, the Emperor and the rest of them," said he, "make all three modes
+of pacification--the treaty, the guarantee by the mediating kings, the
+administration divided between the possessory princes--alike impossible.
+They mean, under pretext of sequestration, to make themselves absolute
+masters there.  I have no doubt that Villeroy means sincerely, and
+understands the matter, but meantime we sit by the fire and burn.  If the
+conflagration is neglected, all the world will throw the blame on us."
+
+Thus the Spaniards continued to amuse the British king with assurances of
+their frank desire to leave those fortresses and territories which they
+really meant to hold till the crack of doom.  And while Gondemar was
+making these ingenuous assertions in London, his colleagues at Paris and
+at Brussels distinctly and openly declared that there was no authority
+whatever for them, that the Ambassador had received no such instructions,
+and that there was no thought of giving up Wesel or any other of the
+Protestant strongholds captured, whether in the duchies or out of them.
+And Gondemar, still more to keep that monarch in subjection, had been
+unusually flattering in regard to the Spanish marriage.  "We are in great
+alarm here," said the Advocate, "at the tidings that the projected
+alliance of the Prince of Wales with the daughter of Spain is to be
+renewed; from which nothing good for his Majesty's person, his kingdom,
+nor for our state can be presaged.  We live in hope that it will never
+be."
+
+But the other marriage was made.  Despite the protest of James, the
+forebodings of Barneveld, and the mutiny of the princes, the youthful
+king of France had espoused Anne of Austria early in the year 1616.  The
+British king did his best to keep on terms with France and Spain, and by
+no means renounced his own hopes.  At the same time, while fixed as ever
+in his approbation of the policy pursued by the Emperor and the League,
+and as deeply convinced of their artlessness in regard to the duchies,
+the Protestant princes of Germany, and the Republic, he manifested more
+cordiality than usual in his relations with the States.  Minor questions
+between the countries he was desirous of arranging--so far as matters of
+state could be arranged by orations--and among the most pressing of these
+affairs were the systematic piracy existing and encouraged in English
+ports, to the great damage of all seafaring nations and to the Hollanders
+most of all, and the quarrel about the exportation of undyed cloths,
+which had almost caused a total cessation of the woollen trade between
+the two countries.  The English, to encourage their own artisans, had
+forbidden the export of undyed cloths, and the Dutch had retorted by
+prohibiting the import of dyed ones.
+
+The King had good sense enough to see the absurdity of this condition
+of things, and it will be remembered that Barneveld had frequently urged
+upon the Dutch ambassador to bring his Majesty's attention to these
+dangerous disputes.  Now that the recovery of the cautionary towns had
+been so dexterously and amicably accomplished, and at so cheap a rate,
+it seemed a propitious moment to proceed to a general extinction of what
+would now be called "burning questions."
+
+James was desirous that new high commissioners might be sent from the
+States to confer with himself and his ministers upon the subjects just
+indicated, as well as upon the fishery questions as regarded both
+Greenland and Scotland, and upon the general affairs of India.
+
+He was convinced, he said to Caron, that the sea had become more and more
+unsafe and so full of freebooters that the like was never seen or heard
+of before.  It will be remembered that the Advocate had recently called
+his attention to the fact that the Dutch merchants had lost in two months
+800,000 florins' worth of goods by English pirates.
+
+The King now assured the Ambassador of his intention of equipping a fleet
+out of hand and to send it forth as speedily as possible under command
+of a distinguished nobleman, who would put his honour and credit in a
+successful expedition, without any connivance or dissimulation whatever.
+In order thoroughly to scour these pirates from the seas, he expressed
+the hope that their Mightinesses the States would do the same either
+jointly or separately as they thought most advisable.  Caron bluntly
+replied that the States had already ten or twelve war-ships at sea for
+this purpose, but that unfortunately, instead of finding any help from
+the English in this regard, they had always found the pirates favoured
+in his Majesty's ports, especially in Ireland and Wales.
+
+"Thus they have so increased in numbers," continued the Ambassador, "that
+I quite believe what your Majesty says, that not a ship can pass with
+safety over the seas.  More over, your Majesty has been graciously
+pleased to pardon several of these corsairs, in consequence of which they
+have become so impudent as to swarm everywhere, even in the river Thames,
+where they are perpetually pillaging honest merchantmen."
+
+"I confess," said the King, "to having pardoned a certain Manning, but
+this was for the sake of his old father, and I never did anything so
+unwillingly in my life.  But I swear that if it were the best nobleman
+in England, I would never grant one of them a pardon again."
+
+Caron expressed his joy at hearing such good intentions on the part of
+his Majesty, and assured him that the States-General would be equally
+delighted.
+
+In the course of the summer the Dutch ambassador had many opportunities
+of seeing the King very confidentially, James having given him the use of
+the royal park at Bayscot, so that during the royal visits to that place
+Caron was lodged under his roof.
+
+On the whole, James had much regard and respect for Noel de Caron.
+He knew him to be able, although he thought him tiresome.  It is amusing
+to observe the King and Ambassador in their utterances to confidential
+friends each frequently making the charge of tediousness against the
+other.  "Caron's general education," said James on one occasion to Cecil,
+"cannot amend his native German prolixity, for had I not interrupted him,
+it had been tomorrow morning before I had begun to speak.  God preserve
+me from hearing a cause debated between Don Diego and him!  .  .  .  But
+in truth it is good dealing with so wise and honest a man, although he be
+somewhat longsome."
+
+Subsequently James came to Whitehall for a time, and then stopped at
+Theobalds for a few days on his way to Newmarket, where he stayed until
+Christmas.  At Theobalds he sent again for the Ambassador, saying that at
+Whitehall he was so broken down with affairs that it would be impossible
+to live if he stayed there.
+
+He asked if the States were soon to send the commissioners, according
+to his request, to confer in regard to the cloth-trade.  Without
+interference of the two governments, he said, the matter would never be
+settled.  The merchants of the two countries would never agree except
+under higher authority.
+
+"I have heard both parties," he said, "the new and the old companies, two
+or three times in full council, and tried to bring them to an agreement,
+but it won't do.  I have heard that My Lords the States have been hearing
+both sides, English and the Hollanders, over and over again, and that the
+States have passed a provisional resolution, which however does not suit
+us.  Now it is not reasonable, as we are allies, that our merchants
+should be obliged to send their cloths roundabout, not being allowed
+either to sell them in the United Provinces or to pass them through your
+territories.  I wish I could talk with them myself, for I am certain, if
+they would send some one here, we could make an agreement.  It is not
+necessary that one should take everything from them, or that one should
+refuse everything to us.  I am sure there are people of sense in your
+assembly who will justify me in favouring my own people so far as I
+reasonably can, and I know very well that My Lords the States must stand
+up for their own citizens.  If we have been driving this matter to an
+extreme and see that we are ruining each other, we must take it up again
+in other fashion, for Yesterday is the preceptor of To-morrow.  Let the
+commissioners come as soon as possible.  I know they have complaints to
+make, and I have my complaints also.  Therefore we must listen to each
+other, for I protest before God that I consider the community of your
+state with mine to be so entire that, if one goes to perdition, the other
+must quickly follow it."
+
+Thus spoke James, like a wise and thoughtful sovereign interested in the
+welfare of his subjects and allies, with enlightened ideas for the time
+upon public economy.  It is difficult, in the man conversing thus
+amicably and sensibly with the Dutch ambassador, to realise the shrill
+pedant shrieking against Vorstius, the crapulous comrade of Carrs and
+Steenies, the fawning solicitor of Spanish marriages, the "pepperer" and
+hangman of Puritans, the butt and dupe of Gondemar and Spinola.
+
+"I protest," he said further, "that I seek nothing in your state but
+all possible friendship and good fellowship.  My own subjects complain
+sometimes that your people follow too closely on their heels, and confess
+that your industry goes far above their own.  If this be so, it is a lean
+kind of reproach; for the English should rather study to follow you.
+Nevertheless, when industry is directed by malice, each may easily be
+attempting to snap an advantage from the other.  I have sometimes
+complained of many other things in which my subjects suffered great
+injustice from you, but all that is excusable.  I will willingly listen
+to your people and grant them to be in the right when they are so.  But I
+will never allow them to be in the right when they mistrust me.  If I had
+been like many other princes, I should never have let the advantage of
+the cautionary towns slip out of my fingers, but rather by means of them
+attempted to get even a stronger hold on your country.  I have had plenty
+of warnings from great statesmen in France, Germany, and other nations
+that I ought to give them up nevermore.  Yet you know how frankly and
+sincerely I acquitted myself in that matter without ever making
+pretensions upon your state than the pretensions I still make to your
+friendship and co-operation."
+
+James, after this allusion to an important transaction to be explained in
+the next chapter, then made an observation or two on a subject which was
+rapidly overtopping all others in importance to the States, and his
+expressions were singularly at variance with his last utterances in that
+regard.  "I tell you," he said, "that you have no right to mistrust me in
+anything, not even in the matter of religion.  I grieve indeed to hear
+that your religious troubles continue.  You know that in the beginning
+I occupied myself with this affair, but fearing that my course might be
+misunderstood, and that it might be supposed that I was seeking to
+exercise authority in your republic, I gave it up, and I will never
+interfere with the matter again, but will ever pray God that he may give
+you a happy issue out of these troubles."
+
+Alas! if the King had always kept himself on that height of amiable
+neutrality, if he had been able to govern himself in the future by these
+simplest principles of reason and justice, there might have been perhaps
+a happier issue from the troubles than time was like to reveal.
+
+Once more James referred to the crisis pending in German affairs, and as
+usual spoke of the Clove and Julich question as if it were a simple
+matter to be settled by a few strokes of the pen and a pennyworth of
+sealing-wax, instead of being the opening act in a vast tragedy, of which
+neither he, nor Carom nor Barneveld, nor Prince Maurice, nor the youthful
+king of France, nor Philip, nor Matthias, nor any of the men now foremost
+in the conduct of affairs, was destined to see the end.
+
+The King informed Caron that he had just received most satisfactory
+assurances from the Spanish ambassador in his last audience at Whitehall.
+
+"He has announced to me on the part of the King his master with great
+compliments that his Majesty seeks to please me and satisfy me in
+everything that I could possibly desire of him," said James, rolling over
+with satisfaction these unctuous phrases as if they really had any
+meaning whatever.
+
+"His Majesty says further," added the King, "that as he has been at
+various times admonished by me, and is daily admonished by other princes,
+that he ought to execute the treaty of Xanten by surrendering the city of
+Wesel and all other places occupied by Spinola, he now declares himself
+ready to carry out that treaty in every point.  He will accordingly
+instruct the Archduke to do this, provided the Margrave of Brandenburg
+and the States will do the same in regard to their captured places.  As
+he understands however that the States have been fortifying Julich even
+as he might fortify Wesel, he would be glad that no innovation be made
+before the end of the coming month of March.  When this term shall have
+expired, he will no longer be bound by these offers, but will proceed to
+fortify Wesel and the other places, and to hold them as he best may for
+himself.  Respect for me has alone induced his Majesty to make this
+resolution."
+
+We have already seen that the Spanish ambassador in Paris was at this
+very time loudly declaring that his colleague in London had no commission
+whatever to make these propositions.  Nor when they were in the slightest
+degree analysed, did they appear after all to be much better than
+threats.  Not a word was said of guarantees.  The names of the two
+kings were not mentioned.  It was nothing but Albert and Spinola then as
+always, and a recommendation that Brandenburg and the States and all the
+Protestant princes of Germany should trust to the candour of the Catholic
+League.  Caron pointed out to the King that in these proposals there
+were no guarantees nor even promises that the fortresses would not be
+reoccupied at convenience of the Spaniards.  He engaged however to report
+the whole statement to his masters.  A few weeks afterwards the Advocate
+replied in his usual vein, reminding the King through the Ambassador that
+the Republic feared fraud on the part of the League much more than force.
+He also laid stress on the affairs of Italy, considering the fate of
+Savoy and the conflicts in which Venice was engaged as components of a
+general scheme.  The States had been much solicited, as we have seen, to
+render assistance to the Duke of Savoy, the temporary peace of Asti being
+already broken, and Barneveld had been unceasing in his efforts to arouse
+France as well as England to the danger to themselves and to all
+Christendom should Savoy be crushed.  We shall have occasion to see the
+prominent part reserved to Savoy in the fast opening debate in Germany.
+Meantime the States had sent one Count of Nassau with a couple of
+companies to Charles Emmanuel, while another (Ernest) had just gone to
+Venice at the head of more than three thousand adventurers.  With so many
+powerful armies at their throats, as Barneveld had more than once
+observed, it was not easy for them to despatch large forces to the other
+end of Europe, but he justly reminded his allies that the States were
+now rendering more effective help to the common cause by holding great
+Spanish armies in check on their own frontier than if they assumed a more
+aggressive line in the south.  The Advocate, like every statesman
+worthy of the name, was accustomed to sweep the whole horizon in his
+consideration of public policy, and it will be observed that he always
+regarded various and apparently distinct and isolated movements in
+different parts of Europe as parts of one great whole.  It is easy enough
+for us, centuries after the record has been made up, to observe the
+gradual and, as it were, harmonious manner in which the great Catholic
+conspiracy against the liberties of Europe was unfolded in an ever
+widening sphere.  But to the eyes of contemporaries all was then misty
+and chaotic, and it required the keen vision of a sage and a prophet to
+discern the awful shape which the future might assume.  Absorbed in the
+contemplation of these portentous phenomena, it was not unnatural that
+the Advocate should attach less significance to perturbations nearer
+home.  Devoted as was his life to save the great European cause of
+Protestantism, in which he considered political and religious liberty
+bound up, from the absolute extinction with which it was menaced, he
+neglected too much the furious hatreds growing up among Protestants
+within the narrow limits of his own province.  He was destined one day to
+be rudely awakened.  Meantime he was occupied with organizing a general
+defence of Italy, Germany, France, and England, as well as the
+Netherlands, against the designs of Spain and the League.
+
+"We wish to know," he said in answer to the affectionate messages and
+fine promises of the King of Spain to James as reported by Caron, "what
+his Majesty of Great Britain has done, is doing, and is resolved to do
+for the Duke of Savoy and the Republic of Venice.  If they ask you what
+we are doing, answer that we with our forces and vigour are keeping off
+from the throats of Savoy and Venice 2000 riders and 10,000 infantry,
+with which forces, let alone their experience, more would be accomplished
+than with four times the number of new troops brought to the field in
+Italy.  This is our succour, a great one and a very costly one, for the
+expense of maintaining our armies to hold the enemy in check here is very
+great."
+
+He alluded with his usual respectful and quiet scorn to the arrangements
+by which James so wilfully allowed himself to be deceived.
+
+"If the Spaniard really leaves the duchies," he said, "it is a grave
+matter to decide whether on the one side he is not resolved by that means
+to win more over us and the Elector of Brandenburg in the debateable land
+in a few days than he could gain by force in many years, or on the other
+whether by it he does not intend despatching 1200 or 1500 cavalry and
+5000 or 6000 foot, all his most experienced soldiers, from the
+Netherlands to Italy, in order to give the law at his pleasure to the
+Duke of Savoy and the Republic of Venice, reserving his attack upon
+Germany and ourselves to the last.  The Spaniards, standing under a
+monarchical government, can in one hour resolve to seize to-morrow all
+that they and we may abandon to-day.  And they can carry such a
+resolution into effect at once.  Our form of government does not permit
+this, so that our republic must be conserved by distrust and good
+garrisons."
+
+Thus during this long period of half hostilities Barneveld, while
+sincerely seeking to preserve the peace in Europe, was determined,
+if possible, that the Republic should maintain the strongest defensive
+position when the war which he foreboded should actually begin.  Maurice
+and the war party had blamed him for the obstacles which he interposed to
+the outbreak of hostilities, while the British court, as we have seen,
+was perpetually urging him to abate from his demands and abandon both the
+well strengthened fortresses in the duchies and that strong citadel of
+distrust which in his often repeated language he was determined never to
+surrender.  Spinola and the military party of Spain, while preaching
+peace, had been in truth most anxious for fighting.  "The only honour I
+desire henceforth," said that great commander, "is to give battle to
+Prince Maurice."  The generals were more anxious than the governments to
+make use of the splendid armies arrayed against each other in such
+proximity that, the signal for conflict not having been given, it was not
+uncommon for the soldiers of the respective camps to aid each other in
+unloading munition waggons, exchanging provisions and other articles of
+necessity, and performing other small acts of mutual service.
+
+But heavy thunder clouds hanging over the earth so long and so closely
+might burst into explosion at any moment.  Had it not been for the
+distracted condition of France, the infatuation of the English king, and
+the astounding inertness of the princes of the German Union, great
+advantages might have been gained by the Protestant party before the
+storm should break.  But, as the French ambassador at the Hague well
+observed, "the great Protestant Union of Germany sat with folded arms
+while Hannibal was at their gate, the princes of which it was composed
+amusing themselves with staring at each other.  It was verifying," he
+continued, bitterly, "the saying of the Duke of Alva, 'Germany is an old
+dog which still can bark, but has lost its teeth to bite with.'"
+
+To such imbecility had that noble and gifted people--which had never been
+organized into a nation since it crushed the Roman empire and established
+a new civilization on its ruins, and was to wait centuries longer until
+it should reconstruct itself into a whole--been reduced by subdivision,
+disintegration, the perpetual dissolvent of religious dispute, and the
+selfish policy of infinitesimal dynasties.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+     James still presses for the Payment of the Dutch Republic's Debt to
+     him--A Compromise effected, with Restitution of the Cautionary
+     Towns--Treaty of Loudun--James's Dream of a Spanish Marriage
+     revives--James visits Scotland--The States-General agree to furnish
+     Money and Troops in fulfilment of the Treaty of 1609--Death of
+     Concini--Villeroy returns to Power.
+
+Besides matters of predestination there were other subjects political and
+personal which increased the King's jealousy and hatred.  The debt of the
+Republic to the British crown, secured by mortgage of the important sea-
+ports and fortified towns of Flushing, Brielle, Rammekens, and other
+strong places, still existed.  The possession of those places by England
+was a constant danger and irritation to the States.  It was an axe
+perpetually held over their heads.  It threatened their sovereignty,
+their very existence.  On more than one occasion, in foreign courts, the
+representatives of the Netherlands had been exposed to the taunt that the
+Republic was after all not an independent power, but a British province.
+The gibe had always been repelled in a manner becoming the envoys of a
+proud commonwealth; yet it was sufficiently galling that English
+garrisons should continue to hold Dutch towns; one of them among the most
+valuable seaports of the Republic,--the other the very cradle of its
+independence, the seizure of which in Alva's days had always been
+reckoned a splendid achievement.  Moreover, by the fifth article of the
+treaty of peace between James and Philip III., although the King had
+declared himself bound by the treaties made by Elizabeth to deliver up
+the cautionary towns to no one but the United States, he promised Spain
+to allow those States a reasonable time to make peace with the Archdukes
+on satisfactory conditions.  Should they refuse to do so, he held himself
+bound by no obligations to them, and would deal with the cities as he
+thought proper, and as the Archdukes themselves might deem just.
+
+The King had always been furious at "the huge sum of money to be
+advanced, nay, given, to the States," as he phrased it.  "It is so far
+out of all square," he had said, "as on my conscience I cannot think that
+ever they craved it 'animo obtinendi,' but only by that objection to
+discourage me from any thought of getting any repayment of my debts from
+them when they shall be in peace .  .  ..  .  .  .  Should I ruin myself
+for maintaining them?  Should I bestow as much on them as cometh to the
+value of my whole yearly rent?  "He had proceeded to say very plainly
+that, if the States did not make great speed to pay him all his debt
+so soon as peace was established, he should treat their pretence at
+independence with contempt, and propose dividing their territory
+between himself and the King of France.
+
+"If they be so weak as they cannot subsist either in peace or war," he
+said, "without I ruin myself for upholding them, in that case surely
+'minus malunv est eligendum,' the nearest harm is first to be eschewed,
+a man will leap out of a burning ship and drown himself in the sea; and
+it is doubtless a farther off harm for me to suffer them to fall again in
+the hands of Spain, and let God provide for the danger that may with time
+fall upon me or my posterity than presently to starve myself and mine
+with putting the meat in their mouth.  Nay, rather if they be so weak as
+they can neither sustain themselves in peace nor war, let them leave this
+vainglorious thirsting for the title of a free state (which no people
+are worthy or able to enjoy that cannot stand by themselves like
+substantives), and 'dividantur inter nos;' I mean, let their countries be
+divided between France and me, otherwise the King of Spain shall be sure
+to consume us."
+
+Such were the eyes with which James had always regarded the great
+commonwealth of which he affected to be the ally, while secretly aspiring
+to be its sovereign, and such was his capacity to calculate political
+forces and comprehend coming events.
+
+Certainly the sword was hanging by a thread.  The States had made no
+peace either with the Archdukes or with Spain.  They had made a truce,
+half the term of which had already run by.  At any moment the keys of
+their very house-door might be placed in the hands of their arch enemy.
+Treacherous and base as the deed would be, it might be defended by the
+letter of a treaty in which the Republic had no part; and was there
+anything too treacherous or too base to be dreaded from James Stuart?
+
+But the States owed the crown of England eight millions of florins,
+equivalent to about L750,000.  Where was this vast sum to be found?  It
+was clearly impossible for the States to beg or to borrow it, although
+they were nearly as rich as any of the leading powers at that day.
+
+It was the merit of Barneveld, not only that he saw the chance for a good
+bargain, but that he fully comprehended a great danger.  Years long James
+had pursued the phantom of a Spanish marriage for his son.  To achieve
+this mighty object, he had perverted the whole policy of the realm; he
+had grovelled to those who despised him, had repaid attempts at wholesale
+assassination with boundless sycophancy.  It is difficult to imagine
+anything more abject than the attitude of James towards Philip.  Prince
+Henry was dead, but Charles had now become Prince of Wales in his turn,
+and there was a younger infanta whose hand was not yet disposed of.
+
+So long as the possible prize of a Most Catholic princess was dangling
+before the eyes of the royal champion of Protestantism, so long there was
+danger that the Netherlanders might wake up some fine morning and see the
+flag of Spain waving over the walls of Flushing, Brielle, and Rammekens.
+
+It was in the interest of Spain too that the envoys of James at the Hague
+were perpetually goading Barneveld to cause the States' troops to be
+withdrawn from the duchies and the illusory treaty of Xanten to be
+executed.  Instead of an eighth province added to the free Netherlands,
+the result of such a procedure would have been to place that territory
+enveloping them in the hands of the enemy; to strengthen and sharpen the
+claws, as the Advocate had called them, by which Spain was seeking to
+clutch and to destroy the Republic.
+
+The Advocate steadily refused to countenance such policy in the duchies,
+and he resolved on a sudden stroke to relieve the Commonwealth from the
+incubus of the English mortgage.
+
+James was desperately pushed for money.  His minions, as insatiable in
+their demands on English wealth as the parasites who fed on the Queen-
+Regent were exhaustive of the French exchequer, were greedier than ever
+now that James, who feared to face a parliament disgusted with the
+meanness of his policy and depravity of his life, could not be relied
+upon to minister to their wants.
+
+The Advocate judiciously contrived that the proposal of a compromise
+should come from the English government.  Noel de Caron, the veteran
+ambassador of the States in London, after receiving certain proposals,
+offered, under instructions' from Barneveld, to pay L250,000 in full of
+all demands.  It was made to appear that the additional L250,000 was in
+reality in advance of his instructions.  The mouths of the minions
+watered at the mention of so magnificent a sum of money in one lump.
+
+The bargain was struck.  On the 11th June 1616, Sir Robert Sidney, who
+had become Lord Lisle, gave over the city of Flushing to the States,
+represented by the Seignior van Maldere, while Sir Horace Vere placed the
+important town of Brielle in the hands of the Seignior van Mathenesse.
+According to the terms of the bargain, the English garrisons were
+converted into two regiments, respectively to be commanded by Lord
+Lisle's son, now Sir Robert Sidney, and by Sir Horace Vere, and were to
+serve the States.  Lisle, who had been in the Netherlands since the days
+of his uncle Leicester and his brother Sir Philip Sidney, now took his
+final departure for England.
+
+Thus this ancient burthen had been taken off the Republic by the masterly
+policy of the Advocate.  A great source of dread for foreign complication
+was closed for ever.
+
+The French-Spanish marriages had been made.  Henry IV. had not been
+murdered in vain.  Conde and his confederates had issued their manifesto.
+A crisis came to the States, for Maurice, always inclined to take part
+for the princes, and urged on by Aerssens, who was inspired by a deadly
+hatred for the French government ever since they had insisted on his
+dismissal from his post, and who fed the Stadholder's growing jealousy of
+the Advocate to the full, was at times almost ready for joining in the
+conflict.  It was most difficult for the States-General, led by
+Barneveld, to maintain relations of amity with a government controlled
+by Spain, governed by the Concini's, and wafted to and fro by every wind
+that blew.  Still it was the government, and the States might soon be
+called upon, in virtue of their treaties with Henry, confirmed by Mary
+de' Medici, not only to prevent the daily desertion of officers and
+soldiers of the French regiments to the rebellious party, but to send the
+regiments themselves to the assistance of the King and Queen.
+
+There could be no doubt that the alliance of the French Huguenots at
+Grenoble with the princes made the position of the States very critical.
+Bouillon was loud in his demands upon Maurice and the States for money
+and reinforcements, but the Prince fortunately understood the character
+of the Duke and of Conde, and comprehended the nature of French politics
+too clearly to be led into extremities by passion or by pique.  He said
+loudly to any one that chose to listen:
+
+"It is not necessary to ruin the son in order to avenge the death of the
+father.  That should be left to the son, who alone has legitimate
+authority to do it."  Nothing could be more sensible, and the remark
+almost indicated a belief on the Prince's part in Mary's complicity in
+the murder of her husband.  Duplessis-Mornay was in despair, and, like
+all true patriots and men of earnest character, felt it almost an
+impossibility to choose between the two ignoble parties contending for
+the possession of France, and both secretly encouraged by France's deadly
+enemy.
+
+The Treaty of Loudun followed, a treaty which, said du Maurier, had
+about as many negotiators as there were individuals interested in the
+arrangements.  The rebels were forgiven, Conde sold himself out for a
+million and a half livres and the presidency of the council, came to
+court, and paraded himself in greater pomp and appearance of power than
+ever.  Four months afterwards he was arrested and imprisoned.  He
+submitted like a lamb, and offered to betray his confederates.
+
+King James, faithful to his self-imposed part of mediator-general, which
+he thought so well became him, had been busy in bringing about this
+pacification, and had considered it eminently successful.  He was now
+angry at this unexpected result.  He admitted that Conde had indulged in
+certain follies and extravagancies, but these in his opinion all came out
+of the quiver of the Spaniard, "who was the head of the whole intrigue."
+He determined to recall Lord Hayes from Madrid and even Sir Thomas
+Edmonds from Paris, so great was his indignation.  But his wrath was
+likely to cool under the soothing communications of Gondemar, and the
+rumour of the marriage of the second infanta with the Prince of Wales
+soon afterwards started into new life.  "We hope," wrote Barneveld, "that
+the alliance of his Highness the Prince of Wales with the daughter of the
+Spanish king will make no further progress, as it will place us in the
+deepest embarrassment and pain."
+
+For the reports had been so rife at the English court in regard to this
+dangerous scheme that Caron had stoutly gone to the King and asked him
+what he was to think about it.  "The King told me," said the Ambassador,
+"that there was nothing at all in it, nor any appearance that anything
+ever would come of it.  It was true, he said, that on the overtures made
+to him by the Spanish ambassador he had ordered his minister in Spain to
+listen to what they had to say, and not to bear himself as if the
+overtures would be rejected."
+
+The coyness thus affected by James could hardly impose on so astute a
+diplomatist as Noel de Caron, and the effect produced upon the policy of
+one of the Republic's chief allies by the Spanish marriages naturally
+made her statesmen shudder at the prospect of their other powerful friend
+coming thus under the malign influence of Spain.
+
+"He assured me, however," said the Envoy, "that the Spaniard is not
+sincere in the matter, and that he has himself become so far alienated
+from the scheme that we may sleep quietly upon it."  And James appeared
+at that moment so vexed at the turn affairs were taking in France, so
+wounded in his self-love, and so bewildered by the ubiquitous nature of
+nets and pitfalls spreading over Europe by Spain, that he really seemed
+waking from his delusion.  Even Caron was staggered?  "In all his talk
+he appears so far estranged from the Spaniard," said he, "that it would
+seem impossible that he should consider this marriage as good for his
+state.  I have also had other advices on the subject which in the highest
+degree comfort me.  Now your Mightinesses may think whatever you like
+about it."
+
+The mood of the King was not likely to last long in so comfortable a
+state.  Meantime he took the part of Conde and the other princes,
+justified their proceedings to the special envoy sent over by Mary de'
+Medici, and wished the States to join with him in appealing to that Queen
+to let the affair, for his sake, pass over once more.
+
+"And now I will tell your Mightinesses," said Caron, reverting once more
+to the dreaded marriage which occupies so conspicuous a place in the
+strangely mingled and party-coloured tissue of the history of those days,
+"what the King has again been telling me about the alliance between his
+son and the Infanta.  He hears from Carleton that you are in very great
+alarm lest this event may take place.  He understands that the special
+French envoy at the Hague, M. de la None, has been representing to you
+that the King of Great Britain is following after and begging for the
+daughter of Spain for his son.  He says it is untrue.  But it is true
+that he has been sought and solicited thereto, and that in consequence
+there have been talks and propositions and rejoinders, but nothing of any
+moment.  As he had already told me not to be alarmed until he should
+himself give me cause for it, he expressed his amazement that I had not
+informed your Mightinesses accordingly.  He assured me again that he
+should not proceed further in the business without communicating it to
+his good friends and neighbours, that he considered My Lords the States
+as his best friends and allies, who ought therefore to conceive no
+jealousy in the matter."
+
+This certainly was cold comfort.  Caron knew well enough, not a clerk in
+his office but knew well enough, that James had been pursuing this prize
+for years.  For the King to represent himself as persecuted by Spain to
+give his son to the Infanta was about as ridiculous as it would have been
+to pretend that Emperor Matthias was persuading him to let his son-in-law
+accept the crown of Bohemia.  It was admitted that negotiations for the
+marriage were going on, and the assertion that the Spanish court was more
+eager for it than the English government was not especially calculated to
+allay the necessary alarm of the States at such a disaster.  Nor was it
+much more tranquillizing for them to be assured, not that the marriage
+was off, but that, when it was settled, they, as the King's good friends
+and neighbours, should have early information of it.
+
+"I told him," said the Ambassador, "that undoubtedly this matter was of
+the highest 'importance to your Mightinesses, for it was not good for us
+to sit between two kingdoms both so nearly allied with the Spanish
+monarch, considering the pretensions he still maintained to sovereignty
+over us.  Although his Majesty might not now be willing to treat to our
+prejudice, yet the affair itself in the sequence of time must of
+necessity injure our commonwealth.  We hoped therefore that it would
+never come to pass."
+
+Caron added that Ambassador Digby was just going to Spain on
+extraordinary mission in regard to this affair, and that eight or ten
+gentlemen of the council had been deputed to confer with his Majesty
+about it.  He was still inclined to believe that the whole negotiation
+would blow over, the King continuing to exhort him not to be alarmed,
+and assuring him that there were many occasions moving princes to treat
+of great affairs although often without any effective issue.
+
+At that moment too the King was in a state of vehement wrath with the
+Spanish Netherlands on account of a stinging libel against himself, "an
+infamous and wonderfully scandalous pamphlet," as he termed it, called
+'Corona Regis', recently published at Louvain.  He had sent Sir John
+Bennet as special ambassador to the Archdukes to demand from them justice
+and condign and public chastisement on the author of the work--a rector
+Putianus as he believed, successor of Justus Lipsius in his professorship
+at Louvain--and upon the printer, one Flaminius.  Delays and excuses
+having followed instead of the punishment originally demanded, James had
+now instructed his special envoy in case of further delay or evasion to
+repudiate all further friendship or intercourse with the Archduke, to
+ratify the recall of his minister-resident Trumbull, and in effect to
+announce formal hostilities.
+
+"The King takes the thing wonderfully to heart," said Caron.
+
+James in effect hated to be made ridiculous, and we shall have
+occasion to see how important a part other publications which he deemed
+detrimental to the divinity of his person were to play in these affairs.
+
+Meantime it was characteristic of this sovereign that--while ready to
+talk of war with Philip's brother-in-law for a pamphlet, while seeking
+the hand of Philip's daughter for his son--he was determined at the very
+moment when the world was on fire to take himself, the heaven-born
+extinguisher of all political conflagrations, away from affairs and
+to seek the solace of along holiday in Scotland.  His counsellors
+persistently and vehemently implored him to defer that journey until
+the following year at least, all the neighbouring nations being now in
+a state of war and civil commotion.  But it was in vain.  He refused to
+listen to them for a moment, and started for Scotland before the middle
+of March.
+
+Conde, who had kept France in a turmoil, had sought aid alternately from
+the Calvinists at Grenoble and the Jesuits in Rome, from Spain and from
+the Netherlands, from the Pope and from Maurice of Nassau, had thus been
+caged at last.  But there was little gained.  There was one troublesome
+but incompetent rebel the less, but there was no king in the land.  He
+who doubts the influence of the individual upon the fate of a country
+and upon his times through long passages of history may explain the
+difference between France of 1609, with a martial king aided by great
+statesmen at its head, with an exchequer overflowing with revenue hoarded
+for a great cause--and that cause an attempt at least to pacificate
+Christendom and avert a universal and almost infinite conflict now
+already opening--and the France of 1617, with its treasures already
+squandered among ignoble and ruffianly favourites, with every office in
+state, church, court, and magistracy sold to the highest bidder, with
+a queen governed by an Italian adventurer who was governed by Spain,
+and with a little king who had but lately expressed triumph at his
+confirmation because now he should no longer be whipped, and who was just
+married to a daughter of the hereditary and inevitable foe of France.
+
+To contemplate this dreary interlude in the history of a powerful state
+is to shiver at the depths of inanity and crime to which mankind can at
+once descend.  What need to pursue the barren, vulgar, and often repeated
+chronicle?  France pulled at by scarcely concealed strings and made to
+perform fantastic tricks according as its various puppets were swerved
+this way or that by supple bands at Madrid and Rome is not a refreshing
+spectacle.  The States-General at last, after an agitated discussion,
+agreed in fulfilment of the treaty of 1609 to send 4000 men, 2000 being
+French, to help the King against the princes still in rebellion.  But the
+contest was a most bitter one, and the Advocate had a difficult part to
+play between a government and a rebellion, each more despicable than the
+other.  Still Louis XIII. and his mother were the legitimate government
+even if ruled by Concini.  The words of the treaty made with Henry IV.
+were plain, and the ambassadors of his son had summoned the States to
+fulfil it.  But many impediments were placed in the path of obvious duty
+by the party led by Francis Aerssens.
+
+"I know very well," said the Advocate to ex-Burgomaster Hooft of
+Amsterdam, father of the great historian, sending him confidentially a
+copy of the proposals made by the French ambassadors, "that many in this
+country are striving hard to make us refuse to the King the aid demanded,
+notwithstanding that we are bound to do it by the pledges given not only
+by the States-General but by each province in particular.  By this no one
+will profit but the Spaniard, who unquestionably will offer much, aye,
+very much, to bring about dissensions between France and us, from which I
+foresee great damage, inconvenience, and difficulties for the whole
+commonwealth and for Holland especially.  This province has already
+advanced 1,000,000 florins to the general government on the money still
+due from France, which will all be lost in case the subsidy should be
+withheld, besides other evils which cannot be trusted to the pen."
+
+On the same day on which it had been decided at the Hague to send the
+troops, a captain of guards came to the aid of the poor little king and
+shot Concini dead one fine spring morning on the bridge of the Louvre.
+"By order of the King," said Vitry.  His body was burned before the
+statue of Henry IV. by the people delirious with joy.  "L'hanno
+ammazzato" was shouted to his wife, Eleanora Galigai, the supposed
+sorceress.  They were the words in which Concini had communicated to the
+Queen the murder of her husband seven years before.  Eleanora, too, was
+burned after having been beheaded.  Thus the Marshal d'Ancre and wife
+ceased to reign in France.
+
+The officers of the French regiments at the Hague danced for joy on the
+Vyverberg when the news arrived there.  The States were relieved from an
+immense embarrassment, and the Advocate was rewarded for having pursued
+what was after all the only practicable policy.  "Do your best," said he
+to Langerac, "to accommodate differences so far as consistent with the
+conservation of the King's authority.  We hope the princes will submit
+themselves now that the 'lapis offensionis,' according to their pretence,
+is got rid of.  We received a letter from them to-day sealed with the
+King's arms, with the circumscription 'Periclitante Regno, Regis vita et
+Regia familia."
+
+The shooting of Concini seemed almost to convert the little king into
+a hero.  Everyone in the Netherlands, without distinction of party, was
+delighted with the achievement.  "I cannot represent to the King," wrote
+du Maurier to Villeroy, "one thousandth part of the joy of all these
+people who are exalting him to heaven for having delivered the earth from
+this miserable burthen.  I can't tell you in what execration this public
+pest was held.  His Majesty has not less won the hearts of this state
+than if he had gained a great victory over the Spaniards.  You would not
+believe it, and yet it is true, that never were the name and reputation
+of the late king in greater reverence than those of our reigning king at
+this moment."
+
+Truly here was glory cheaply earned.  The fame of Henry the Great, after
+a long career of brilliant deeds of arms, high statesmanship, and twenty
+years of bountiful friendship for the States, was already equalled by
+that of Louis XIII., who had tremblingly acquiesced in the summary
+execution of an odious adventurer--his own possible father--and who
+never had done anything else but feed his canary birds.
+
+As for Villeroy himself, the Ambassador wrote that he could not find
+portraits enough of him to furnish those who were asking for them since
+his return to power.
+
+Barneveld had been right in so often instructing Langerac to "caress the
+old gentleman."
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+And give advice.  Of that, although always a spendthrift
+Casual outbursts of eternal friendship
+Changed his positions and contradicted himself day by day
+Conciliation when war of extermination was intended
+Considered it his special mission in the world to mediate
+Denoungced as an obstacle to peace
+France was mourning Henry and waiting for Richelieu
+Hardly a sound Protestant policy anywhere but in Holland
+History has not too many really important and emblematic men
+I hope and I fear
+King who thought it furious madness to resist the enemy
+Mockery of negotiation in which nothing could be negotiated
+More apprehension of fraud than of force
+Opening an abyss between government and people
+Successful in this step, he is ready for greater ones
+That he tries to lay the fault on us is pure malice
+The magnitude of this wonderful sovereign's littleness
+This wonderful sovereign's littleness oppresses the imagination
+Wise and honest a man, although he be somewhat longsome
+Yesterday is the preceptor of To-morrow
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext Life of John Barneveld, v7, Motley #93
+by John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND
+
+WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR
+
+By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+
+
+Life and Death of John of Barneveld, v8, 1617
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+     Ferdinand of Gratz crowned King of Bohemia--His Enmity to
+     Protestants--Slawata and Martinitz thrown from the Windows of the
+     Hradschin--Real Beginning of the Thirty Years' War--The Elector-
+     Palatine's Intrigues in Opposition to the House of Austria--He
+     supports the Duke of Savoy--The Emperor Matthias visits Dresden--
+     Jubilee for the Hundredth Anniversary of the Reformation.
+
+When the forlorn emperor Rudolph had signed the permission for his
+brother Matthias to take the last crown but one from his head, he bit the
+pen in a paroxysm of helpless rage.  Then rushing to the window of his
+apartment, he looked down on one of the most stately prospects that the
+palaces of the earth can offer.  From the long monotonous architectural
+lines of the Hradschin, imposing from its massiveness and its imperial
+situation, and with the dome and minarets of the cathedral clustering
+behind them, the eye swept across the fertile valley, through which the
+rapid, yellow Moldau courses, to the opposite line of cliffs crested with
+the half imaginary fortress-palaces of the Wyscherad.  There, in the
+mythical legendary past of Bohemia had dwelt the shadowy Libuscha,
+daughter of Krok, wife of King Premysl, foundress of Prague, who, when
+wearied of her lovers, was accustomed to toss them from those heights
+into the river.  Between these picturesque precipices lay the two
+Pragues, twin-born and quarrelsome, fighting each other for centuries,
+and growing up side by side into a double, bellicose, stormy, and most
+splendid city, bristling with steeples and spires, and united by the
+ancient many-statued bridge with its blackened mediaeval entrance towers.
+
+But it was not to enjoy the prospect that the aged, discrowned, solitary
+emperor, almost as dim a figure among sovereigns as the mystic Libuscha
+herself, was gazing from the window upon the imperial city.
+
+"Ungrateful Prague," he cried, "through me thou hast become thus
+magnificent, and now thou hast turned upon and driven away thy
+benefactor.  May the vengeance of God descend upon thee; may my curse
+come upon thee and upon all Bohemia."
+
+History has failed to record the special benefits of the Emperor
+through which the city had derived its magnificence and deserved this
+malediction.  But surely if ever an old man's curse was destined to be
+literally fulfilled, it seemed to be this solemn imprecation of Rudolph.
+Meantime the coronation of Matthias had gone on with pomp and popular
+gratulations, while Rudolph had withdrawn into his apartments to pass
+the little that was left to him of life in solitude and in a state of
+hopeless pique with Matthias, with the rest of his brethren, with all
+the world.
+
+And now that five years had passed since his death, Matthias, who had
+usurped so much power prematurely, found himself almost in the same
+condition as that to which he had reduced Rudolph.
+
+Ferdinand of Styria, his cousin, trod closely upon his heels.  He was
+the presumptive successor to all his crowns, had not approved of the
+movements of Matthias in the lifetime of his brother, and hated the
+Vienna Protestant baker's son, Cardinal Clesel, by whom all those
+movements had been directed.  Professor Taubmann, of Wittenberg,
+ponderously quibbling on the name of that prelate, had said that he was
+of "one hundred and fifty ass power."  Whether that was a fair measure
+of his capacity may be doubted, but it certainly was not destined to be
+sufficient to elude the vengeance of Ferdinand, and Ferdinand would soon
+have him in his power.
+
+Matthias, weary of ambitious intrigue, infirm of purpose, and shattered
+in health, had withdrawn from affairs to devote himself to his gout and
+to his fair young wife, Archduchess Anna of Tyrol, whom at the age of
+fifty-four he had espoused.
+
+On the 29th June 1617, Ferdinand of Gratz was crowned King of Bohemia.
+The event was a shock and a menace to the Protestant cause all over the
+world.  The sombre figure of the Archduke had for years appeared in the
+background, foreshadowing as it were the wrath to come, while throughout
+Bohemia and the neighbouring countries of Moravia, Silesia, and the
+Austrias, the cause of Protestantism had been making such rapid progress.
+The Emperor Maximilian II. had left five stalwart sons, so that there had
+seemed little probability that the younger line, the sons of his brother,
+would succeed.  But all the five were childless, and now the son of
+Archduke Charles, who had died in 1590, had become the natural heir
+after the death of Matthias to the immense family honours--his cousins
+Maximilian and Albert having resigned their claims in his favour.
+
+Ferdinand, twelve years old at his father's death, had been placed under
+the care of his maternal uncle, Duke William of Bavaria.  By him the boy
+was placed at the high school of Ingolstadt, to be brought up by the
+Jesuits, in company with Duke William's own son Maximilian, five years
+his senior.  Between these youths, besides the tie of cousinship, there
+grew up the most intimate union founded on perfect sympathy in religion
+and politics.
+
+When Ferdinand entered upon the government of his paternal estates of
+Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, he found that the new religion, at which
+the Jesuits had taught him to shudder as at a curse and a crime, had been
+widely spreading.  His father had fought against heresy with all his
+might, and had died disappointed and broken-hearted at its progress.
+His uncle of Bavaria, in letters to his son and nephew, had stamped into
+their minds with the enthusiasm of perfect conviction that all happiness
+and blessing for governments depended on the restoration and maintenance
+of the unity of the Catholic faith.  All the evils in times past and
+present resulting from religious differences had been held up to the two
+youths by the Jesuits in the most glaring colours.  The first duty of a
+prince, they had inculcated, was to extirpate all false religions, to
+give the opponents of the true church no quarter, and to think no
+sacrifice too great by which the salvation of human society, brought
+almost to perdition by the new doctrines, could be effected.
+
+Never had Jesuits an apter scholar than Ferdinand.  After leaving school,
+he made a pilgrimage to Loretto to make his vows to the Virgin Mary of
+extirpation of heresy, and went to Rome to obtain the blessing of Pope
+Clement VIII.
+
+Then, returning to the government of his inheritance, he seized that
+terrible two-edged weapon of which the Protestants of Germany had taught
+him the use.
+
+"Cujus regio ejus religio;" to the prince the choice of religion, to the
+subject conformity with the prince, as if that formula of shallow and
+selfish princelings, that insult to the dignity of mankind, were the
+grand result of a movement which was to go on centuries after they had
+all been forgotten in their tombs.  For the time however it was a valid
+and mischievous maxim.  In Saxony Catholics and Calvinists were
+proscribed; in Heidelberg Catholics and Lutherans.  Why should either
+Calvinists or Lutherans be tolerated in Styria?  Why, indeed?  No logic
+could be more inexorable, and the pupil of the Ingolstadt Jesuits
+hesitated not an instant to carry out their teaching with the very
+instrument forged for him by the Reformation.  Gallows were erected in
+the streets of all his cities, but there was no hanging.  The sight of
+them proved enough to extort obedience to his edict, that every man,
+woman, and child not belonging to the ancient church should leave his
+dominions.  They were driven out in hordes in broad daylight from Gratz
+and other cities.  Rather reign over a wilderness than over heretics was
+the device of the Archduke, in imitation of his great relative, Philip
+II. of Spain.  In short space of time his duchies were as empty of
+Protestants as the Palatinate of Lutherans, or Saxony of Calvinists, or
+both of Papists.  Even the churchyards were rifled of dead Lutherans and
+Utraquists, their carcasses thrown where they could no longer pollute the
+true believers mouldering by their side.
+
+It was not strange that the coronation as King of Bohemia of a man of
+such decided purposes--a country numbering ten Protestants to one
+Catholic--should cause a thrill and a flutter.  Could it be doubted that
+the great elemental conflict so steadily prophesied by Barneveld and
+instinctively dreaded by all capable of feeling the signs of the time
+would now begin?  It had begun.  Of what avail would be Majesty-Letters
+and Compromises extorted by force from trembling or indolent emperors,
+now that a man who knew his own mind, and felt it to be a crime not to
+extirpate all religions but the one orthodox religion, had mounted the
+throne?  It is true that he had sworn at his coronation to maintain the
+laws of Bohemia, and that the Majesty-Letter and the Compromise were part
+of the laws.
+
+But when were doctors ever wanting to prove the unlawfulness of law
+which interferes with the purposes of a despot and the convictions
+of the bigot?
+
+"Novus rex, nova lex," muttered the Catholics, lifting up their heads
+and hearts once more out of the oppression and insults which they had
+unquestionably suffered at the hands of the triumphant Reformers.  "There
+are many empty poppy-heads now flaunting high that shall be snipped off,"
+said others.  "That accursed German Count Thurn and his fellows, whom the
+devil has sent from hell to Bohemia for his own purposes, shall be
+disposed of now," was the general cry.
+
+It was plain that heresy could no longer be maintained except by the
+sword.  That which had been extorted by force would be plucked back by
+force.  The succession of Ferdinand was in brief a warshout to be echoed
+by all the Catholics of Europe.  Before the end of the year the
+Protestant churches of Brunnau were sealed up.  Those at Klostergrab were
+demolished in three days by command of the Archbishop of Prague.  These
+dumb walls preached in their destruction more stirring sermons than
+perhaps would ever have been heard within them had they stood.  This
+tearing in pieces of the Imperial patent granting liberty of Protestant
+worship, this summary execution done upon senseless bricks and mortar,
+was an act of defiance to the Reformed religion everywhere.
+Protestantism was struck in the face, spat upon, defied.
+
+The effect was instantaneous.  Thurn and the other defenders of the
+Protestant faith were as prompt in action as the Catholics had been in
+words.  A few months passed away.  The Emperor was in Vienna, but his ten
+stadholders were in Prague.  The fateful 23rd of May 1618 arrived.
+
+Slawata, a Bohemian Protestant, who had converted himself to the Roman
+Church in order to marry a rich widow, and who converted his peasants by
+hunting them to mass with his hounds, and Martinitz, the two stadholders
+who at Ferdinand's coronation had endeavoured to prevent him from
+including the Majesty-Letter among the privileges he was swearing to
+support, and who were considered the real authors of the royal letters
+revoking all religious rights of Protestants, were the most obnoxious of
+all.  They were hurled from the council-chamber window of the Hradschin.
+The unfortunate secretary Fabricius was tossed out after them.  Twenty-
+eight ells deep they fell, and all escaped unhurt by the fall; Fabricius
+being subsequently ennobled by a grateful emperor with the well-won title
+of Baron Summerset.
+
+The Thirty Years' War, which in reality had been going on for several
+years already, is dated from that day.  A provisional government was
+established in Prague by the Estates under Protestant guidance,
+a college of thirty directors managing affairs.
+
+The Window-Tumble, as the event has always been called in history,
+excited a sensation in Europe.  Especially the young king of France,
+whose political position should bring him rather into alliance with the
+rebels than the Emperor, was disgusted and appalled.  He was used to
+rebellion.  Since he was ten years old there had been a rebellion against
+himself every year.  There was rebellion now.  But his ministers had
+never been thrown out of window.  Perhaps one might take some day to
+tossing out kings as well.  He disapproved the process entirely.
+
+Thus the great conflict of Christendom, so long impending, seemed at
+last to have broken forth in full fury on a comparatively insignificant
+incident.  Thus reasoned the superficial public, as if the throwing out
+of window of twenty stadholders could have created a general war in
+Europe had not the causes of war lain deep and deadly in the whole
+framework of society.
+
+The succession of Ferdinand to the throne of the holy Wenzel, in which
+his election to the German Imperial crown was meant to be involved, was
+a matter which concerned almost every household in Christendom.  Liberty
+of religion, civil franchise, political charters, contract between
+government and subject, right to think, speak, or act, these were the
+human rights everywhere in peril.  A compromise between the two religious
+parties had existed for half a dozen years in Germany, a feeble
+compromise by which men had hardly been kept from each others' throats.
+That compromise had now been thrown to the winds.  The vast conspiracy
+of Spain, Rome, the House of Austria, against human liberty had found a
+chief in the docile, gloomy pupil of the Jesuits now enthroned in
+Bohemia, and soon perhaps to wield the sceptre of the Holy Roman Empire.
+There was no state in Europe that had not cause to put hand on sword-
+hilt.  "Distrust and good garrisons," in the prophetic words of
+Barneveld, would now be the necessary resource for all intending
+to hold what had been gained through long years of toil, martyrdom,
+and hard fighting,
+
+The succession of Ferdinand excited especial dismay and indignation in
+the Palatinate.  The young elector had looked upon the prize as his own.
+The marked advance of Protestant sentiment throughout the kingdom and its
+neighbour provinces had seemed to render the succession of an extreme
+Papist impossible.  When Frederic had sued for and won the hand of the
+fair Elizabeth, daughter of the King of Great Britain, it was understood
+that the alliance would be more brilliant for her than it seemed.  James
+with his usual vanity spoke of his son-in-law as a future king.
+
+It was a golden dream for the Elector and for the general cause of the
+Reformed religion.  Heidelberg enthroned in the ancient capital of the
+Wenzels, Maximilians, and Rudolphs, the Catechism and Confession enrolled
+among the great statutes of the land, this was progress far beyond flimsy
+Majesty-Letters and Compromises, made only to be torn to pieces.
+
+Through the dim vista of futurity and in ecstatic vision no doubt even
+the Imperial crown might seem suspended over the Palatine's head.  But
+this would be merely a midsummer's dream.  Events did not whirl so
+rapidly as they might learn to do centuries later, and--the time for a
+Protestant to grasp at the crown of Germany could then hardly be imagined
+as ripening.
+
+But what the Calvinist branch of the House of Wittelsbach had indeed long
+been pursuing was to interrupt the succession of the House of Austria to
+the German throne.  That a Catholic prince must for the immediate future
+continue to occupy it was conceded even by Frederic, but the electoral
+votes might surely be now so manipulated as to prevent a slave of Spain
+and a tool of the Jesuits from wielding any longer the sceptre of
+Charlemagne.
+
+On the other hand the purpose of the House of Austria was to do away with
+the elective principle and the prescriptive rights of the Estates in
+Bohemia first, and afterwards perhaps to send the Golden Bull itself to
+the limbo of wornout constitutional devices.  At present however their
+object was to secure their hereditary sovereignty in Prague first, and
+then to make sure of the next Imperial election at Frankfurt.  Time
+afterwards might fight still more in their favour, and fix them in
+hereditary possession of the German throne.
+
+The Elector-Palatine had lost no time.  His counsellors even before the
+coronation of Ferdinand at Prague had done their best to excite alarm
+throughout Germany at the document by which Archdukes Maximilian and
+Albert had resigned all their hereditary claims in favour of Ferdinand
+and his male children.  Should there be no such issue, the King of Spain
+claimed the succession for his own sons as great-grandchildren of Emperor
+Maximilian, considering himself nearer in the line than the Styrian
+branch, but being willing to waive his own rights in favour of so ardent
+a Catholic as Ferdinand.  There was even a secret negotiation going on a
+long time between the new king of Bohemia and Philip to arrange for the
+precedence of the Spanish males over the Styrian females to the
+hereditary Austrian states, and to cede the province of Alsace
+to Spain.
+
+It was not wonderful that Protestant Germany should be alarmed.  After a
+century of Protestantism, that Spain should by any possibility come to be
+enthroned again over Germany was enough to raise both Luther and Calvin
+from their graves.  It was certainly enough to set the lively young
+palatine in motion.  So soon as the election of Frederic was proclaimed,
+he had taken up the business in person.  Fond of amusement, young,
+married to a beautiful bride of the royal house of England, he had
+hitherto left politics to his counsellors.
+
+Finding himself frustrated in his ambition by the election of another to
+the seat he had fondly deemed his own, he resolved to unseat him if he
+could, and, at any rate, to prevent the ulterior consequences of his
+elevation.  He made a pilgrimage to Sedan, to confer with that
+irrepressible intriguer and Huguenot chieftain, the Duc de Bouillon.
+He felt sure of the countenance of the States-General, and, of course,
+of his near relative the great stadholder.  He was resolved to invite
+the Duke of Lorraine to head the anti-Austrian party, and to stand for
+the kingship of the Romans and the Empire in opposition to Ferdinand.
+An emissary sent to Nancy came back with a discouraging reply.  The Duke
+not only flatly refused the candidacy, but warned the Palatine that if it
+really came to a struggle he could reckon on small support anywhere, not
+even from those who now seemed warmest for the scheme.  Then Frederic
+resolved to try his cousin, the great Maximilian of Bavaria, to whom all
+Catholics looked with veneration and whom all German Protestants
+respected.  Had the two branches of the illustrious house of Wittelsbach
+been combined in one purpose, the opposition to the House of Austria
+might indeed have been formidable.  But what were ties of blood compared
+to the iron bands of religious love and hatred?  How could Maximilian,
+sternest of Papists, and Frederick V., flightiest of Calvinists, act
+harmoniously in an Imperial election?  Moreover, Maximilian was united by
+ties of youthful and tender friendship as well as by kindred and perfect
+religious sympathy to his other cousin, King Ferdinand himself.  The case
+seemed hopeless, but the Elector went to Munich, and held conferences
+with his cousin.  Not willing to take No for an answer so long as it was
+veiled under evasive or ornamental phraseology, he continued to negotiate
+with Maximilian through his envoys Camerarius and Secretary Neu, who held
+long debates with the Duke's chief councillor, Doctor Jocher.  Camerarius
+assured Jocher that his master was the Hercules to untie the Gordian
+knot, and the lion of the tribe of Judah.  How either the lion of Judah
+or Hercules were to untie the knot which was popularly supposed to have
+been cut by the sword of Alexander did not appear, but Maximilian at any
+rate was moved neither by entreaties nor tropes.  Being entirely averse
+from entering himself for the German crown, he grew weary at last of the
+importunity with which the scheme was urged.  So he wrote a short billet
+to his councillor, to be shown to Secretary Neu.
+
+"Dear Jocher," he said, "I am convinced one must let these people
+understand the matter in a little plainer German.  I am once for
+all determined not to let myself into any misunderstanding or even
+amplifications with the House of Austria in regard to the succession.
+I think also that it would rather be harmful than useful to my house
+to take upon myself so heavy a burthen as the German crown."
+
+This time the German was plain enough and produced its effect.
+Maximilian was too able a statesman and too conscientious a friend
+to wish to exchange his own proud position as chief of the League,
+acknowledged head of the great Catholic party, for the slippery,
+comfortless, and unmeaning throne of the Holy Empire, which he
+considered Ferdinand's right.
+
+The chiefs of the anti-Austrian party, especially the Prince of Anhalt
+and the Margrave of Anspach, in unison with the Heidelberg cabinet, were
+forced to look for another candidate.  Accordingly the Margrave and the
+Elector-Palatine solemnly agreed that it was indispensable to choose an
+emperor who should not be of the House of Austria nor a slave of Spain.
+It was, to be sure, not possible to think of a Protestant prince.
+Bavaria would not oppose Austria, would also allow too much influence to
+the Jesuits.  So there remained no one but the Duke of Savoy.  He was a
+prince of the Empire.  He was of German descent, of Saxon race, a great
+general, father of his soldiers, who would protect Europe against a
+Turkish invasion better than the bastions of Vienna could do.  He would
+be agreeable to the Catholics, while the Protestants could live under him
+without anxiety because the Jesuits would be powerless with him.  It
+would be a master-stroke if the princes would unite upon him.  The King
+of France would necessarily be pleased with it, the King of Great Britain
+delighted.
+
+At last the model candidate had been found.  The Duke of Savoy having
+just finished for a second time his chronic war with Spain, in which the
+United Provinces, notwithstanding the heavy drain on their resources, had
+allowed him 50,000 florins a month besides the soldiers under Count
+Ernest of Nassau, had sent Mansfeld with 4000 men to aid the revolted
+estates in Bohemia.  Geographically, hereditarily, necessarily the deadly
+enemy of the House of Austria, he listened favourably to the overtures
+made to him by the princes of the Union, expressed undying hatred for the
+Imperial race, and thought the Bohemian revolt a priceless occasion for
+expelling them from power.  He was informed by the first envoy sent to
+him, Christopher van Dohna, that the object of the great movement now
+contemplated was to raise him to the Imperial throne at the next
+election, to assist the Bohemian estates, to secure the crown of Bohemia
+for the Elector-Palatine, to protect the Protestants of Germany, and to
+break down the overweening power of the Austrian house.
+
+The Duke displayed no eagerness for the crown of Germany, while approving
+the election of Frederic, but expressed entire sympathy with the
+enterprise.  It was indispensable however to form a general federation in
+Europe of England, the Netherlands, Venice, together with Protestant
+Germany and himself, before undertaking so mighty a task.  While the
+negotiations were going on, both Anspach and Anhalt were in great
+spirits.  The Margrave cried out exultingly, "In a short time the means
+will be in our hands for turning the world upside down."  He urged the
+Prince of Anhalt to be expeditious in his decisions and actions.  "He who
+wishes to trade," he said, "must come to market early."
+
+There was some disappointment at Heidelberg when the first news from
+Turin arrived, the materials for this vast scheme for an overwhelming and
+universal European war not seeming to be at their disposition.  By and by
+the Duke's plans seem to deepen and broaden.  He told Mansfeld, who,
+accompanied by Secretary Neu, was glad at a pause in his fighting and
+brandschatzing in Bohemia to be employed on diplomatic business, that on
+the whole he should require the crown of Bohemia for himself.  He also
+proposed to accept the Imperial crown, and as for Frederic, he would
+leave him the crown of Hungary, and would recommend him to round himself
+out by adding to his hereditary dominions the province of Alsace, besides
+Upper Austria and other territories in convenient proximity to the
+Palatinate.
+
+Venice, it had been hoped, would aid in the great scheme and might
+in her turn round herself out with Friuli and Istria and other tempting
+possessions of Ferdinand, in reward for the men and money she was
+expected to furnish.  That republic had however just concluded a war with
+Ferdinand, caused mainly by the depredations of the piratical Uscoques,
+in which, as we have seen, she had received the assistance of 4000
+Hollanders under command of Count John of Nassau.  The Venetians had
+achieved many successes, had taken the city of Gortz, and almost reduced
+the city of Gradiska.  A certain colonel Albert Waldstein however,
+of whom more might one day be heard in the history of the war now begun,
+had beaten the Venetians and opened a pathway through their ranks for
+succour to the beleaguered city.  Soon afterwards peace was made on an
+undertaking that the Uscoques should be driven from their haunts, their
+castles dismantled, and their ships destroyed.
+
+Venice declined an engagement to begin a fresh war.
+
+She hated Ferdinand and Matthias and the whole Imperial brood, but, as
+old Barbarigo declared in the Senate, the Republic could not afford to
+set her house on fire in order to give Austria the inconvenience of the
+smoke.
+
+Meantime, although the Elector-Palatine had magnanimously agreed to use
+his influence in Bohemia in favour of Charles Emmanuel, the Duke seems at
+last to have declined proposing himself for that throne.  He knew, he
+said, that King James wished that station for his son-in-law.  The
+Imperial crown belonged to no one as yet after the death of Matthias,
+and was open therefore to his competition.
+
+Anhalt demanded of Savoy 15,000 men for the maintenance of the good
+cause, asserting that "it would be better to have the Turk or the devil
+himself on the German throne than leave it to Ferdinand."
+
+The triumvirate ruling at Prague-Thurn, Ruppa, and Hohenlohe--were
+anxious for a decision from Frederic.  That simple-hearted and ingenuous
+young elector had long been troubled both with fears lest after all he
+might lose the crown of Bohemia and with qualms of conscience as to the
+propriety of taking it even if he could get it.  He wrestled much in
+prayer and devout meditation whether as anointed prince himself he were
+justified in meddling with the anointment of other princes.  Ferdinand
+had been accepted, proclaimed, crowned.  He artlessly sent to Prague to
+consult the Estates whether they possessed the right to rebel, to set
+aside the reigning dynasty, and to choose a new king.  At the same time,
+with an eye to business, he stipulated that on account of the great
+expense and trouble devolving upon him the crown must be made hereditary
+in his family.  The impression made upon the grim Thurn and his
+colleagues by the simplicity of these questions may be imagined.  The
+splendour and width of the Savoyard's conceptions fascinated the leaders
+of the Union.  It seemed to Anspach and Anhalt that it was as well that
+Frederic should reign in Hungary as in Bohemia, and the Elector was
+docile.  All had relied however on the powerful assistance of the great
+defender of the Protestant faith, the father-in-law of the Elector, the
+King of Great Britain.  But James had nothing but cold water and
+Virgilian quotations for his son's ardour.  He was more under the
+influence of Gondemar than ever before, more eagerly hankering for the
+Infanta, more completely the slave of Spain.  He pledged himself to that
+government that if the Protestants in Bohemia continued rebellious, he
+would do his best to frustrate their designs, and would induce his son-
+in-law to have no further connection with them.  And Spain delighted his
+heart not by immediately sending over the Infanta, but by proposing that
+he should mediate between the contending parties.  It would be difficult
+to imagine a greater farce.  All central Europe was now in arms.  The
+deepest and gravest questions about which men can fight: the right to
+worship God according to their conscience and to maintain civil
+franchises which have been earned by the people with the blood and
+treasure of centuries, were now to be solved by the sword, and the pupil
+of Buchanan and the friend of Buckingham was to step between hundreds of
+thousands of men in arms with a classical oration.  But James was very
+proud of the proposal and accepted it with alacrity.
+
+"You know, my dear son," he wrote to Frederic, "that we are the only
+king in Europe that is sought for by friend and foe for his mediation.
+It would be for this our lofty part very unbecoming if we were capable
+of favouring one of the parties.  Your suggestion that we might secretly
+support the Bohemians we must totally reject, as it is not our way to do
+anything that we would not willingly confess to the whole world."
+
+And to do James justice, he had never fed Frederic with false hopes,
+never given a penny for his great enterprise, nor promised him a penny.
+He had contented himself with suggesting from time to time that he might
+borrow money of the States-General.  His daughter Elizabeth must take
+care of herself, else what would become of her brother's marriage to the
+daughter of Spain.
+
+And now it was war to the knife, in which it was impossible that Holland,
+as well as all the other great powers should not soon be involved.  It
+was disheartening to the cause of freedom and progress, not only that the
+great kingdom on which the world, had learned to rely in all movements
+upward and onward should be neutralized by the sycophancy of its monarch
+to the general oppressor, but that the great republic which so long had
+taken the lead in maintaining the liberties of Europe should now be torn
+by religious discord within itself, and be turning against the great
+statesman who had so wisely guided her councils and so accurately
+foretold the catastrophe which was now upon the world.
+
+Meantime the Emperor Matthias, not less forlorn than through his
+intrigues and rebellions his brother Rudolph had been made, passed his
+days in almost as utter retirement as if he had formally abdicated.
+Ferdinand treated him as if in his dotage.  His fair young wife too had
+died of hard eating in the beginning of the winter to his inexpressible
+grief, so that there was nothing left to solace him now but the
+Rudolphian Museum.
+
+He had made but one public appearance since the coronation of Ferdinand
+in Prague.  Attended by his brother Maximilian, by King Ferdinand, and by
+Cardinal Khlesl, he had towards the end of the year 1617 paid a visit to
+the Elector John George at Dresden.  The Imperial party had been received
+with much enthusiasm by the great leader of Lutheranism.  The Cardinal
+had seriously objected to accompanying the Emperor on this occasion.
+Since the Reformation no cardinal had been seen at the court of Saxony.
+He cared not personally for the pomps and glories of his rank, but still
+as prince of the Church he had settled right of precedence over electors.
+To waive it would be disrespectful to the Pope, to claim it would lead to
+squabbles.  But Ferdinand had need of his skill to secure the vote of
+Saxony at the next Imperial election.  The Cardinal was afraid of
+Ferdinand with good reason, and complied.  By an agreeable fiction he was
+received at court not as cardinal but as minister, and accommodated with
+an humble place at table.  Many looking on with astonishment thought he
+would have preferred to dine by himself in retirement.  But this was not
+the bitterest of the mortifications that the pastor and guide of Matthias
+was to suffer at the hands of Ferdinand before his career should be
+closed.  The visit at Dresden was successful, however.  John George,
+being a claimant, as we have seen, for the Duchies of Cleve and Julich,
+had need of the Emperor.  The King had need of John George's vote.  There
+was a series of splendid balls, hunting parties, carousings.
+
+The Emperor was an invalid, the King was abstemious, but the Elector was
+a mighty drinker.  It was not his custom nor that of his councillors to
+go to bed.  They were usually carried there.  But it was the wish of
+Ferdinand to be conciliatory, and he bore himself as well as he could at
+the banquet.  The Elector was also a mighty hunter.  Neither of his
+Imperial guests cared for field sports, but they looked out contentedly
+from the window of a hunting-lodge, before which for their entertainment
+the Elector and his courtiers slaughtered eight bears, ten stags, ten
+pigs, and eleven badgers, besides a goodly number of other game; John
+George shooting also three martens from a pole erected for that purpose
+in the courtyard.  It seemed proper for him thus to exhibit a specimen of
+the skill for which he was justly famed.  The Elector before his life
+closed, so says the chronicle, had killed 28,000 wild boars, 208 bears,
+3543 wolves, 200 badgers, 18,967 foxes, besides stags and roedeer in
+still greater number, making a grand total of 113,629 beasts.  The leader
+of the Lutheran party of Germany had not lived in vain.
+
+Thus the great chiefs of Catholicism and of Protestantism amicably
+disported themselves in the last days of the year, while their respective
+forces were marshalling for mortal combat all over Christendom.  The
+Elector certainly loved neither Matthias nor Ferdinand, but he hated the
+Palatine.  The chief of the German Calvinists disputed that Protestant
+hegemony which John George claimed by right.  Indeed the immense
+advantage enjoyed by the Catholics at the outbreak of the religious war
+from the mutual animosities between the two great divisions of the
+Reformed Church was already terribly manifest.  What an additional power
+would it derive from the increased weakness of the foe, should there be
+still other and deeper and more deadly schisms within one great division
+itself!
+
+"The Calvinists and Lutherans," cried the Jesuit Scioppius, "are so
+furiously attacking each other with calumnies and cursings and are
+persecuting each other to such extent as to give good hope that the
+devilish weight and burthen of them will go to perdition and shame of
+itself, and the heretics all do bloody execution upon each other.
+Certainly if ever a golden time existed for exterminating the heretics,
+it is the present time."
+
+The Imperial party took their leave of Dresden, believing themselves to
+have secured the electoral vote of Saxony; the Elector hoping for
+protection to his interests in the duchies through that sequestration to
+which Barneveld had opposed such vigorous resistance.  There had been
+much slavish cringing before these Catholic potentates by the courtiers
+of Dresden, somewhat amazing to the ruder churls of Saxony, the common
+people, who really believed in the religion which their prince had
+selected for them and himself.
+
+And to complete the glaring contrast, Ferdinand and Matthias had scarcely
+turned their backs before tremendous fulminations upon the ancient church
+came from the Elector and from all the doctors of theology in Saxony.
+
+For the jubilee of the hundredth anniversary of the Reformation was
+celebrated all over Germany in the autumn of this very year, and nearly
+at the exact moment of all this dancing, and fuddling, and pig shooting
+at Dresden in honour of emperors and cardinals.  And Pope Paul V. had
+likewise ordained a jubilee for true believers at almost the same time.
+
+The Elector did not mince matters in his proclamation from any regard
+to the feelings of his late guests.  He called on all Protestants to
+rejoice, "because the light of the Holy Gospel had now shone brightly in
+the electoral dominions for a hundred years, the Omnipotent keeping it
+burning notwithstanding the raging and roaring of the hellish enemy and
+all his scaly servants."
+
+The doctors of divinity were still more emphatic in their phraseology.
+They called on all professors and teachers of the true Evangelical
+churches, not only in Germany but throughout Christendom, to keep the
+great jubilee.  They did this in terms not calculated certainly to
+smother the flames of religious and party hatred, even if it had been
+possible at that moment to suppress the fire.  "The great God of Heaven,"
+they said, "had caused the undertaking of His holy instrument Mr. Doctor
+Martin Luther to prosper.  Through His unspeakable mercy he has driven
+away the Papal darkness and caused the sun of righteousness once more to
+beam upon the world.  The old idolatries, blasphemies, errors, and
+horrors of the benighted Popedom have been exterminated in many kingdoms
+and countries.  Innumerable sheep of the Lord Christ have been fed on
+the wholesome pasture of the Divine Word in spite of those monstrous,
+tearing, ravenous wolves, the Pope and his followers.  The enemy of God
+and man, the ancient serpent, may hiss and rage.  Yes, the Roman
+antichrist in his frantic blusterings may bite off his own tongue, may
+fulminate all kinds of evils, bans, excommunications, wars, desolations,
+and burnings, as long and as much as he likes.  But if we take refuge
+with the Lord God, what can this inane, worn-out man and water-bubble do
+to us?"  With more in the same taste.
+
+The Pope's bull for the Catholic jubilee was far more decorous and lofty
+in tone, for it bewailed the general sin in Christendom, and called on
+all believers to flee from the wrath about to descend upon the earth,
+in terms that were almost prophetic.  He ordered all to pray that the
+Lord might lift up His Church, protect it from the wiles of the enemy,
+extirpate heresies, grant peace and true unity among Christian princes,
+and mercifully avert disasters already coming near.
+
+But if the language of Paul V. was measured and decent, the swarm of
+Jesuit pamphleteers that forthwith began to buzz and to sting all over
+Christendom were sufficiently venomous.  Scioppius, in his Alarm Trumpet
+to the Holy War, and a hundred others declared that all heresies and
+heretics were now to be extirpated, the one true church to be united and
+re-established, and that the only road to such a consummation was a path
+of blood.
+
+The Lutheran preachers, on the other hand, obedient to the summons from
+Dresden, vied with each other in every town and village in heaping
+denunciations, foul names, and odious imputations on the Catholics;
+while the Calvinists, not to be behindhand with their fellow Reformers,
+celebrated the jubilee, especially at Heidelberg, by excluding Papists
+from hope of salvation, and bewailing the fate of all churches sighing
+under the yoke of Rome.
+
+And not only were the Papists and the Reformers exchanging these blasts
+and counterblasts of hatred, not less deadly in their effects than the
+artillery of many armies, but as if to make a thorough exhibition of
+human fatuity when drunk with religious passion, the Lutherans were
+making fierce paper and pulpit war upon the Calvinists.  Especially Hoe,
+court preacher of John George, ceaselessly hurled savage libels against
+them.  In the name of the theological faculty of Wittenberg, he addressed
+a "truehearted warning to all Lutheran Christians in Bohemia, Moravia,
+Silesia, and other provinces, to beware of the erroneous Calvinistic
+religion."  He wrote a letter to Count Schlick, foremost leader in the
+Bohemian movement, asking whether "the unquiet Calvinist spirit, should
+it gain ascendency, would be any more endurable than the Papists.  Oh
+what woe, what infinite woe," he cried, "for those noble countries if
+they should all be thrust into the jaws of Calvinism!"
+
+Did not preacher Hoe's master aspire to the crown of Bohemia himself?
+Was he not furious at the start which Heidelberg had got of him in the
+race for that golden prize?  Was he not mad with jealousy of the
+Palatine, of the Palatine's religion, and of the Palatine's claim to
+"hegemony" in Germany?
+
+Thus embittered and bloodthirsty towards each other were the two great
+sections of the Reformed religion on the first centennial jubilee of the
+Reformation.  Such was the divided front which the anti-Catholic party
+presented at the outbreak of the war with Catholicism.
+
+Ferdinand, on the other hand, was at the head of a comparatively united
+party.  He could hardly hope for more than benevolent neutrality from the
+French government, which, in spite of the Spanish marriages, dared not
+wholly desert the Netherlands and throw itself into the hands of Spain;
+but Spanish diplomacy had enslaved the British king, and converted what
+should have been an active and most powerful enemy into an efficient if
+concealed ally.  The Spanish and archiducal armies were enveloping the
+Dutch republic, from whence the most powerful support could be expected
+for the Protestant cause.  Had it not been for the steadiness of
+Barneveld, Spain would have been at that moment established in full
+panoply over the whole surface of those inestimable positions, the
+disputed duchies.  Venice was lukewarm, if not frigid; and Savoy,
+although deeply pledged by passion and interest to the downfall of the
+House of Austria, was too dangerously situated herself, too distant, too
+poor, and too Catholic to be very formidable.
+
+Ferdinand was safe from the Turkish side.  A twenty years' peace,
+renewable by agreement, between the Holy Empire and the Sultan had been
+negotiated by those two sons of bakers, Cardinal Khlesl and the Vizier
+Etmekdschifade.  It was destined to endure through all the horrors of the
+great war, a stronger protection to Vienna than all the fortifications
+which the engineering art could invent.  He was safe too from Poland,
+King Sigmund being not only a devoted Catholic but doubly his brother-in-
+law.
+
+Spain, therefore, the Spanish Netherlands, the Pope, and the German
+League headed by Maximilian of Bavaria, the ablest prince on the
+continent of Europe, presented a square, magnificent phalanx on which
+Ferdinand might rely.  The States-General, on the other hand, were a most
+dangerous foe.  With a centennial hatred of Spain, splendidly disciplined
+armies and foremost navy of the world, with an admirable financial system
+and vast commercial resources, with a great stadholder, first captain of
+the age, thirsting for war, and allied in blood as well as religion to
+the standard-bearer of the Bohemian revolt; with councils directed by the
+wisest and most experienced of living statesman, and with the very life
+blood of her being derived from the fountain of civil and religious
+liberty, the great Republic of the United Netherlands--her Truce with the
+hereditary foe just expiring was, if indeed united, strong enough at the
+head of the Protestant forces of Europe to dictate to a world in arms.
+
+Alas! was it united?
+
+As regarded internal affairs of most pressing interest, the electoral
+vote at the next election at Frankfurt had been calculated as being
+likely to yield a majority of one for the opposition candidate, should
+the Savoyard or any other opposition candidate be found.  But the
+calculation was a close one and might easily be fallacious.  Supposing
+the Palatine elected King of Bohemia by the rebellious estates, as was
+probable, he could of course give the vote of that electorate and his own
+against Ferdinand, and the vote of Brandenburg at that time seemed safe.
+But Ferdinand by his visit to Dresden had secured the vote of Saxony,
+while of the three ecclesiastical electors, Cologne and Mayence were sure
+for him.  Thus it would be three and three, and the seventh and decisive
+vote would be that of the Elector-Bishop of Treves.  The sanguine
+Frederic thought that with French influence and a round sum of money this
+ecclesiastic might be got to vote for the opposition candidate.  The
+ingenious combination was not destined to be successful, and as there has
+been no intention in the present volume to do more than slightly indicate
+the most prominent movements and mainsprings of the great struggle so far
+as Germany is concerned, without entering into detail, it may be as well
+to remind the reader that it proved wonderfully wrong.  Matthias died on
+the 20th March, 1619, the election of a new emperor took place at
+Frankfurt On the 28th of the following August, and not only did Saxony
+and all three ecclesiastical electors vote for Ferdinand, but Brandenburg
+likewise, as well as the Elector-Palatine himself, while Ferdinand,
+personally present in the assembly as Elector of Bohemia, might according
+to the Golden Bull have given the seventh vote for himself had he chosen
+to do so.  Thus the election was unanimous.
+
+Strange to say, as the electors proceeded through the crowd from the hall
+of election to accompany the new emperor to the church where he was to
+receive the popular acclaim, the news reached them from Prague that the
+Elector-Palatine had been elected King of Bohemia.
+
+Thus Frederic, by voting for Ferdinand, had made himself voluntarily a
+rebel should he accept the crown now offered him.  Had the news arrived
+sooner, a different result and even a different history might have been
+possible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+Barneveld connected with the East India Company, but opposed to the West
+India Company--Carleton comes from Venice inimical to Barneveld--
+Maurice openly the Chieftain of the Contra-Remonstrants--Tumults
+about the Churches--"Orange or Spain" the Cry of Prince Maurice and
+his Party--They take possession of the Cloister Church--"The Sharp
+Resolve"--Carleton's Orations before the States-General.
+
+King James never forgave Barneveld for drawing from him those famous
+letters to the States in which he was made to approve the Five Points
+and to admit the possibility of salvation under them.  These epistles
+had brought much ridicule upon James, who was not amused by finding his
+theological discussions a laughing-stock.  He was still more incensed by
+the biting criticisms made upon the cheap surrender of the cautionary
+towns, and he hated more than ever the statesman who, as he believed,
+had twice outwitted him.
+
+On the other hand, Maurice, inspired by his brother-in-law the Duke of
+Bouillon and by the infuriated Francis Aerssens, abhorred Barneveld's
+French policy, which was freely denounced by the French Calvinists and
+by the whole orthodox church.  In Holland he was still warmly sustained
+except in the Contra-Remonstrant Amsterdam and a few other cities of less
+importance.  But there were perhaps deeper reasons for the Advocate's
+unpopularity in the great commercial metropolis than theological
+pretexts.  Barneveld's name and interests were identified with the great
+East India Company, which was now powerful and prosperous beyond anything
+ever dreamt of before in the annals of commerce.  That trading company
+had already founded an empire in the East.  Fifty ships of war,
+fortresses guarded by 4000 pieces of artillery and 10,000 soldiers and
+sailors, obeyed the orders of a dozen private gentlemen at home seated in
+a back parlour around a green table.  The profits of each trading voyage
+were enormous, and the shareholders were growing rich beyond their
+wildest imaginings.  To no individual so much as to Holland's Advocate
+was this unexampled success to be ascribed.  The vast prosperity of the
+East India Company had inspired others with the ambition to found a
+similar enterprise in the West.  But to the West India Company then
+projected and especially favoured in Amsterdam, Barneveld was firmly
+opposed.  He considered it as bound up with the spirit of military
+adventure and conquest, and as likely to bring on prematurely and
+unwisely a renewed conflict with Spain.  The same reasons which had
+caused him to urge the Truce now influenced his position in regard
+to the West India Company.
+
+Thus the clouds were gathering every day more darkly over the head of
+the Advocate.  The powerful mercantile interest in the great seat of
+traffic in the Republic, the personal animosity of the Stadholder,
+the execrations of the orthodox party in France, England, and all the
+Netherlands, the anger of the French princes and all those of the old
+Huguenot party who had been foolish enough to act with the princes in
+their purely selfish schemes against the, government, and the overflowing
+hatred of King James, whose darling schemes of Spanish marriages and a
+Spanish alliance had been foiled by the Advocate's masterly policy in
+France and in the duchies, and whose resentment at having been so
+completely worsted and disarmed in the predestination matter and in the
+redemption of the great mortgage had deepened into as terrible wrath as
+outraged bigotry and vanity could engender; all these elements made up a
+stormy atmosphere in which the strongest heart might have quailed.  But
+Barneveld did not quail.  Doubtless he loved power, and the more danger
+he found on every side the less inclined he was to succumb.  But he
+honestly believed that the safety and prosperity of the country he had
+so long and faithfully served were identified with the policy which he
+was pursuing.  Arrogant, overbearing, self-concentrated, accustomed to
+lead senates and to guide the councils and share the secrets of kings,
+familiar with and almost an actor in every event in the political history
+not only of his own country but of every important state in Christendom
+during nearly two generations of mankind, of unmatched industry, full
+of years and experience, yet feeling within him the youthful strength
+of a thousand intellects compared to most of those by which he was
+calumniated, confronted, and harassed; he accepted the great fight which
+was forced upon him.  Irascible, courageous, austere, contemptuous, he
+looked around and saw the Republic whose cradle he had rocked grown to be
+one of the most powerful and prosperous among the states of the world,
+and could with difficulty imagine that in this supreme hour of her
+strength and her felicity she was ready to turn and rend the man whom
+she was bound by every tie of duty to cherish and to revere.
+
+Sir Dudley Carleton, the new English ambassador to the States, had
+arrived during the past year red-hot from Venice.  There he had perhaps
+not learned especially to love the new republic which had arisen among
+the northern lagunes, and whose admission among the nations had been at
+last accorded by the proud Queen of the Adriatic, notwithstanding the
+objections and the intrigues both of French and English representatives.
+He had come charged to the brim with the political spite of James against
+the Advocate, and provided too with more than seven vials of theological
+wrath.  Such was the King's revenge for Barneveld's recent successes.
+The supporters in the Netherlands of the civil authority over the Church
+were moreover to be instructed by the political head of the English
+Church that such supremacy, although highly proper for a king, was
+"thoroughly unsuitable for a many-headed republic."  So much for church
+government.  As for doctrine, Arminianism and Vorstianism were to be
+blasted with one thunderstroke from the British throne.
+
+"In Holland," said James to his envoy, "there have been violent and sharp
+contestations amongst the towns in the cause of religion .  .  .  .  .
+If they shall be unhappily revived during your time, you shall not forget
+that you are the minister of that master whom God hath made the sole
+protector of His religion."
+
+There was to be no misunderstanding in future as to the dogmas which
+the royal pope of Great Britain meant to prescribe to his Netherland
+subjects.  Three years before, at the dictation of the Advocate, he had
+informed the States that he was convinced of their ability to settle the
+deplorable dissensions as to religion according to their wisdom and the
+power which belonged to them over churches and church servants.  He had
+informed them of his having learned by experience that such questions
+could hardly be decided by the wranglings of theological professors, and
+that it was better to settle them by public authority and to forbid their
+being brought into the pulpit or among common people.  He had recommended
+mutual toleration of religious difference until otherwise ordained by the
+public civil authority, and had declared that neither of the two opinions
+in regard to predestination was in his opinion far from the truth or
+inconsistent with Christian faith or the salvation of souls.
+
+It was no wonder that these utterances were quite after the Advocate's
+heart, as James had faithfully copied them from the Advocate's draft.
+
+But now in the exercise of his infallibility the King issued other
+decrees.  His minister was instructed to support the extreme views of the
+orthodox both as to government and dogma, and to urge the National Synod,
+as it were, at push of pike.  "Besides the assistance," said he to
+Carleton, "which we would have you give to the true professors of the
+Gospel in your discourse and conferences, you may let fall how hateful
+the maintenance of these erroneous opinions is to the majesty of God, how
+displeasing unto us their dearest friends, and how disgraceful to the
+honour and government of that state."
+
+And faithfully did the Ambassador act up to his instructions.  Most
+sympathetically did he embody the hatred of the King.  An able,
+experienced, highly accomplished diplomatist and scholar, ready with
+tongue and pen, caustic, censorious, prejudiced, and partial, he was soon
+foremost among the foes of the Advocate in the little court of the Hague,
+and prepared at any moment to flourish the political and theological goad
+when his master gave the word.
+
+Nothing in diplomatic history is more eccentric than the long sermons
+upon abstruse points of divinity and ecclesiastical history which the
+English ambassador delivered from time to time before the States-General
+in accordance with elaborate instructions drawn up by his sovereign with
+his own hand.  Rarely has a king been more tedious, and he bestowed all
+his tediousness upon My Lords the States-General.  Nothing could be more
+dismal than these discourses, except perhaps the contemporaneous and
+interminable orations of Grotius to the states of Holland, to the
+magistrates of Amsterdam, to the states of Utrecht; yet Carleton was a
+man of the world, a good debater, a ready writer, while Hugo Grotius was
+one of the great lights of that age and which shone for all time.
+
+Among the diplomatic controversies of history, rarely refreshing at best,
+few have been more drouthy than those once famous disquisitions, and they
+shall be left to shrivel into the nothingness of the past, so far as is
+consistent with the absolute necessities of this narrative.
+
+The contest to which the Advocate was called had become mainly a personal
+and a political one, although the weapons with which it was fought were
+taken from ecclesiastical arsenals.  It was now an unequal contest.
+
+For the great captain of the country and of his time, the son of William
+the Silent, the martial stadholder, in the fulness of his fame and vigour
+of his years, had now openly taken his place as the chieftain of the
+Contra-Remonstrants.  The conflict between the civil and the military
+element for supremacy in a free commonwealth has never been more vividly
+typified than in this death-grapple between Maurice and Barneveld.
+
+The aged but still vigorous statesman, ripe with half a century of
+political lore, and the high-born, brilliant, and scientific soldier,
+with the laurels of Turnhout and Nieuwpoort and of a hundred famous
+sieges upon his helmet, reformer of military science, and no mean
+proficient in the art of politics and government, were the
+representatives and leaders of the two great parties into which the
+Commonwealth had now unhappily divided itself.  But all history shows
+that the brilliant soldier of a republic is apt to have the advantage,
+in a struggle for popular affection and popular applause, over the
+statesman, however consummate.  The general imagination is more excited
+by the triumphs of the field than by those of the tribune, and the man
+who has passed many years of life in commanding multitudes with
+necessarily despotic sway is often supposed to have gained in the process
+the attributes likely to render him most valuable as chief citizen of a
+flee commonwealth.  Yet national enthusiasm is so universally excited by
+splendid military service as to forbid a doubt that the sentiment is
+rooted deeply in our nature, while both in antiquity and in modern times
+there are noble although rare examples of the successful soldier
+converting himself into a valuable and exemplary magistrate.
+
+In the rivalry of Maurice and Barneveld however for the national
+affection the chances were singularly against the Advocate.  The great
+battles and sieges of the Prince had been on a world's theatre, had
+enchained the attention of Christendom, and on their issue had frequently
+depended, or seemed to depend, the very existence of the nation.  The
+labours of the statesman, on the contrary, had been comparatively secret.
+His noble orations and arguments had been spoken with closed doors to
+assemblies of colleagues--rather envoys than senators--were never printed
+or even reported, and could be judged of only by their effects; while his
+vast labours in directing both the internal administration and especially
+the foreign affairs of the Commonwealth had been by their very nature as
+secret as they were perpetual and enormous.
+
+Moreover, there was little of what we now understand as the democratic
+sentiment in the Netherlands.  There was deep and sturdy attachment to
+ancient traditions, privileges, special constitutions extorted from a
+power acknowledged to be superior to the people.  When partly to save
+those chartered rights, and partly to overthrow the horrible
+ecclesiastical tyranny of the sixteenth century, the people had
+accomplished a successful revolt, they never dreamt of popular
+sovereignty, but allowed the municipal corporations, by which their
+local affairs had been for centuries transacted, to unite in offering
+to foreign princes, one after another, the crown which they had torn
+from the head of the Spanish king.  When none was found to accept the
+dangerous honour, they had acquiesced in the practical sovereignty of the
+States; but whether the States-General or the States-Provincial were the
+supreme authority had certainly not been definitely and categorically
+settled.  So long as the States of Holland, led by the Advocate, had
+controlled in great matters the political action of the States-General,
+while the Stadholder stood without a rival at the head of their military
+affairs, and so long as there were no fierce disputes as to government
+and dogma within the bosom of the Reformed Church, the questions which
+were now inflaming the whole population had been allowed to slumber.
+
+The termination of the war and the rise of Arminianism were almost
+contemporaneous.  The Stadholder, who so unwillingly had seen the
+occupation in which he had won so much glory taken from him by the Truce,
+might perhaps find less congenial but sufficiently engrossing business as
+champion of the Church and of the Union.
+
+The new church--not freedom of worship for different denominations of
+Christians, but supremacy of the Church of Heidelberg and Geneva--seemed
+likely to be the result of the overthrow of the ancient church.  It is
+the essence of the Catholic Church to claim supremacy over and immunity
+from the civil authority, and to this claim for the Reformed Church, by
+which that of Rome had been supplanted, Barneveld was strenuously
+opposed.
+
+The Stadholder was backed, therefore, by the Church in its purity, by the
+majority of the humbler classes--who found in membership of the oligarchy
+of Heaven a substitute for those democratic aspirations on earth which
+were effectually suppressed between the two millstones of burgher
+aristocracy and military discipline--and by the States-General,
+a majority of which were Contra-Remonstrant in their faith.
+
+If the sword is usually an overmatch for the long robe in political
+struggles, the cassock has often proved superior to both combined.  But
+in the case now occupying our attention the cassock was in alliance with
+the sword.  Clearly the contest was becoming a desperate one for the
+statesman.
+
+And while the controversy between the chiefs waged hotter and hotter, the
+tumults around the churches on Sundays in every town and village grew
+more and more furious, ending generally in open fights with knives,
+bludgeons, and brickbats; preachers and magistrates being often too glad
+to escape with a whole skin.  One can hardly be ingenuous enough to
+consider all this dirking, battering, and fisticuffing as the legitimate
+and healthy outcome of a difference as to the knotty point whether all
+men might or might not be saved by repentance and faith in Christ.
+
+The Greens and Blues of the Byzantine circus had not been more typical
+of fierce party warfare in the Lower Empire than the greens and blues
+of predestination in the rising commonwealth, according to the real or
+imagined epigram of Prince Maurice.
+
+"Your divisions in religion," wrote Secretary Lake to Carleton, "have, I
+doubt not, a deeper root than is discerned by every one, and I doubt not
+that the Prince Maurice's carriage doth make a jealousy of affecting a
+party under the pretence of supporting one side, and that the States
+fear his ends and aims, knowing his power with the men of war; and that
+howsoever all be shadowed under the name of religion there is on either
+part a civil end, of the one seeking a step of higher authority, of the
+other a preservation of liberty."
+
+And in addition to other advantages the Contra-Remonstrants had now got a
+good cry--an inestimable privilege in party contests.
+
+"There are two factions in the land," said Maurice, "that of Orange and
+that of Spain, and the two chiefs of the Spanish faction are those
+political and priestly Arminians, Uytenbogaert and Oldenbarneveld."
+
+Orange and Spain!  the one name associated with all that was most
+venerated and beloved throughout the country, for William the Silent
+since his death was almost a god; the other ineradicably entwined at that
+moment with, everything execrated throughout the land.  The Prince of
+Orange's claim to be head of the Orange faction could hardly be disputed,
+but it was a master stroke of political malice to fix the stigma of
+Spanish partisanship on the Advocate.  If the venerable patriot who had
+been fighting Spain, sometimes on the battle-field and always in the
+council, ever since he came to man's estate, could be imagined even in
+a dream capable of being bought with Spanish gold to betray his country,
+who in the ranks of the Remonstrant party could be safe from such
+accusations?  Each party accused the other of designs for altering or
+subverting the government.  Maurice was suspected of what were called
+Leicestrian projects, "Leycestrana consilia"--for the Earl's plots to
+gain possession of Leyden and Utrecht had never been forgotten--while
+the Prince and those who acted with him asserted distinctly that it was
+the purpose of Barneveld to pave the way for restoring the Spanish
+sovereignty and the Popish religion so soon as the Truce had reached its
+end?
+
+Spain and Orange.  Nothing for a faction fight could be neater.  Moreover
+the two words rhyme in Netherlandish, which is the case in no other
+language, "Spanje-Oranje."  The sword was drawn and the banner unfurled.
+
+The "Mud Beggars" of the Hague, tired of tramping to Ryswyk of a Sunday
+to listen to Henry Rosaeus, determined on a private conventicle in the
+capital.  The first barn selected was sealed up by the authorities, but
+Epoch Much, book-keeper of Prince Maurice, then lent them his house.  The
+Prince declared that sooner than they should want a place of assembling
+he would give them his own.  But he meant that they should have a public
+church to themselves, and that very soon.  King James thoroughly approved
+of all these proceedings.  At that very instant such of his own subjects
+as had seceded from the Established Church to hold conventicles in barns
+and breweries and backshops in London were hunted by him with bishops'
+pursuivants and other beagles like vilest criminals, thrown into prison
+to rot, or suffered to escape from their Fatherland into the trans-
+Atlantic wilderness, there to battle with wild beasts and savages, and
+to die without knowing themselves the fathers of a more powerful United
+States than the Dutch Republic, where they were fain to seek in passing a
+temporary shelter.  He none the less instructed his envoy at the Hague to
+preach the selfsame doctrines for which the New England Puritans were
+persecuted, and importunately and dictatorially to plead the cause of
+those Hollanders who, like Bradford and Robinson, Winthrop and Cotton,
+maintained the independence of the Church over the State.
+
+Logic is rarely the quality on which kings pride themselves, and
+Puritanism in the Netherlands, although under temporary disadvantage at
+the Hague, was evidently the party destined to triumph throughout the
+country.  James could safely sympathize therefore in Holland with what he
+most loathed in England, and could at the same time feed fat the grudge
+he owed the Advocate.  The calculations of Barneveld as to the respective
+political forces of the Commonwealth seem to have been to a certain
+extent defective.
+
+He allowed probably too much weight to the Catholic party as a motive
+power at that moment, and he was anxious both from that consideration and
+from his honest natural instinct for general toleration; his own broad
+and unbigoted views in religious matters, not to force that party into a
+rebellious attitude dangerous to the state.  We have seen how nearly a
+mutiny in the important city of Utrecht, set on foot by certain Romanist
+conspirators in the years immediately succeeding the Truce, had subverted
+the government, had excited much anxiety amongst the firmest allies of
+the Republic, and had been suppressed only by the decision of the
+Advocate and a show of military force.
+
+He had informed Carleton not long after his arrival that in the United
+Provinces, and in Holland in particular, were many sects and religions of
+which, according to his expression, "the healthiest and the richest part
+were the Papists, while the Protestants did not make up one-third part of
+the inhabitants."
+
+Certainly, if these statistics were correct or nearly correct, there
+could be nothing more stupid from a purely political point of view than
+to exasperate so influential a portion of the community to madness and
+rebellion by refusing them all rights of public worship.  Yet because
+the Advocate had uniformly recommended indulgence, he had incurred more
+odium at home than from any other cause.  Of course he was a Papist in
+disguise, ready to sell his country to Spain, because he was willing that
+more than half the population of the country should be allowed to worship
+God according to their conscience.  Surely it would be wrong to judge the
+condition of things at that epoch by the lights of to-day, and perhaps in
+the Netherlands there had before been no conspicuous personage, save
+William the Silent alone, who had risen to the height of toleration
+on which the Advocate essayed to stand.  Other leading politicians
+considered that the national liberties could be preserved only by
+retaining the Catholics in complete subjection.
+
+At any rate the Advocate was profoundly convinced of the necessity of
+maintaining harmony and mutual toleration among the Protestants
+themselves, who, as he said, made up but one-third of the whole people.
+In conversing with the English ambassador he divided them into "Puritans
+and double Puritans," as they would be called, he said, in England.  If
+these should be at variance with each other, he argued, the Papists would
+be the strongest of all.  "To prevent this inconvenience," he said, "the
+States were endeavouring to settle some certain form of government in the
+Church; which being composed of divers persecuted churches such as in the
+beginning of the wars had their refuge here, that which during the wars
+could not be so well done they now thought seasonable for a time of
+truce; and therefore would show their authority in preventing the schism
+of the Church which would follow the separation of those they call
+Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants."
+
+There being no word so offensive to Carleton's sovereign as the word
+Puritan, the Ambassador did his best to persuade the Advocate that a
+Puritan in Holland was a very different thing from a Puritan in England.
+In England he was a noxious vermin, to be hunted with dogs.  In the
+Netherlands he was the governing power.  But his arguments were vapourous
+enough and made little impression on Barneveld.  "He would no ways
+yield," said Sir Dudley.
+
+Meantime the Contra-Remonstrants of the Hague, not finding sufficient
+accommodation in Enoch Much's house, clamoured loudly for the use of a
+church.  It was answered by the city magistrates that two of their
+persuasion, La Motte and La Faille, preached regularly in the Great
+Church, and that Rosaeus had been silenced only because he refused
+to hold communion with Uytenbogaert.  Maurice insisted that a separate
+church should be assigned them.  "But this is open schism," said
+Uytenbogaert.
+
+Early in the year there was a meeting of the Holland delegation to the
+States-General, of the state council, and of the magistracy of the Hague,
+of deputies from the tribunals, and of all the nobles resident in the
+capital.  They sent for Maurice and asked his opinion as to the alarming
+situation of affairs.  He called for the register-books of the States of
+Holland, and turning back to the pages on which was recorded his
+accession to the stadholderate soon after his father's murder, ordered
+the oath then exchanged between himself and the States to be read aloud.
+
+That oath bound them mutually to support the Reformed religion till the
+last drop of blood in their veins.
+
+"That oath I mean to keep," said the Stadholder, "so long as I live."
+
+No one disputed the obligation of all parties to maintain the Reformed
+religion.  But the question was whether the Five Points were inconsistent
+with the Reformed religion.  The contrary was clamorously maintained by
+most of those present: In the year 1586 this difference in dogma had not
+arisen, and as the large majority of the people at the Hague, including
+nearly all those of rank and substance, were of the Remonstrant
+persuasion, they naturally found it not agreeable to be sent out of the
+church by a small minority.  But Maurice chose to settle the question
+very summarily.  His father had been raised to power by the strict
+Calvinists, and he meant to stand by those who had always sustained
+William the Silent.  "For this religion my father lost his life, and this
+religion will I defend," said he.
+
+"You hold then," said Barneveld, "that the Almighty has created one child
+for damnation and another for salvation, and you wish this doctrine to be
+publicly preached."
+
+"Did you ever hear any one preach that?" replied the Prince.
+
+"If they don't preach it, it is their inmost conviction," said the other.
+And he proceeded to prove his position by copious citations.
+
+"And suppose our ministers do preach this doctrine, is there anything
+strange in it, any reason why they should not do so?"
+
+The Advocate expressed his amazement and horror at the idea.
+
+"But does not God know from all eternity who is to be saved and who to be
+damned; and does He create men for any other end than that to which He
+from eternity knows they will come?"
+
+And so they enclosed themselves in the eternal circle out of which it was
+not probable that either the soldier or the statesman would soon find an
+issue.
+
+"I am no theologian," said Barneveld at last, breaking off the
+discussion.
+
+"Neither am I," said the Stadholder.  "So let the parsons come together.
+Let the Synod assemble and decide the question.  Thus we shall get out of
+all this."
+
+Next day a deputation of the secessionists waited by appointment on
+Prince Maurice.  They found him in the ancient mediaeval hall of the
+sovereign counts of Holland, and seated on their old chair of state.
+He recommended them to use caution and moderation for the present,
+and to go next Sunday once more to Ryswyk.  Afterwards he pledged himself
+that they should have a church at the Hague, and, if necessary, the Great
+Church itself.
+
+But the Great Church, although a very considerable Catholic cathedral
+before the Reformation, was not big enough now to hold both Henry Rosaeus
+and John Uytenbogaert.  Those two eloquent, learned, and most pugnacious
+divines were the respective champions in the pulpit of the opposing
+parties, as were the Advocate and the Stadholder in the council.  And
+there was as bitter personal rivalry between the two as between the
+soldier and statesman.
+
+"The factions begin to divide themselves," said Carleton, "betwixt his
+Excellency and Monsieur Barneveld as heads who join to this present
+difference their ancient quarrels.  And the schism rests actually between
+Uytenbogaert and Rosaeus, whose private emulation and envy (both being
+much applauded and followed) doth no good towards the public
+pacification."  Uytenbogaert repeatedly offered, however, to resign his
+functions and to leave the Hague.  "He was always ready to play the
+Jonah," he said.
+
+A temporary arrangement was made soon afterwards by which Rosaeus and his
+congregation should have the use of what was called the Gasthuis Kerk,
+then appropriated to the English embassy.
+
+Carleton of course gave his consent most willingly.  The Prince declared
+that the States of Holland and the city magistracy had personally
+affronted him by the obstacles they had interposed to the public worship
+of the Contra-Remonstrants.  With their cause he had now thoroughly
+identified himself.
+
+The hostility between the representatives of the civil and military
+authority waxed fiercer every hour.  The tumults were more terrible than
+ever.  Plainly there was no room in the Commonwealth for the Advocate and
+the Stadholder.  Some impartial persons believed that there would be no
+peace until both were got rid of.  "There are many words among this free-
+spoken people," said Carleton, "that to end these differences they must
+follow the example of France in Marshal d'Ancre's case, and take off the
+heads of both chiefs."
+
+But these decided persons were in a small minority.  Meantime the States
+of Holland met in full assembly; sixty delegates being present.
+
+It was proposed to invite his Excellency to take part in the
+deliberations.  A committee which had waited upon him the day before
+had reported him as in favour of moderate rather than harsh measures in
+the church affair, while maintaining his plighted word to the seceders.
+
+Barneveld stoutly opposed the motion.
+
+"What need had the sovereign states of Holland of advice from a
+stadholder, from their servant, their functionary?" he cried.
+
+But the majority for once thought otherwise.  The Prince was invited to
+come.  The deliberations were moderate but inconclusive.  He appeared
+again at an adjourned meeting when the councils were not so harmonious.
+
+Barneveld, Grotius, and other eloquent speakers endeavoured to point out
+that the refusal of the seceders to hold communion with the Remonstrant
+preachers and to insist on a separation was fast driving the state to
+perdition.  They warmly recommended mutual toleration and harmony.
+Grotius exhausted learning and rhetoric to prove that the Five Points
+were not inconsistent with salvation nor with the constitution of the
+United Provinces.
+
+The Stadholder grew impatient at last and clapped his hand on his rapier.
+
+"No need here," he said, "of flowery orations and learned arguments.
+With this good sword I will defend the religion which my father planted
+in these Provinces, and I should like to see the man who is going to
+prevent me!"
+
+The words had an heroic ring in the ears of such as are ever ready to
+applaud brute force, especially when wielded by a prince.  The argumentum
+ad ensem, however, was the last plea that William the Silent would have
+been likely to employ on such an occasion, nor would it have been easy to
+prove that the Reformed religion had been "planted" by one who had drawn
+the sword against the foreign tyrant, and had made vast sacrifices for
+his country's independence years before abjuring communion with the Roman
+Catholic Church.
+
+When swords are handled by the executive in presence of civil assemblies
+there is usually but one issue to be expected.
+
+Moreover, three whales had recently been stranded at Scheveningen,
+one of them more than sixty feet long, and men wagged their beards
+gravely as they spoke of the event, deeming it a certain presage of
+civil commotions.  It was remembered that at the outbreak of the great
+war two whales had been washed ashore in the Scheldt.  Although some
+free-thinking people were inclined to ascribe the phenomenon to a
+prevalence of strong westerly gales, while others found proof in it of a
+superabundance of those creatures in the Polar seas, which should rather
+give encouragement to the Dutch and Zealand fisheries, it is probable
+that quite as dark forebodings of coming disaster were caused by this
+accident as by the trumpet-like defiance which the Stadholder had just
+delivered to the States of Holland.
+
+Meantime the seceding congregation of the Hague had become wearied of the
+English or Gasthuis Church, and another and larger one had been promised
+them.  This was an ancient convent on one of the principal streets of the
+town, now used as a cannon-foundry.  The Prince personally superintended
+the preparations for getting ready this place of worship, which was
+thenceforth called the Cloister Church.  But delays were, as the Contra-
+Remonstrants believed, purposely interposed, so that it was nearly
+Midsummer before there were any signs of the church being fit for use.
+
+They hastened accordingly to carry it, as it were, by assault.  Not
+wishing peaceably to accept as a boon from the civil authority what they
+claimed as an indefeasible right, they suddenly took possession one
+Sunday night of the Cloister Church.
+
+It was in a state of utter confusion--part monastery, part foundry, part
+conventicle.  There were few seats, no altar, no communion-table, hardly
+any sacramental furniture, but a pulpit was extemporized.  Rosaeus
+preached in triumph to an enthusiastic congregation, and three children
+were baptized with the significant names of William, Maurice, and Henry.
+
+On the following Monday there was a striking scene on the Voorhout.  This
+most beautiful street of a beautiful city was a broad avenue, shaded by a
+quadruple row of limetrees, reaching out into the thick forest of secular
+oaks and beeches--swarming with fallow-deer and alive with the notes of
+singing birds--by which the Hague, almost from time immemorial, has been
+embowered.  The ancient cloisterhouse and church now reconverted to
+religious uses--was a plain, rather insipid structure of red brick picked
+out with white stone, presenting three symmetrical gables to the street,
+with a slender belfry and spire rising in the rear.
+
+Nearly adjoining it on the north-western side was the elegant
+and commodious mansion of Barneveld, purchased by him from the
+representatives of the Arenberg family, surrounded by shrubberies
+and flower-gardens; not a palace, but a dignified and becoming abode
+for the first citizen of a powerful republic.
+
+On that midsummer's morning it might well seem that, in rescuing the old
+cloister from the military purposes to which it had for years been
+devoted, men had given an even more belligerent aspect to the scene than
+if it had been left as a foundry.  The miscellaneous pieces of artillery
+and other fire-arms lying about, with piles of cannon-ball which there
+had not been time to remove, were hardly less belligerent and threatening
+of aspect than the stern faces of the crowd occupied in thoroughly
+preparing the house for its solemn destination.  It was determined that
+there should be accommodation on the next Sunday for all who came to the
+service.  An army of carpenters, joiners, glaziers, and other workmen-
+assisted by a mob of citizens of all ranks and ages, men and women,
+gentle and simple were busily engaged in bringing planks and benches;
+working with plane, adze, hammer and saw, trowel and shovel, to complete
+the work.
+
+On the next Sunday the Prince attended public worship for the last time
+at the Great Church under the ministration of Uytenbogaert.  He was
+infuriated with the sermon, in which the bold Remonstrant bitterly
+inveighed against the proposition for a National Synod.  To oppose that
+measure publicly in the very face of the Stadholder, who now considered
+himself as the Synod personified, seemed to him flat blasphemy.  Coming
+out of the church with his step-mother, the widowed Louise de Coligny,
+Princess of Orange, he denounced the man in unmeasured terms.  "He is the
+enemy of God," said Maurice.  At least from that time forth, and indeed
+for a year before, Maurice was the enemy of the preacher.
+
+On the following Sunday, July 23, Maurice went in solemn state to the
+divine service at the Cloister Church now thoroughly organized.  He was
+accompanied by his cousin, the famous Count William Lewis of Nassau,
+Stadholder of Friesland, who had never concealed his warm sympathy with
+the Contra-Remonstrants, and by all the chief officers of his household
+and members of his staff.  It was an imposing demonstration and meant for
+one.  As the martial stadholder at the head of his brilliant cavalcade
+rode forth across the drawbridge from the Inner Court of the old moated
+palace--where the ancient sovereign Dirks and Florences of Holland had so
+long ruled their stout little principality--along the shady and stately
+Kneuterdyk and so through the Voorhout, an immense crowd thronged around
+his path and accompanied him to the church.  It was as if the great
+soldier were marching to siege or battle-field where fresher glories
+than those of Sluys or Geertruidenberg were awaiting him.
+
+The train passed by Barneveld's house and entered the cloister.  More
+than four thousand persons were present at the service or crowded around
+the doors vainly attempting to gain admission into the overflowing
+aisles; while the Great Church was left comparatively empty, a few
+hundred only worshipping there.  The Cloister Church was thenceforth
+called the Prince's Church, and a great revolution was beginning even
+in the Hague.
+
+The Advocate was wroth as he saw the procession graced by the two
+stadholders and their military attendants.  He knew that he was now to
+bow his head to the Church thus championed by the chief personage and
+captain-general of the state, to renounce his dreams of religious
+toleration, to sink from his post of supreme civic ruler, or to accept an
+unequal struggle in which he might utterly succumb.  But his iron nature
+would break sooner than bend.  In the first transports of his indignation
+he is said to have vowed vengeance against the immediate instruments by
+which the Cloister Church had, as he conceived, been surreptitiously and
+feloniously seized.  He meant to strike a blow which should startle the
+whole population of the Hague, send a thrill of horror through the
+country, and teach men to beware how they trifled with the sovereign
+states of Holland, whose authority had so long been undisputed, and with
+him their chief functionary.
+
+He resolved--so ran the tale of the preacher Trigland, who told it to
+Prince Maurice, and has preserved it in his chronicle--to cause to be
+seized at midnight from their beds four men whom he considered the
+ringleaders in this mutiny, to have them taken to the place of execution
+on the square in the midst of the city, to have their heads cut off at
+once by warrant from the chief tribunal without any previous warning, and
+then to summon all the citizens at dawn of day, by ringing of bells and
+firing of cannon, to gaze on the ghastly spectacle, and teach them to
+what fate this pestilential schism and revolt against authority had
+brought its humble tools.  The victims were to be Enoch Much, the
+Prince's book-keeper, and three others, an attorney, an engraver, and an
+apothecary, all of course of the Contra-Remonstrant persuasion.  It was
+necessary, said the Advocate, to make once for all an example, and show
+that there was a government in the land.
+
+He had reckoned on a ready adhesion to this measure and a sentence from
+the tribunal through the influence of his son-in-law, the Seignior van
+Veenhuyzen, who was president of the chief court.  His attempt was foiled
+however by the stern opposition of two Zealand members of the court, who
+managed to bring up from a bed of sickness, where he had long been lying,
+a Holland councillor whom they knew to be likewise opposed to the fierce
+measure, and thus defeated it by a majority of one.
+
+Such is the story as told by contemporaries and repeated from that day to
+this.  It is hardly necessary to say that Barneveld calmly denied having
+conceived or even heard of the scheme.  That men could go about looking
+each other in the face and rehearsing such gibberish would seem
+sufficiently dispiriting did we not know to what depths of credulity men
+in all ages can sink when possessed by the demon of party malice.
+
+If it had been narrated on the Exchange at Amsterdam or Flushing during
+that portentous midsummer that Barneveld had not only beheaded but
+roasted alive, and fed the dogs and cats upon the attorney, the
+apothecary, and the engraver, there would have been citizens in
+plenty to devour the news with avidity.
+
+But although the Advocate had never imagined such extravagances as these,
+it is certain that he had now resolved upon very bold measures, and that
+too without an instant's delay.  He suspected the Prince of aiming at
+sovereignty not only over Holland but over all the provinces and to be
+using the Synod as a principal part of his machinery.  The gauntlet was
+thrown down by the Stadholder, and the Advocate lifted it at once.  The
+issue of the struggle would depend upon the political colour of the town
+magistracies.  Barneveld instinctively felt that Maurice, being now
+resolved that the Synod should be held, would lose no time in making a
+revolution in all the towns through the power he held or could plausibly
+usurp.  Such a course would, in his opinion, lead directly to an
+unconstitutional and violent subversion of the sovereign rights of each
+province, to the advantage of the central government.  A religious creed
+would be forced upon Holland and perhaps upon two other provinces which
+was repugnant to a considerable majority of the people.  And this would
+be done by a majority vote of the States-General, on a matter over which,
+by the 13th Article of the fundamental compact--the Union of Utrecht--
+the States-General had no control, each province having reserved the
+disposition of religious affairs to itself.  For let it never be
+forgotten that the Union of the Netherlands was a compact, a treaty, an
+agreement between sovereign states.  There was no pretence that it was an
+incorporation, that the people had laid down a constitution, an organic
+law.  The people were never consulted, did not exist, had not for
+political purposes been invented.  It was the great primal defect of
+their institutions, but the Netherlanders would have been centuries
+before their age had they been able to remedy that defect.  Yet the
+Netherlanders would have been much behind even that age of bigotry had
+they admitted the possibility in a free commonwealth, of that most sacred
+and important of all subjects that concern humanity, religious creed--the
+relation of man to his Maker--to be regulated by the party vote of a
+political board.
+
+It was with no thought of treason in his heart or his head therefore that
+the Advocate now resolved that the States of Holland and the cities of
+which that college was composed should protect their liberties and
+privileges, the sum of which in his opinion made up the sovereignty of
+the province he served, and that they should protect them, if necessary,
+by force.  Force was apprehended.  It should be met by force.  To be
+forewarned was to be forearmed.  Barneveld forewarned the States of
+Holland.
+
+On the 4th August 1617, he proposed to that assembly a resolution which
+was destined to become famous.  A majority accepted it after brief
+debate.  It was to this effect.
+
+The States having seen what had befallen in many cities, and especially
+in the Hague, against the order, liberties, and laws of the land, and
+having in vain attempted to bring into harmony with the States certain
+cities which refused to co-operate with the majority, had at last
+resolved to refuse the National Synod, as conflicting with the
+sovereignty and laws of Holland.  They had thought good to set forth in
+public print their views as to religious worship, and to take measures to
+prevent all deeds of violence against persons and property.  To this end
+the regents of cities were authorized in case of need, until otherwise
+ordained, to enrol men-at-arms for their security and prevention of
+violence.  Furthermore, every one that might complain of what the regents
+of cities by strength of this resolution might do was ordered to have
+recourse to no one else than the States of Holland, as no account would
+be made of anything that might be done or undertaken by the tribunals.
+
+Finally, it was resolved to send a deputation to Prince Maurice, the
+Princess-Widow, and Prince Henry, requesting them to aid in carrying
+out this resolution.
+
+Thus the deed was done.  The sword was drawn.  It was drawn in self-
+defence and in deliberate answer to the Stadholder's defiance when he
+rapped his sword hilt in face of the assembly, but still it was drawn.
+The States of Holland were declared sovereign and supreme.  The National
+Synod was peremptorily rejected.  Any decision of the supreme courts of
+the Union in regard to the subject of this resolution was nullified in
+advance.  Thenceforth this measure of the 4th August was called the
+"Sharp Resolve."  It might prove perhaps to be double-edged.
+
+It was a stroke of grim sarcasm on the part of the Advocate thus solemnly
+to invite the Stadholder's aid in carrying out a law which was aimed
+directly at his head; to request his help for those who meant to defeat
+with the armed hand that National Synod which he had pledged himself to
+bring about.
+
+The question now arose what sort of men-at-arms it would be well for the
+city governments to enlist.  The officers of the regular garrisons had
+received distinct orders from Prince Maurice as their military superior
+to refuse any summons to act in matters proceeding from the religious
+question.  The Prince, who had chief authority over all the regular
+troops, had given notice that he would permit nothing to be done against
+"those of the Reformed religion," by which he meant the Contra-
+Remonstrants and them only.
+
+In some cities there were no garrisons, but only train-bands.  But the
+train bands (Schutters) could not be relied on to carry out the Sharp
+Resolve, for they were almost to a man Contra-Remonstrants.  It was
+therefore determined to enlist what were called "Waartgelders;" soldiers,
+inhabitants of the place, who held themselves ready to serve in time of
+need in consideration of a certain wage; mercenaries in short.
+
+This resolution was followed as a matter of course by a solemn protest
+from Amsterdam and the five cities who acted with her.
+
+On the same day Maurice was duly notified of the passage of the law.  His
+wrath was great.  High words passed between him and the deputies.  It
+could hardly have been otherwise expected.  Next-day he came before the
+Assembly to express his sentiments, to complain of the rudeness with
+which the resolution of 4th August had been communicated to him, and to
+demand further explanations.  Forthwith the Advocate proceeded to set
+forth the intentions of the States, and demanded that the Prince should
+assist the magistrates in carrying out the policy decided upon.  Reinier
+Pauw, burgomaster of Amsterdam, fiercely interrupted the oration of
+Barneveld, saying that although these might be his views, they were not
+to be held by his Excellency as the opinions of all.  The Advocate, angry
+at the interruption, answered him sternly, and a violent altercation,
+not unmixed with personalities, arose.  Maurice, who kept his temper
+admirably on this occasion, interfered between the two and had much
+difficulty in quieting the dispute.  He then observed that when he took
+the oath as stadholder these unfortunate differences had not arisen, but
+all had been good friends together.  This was perfectly true, but he
+could have added that they might all continue good friends unless the
+plan of imposing a religious creed upon the minority by a clerical
+decision were persisted in.  He concluded that for love of one of the two
+great parties he would not violate the oath he had taken to maintain the
+Reformed religion to the last drop of his blood.  Still, with the same
+'petitio principii' that the Reformed religion and the dogmas of the
+Contra-Remonstrants were one and the same thing, he assured the Assembly
+that the authority of the magistrates would be sustained by him so long
+as it did not lead to the subversion of religion.
+
+Clearly the time for argument had passed.  As Dudley Carleton observed,
+men had been disputing 'pro aris' long enough.  They would soon be
+fighting 'pro focis.'
+
+In pursuance of the policy laid down by the Sharp Resolution, the States
+proceeded to assure themselves of the various cities of the province by
+means of Waartgelders.  They sent to the important seaport of Brielle and
+demanded a new oath from the garrison.  It was intimated that the Prince
+would be soon coming there in person to make himself master of the place,
+and advice was given to the magistrates to be beforehand with him.  These
+statements angered Maurice, and angered him the more because they
+happened to be true.  It was also charged that he was pursuing his
+Leicestrian designs and meant to make himself, by such steps, sovereign
+of the country.  The name of Leicester being a byword of reproach ever
+since that baffled noble had a generation before left the Provinces in
+disgrace, it was a matter of course that such comparisons were
+excessively exasperating.  It was fresh enough too in men's memory that
+the Earl in his Netherland career had affected sympathy with the
+strictest denomination of religious reformers, and that the profligate
+worldling and arrogant self-seeker had used the mask of religion to cover
+flagitious ends.  As it had indeed been the object of the party at the
+head of which the Advocate had all his life acted to raise the youthful
+Maurice to the stadholderate expressly to foil the plots of Leicester,
+it could hardly fail to be unpalatable to Maurice to be now accused of
+acting the part of Leicester.
+
+He inveighed bitterly on the subject before the state council: The state
+council, in a body, followed him to a meeting of the States-General.
+Here the Stadholder made a vehement speech and demanded that the States
+of Holland should rescind the "Sharp Resolution," and should desist from
+the new oaths required from the soldiery.  Barneveld, firm as a rock, met
+these bitter denunciations.  Speaking in the name of Holland, he repelled
+the idea that the sovereign States of that province were responsible to
+the state council or to the States-General either.  He regretted, as all
+regretted, the calumnies uttered against the Prince, but in times of such
+intense excitement every conspicuous man was the mark of calumny.
+
+The Stadholder warmly repudiated Leicestrian designs, and declared that
+he had been always influenced by a desire to serve his country and
+maintain the Reformed religion.  If he had made mistakes, he desired to
+be permitted to improve in the future.
+
+Thus having spoken, the soldier retired from the Assembly with the state
+council at his heels.
+
+The Advocate lost no time in directing the military occupation of the
+principal towns of Holland, such as Leyden, Gouda, Rotterdam,
+Schoonhoven, Hoorn, and other cities.
+
+At Leyden especially, where a strong Orange party was with difficulty
+kept in obedience by the Remonstrant magistracy, it was found necessary
+to erect a stockade about the town-hall and to plant caltrops and other
+obstructions in the squares and streets.
+
+The broad space in front; of the beautiful medieval seat of the municipal
+government, once so sacred for the sublime and pathetic scenes enacted
+there during the famous siege and in the magistracy of Peter van der
+Werff, was accordingly enclosed by a solid palisade of oaken planks,
+strengthened by rows of iron bars with barbed prongs: The entrenchment
+was called by the populace the Arminian Fort, and the iron spear heads
+were baptized Barneveld's teeth.  Cannon were planted at intervals along
+the works, and a company or two of the Waartgelders, armed from head to
+foot, with snaphances on their shoulders, stood ever ready to issue forth
+to quell any disturbances.  Occasionally a life or two was lost of
+citizen or soldier, and many doughty blows were interchanged.
+
+It was a melancholy spectacle.  No commonwealth could be more fortunate
+than this republic in possessing two such great leading minds.  No two
+men could be more patriotic than both Stadholder and Advocate.  No two
+men could be prouder, more overbearing, less conciliatory.
+
+"I know Mons. Barneveld well," said Sir Ralph Winwood, "and know that he
+hath great powers and abilities, and malice itself must confess that man
+never hath done more faithful and powerful service to his country than
+he.  But 'finis coronat opus' and 'il di lodi lacera; oportet imperatorem
+stantem mori.'"
+
+The cities of Holland were now thoroughly "waartgeldered," and Barneveld
+having sufficiently shown his "teeth" in that province departed for
+change of air to Utrecht.  His failing health was assigned as the pretext
+for the visit, although the atmosphere of that city has never been
+considered especially salubrious in the dog-days.
+
+Meantime the Stadholder remained quiet, but biding his time.  He did not
+choose to provoke a premature conflict in the strongholds of the
+Arminians as he called them, but with a true military instinct preferred
+making sure of the ports.  Amsterdam, Enkhuyzen, Flushing, being without
+any effort of his own within his control, he quietly slipped down the
+river Meuse on the night of the 29th September, accompanied by his
+brother Frederic Henrys and before six o'clock next morning had
+introduced a couple of companies of trustworthy troops into Brielle, had
+summoned the magistrates before him, and compelled them to desist from
+all further intention of levying mercenaries.  Thus all the fortresses
+which Barneveld had so recently and in such masterly fashion rescued from
+the grasp of England were now quietly reposing in the hands of the
+Stadholder.
+
+Maurice thought it not worth his while for the present to quell the
+mutiny--as he considered it the legal and constitutional defence of
+vested right--as great jurists like Barneveld and Hugo Grotius accounted
+the movement--at its "fountain head Leyden or its chief stream Utrecht;"
+to use the expression of Carleton.  There had already been bloodshed in
+Leyden, a burgher or two having been shot and a soldier stoned to death
+in the streets, but the Stadholder deemed it unwise to precipitate
+matters.  Feeling himself, with his surpassing military knowledge and
+with a large majority of the nation at his back, so completely master of
+the situation, he preferred waiting on events.  And there is no doubt
+that he was proving himself a consummate politician and a perfect master
+of fence.  "He is much beloved and followed both of soldiers and people,"
+said the English ambassador, "he is a man 'innoxiae popularitatis' so as
+this jealousy cannot well be fastened upon him; and in this cause of
+religion he stirred not until within these few months he saw he must
+declare himself or suffer the better party to be overborne."
+
+The chief tribunal-high council so called-of the country soon gave
+evidence that the "Sharp Resolution" had judged rightly in reckoning on
+its hostility and in nullifying its decisions in advance.
+
+They decided by a majority vote that the Resolution ought not to be
+obeyed, but set aside.  Amsterdam, and the three or four cities usually
+acting with her, refused to enlist troops.
+
+Rombout Hoogerbeets, a member of the tribunal, informed Prince Maurice
+that he "would no longer be present on a bench where men disputed the
+authority of the States of Holland, which he held to be the supreme
+sovereignty over him."
+
+This was plain speaking; a distinct enunciation of what the States' right
+party deemed to be constitutional law.
+
+And what said Maurice in reply?
+
+"I, too, recognize the States of Holland as sovereign; but we might at
+least listen to each other occasionally."
+
+Hoogerbeets, however, deeming that listening had been carried far enough,
+decided to leave the tribunal altogether, and to resume the post which he
+had formerly occupied as Pensionary or chief magistrate of Leyden.
+
+Here he was soon to find himself in the thick of the conflict.  Meantime
+the States-General, in full assembly, on 11th November 1617, voted that
+the National Synod should be held in the course of the following year.
+The measure was carried by a strict party vote and by a majority of one.
+The representatives of each province voting as one, there were four in
+favour of to three against the Synod.  The minority, consisting of
+Holland, Utrecht, and Overyssel, protested against the vote as an
+outrageous invasion of the rights of each province, as an act of
+flagrant tyranny and usurpation.
+
+The minority in the States of Holland, the five cities often named,
+protested against the protest.
+
+The defective part of the Netherland constitutions could not be better
+illustrated.  The minority of the States of Holland refused to be bound
+by a majority of the provincial assembly.  The minority of the States-
+General refused to be bound by the majority of the united assembly.
+
+This was reducing politics to an absurdity and making all government
+impossible.  It is however quite certain that in the municipal
+governments a majority had always governed, and that a majority vote in
+the provincial assemblies had always prevailed.  The present innovation
+was to govern the States-General by a majority.
+
+Yet viewed by the light of experience and of common sense, it would be
+difficult to conceive of a more preposterous proceeding than thus to cram
+a religious creed down the throats of half the population of a country by
+the vote of a political assembly.  But it was the seventeenth and not the
+nineteenth century.
+
+Moreover, if there were any meaning in words, the 13th Article of Union,
+reserving especially the disposition over religious matters to each
+province, had been wisely intended to prevent the possibility of such
+tyranny.
+
+When the letters of invitation to the separate states and to others were
+drawing up in the general assembly, the representatives of the three
+states left the chamber.  A solitary individual from Holland remained
+however, a burgomaster of Amsterdam.
+
+Uytenbogaert, conversing with Barneveld directly afterwards, advised him
+to accept the vote.  Yielding to the decision of the majority, it would
+be possible, so thought the clergyman, for the great statesman so to
+handle matters as to mould the Synod to his will, even as he had so long
+controlled the States-Provincial and the States-General.
+
+"If you are willing to give away the rights of the land," said the
+Advocate very sharply, "I am not."
+
+Probably the priest's tactics might have proved more adroit than the
+stony opposition on which Barneveld was resolved.
+
+But it was with the aged statesman a matter of principle, not of policy.
+His character and his personal pride, the dignity of opinion and office,
+his respect for constitutional law, were all at stake.
+
+Shallow observers considered the struggle now taking place as a personal
+one.  Lovers of personal government chose to look upon the Advocate's
+party as a faction inspired with an envious resolve to clip the wings
+of the Stadholder, who was at last flying above their heads.
+
+There could be no doubt of the bitter animosity between the two men.
+There could be no doubt that jealousy was playing the part which that
+master passion will ever play in all the affairs of life.  But there
+could be no doubt either that a difference of principle as wide as the
+world separated the two antagonists.
+
+Even so keen an observer as Dudley Carleton, while admitting the man's
+intellectual power and unequalled services, could see nothing in the
+Advocate's present course but prejudice, obstinacy, and the insanity of
+pride.  "He doth no whit spare himself in pains nor faint in his
+resolution," said the Envoy, "wherein notwithstanding he will in all
+appearance succumb ere afore long, having the disadvantages of a weak
+body, a weak party, and a weak cause."  But Carleton hated Barneveld,
+and considered it the chief object of his mission to destroy him, if he
+could.  In so doing he would best carry out the wishes of his sovereign.
+
+The King of Britain had addressed a somewhat equivocal letter to the
+States-General on the subject of religion in the spring of 1617.  It
+certainly was far from being as satisfactory as, the epistles of 1613
+prepared under the Advocate's instructions, had been, while the exuberant
+commentary upon the royal text, delivered in full assembly by his
+ambassador soon after the reception of the letter, was more than usually
+didactic, offensive, and ignorant.  Sir Dudley never omitted an
+opportunity of imparting instruction to the States-General as to the
+nature of their constitution and the essential dogmas on which their
+Church was founded.  It is true that the great lawyers and the great
+theologians of the country were apt to hold very different opinions from
+his upon those important subjects, but this was so much the worse for the
+lawyers and theologians, as time perhaps might prove.
+
+The King in this last missive had proceeded to unsay the advice which he
+had formerly bestowed upon the States, by complaining that his earlier
+letters had been misinterpreted.  They had been made use of, he said, to
+authorize the very error against which they had been directed.  They had
+been held to intend the very contrary of what they did mean.  He felt
+himself bound in conscience therefore, finding these differences ready to
+be "hatched into schisms," to warn the States once more against pests so
+pernicious.
+
+Although the royal language was somewhat vague so far as enunciation of
+doctrine, a point on which he had once confessed himself fallible, was
+concerned, there was nothing vague in his recommendation of a National
+Synod.  To this the opposition of Barneveld was determined not upon
+religious but upon constitutional grounds.  The confederacy did not
+constitute a nation, and therefore there could not be a national synod
+nor a national religion.
+
+Carleton came before the States-General soon afterwards with a prepared
+oration, wearisome as a fast-day sermon after the third turn of the hour-
+glass, pragmatical as a schoolmaster's harangue to fractious little boys.
+
+He divided his lecture into two heads--the peace of the Church, and the
+peace of the Provinces--starting with the first.  "A Jove principium," he
+said, "I will begin with that which is both beginning and end.  It is the
+truth of God's word and its maintenance that is the bond of our common
+cause.  Reasons of state invite us as friends and neighbours by the
+preservation of our lives and property, but the interest of religion
+binds us as Christians and brethren to the mutual defence of the liberty
+of our consciences."
+
+He then proceeded to point out the only means by which liberty of
+conscience could be preserved.  It was by suppressing all forms of
+religion but one, and by silencing all religious discussion.  Peter
+Titelman and Philip II. could not have devised a more pithy formula.  All
+that was wanting was the axe and faggot to reduce uniformity to practice.
+Then liberty of conscience would be complete.
+
+"One must distinguish," said the Ambassador, "between just liberty and
+unbridled license, and conclude that there is but one truth single and
+unique.  Those who go about turning their brains into limbecks for
+distilling new notions in religious matters only distract the union of
+the Church which makes profession of this unique truth.  If it be
+permitted to one man to publish the writings and fantasies of a sick
+spirit and for another moved by Christian zeal to reduce this wanderer
+'ad sanam mentem;' why then 'patet locus adversus utrumque,' and the
+common enemy (the Devil) slips into the fortress."  He then proceeded to
+illustrate this theory on liberty of conscience by allusions to Conrad
+Vorstius.
+
+This infamous sectary had in fact reached such a pitch of audacity, said
+the Ambassador, as not only to inveigh against the eternal power of God
+but to indulge in irony against the honour of his Majesty King James.
+
+And in what way had he scandalized the government of the Republic?  He
+had dared to say that within its borders there was religious toleration.
+He had distinctly averred that in the United Provinces heretics were not
+punished with death or with corporal chastisement.
+
+"He declares openly," said Carleton, "that contra haereticos etiam vere
+dictos (ne dum falso et calumniose sic traductos) there is neither
+sentence of death nor other corporal punishment, so that in order to
+attract to himself a great following of birds of the name feather he
+publishes to all the world that here in this country one can live and
+die a heretic, unpunished, without being arrested and without danger."
+
+In order to suppress this reproach upon the Republic at which the
+Ambassador stood aghast, and to prevent the Vorstian doctrines of
+religious toleration and impunity of heresy from spreading among "the
+common people, so subject by their natures to embrace new opinions," he
+advised of course that "the serpent be sent back to the nest where he was
+born before the venom had spread through the whole body of the Republic."
+
+A week afterwards a long reply was delivered on part of the States-
+General to the Ambassador's oration.  It is needless to say that it was
+the work of the Advocate, and that it was in conformity with the opinions
+so often exhibited in the letters to Caron and others of which the reader
+has seen many samples.
+
+That religious matters were under the control of the civil government,
+and that supreme civil authority belonged to each one of the seven
+sovereign provinces, each recognizing no superior within its own sphere,
+were maxims of state always enforced in the Netherlands and on which the
+whole religious controversy turned.
+
+"The States-General have always cherished the true Christian Apostolic
+religion," they said, "and wished it to be taught under the authority and
+protection of the legal government of these Provinces in all purity, and
+in conformity with the Holy Scriptures, to the good people of these
+Provinces.  And My Lords the States and magistrates of the respective
+provinces, each within their own limits, desire the same."
+
+They had therefore given express orders to the preachers "to keep the
+peace by mutual and benign toleration of the different opinions on the
+one side and the other at least until with full knowledge of the subject
+the States might otherwise ordain.  They had been the more moved to this
+because his Majesty having carefully examined the opinions of the learned
+hereon each side had found both consistent with Christian belief and the
+salvation of souls."
+
+It was certainly not the highest expression of religious toleration for
+the civil authority to forbid the clergymen of the country from
+discussing in their pulpits the knottiest and most mysterious points of
+the schoolmen lest the "common people" should be puzzled.  Nevertheless,
+where the close union of Church and State and the necessity of one church
+were deemed matters of course, it was much to secure subordination of the
+priesthood to the magistracy, while to enjoin on preachers abstention
+from a single exciting cause of quarrel, on the ground that there was
+more than one path to salvation, and that mutual toleration was better
+than mutual persecution, was; in that age, a stride towards religious
+equality.  It was at least an advance on Carleton's dogma, that there was
+but one unique and solitary truth, and that to declare heretics not
+punishable with death was an insult to the government of the Republic.
+
+The States-General answered the Ambassador's plea, made in the name of
+his master, for immediate and unguaranteed evacuation of the debatable
+land by the arguments already so often stated in the Advocate's
+instructions to Caron.  They had been put to great trouble and expense
+already in their campaigning and subsequent fortification of important
+places in the duchies.  They had seen the bitter spirit manifested by the
+Spaniards in the demolition of the churches and houses of Mulheim and
+other places.  "While the affair remained in its present terms of utter
+uncertainty their Mightinesses," said the States-General, "find it most
+objectionable to forsake the places which they have been fortifying and
+to leave the duchies and all their fellow-religionists, besides the
+rights of the possessory princes a prey to those who have been hankering
+for the territories for long years, and who would unquestionably be able
+to make themselves absolute masters of all within a very few days."
+
+A few months later Carleton came before the States-General again and
+delivered another elaborate oration, duly furnished to him by the King,
+upon the necessity of the National Synod, the comparative merits of
+Arminianism and Contra-Remonstrantism, together with a full exposition of
+the constitutions of the Netherlands.
+
+It might be supposed that Barneveld and Grotius and Hoogerbeets knew
+something of the law and history of their country.
+
+But James knew much better, and so his envoy endeavoured to convince his
+audience.
+
+He received on the spot a temperate but conclusive reply from the
+delegates of Holland.  They informed him that the war with Spain--the
+cause of the Utrecht Union--was not begun about religion but on account
+of the violation of liberties, chartered rights and privileges, not the
+least of which rights was that of each province to regulate religious
+matters within its borders.
+
+A little later a more vehement reply was published anonymously in the
+shape of a pamphlet called 'The Balance,' which much angered the
+Ambassador and goaded his master almost to frenzy.  It was deemed so
+blasphemous, so insulting to the Majesty of England, so entirely
+seditious, that James, not satisfied with inditing a rejoinder, insisted
+through Carleton that a reward should be offered by the States for the
+detection of the author, in order that he might be condignly punished.
+This was done by a majority vote, 1000 florins being offered for the
+discovery of the author and 600 for that of the printer.
+
+Naturally the step was opposed in the States-General; two deputies in
+particular making themselves conspicuous.  One of them was an audacious
+old gentleman named Brinius of Gelderland, "much corrupted with
+Arminianism," so Carleton informed his sovereign.  He appears to have
+inherited his audacity through his pedigree, descending, as it was
+ludicrously enough asserted he did, from a chief of the Caninefates, the
+ancient inhabitants of Gelderland, called Brinio.  And Brinio the
+Caninefat had been as famous for his stolid audacity as for his
+illustrious birth; "Erat in Caninefatibus stolidae audaciae Brinio
+claritate natalium insigni."
+
+The patronizing manner in which the Ambassador alluded to the other
+member of the States-General who opposed the decree was still more
+diverting.  It was "Grotius, the Pensioner of Rotterdam, a young petulant
+brain, not unknown to your Majesty," said Carleton.
+
+Two centuries and a half have rolled away, and there are few majesties,
+few nations, and few individuals to whom the name of that petulant youth
+is unknown; but how many are familiar with the achievements of the able
+representative of King James?
+
+Nothing came of the measure, however, and the offer of course helped the
+circulation of the pamphlet.
+
+It is amusing to see the ferocity thus exhibited by the royal pamphleteer
+against a rival; especially when one can find no crime in 'The Balance'
+save a stinging and well-merited criticism of a very stupid oration.
+
+Gillis van Ledenberg was generally supposed to be the author of it.
+Carleton inclined, however, to suspect Grotius, "because," said he,
+"having always before been a stranger to my house, he has made me the day
+before the publication thereof a complimentary visit, although it was
+Sunday and church time; whereby the Italian proverb, 'Chi ti caresse piu
+che suole,' &c.,' is added to other likelihoods."
+
+It was subsequently understood however that the pamphlet was written by a
+Remonstrant preacher of Utrecht, named Jacobus Taurinus; one of those who
+had been doomed to death by the mutinous government in that city seven
+years before.
+
+It was now sufficiently obvious that either the governments in the three
+opposition provinces must be changed or that the National Synod must be
+imposed by a strict majority vote in the teeth of the constitution and of
+vigorous and eloquent protests drawn up by the best lawyers in the
+country.  The Advocate and Grotius recommended a provincial synod first
+and, should that not succeed in adjusting the differences of church
+government, then the convocation of a general or oecumenical synod.  They
+resisted the National Synod because, in their view, the Provinces were
+not a nation.  A league of seven sovereign and independent Mates was all
+that legally existed in the Netherlands.  It was accordingly determined
+that the governments should be changed, and the Stadholder set himself to
+prepare the way for a thorough and, if possible, a bloodless revolution.
+He departed on the 27th November for a tour through the chief cities, and
+before leaving the Hague addressed an earnest circular letter to the
+various municipalities of Holland.
+
+A more truly dignified, reasonable, right royal letter, from the
+Stadholder's point of view, could not have been indited.  The Imperial
+"we" breathing like a morning breeze through the whole of it blew away
+all legal and historical mistiness.
+
+But the clouds returned again nevertheless.  Unfortunately for Maurice it
+could not be argued by the pen, however it might be proved by the sword,
+that the Netherlands constituted a nation, and that a convocation of
+doctors of divinity summoned by a body of envoys had the right to dictate
+a creed to seven republics.
+
+All parties were agreed on one point.  There must be unity of divine
+worship.  The territory of the Netherlands was not big enough to hold
+two systems of religion, two forms of Christianity, two sects of
+Protestantism.  It was big enough to hold seven independent and sovereign
+states, but would be split into fragments--resolved into chaos--should
+there be more than one Church or if once a schism were permitted in that
+Church.  Grotius was as much convinced of this as Gomarus.  And yet the
+13th Article of the Union stared them all in the face, forbidding the
+hideous assumptions now made by the general government.  Perhaps no man
+living fully felt its import save Barneveld alone.  For groping however
+dimly and hesitatingly towards the idea of religious liberty, of general
+toleration, he was denounced as a Papist, an atheist, a traitor,
+a miscreant, by the fanatics for the sacerdotal and personal power.
+Yet it was a pity that he could never contemplate the possibility of his
+country's throwing off the swaddling clothes of provincialism which had
+wrapped its infancy.  Doubtless history, law, tradition, and usage
+pointed to the independent sovereignty of each province.  Yet the period
+of the Truce was precisely the time when a more generous constitution,
+a national incorporation might have been constructed to take the place
+of the loose confederacy by which the gigantic war had been fought out.
+After all, foreign powers had no connection with the States, and knew
+only the Union with which and with which alone they made treaties, and
+the reality of sovereignty in each province was as ridiculous as in
+theory it was impregnable.  But Barneveld, under the modest title of
+Advocate of one province, had been in reality president and prime
+minister of the whole commonwealth.  He had himself been the union and
+the sovereignty.  It was not wonderful that so imperious a nature
+objected to transfer its powers to the Church, to the States-General,
+or to Maurice.
+
+Moreover, when nationality assumed the unlovely form of rigid religious
+uniformity; when Union meant an exclusive self-governed Church enthroned
+above the State, responsible to no civic authority and no human law, the
+boldest patriot might shiver at emerging from provincialism.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+     The Commonwealth bent on Self-destruction--Evils of a Confederate
+     System of Government--Rem Bischop's House sacked--Aerssens'
+     unceasing Efforts against Barneveld--The Advocate's Interview with
+     Maurice--The States of Utrecht raise the Troops--The Advocate at
+     Utrecht--Barneveld urges mutual Toleration--Barneveld accused of
+     being Partisan of Spain--Carleton takes his Departure.
+
+It is not cheerful after widely contemplating the aspect of Christendom
+in the year of supreme preparation to examine with the minuteness
+absolutely necessary the narrow theatre to which the political affairs of
+the great republic had been reduced.
+
+That powerful commonwealth, to which the great party of the Reformation
+naturally looked for guidance in the coming conflict, seemed bent on
+self-destruction.  The microcosm of the Netherlands now represented,
+alas! the war of elements going on without on a world-wide scale.  As the
+Calvinists and Lutherans of Germany were hotly attacking each other
+even in sight of the embattled front of Spain and the League, so the
+Gomarites and the Arminians by their mutual rancour were tearing the
+political power of the Dutch Republic to shreds and preventing her from
+assuming a great part in the crisis.  The consummate soldier, the
+unrivalled statesman, each superior in his sphere to any contemporary
+rival, each supplementing the other, and making up together, could they
+have been harmonized, a double head such as no political organism then
+existing could boast, were now in hopeless antagonism to each other.  A
+mass of hatred had been accumulated against the Advocate with which he
+found it daily more and more difficult to struggle.  The imperious,
+rugged, and suspicious nature of the Stadholder had been steadily wrought
+upon by the almost devilish acts of Francis Aerssens until he had come to
+look upon his father's most faithful adherent, his own early preceptor in
+statesmanship and political supporter, as an antagonist, a conspirator,
+and a tyrant.
+
+The soldier whose unrivalled ability, experience, and courage in the
+field should have placed him at the very head of the great European army
+of defence against the general crusade upon Protestantism, so constantly
+foretold by Barneveld, was now to be engaged in making bloodless but
+mischievous warfare against an imaginary conspiracy and a patriot foe.
+
+The Advocate, keeping steadily in view the great principles by which his
+political life had been guided, the supremacy of the civil authority in
+any properly organized commonwealth over the sacerdotal and military,
+found himself gradually forced into mortal combat with both.  To the
+individual sovereignty of each province he held with the tenacity of a
+lawyer and historian.  In that he found the only clue through the
+labyrinth which ecclesiastical and political affairs presented.  So close
+was the tangle, so confused the medley, that without this slender guide
+all hope of legal issue seemed lost.
+
+No doubt the difficulty of the doctrine of individual sovereignty was
+great, some of the provinces being such slender morsels of territory,
+with resources so trivial, as to make the name of sovereignty ludicrous.
+Yet there could be as little doubt that no other theory was tenable.  If
+so powerful a mind as that of the Advocate was inclined to strain the
+theory to its extreme limits, it was because in the overshadowing
+superiority of the one province Holland had been found the practical
+remedy for the imbecility otherwise sure to result from such provincial
+and meagre federalism.
+
+Moreover, to obtain Union by stretching all the ancient historical
+privileges and liberties of the separate provinces upon the Procrustean
+bed of a single dogma, to look for nationality only in common subjection
+to an infallible priesthood, to accept a Catechism as the palladium upon
+which the safety of the State was to depend for all time, and beyond
+which there was to be no further message from Heaven--such was not
+healthy constitutionalism in the eyes of a great statesman.  No doubt
+that without the fervent spirit of Calvinism it would have been difficult
+to wage war with such immortal hate as the Netherlands had waged it, no
+doubt the spirit of republican and even democratic liberty lay hidden
+within that rigid husk, but it was dishonour to the martyrs who had died
+by thousands at the stake and on the battle field for the rights of
+conscience if the only result of their mighty warfare against wrong had
+been to substitute a new dogma for an old one, to stifle for ever the
+right of free enquiry, theological criticism, and the hope of further
+light from on high, and to proclaim it a libel on the Republic that
+within its borders all heretics, whether Arminian or Papist, were safe
+from the death penalty or even from bodily punishment.  A theological
+union instead of a national one and obtained too at the sacrifice of
+written law and immemorial tradition, a congress in which clerical
+deputations from all the provinces and from foreign nations should
+prescribe to all Netherlanders an immutable creed and a shadowy
+constitution, were not the true remedies for the evils of confederacy,
+nor, if they had been, was the time an appropriate one for their
+application.
+
+It was far too early in the world's history to hope for such
+redistribution of powers and such a modification of the social compact
+as would place in separate spheres the Church and the State, double the
+sanctions and the consolations of religion by removing it from the
+pollutions of political warfare, and give freedom to individual
+conscience by securing it from the interference of government.
+
+It is melancholy to see the Republic thus perversely occupying its
+energies.  It is melancholy to see the great soldier becoming gradually
+more ardent for battle with Barneveld and Uytenbogaert than with Spinola
+and Bucquoy, against whom he had won so many imperishable laurels.  It is
+still sadder to see the man who had been selected by Henry IV. as the one
+statesman of Europe to whom he could confide his great projects for the
+pacification of Christendom, and on whom he could depend for counsel and
+support in schemes which, however fantastic in some of their details, had
+for their object to prevent the very European war of religion against
+which Barneveld had been struggling, now reduced to defend himself
+against suspicion hourly darkening and hatred growing daily more insane.
+
+The eagle glance and restless wing, which had swept the whole political
+atmosphere, now caged within the stifling limits of theological casuistry
+and personal rivalry were afflicting to contemplate.
+
+The evils resulting from a confederate system of government, from a
+league of petty sovereignties which dared not become a nation, were as
+woefully exemplified in the United Provinces as they were destined to be
+more than a century and a half later, and in another hemisphere, before
+that most fortunate and sagacious of written political instruments, the
+American Constitution of 1787, came to remedy the weakness of the old
+articles of Union.
+
+Meantime the Netherlands were a confederacy, not a nation.  Their general
+government was but a committee.
+
+It could ask of, but not command, the separate provinces.  It had no
+dealings with nor power over the inhabitants of the country; it could say
+"Thou shalt" neither to state nor citizen; it could consult only with
+corporations--fictitious and many-headed personages--itself incorporate.
+There was no first magistrate, no supreme court, no commander-in-chief,
+no exclusive mint nor power of credit, no national taxation, no central
+house of representation and legislation, no senate.  Unfortunately it had
+one church, and out of this single matrix of centralism was born more
+discord than had been produced by all the centrifugal forces of
+provincialism combined.
+
+There had been working substitutes found, as we well know, for the
+deficiencies of this constitution, but the Advocate felt himself bound to
+obey and enforce obedience to the laws and privileges of his country so
+long as they remained without authorized change.  His country was the
+Province of Holland, to which his allegiance was due and whose servant he
+was.  That there was but one church paid and sanctioned by law, he
+admitted, but his efforts were directed to prevent discord within that
+church, by counselling moderation, conciliation, mutual forbearance, and
+abstention from irritating discussion of dogmas deemed by many thinkers
+and better theologians than himself not essential to salvation.  In this
+he was much behind his age or before it.  He certainly was not with the
+majority.
+
+And thus, while the election of Ferdinand had given the signal of war
+all over Christendom, while from the demolished churches in Bohemia the
+tocsin was still sounding, whose vibrations were destined to be heard a
+generation long through the world, there was less sympathy felt with the
+call within the territory of the great republic of Protestantism than
+would have seemed imaginable a few short years before.  The capture of
+the Cloister Church at the Hague in the summer of 1617 seemed to minds
+excited by personal rivalries and minute theological controversy a more
+momentous event than the destruction of the churches in the Klostergrab
+in the following December.  The triumph of Gomarism in a single Dutch
+city inspired more enthusiasm for the moment than the deadly buffet to
+European Protestantism could inspire dismay.
+
+The church had been carried and occupied, as it were, by force, as if an
+enemy's citadel.  It seemed necessary to associate the idea of practical
+warfare with a movement which might have been a pacific clerical success.
+Barneveld and those who acted with him, while deploring the intolerance
+out of which the schism had now grown to maturity, had still hoped for
+possible accommodation of the quarrel.  They dreaded popular tumults
+leading to oppression of the magistracy by the mob or the soldiery and
+ending in civil war.  But what was wanted by the extreme partisans on
+either side was not accommodation but victory.
+
+"Religious differences are causing much trouble and discontents in many
+cities," he said.  "At Amsterdam there were in the past week two
+assemblages of boys and rabble which did not disperse without violence,
+crime, and robbery.  The brother of Professor Episcopius (Rem Bischop)
+was damaged to the amount of several thousands.  We are still hoping that
+some better means of accommodation may be found."
+
+The calmness with which the Advocate spoke of these exciting and painful
+events is remarkable.  It was exactly a week before the date of his
+letter that this riot had taken place at Amsterdam; very significant in
+its nature and nearly tragical in its results.  There were no Remonstrant
+preachers left in the city, and the people of that persuasion were
+excluded from the Communion service.  On Sunday morning, 17th February
+(1617), a furious mob set upon the house of Rem Bischop, a highly
+respectable and wealthy citizen, brother of the Remonstrant professor
+Episcopius, of Leyden.  The house, an elegant mansion in one of the
+principal streets, was besieged and after an hour's resistance carried by
+storm.  The pretext of the assault was that Arminian preaching was going
+on within its walls, which was not the fact.  The mistress of the house,
+half clad, attempted to make her escape by the rear of the building, was
+pursued by the rabble with sticks and stones, and shrieks of "Kill the
+Arminian harlot, strike her dead," until she fortunately found refuge in
+the house of a neighbouring carpenter.  There the hunted creature fell
+insensible on the ground, the master of the house refusing to give her
+up, though the maddened mob surged around it, swearing that if the
+"Arminian harlot"--as respectable a matron as lived in the city--were not
+delivered over to them, they would tear the house to pieces.  The hope of
+plunder and of killing Rem Bischop himself drew them at last back to his
+mansion.  It was thoroughly sacked; every portable article of value,
+linen, plate, money, furniture, was carried off, the pictures and objects
+of art destroyed, the house gutted from top to bottom.  A thousand
+spectators were looking on placidly at the work of destruction as they
+returned from church, many of them with Bible and Psalm-book in their
+hands.  The master effected his escape over the roof into an adjoining
+building.  One of the ringleaders, a carpenter by trade, was arrested
+carrying an armful of valuable plunder.  He was asked by the magistrate
+why he had entered the house.  "Out of good zeal," he replied; "to help
+beat and kill the Arminians who were holding conventicle there."  He was
+further asked why he hated the Arminians so much.  "Are we to suffer such
+folk here," he replied, "who preach the vile doctrine that God has
+created one man for damnation and another for salvation?"--thus ascribing
+the doctrine of the church of which he supposed himself a member to the
+Arminians whom he had been plundering and wished to kill.
+
+Rem Bischop received no compensation for the damage and danger; the
+general cry in the town being that the money he was receiving from
+Barneveld and the King of Spain would make him good even if not a stone
+of the house had been left standing.  On the following Thursday two
+elders of the church council waited upon and informed him that he must
+in future abstain from the Communion service.
+
+It may well be supposed that the virtual head of the government liked
+not the triumph of mob law, in the name of religion, over the civil
+authority.  The Advocate was neither democrat nor demagogue.  A lawyer,
+a magistrate, and a noble, he had but little sympathy with the humbler
+classes, which he was far too much in the habit of designating as rabble
+and populace.  Yet his anger was less against them than against the
+priests, the foreigners, the military and diplomatic mischief-makers, by
+whom they were set upon to dangerous demonstrations.  The old patrician
+scorned the arts by which highborn demagogues in that as in every age
+affect adulation for inferiors whom they despise.  It was his instinct to
+protect, and guide the people, in whom he recognized no chartered nor
+inherent right to govern.  It was his resolve, so long as breath was in
+him, to prevent them from destroying life and property and subverting the
+government under the leadership of an inflamed priesthood.
+
+It was with this intention, as we have just seen, and in order to avoid
+bloodshed, anarchy, and civil war in the streets of every town and
+village, that a decisive but in the Advocate's opinion a perfectly legal
+step had been taken by the States of Holland.  It had become necessary to
+empower the magistracies of towns to defend themselves by enrolled troops
+against mob violence and against an enforced synod considered by great
+lawyers as unconstitutional.
+
+Aerssens resided in Zealand, and the efforts of that ex-ambassador were
+unceasing to excite popular animosity against the man he hated and to
+trouble the political waters in which no man knew better than he how to
+cast the net.
+
+"The States of Zealand," said the Advocate to the ambassador in London,
+"have a deputation here about the religious differences, urging the
+holding of a National Synod according to the King's letters, to which
+some other provinces and some of the cities of Holland incline.  The
+questions have not yet been defined by a common synod, so that a national
+one could make no definition, while the particular synods and clerical
+personages are so filled with prejudices and so bound by mutual
+engagements of long date as to make one fear an unfruitful issue.
+We are occupied upon this point in our assembly of Holland to devise
+some compromise and to discover by what means these difficulties may
+be brought into a state of tranquillity."
+
+It will be observed that in all these most private and confidential
+utterances of the Advocate a tone of extreme moderation, an anxious wish
+to save the Provinces from dissensions, dangers, and bloodshed, is
+distinctly visible.  Never is he betrayed into vindictive, ambitious, or
+self-seeking expressions, while sometimes, although rarely, despondent in
+mind.  Nor was his opposition to a general synod absolute.  He was
+probably persuaded however, as we have just seen, that it should of
+necessity be preceded by provincial ones, both in due regard to the laws
+of the land and to the true definition of the points to be submitted to
+its decision.  He had small hope of a successful result from it.
+
+The British king gave him infinite distress.  As towards France so
+towards England the Advocate kept steadily before him the necessity of
+deferring to powerful sovereigns whose friendship was necessary to the
+republic he served, however misguided, perverse, or incompetent those
+monarchs might be.
+
+"I had always hoped," he said, "that his Majesty would have adhered to
+his original written advice, that such questions as these ought to be
+quietly settled by authority of law and not by ecclesiastical persons,
+and I still hope that his Majesty's intention is really to that effect,
+although he speaks of synods."
+
+A month later he felt even more encouraged.  "The last letter of his
+Majesty concerning our religious questions," he said, "has given rise to
+various constructions, but the best advised, who have peace and unity at
+heart, understand the King's intention to be to conserve the state of
+these Provinces and the religion in its purity.  My hope is that his
+Majesty's good opinion will be followed and adopted according to the most
+appropriate methods."
+
+Can it be believed that the statesman whose upright patriotism,
+moderation, and nobleness of purpose thus breathed through every word
+spoken by him in public or whispered to friends was already held up by
+a herd of ravening slanderers to obloquy as a traitor and a tyrant?
+
+He was growing old and had suffered much from illness during this
+eventful summer, but his anxiety for the Commonwealth, caused by these
+distressing and superfluous squabbles, were wearing into him more deeply
+than years or disease could do.
+
+"Owing to my weakness and old age I can't go up-stairs as well
+as I used," he said,--[Barneveld to Caron 31 July and 21 Aug.  1617.
+(H. Arch.  MS.)]--"and these religious dissensions cause me sometimes
+such disturbance of mind as will ere long become intolerable, because of
+my indisposition and because of the cry of my heart at the course people
+are pursuing here.  I reflect that at the time of Duke Casimir and the
+Prince of Chimay exactly such a course was held in Flanders and in Lord
+Leicester's time in the city of Utrecht, as is best known to yourself.
+My hope is fixed on the Lord God Almighty, and that He will make those
+well ashamed who are laying anything to heart save his honour and glory
+and the welfare of our country with maintenance of its freedom and laws.
+I mean unchangeably to live and die for them .  .  .  .  Believe firmly
+that all representations to the contrary are vile calumnies."
+
+Before leaving for Vianen in the middle of August of this year (1617)
+the Advocate had an interview with the Prince.  There had been no open
+rupture between them, and Barneveld was most anxious to avoid a quarrel
+with one to whose interests and honour he had always been devoted.  He
+did not cling to power nor office.  On the contrary, he had repeatedly
+importuned the States to accept his resignation, hoping that perhaps
+these unhappy dissensions might be quieted by his removal from the scene.
+He now told the Prince that the misunderstanding between them arising
+from these religious disputes was so painful to his heart that he would
+make and had made every possible effort towards conciliation and amicable
+settlement of the controversy.  He saw no means now, he said, of bringing
+about unity, unless his Excellency were willing to make some proposition
+for arrangement.  This he earnestly implored the Prince to do, assuring
+him of his sincere and upright affection for him and his wish to support
+such measures to the best of his ability and to do everything for the
+furtherance of his reputation and necessary authority.  He was so
+desirous of this result, he said, that he would propose now as he did at
+the time of the Truce negotiations to lay down all his offices, leaving
+his Excellency to guide the whole course of affairs according to his
+best judgment.  He had already taken a resolution, if no means of
+accommodation were possible, to retire to his Gunterstein estate and
+there remain till the next meeting of the assembly; when he would ask
+leave to retire for at least a year; in order to occupy himself with a
+revision and collation of the charters, laws, and other state papers of
+the country which were in his keeping, and which it was needful to bring
+into an orderly condition.  Meantime some scheme might be found for
+arranging the religious differences, more effective than any he had been
+able to devise.
+
+His appeal seems to have glanced powerlessly upon the iron reticence of
+Maurice, and the Advocate took his departure disheartened.  Later in the
+autumn, so warm a remonstrance was made to him by the leading nobles and
+deputies of Holland against his contemplated withdrawal from his post
+that it seemed a dereliction of duty on his part to retire.  He remained
+to battle with the storm and to see "with anguish of heart," as he
+expressed it, the course religious affairs were taking.
+
+The States of Utrecht on the 26th August resolved that on account of
+the gathering of large masses of troops in the countries immediately
+adjoining their borders, especially in the Episcopate of Cologne, by aid
+of Spanish money, it was expedient for them to enlist a protective force
+of six companies of regular soldiers in order to save the city from
+sudden and overwhelming attack by foreign troops.
+
+Even if the danger from without were magnified in this preamble, which is
+by no means certain, there seemed to be no doubt on the subject in the
+minds of the magistrates.  They believed that they had the right to
+protect and that they were bound to protect their ancient city from
+sudden assault, whether by Spanish soldiers or by organized mobs
+attempting, as had been done in Rotterdam, Oudewater, and other towns, to
+overawe the civil authority in the interest of the Contra-Remonstrants.
+
+Six nobles of Utrecht were accordingly commissioned to raise the troops.
+A week later they had been enlisted, sworn to obey in all things the
+States of Utrecht, and to take orders from no one else.  Three days later
+the States of Utrecht addressed a letter to their Mightinesses the
+States-General and to his Excellency the Prince, notifying them that for
+the reasons stated in the resolution cited the six companies had been
+levied.  There seemed in these proceedings to be no thought of mutiny or
+rebellion, the province considering itself as acting within its
+unquestionable rights as a sovereign state and without any exaggeration
+of the imperious circumstances of the case.
+
+Nor did the States-General and the Stadholder at that moment affect to
+dispute the rights of Utrecht, nor raise a doubt as to the legality of
+the proceedings.  The committee sent thither by the States-General, the
+Prince, and the council of state in their written answer to the letter of
+the Utrecht government declared the reasons given for the enrolment of
+the six companies to be insufficient and the measure itself highly
+dangerous.  They complained, but in very courteous language, that the
+soldiers had been levied without giving the least notice thereof to the
+general government, without asking its advice, or waiting for any
+communication from it, and they reminded the States of Utrecht that they
+might always rely upon the States-General and his Excellency, who were
+still ready, as they had been seven years before (1610), to protect them
+against every enemy and any danger.
+
+The conflict between a single province of the confederacy and the
+authority of the general government had thus been brought to a direct
+issue; to the test of arms.  For, notwithstanding the preamble to the
+resolution of the Utrecht Assembly just cited, there could be little
+question that the resolve itself was a natural corollary of the famous
+"Sharp Resolution," passed by the States of Holland three weeks before.
+Utrecht was in arms to prevent, among other things at least, the forcing
+upon them by a majority of the States-General of the National Synod to
+which they were opposed, the seizure of churches by the Contra-
+Remonstrants, and the destruction of life and property by inflamed mobs.
+
+There is no doubt that Barneveld deeply deplored the issue,
+but that he felt himself bound to accept it.  The innate absurdity of a
+constitutional system under which each of the seven members was sovereign
+and independent and the head was at the mercy of the members could not be
+more flagrantly illustrated.  In the bloody battles which seemed
+impending in the streets of Utrecht and in all the principal cities of
+the Netherlands between the soldiers of sovereign states and soldiers of
+a general government which was not sovereign, the letter of the law and
+the records of history were unquestionably on the aide of the provincial
+and against the general authority.  Yet to nullify the authority of the
+States-General by force of arms at this supreme moment was to stultify
+all government whatever.  It was an awful dilemma, and it is difficult
+here fully to sympathize with the Advocate, for he it was who inspired,
+without dictating, the course of the Utrecht proceedings.
+
+With him patriotism seemed at this moment to dwindle into provincialism,
+the statesman to shrink into the lawyer.
+
+Certainly there was no guilt in the proceedings.  There was no crime in
+the heart of the Advocate.  He had exhausted himself with appeals in
+favour of moderation, conciliation, compromise.  He had worked night
+and day with all the energy of a pure soul and a great mind to assuage
+religious hatreds and avert civil dissensions.  He was overpowered.
+He had frequently desired to be released from all his functions, but as
+dangers thickened over the Provinces, he felt it his duty so long as he
+remained at his post to abide by the law as the only anchor in the storm.
+Not rising in his mind to the height of a national idea, and especially
+averse from it when embodied in the repulsive form of religious
+uniformity, he did not shrink from a contest which he had not provoked,
+but had done his utmost to avert.  But even then he did not anticipate
+civil war.  The enrolling of the Waartgelders was an armed protest,
+a symbol of legal conviction rather than a serious effort to resist the
+general government.  And this is the chief justification of his course
+from a political point of view.  It was ridiculous to suppose that with a
+few hundred soldiers hastily enlisted--and there were less than 1800
+Waartgelders levied throughout the Provinces and under the orders of
+civil magistrates--a serious contest was intended against a splendidly
+disciplined army of veteran troops, commanded by the first general of the
+age.
+
+From a legal point of view Barneveld considered his position impregnable.
+
+The controversy is curious, especially for Americans, and for all who are
+interested in the analysis of federal institutions and of republican
+principles, whether aristocratic or democratic.  The States of Utrecht
+replied in decorous but firm language to the committee of the States-
+General that they had raised the six companies in accordance with their
+sovereign right so to do, and that they were resolved to maintain them.
+They could not wait as they had been obliged to do in the time of the
+Earl of Leicester and more recently in 1610 until they had been surprised
+and overwhelmed by the enemy before the States-General and his Excellency
+the Prince could come to their rescue.  They could not suffer all the
+evils of tumults, conspiracies, and foreign invasion, without defending
+themselves.
+
+Making use, they said, of the right of sovereignty which in their
+province belonged to them alone, they thought it better to prevent in
+time and by convenient means such fire and mischief than to look on while
+it kindled and spread into a conflagration, and to go about imploring aid
+from their fellow confederates who, God better it, had enough in these
+times to do at home.  This would only be to bring them as well as this
+province into trouble, disquiet, and expense.  "My Lords the States of
+Utrecht have conserved and continually exercised this right of
+sovereignty in its entireness ever since renouncing the King of Spain.
+Every contract, ordinance, and instruction of the States-General has been
+in conformity with it, and the States of Utrecht are convinced that the
+States of not one of their confederate provinces would yield an atom of
+its sovereignty."
+
+They reminded the general government that by the 1st article of the
+"Closer Union" of Utrecht, on which that assembly was founded, it was
+bound to support the States of the respective provinces and strengthen
+them with counsel, treasure, and blood if their respective rights, more
+especially their individual sovereignty, the most precious of all, should
+be assailed.  To refrain from so doing would be to violate a solemn
+contract.  They further reminded the council of state that by its
+institution the States-Provincial had not abdicated their respective
+sovereignties, but had reserved it in all matters not specifically
+mentioned in the original instruction by which it was created.
+
+Two days afterwards Arnold van Randwyck and three other commissioners
+were instructed by the general government to confer with the States of
+Utrecht, to tell them that their reply was deemed unsatisfactory, that
+their reasons for levying soldiers in times when all good people should
+be seeking to restore harmony and mitigate dissension were insufficient,
+and to request them to disband those levies without prejudice in so doing
+to the laws and liberties of the province and city of Utrecht.
+
+Here was perhaps an opening for a compromise, the instruction being not
+without ingenuity, and the word sovereignty in regard either to the
+general government or the separate provinces being carefully omitted.
+Soon afterwards, too, the States-General went many steps farther in the
+path of concession, for they made another appeal to the government of
+Utrecht to disband the Waartgelders on the ground of expediency,
+and in so doing almost expressly admitted the doctrine of provincial
+sovereignty.  It is important in regard to subsequent events to observe
+this virtual admission.
+
+"Your Honours lay especial stress upon the right of sovereignty as
+belonging to you alone in your province," they said, "and dispute
+therefore at great length upon the power and authority of the Generality,
+of his Excellency, and of the state council.  But you will please to
+consider that there is here no question of this, as our commissioners
+had no instructions to bring this into dispute in the least, and most
+certainly have not done so.  We have only in effect questioned whether
+that which one has an undoubted right to do can at all times be
+appropriately and becomingly done, whether it was fitting that your
+Honours, contrary to custom, should undertake these new levies upon a
+special oath and commission, and effectively complete the measure without
+giving the slightest notice thereof to the Generality."
+
+It may fairly be said that the question in debate was entirely conceded
+in this remarkable paper, which was addressed by the States-General, the
+Prince-Stadholder, and the council of state to the government of Utrecht.
+It should be observed, too, that while distinctly repudiating the
+intention of disputing the sovereignty of that province, they carefully
+abstain from using the word in relation to themselves, speaking only of
+the might and authority of the Generality, the Prince, and the council.
+
+There was now a pause in the public discussion.  The soldiers were not
+disbanded, as the States of Utrecht were less occupied with establishing
+the soundness of their theory than with securing its practical results.
+They knew very well, and the Advocate knew very well, that the intention
+to force a national synod by a majority vote of the Assembly of the
+States-General existed more strongly than ever, and they meant to resist
+it to the last.  The attempt was in their opinion an audacious violation
+of the fundamental pact on which the Confederacy was founded.  Its
+success would be to establish the sacerdotal power in triumph over the
+civil authority.
+
+During this period the Advocate was resident in Utrecht.  For change of
+air, ostensibly at least, he had absented himself from the seat of
+government, and was during several weeks under the hands of his old
+friend and physician Dr. Saul.  He was strictly advised to abstain
+altogether from political business, but he might as well have attempted
+to abstain from food and drink.  Gillis van Ledenberg, secretary of the
+States of Utrecht, visited him frequently.  The proposition to enlist the
+Waartgelders had been originally made in the Assembly by its president,
+and warmly seconded by van Ledenberg, who doubtless conferred afterwards
+with Barneveld in person, but informally and at his lodgings.
+
+It was almost inevitable that this should be the case, nor did the
+Advocate make much mystery as to the course of action which he deemed
+indispensable at this period.  Believing it possible that some sudden and
+desperate attempt might be made by evil disposed people, he agreed with
+the States of Utrecht in the propriety of taking measures of precaution.
+They were resolved not to look quietly on while soldiers and rabble under
+guidance perhaps of violent Contra-Remonstrant preachers took possession
+of the churches and even of the city itself, as had already been done in
+several towns.
+
+The chief practical object of enlisting the six companies was that the
+city might be armed against popular tumults, and they feared that the
+ordinary military force might be withdrawn.
+
+When Captain Hartvelt, in his own name and that of the other officers
+of those companies, said that they were all resolved never to use their
+weapons against the Stadholder or the States-General, he was answered
+that they would never be required to do so.  They, however, made oath to
+serve against those who should seek to trouble the peace of the Province
+of Utrecht in ecclesiastical or political matters, and further against
+all enemies of the common country.  At the same time it was deemed
+expedient to guard against a surprise of any kind and to keep watch and
+ward.
+
+"I cannot quite believe in the French companies," said the Advocate in a
+private billet to Ledenberg.  "It would be extremely well that not only
+good watch should be kept at the city gates, but also that one might from
+above and below the river Lek be assuredly advised from the nearest
+cities if any soldiers are coming up or down, and that the same might be
+done in regard to Amersfoort."  At the bottom of this letter, which was
+destined to become historical and will be afterwards referred to, the
+Advocate wrote, as he not unfrequently did, upon his private notes, "When
+read, burn, and send me back the two enclosed letters."
+
+The letter lies in the Archives unburned to this day, but, harmless as it
+looked, it was to serve as a nail in more than one coffin.
+
+In his confidential letters to trusted friends he complained of "great
+physical debility growing out of heavy sorrow,"  and described himself as
+entering upon his seventy-first year and no longer fit for hard political
+labour.  The sincere grief, profound love of country, and desire that
+some remedy might be found for impending disaster, is stamped upon all
+his utterances whether official or secret.
+
+"The troubles growing out of the religious differences," he said, "are
+running into all sorts of extremities.  It is feared that an attempt will
+be made against the laws of the land through extraordinary ways, and by
+popular tumults to take from the supreme authority of the respective
+provinces the right to govern clerical persons and regulate clerical
+disputes, and to place it at the disposition of ecclesiastics and of a
+National Synod.
+
+"It is thought too that the soldiers will be forbidden to assist the
+civil supreme power and the government of cities in defending themselves
+from acts of violence which under pretext of religion will be attempted
+against the law and the commands of the magistrates.
+
+"This seems to conflict with the common law of the respective provinces,
+each of which from all times had right of sovereignty and supreme
+authority within its territory and specifically reserved it in all
+treaties and especially in that of the Nearer Union .  .  .  .  The
+provinces have always regulated clerical matters each for itself.  The
+Province of Utrecht, which under the pretext of religion is now most
+troubled, made stipulations to this effect, when it took his Excellency
+for governor, even more stringent than any others.  As for Holland, she
+never imagined that one could ever raise a question on the subject .  .
+.  .  All good men ought to do their best to prevent the enemies to the
+welfare of these Provinces from making profit out of our troubles."
+
+The whole matter he regarded as a struggle between the clergy and the
+civil power for mastery over the state, as an attempt to subject
+provincial autonomy to the central government purely in the interest of
+the priesthood of a particular sect.  The remedy he fondly hoped for was
+moderation and union within the Church itself.  He could never imagine
+the necessity for this ferocious animosity not only between Christians
+but between two branches of the Reformed Church.  He could never be made
+to believe that the Five Points of the Remonstrance had dug an abyss too
+deep and wide ever to be bridged between brethren lately of one faith as
+of one fatherland.  He was unceasing in his prayers and appeals for
+"mutual toleration on the subject of predestination."  Perhaps the
+bitterness, almost amounting to frenzy, with which abstruse points of
+casuistry were then debated, and which converted differences of opinion
+upon metaphysical divinity into deadly hatred and thirst for blood, is
+already obsolete or on the road to become so.  If so, then was Barneveld
+in advance of his age, and it would have been better for the peace of the
+world and the progress of Christianity if more of his contemporaries had
+placed themselves on his level.
+
+He was no theologian, but he believed himself to be a Christian, and he
+certainly was a thoughtful and a humble one.  He had not the arrogance to
+pierce behind the veil and assume to read the inscrutable thoughts of the
+Omnipotent.  It was a cruel fate that his humility upon subjects which he
+believed to be beyond the scope of human reason should have been tortured
+by his enemies into a crime, and that because he hoped for religious
+toleration he should be accused of treason to the Commonwealth.
+
+"Believe and cause others to believe," he said, "that I am and with the
+grace of God hope to continue an upright patriot as I have proved myself
+to be in these last forty-two years spent in the public service.  In the
+matter of differential religious points I remain of the opinions which I
+have held for more than fifty years, and in which I hope to live and die,
+to wit, that a good Christian man ought to believe that he is predestined
+to eternal salvation through God's grace, giving for reasons that he
+through God's grace has a firm belief that his salvation is founded
+purely on God's grace and the expiation of our sins through our Saviour
+Jesus Christ, and that if he should fall into any sins his firm trust is
+that God will not let him perish in them, but mercifully turn him to
+repentance, so that he may continue in the same belief to the last."
+
+These expressions were contained in a letter to Caron with the intention
+doubtless that they should be communicated to the King of Great Britain,
+and it is a curious illustration of the spirit of the age, this picture
+of the leading statesman of a great republic unfolding his religious
+convictions for private inspection by the monarch of an allied nation.
+More than anything else it exemplifies the close commixture of theology,
+politics, and diplomacy in that age, and especially in those two
+countries.
+
+Formerly, as we have seen, the King considered a too curious fathoming of
+divine mysteries as highly reprehensible, particularly for the common
+people.  Although he knew more about them than any one else, he avowed
+that even his knowledge in this respect was not perfect.  It was matter
+of deep regret with the Advocate that his Majesty had not held to his
+former positions, and that he had disowned his original letters.
+
+"I believe my sentiments thus expressed," he said, "to be in accordance
+with Scripture, and I have always held to them without teasing my brains
+with the precise decrees of reprobation, foreknowledge, or the like, as
+matters above my comprehension.  I have always counselled Christian
+moderation.  The States of Holland have followed the spirit of his
+Majesty's letters, but our antagonists have rejected them and with
+seditious talk, sermons, and the spreading of infamous libels have
+brought matters to their present condition.  There have been excesses on
+the other side as well."
+
+He then made a slight, somewhat shadowy allusion to schemes known to be
+afloat for conferring the sovereignty upon Maurice.  We have seen that at
+former periods he had entertained this subject and discussed it privately
+with those who were not only friendly but devoted to the Stadholder, and
+that he had arrived at the conclusion that it would not be for the
+interest of the Prince to encourage the project.  Above all he was
+sternly opposed to the idea of attempting to compass it by secret
+intrigue.  Should such an arrangement be publicly discussed and legally
+completed, it would not meet with his unconditional opposition.
+
+"The Lord God knows," he said, "whether underneath all these movements
+does not lie the design of the year 1600, well known to you.  As for me,
+believe that I am and by God's grace hope to remain, what I always was,
+an upright patriot, a defender of the true Christian religion, of the
+public authority, and of all the power that has been and in future may be
+legally conferred upon his Excellency.  Believe that all things said,
+written, or spread to the contrary are falsehoods and calumnies."
+
+He was still in Utrecht, but about to leave for the Hague, with health
+somewhat improved and in better spirits in regard to public matters.
+
+"Although I have entered my seventy-first year," he said, "I trust still
+to be of some service to the Commonwealth and to my friends .  .  .  .
+Don't consider an arrangement of our affairs desperate.  I hope for
+better things."
+
+Soon after his return he was waited upon one Sunday evening, late in
+October--being obliged to keep his house on account of continued
+indisposition--by a certain solicitor named Nordlingen and informed that
+the Prince was about to make a sudden visit to Leyden at four o'clock
+next morning.
+
+Barneveld knew that the burgomasters and regents were holding a great
+banquet that night, and that many of them would probably have been
+indulging in potations too deep to leave them fit for serious business.
+The agitation of people's minds at that moment made the visit seem rather
+a critical one, as there would probably be a mob collected to see the
+Stadholder, and he was anxious both in the interest of the Prince and the
+regents and of both religious denominations that no painful incidents
+should occur if it was in his power to prevent them.
+
+He was aware that his son-in-law, Cornelis van der Myle, had been invited
+to the banquet, and that he was wont to carry his wine discreetly.  He
+therefore requested Nordlingen to proceed to Leyden that night and seek
+an interview with van der Myle without delay.  By thus communicating the
+intelligence of the expected visit to one who, he felt sure, would do his
+best to provide for a respectful and suitable reception of the Prince,
+notwithstanding the exhilarated condition in which the magistrates would
+probably find themselves, the Advocate hoped to prevent any riot or
+tumultuous demonstration of any kind.  At least he would act conformably
+to his duty and keep his conscience clear should disasters ensue.
+
+Later in the night he learned that Maurice was going not to Leyden but to
+Delft, and he accordingly despatched a special messenger to arrive before
+dawn at Leyden in order to inform van der Myle of this change in the
+Prince's movements.  Nothing seemed simpler or more judicious than these
+precautions on the part of Barneveld.  They could not fail, however, to
+be tortured into sedition, conspiracy, and treason.
+
+Towards the end of the year a meeting of the nobles and knights of
+Holland under the leadership of Barneveld was held to discuss the famous
+Sharp Resolution of 4th August and the letters and arguments advanced
+against it by the Stadholder and the council of state.  It was
+unanimously resolved by this body, in which they were subsequently
+followed by a large majority of the States of Holland, to maintain that
+resolution and its consequences and to oppose the National Synod.  They
+further resolved that a legal provincial synod should be convoked by the
+States of Holland and under their authority and supervision.  The object
+of such synod should be to devise "some means of accommodation, mutual
+toleration, and Christian settlement of differences in regard to the Five
+Points in question."
+
+In case such compromise should unfortunately not be arranged, then it was
+resolved to invite to the assembly two or three persons from France, as
+many from England, from Germany, and from Switzerland, to aid in the
+consultations.  Should a method of reconciliation and mutual toleration
+still remain undiscovered, then, in consideration that the whole
+Christian world was interested in composing these dissensions, it was
+proposed that a "synodal assembly of all Christendom," a Protestant
+oecumenical council, should in some solemn manner be convoked.
+
+These resolutions and propositions were all brought forward by the
+Advocate, and the draughts of them in his handwriting remain.  They are
+the unimpeachable evidences of his earnest desire to put an end to these
+unhappy disputes and disorders in the only way which he considered
+constitutional.
+
+Before the close of the year the States of Holland, in accordance with
+the foregoing advice of the nobles, passed a resolution, the minutes of
+which were drawn up by the hand of the Advocate, and in which they
+persisted in their opposition to the National Synod.  They declared by a
+large majority of votes that the Assembly of the States-General without
+the unanimous consent of the Provincial States were not competent
+according to the Union of Utrecht--the fundamental law of the General
+Assembly--to regulate religious affairs, but that this right belonged to
+the separate provinces, each within its own domain.
+
+They further resolved that as they were bound by solemn oath to maintain
+the laws and liberties of Holland, they could not surrender this right to
+the Generality, nor allow it to be usurped by any one, but in order to
+settle the question of the Five Points, the only cause known to them of
+the present disturbances, they were content under: their own authority to
+convoke a provincial synod within three months, at their own cost, and to
+invite the respective provinces, as many of them as thought good, to send
+to this meeting a certain number of pious and learned theologians.
+
+It is difficult to see why the course thus unanimously proposed by the
+nobles of Holland, under guidance of Barneveld, and subsequently by a
+majority of the States of that province, would not have been as expedient
+as it was legal.  But we are less concerned with that point now than with
+the illustrations afforded by these long buried documents of the
+patriotism and sagacity of a man than whom no human creature was
+ever more foully slandered.
+
+It will be constantly borne in mind that he regarded this religious
+controversy purely from a political, legal, and constitutional--and not
+from a theological-point of view.  He believed that grave danger to the
+Fatherland was lurking under this attempt, by the general government, to
+usurp the power of dictating the religious creed of all the provinces.
+Especially he deplored the evil influence exerted by the King of England
+since his abandonment of the principles announced in his famous letter to
+the States in the year 1613.  All that the Advocate struggled for was
+moderation and mutual toleration within the Reformed Church.  He felt
+that a wider scheme of forbearance was impracticable.  If a dream of
+general religious equality had ever floated before him or before any one
+in that age, he would have felt it to be a dream which would be a reality
+nowhere until centuries should have passed away.  Yet that moderation,
+patience, tolerance, and respect for written law paved the road to that
+wider and loftier region can scarcely be doubted.
+
+Carleton, subservient to every changing theological whim of his master,
+was as vehement and as insolent now in enforcing the intolerant views of
+James as he had previously been in supporting the counsels to tolerance
+contained in the original letters of that monarch.
+
+The Ambassador was often at the Advocate's bed-side during his illness
+that summer, enforcing, instructing, denouncing, contradicting.  He was
+never weary of fulfilling his duties of tuition, but the patient
+Barneveld; haughty and overbearing as he was often described to be,
+rarely used a harsh or vindictive word regarding him in his letters.
+
+"The ambassador of France," he said, "has been heard before the Assembly
+of the States-General, and has made warm appeals in favour of union and
+mutual toleration as his Majesty of Great Britain so wisely did in his
+letters of 1613 .  .  .  .  If his Majesty could only be induced to write
+fresh letters in similar tone, I should venture to hope better fruits
+from them than from this attempt to thrust a national synod upon our
+necks, which many of us hold to be contrary to law, reason, and the Act
+of Union."
+
+So long as it was possible to hope that the action of the States of
+Holland would prevent such a catastrophe, he worked hard to direct them
+in what he deemed the right course.
+
+"Our political and religious differences," he said, "stand between hope
+and fear."
+
+The hope was in the acceptance of the Provincial Synod--the fear lest the
+National Synod should be carried by a minority of the cities of Holland
+combining with a majority of the other Provincial States.
+
+"This would be in violation," he said, "of the so-called Religious Peace,
+the Act of Union, the treaty with the Duke of Anjou, the negotiations of
+the States of Utrecht, and with Prince Maurice in 1590 with cognizance of
+the States-General and those of Holland for, the governorship of that
+province, the custom of the Generality for the last thirty years
+according to which religious matters have always been left to the
+disposition of the States of each province .  .  .  .  Carleton is
+strenuously urging this course in his Majesty's name, and I fear that
+in the present state of our humours great troubles will be the result."
+
+The expulsion by an armed mob, in the past year, of a Remonstrant
+preacher at Oudewater, the overpowering of the magistracy and the forcing
+on of illegal elections in that and other cities, had given him and all
+earnest patriots grave cause for apprehension.  They were dreading, said
+Barneveld, a course of crimes similar to those which under the Earl of
+Leicester's government had afflicted Leyden and Utrecht.
+
+"Efforts are incessant to make the Remonstrants hateful," he said to
+Caron, "but go forward resolutely and firmly in the conviction that our
+friends here are as animated in their opposition to the Spanish dominion
+now and by God's grace will so remain as they have ever proved themselves
+to be, not only by words, but works.  I fear that Mr. Carleton gives too
+much belief to the enviers of our peace and tranquillity under pretext of
+religion, but it is more from ignorance than malice."
+
+Those who have followed the course of the Advocate's correspondence,
+conversation, and actions, as thus far detailed, can judge of the
+gigantic nature of the calumny by which he was now assailed.  That this
+man, into every fibre of whose nature was woven undying hostility to
+Spain, as the great foe to national independence and religious liberty
+throughout the continent of Europe, whose every effort, as we have seen,
+during all these years of nominal peace had been to organize a system of
+general European defence against the war now actually begun upon
+Protestantism, should be accused of being a partisan of Spain, a creature
+of Spain, a pensioner of Spain, was enough to make honest men pray that
+the earth might be swallowed up.  If such idiotic calumnies could be
+believed, what patriot in the world could not be doubted?  Yet they were
+believed.  Barneveld was bought by Spanish gold.  He had received whole
+boxes full of Spanish pistoles, straight from Brussels!  For his part in
+the truce negotiations he had received 120,000 ducats in one lump.
+
+"It was plain," said the greatest man in the country to another great
+man, "that Barneveld and his party are on the road to Spain."
+
+"Then it were well to have proof of it," said the great man.
+
+"Not yet time," was the reply.  "We must flatten out a few of them
+first."
+
+Prince Maurice had told the Princess-Dowager the winter before (8th
+December 1616) that those dissensions would never be decided except by
+use of weapons;  and he now mentioned to her that he had received
+information from Brussels, which he in part believed, that the Advocate
+was a stipendiary of Spain.  Yet he had once said, to the same Princess
+Louise, of this stipendiary that "the services which the Advocate had
+rendered to the House of Nassau were so great that all the members of
+that house might well look upon him not as their friend but their
+father."  Councillor van Maldere, President of the States of Zealand, and
+a confidential friend of Maurice, was going about the Hague saying that
+"one must string up seven or eight Remonstrants on the gallows; then
+there might be some improvement."
+
+As for Arminius and Uytenbogaert, people had long told each other and
+firmly believed it, and were amazed when any incredulity was expressed in
+regard to it, that they were in regular and intimate correspondence with
+the Jesuits, that they had received large sums from Rome, and that both
+had been promised cardinals' hats.  That Barneveld and his friend
+Uytenbogaert were regular pensioners of Spain admitted of no dispute
+whatever.  "It was as true as the Holy Evangel."  The ludicrous chatter
+had been passed over with absolute disdain by the persons attacked, but
+calumny is often a stronger and more lasting power than disdain.  It
+proved to be in these cases.
+
+"You have the plague mark on your flesh, oh pope, oh pensioner," said one
+libeller.  "There are letters safely preserved to make your process for
+you.  Look out for your head.  Many have sworn your death, for it is more
+than time that you were out of the world.  We shall prove, oh great
+bribed one, that you had the 120,000 little ducats."  The preacher
+Uytenbogaert was also said to have had 80,000 ducats for his share.
+"Go to Brussels," said the pamphleteer; "it all stands clearly written
+out on the register with the names and surnames of all you great bribe-
+takers."
+
+These were choice morsels from the lampoon of the notary Danckaerts.
+
+"We are tortured more and more with religious differences," wrote
+Barneveld; "with acts of popular violence growing out of them the more
+continuously as they remain unpunished, and with ever increasing
+jealousies and suspicions.  The factious libels become daily more
+numerous and more impudent, and no man comes undamaged from the field.
+I, as a reward for all my troubles, labours, and sorrows, have three
+double portions of them.  I hope however to overcome all by God's grace
+and to defend my actions with all honourable men so long as right and
+reason have place in the world, as to which many begin to doubt.  If his
+Majesty had been pleased to stick to the letters of 1613, we should never
+have got into these difficulties .  .  .  .  It were better in my opinion
+that Carleton should be instructed to negotiate in the spirit of those
+epistles rather than to torment us with the National Synod, which will do
+more harm than good."
+
+It is impossible not to notice the simplicity and patience with which the
+Advocate, in the discharge of his duty as minister of foreign affairs,
+kept the leading envoys of the Republic privately informed of events
+which were becoming day by day more dangerous to the public interests and
+his own safety.  If ever a perfectly quiet conscience was revealed in the
+correspondence of a statesman, it was to be found in these letters.
+
+Calmly writing to thank Caron for some very satisfactory English beer
+which the Ambassador had been sending him from London, he proceeded to
+speak again of the religious dissensions and their consequences.  He sent
+him the letter and remonstrance which he had felt himself obliged to
+make, and which he had been urged by his ever warm and constant friend
+the widow of William the Silent to make on the subject of "the seditious
+libels, full of lies and calumnies got up by conspiracy against him."
+These letters were never published, however, until years after he had
+been in his grave.
+
+"I know that you are displeased with the injustice done me," he said,
+"but I see no improvement.  People are determined to force through the
+National Synod.  The two last ones did much harm.  This will do ten times
+more, so intensely embittered are men's tempers against each other."
+Again he deplored the King's departure from his letters of 1613, by
+adherence to which almost all the troubles would have been spared.
+
+It is curious too to observe the contrast between public opinion in Great
+Britain, including its government, in regard to the constitution of the
+United Provinces at that period of domestic dissensions and incipient
+civil war and the general impressions manifested in the same nation two
+centuries and a half later, on the outbreak of the slavery rebellion, as
+to the constitution of the United States.
+
+The States in arms against the general government on the other side of
+the Atlantic were strangely but not disingenuously assumed to be
+sovereign and independent, and many statesmen and a leading portion of
+the public justified them in their attempt to shake off the central
+government as if it were but a board of agency established by treaty and
+terminable at pleasure of any one of among sovereigns and terminable at
+pleasure of any one of them.
+
+Yet even a superficial glance at the written constitution of the Republic
+showed that its main object was to convert what had been a confederacy
+into an Incorporation; and that the very essence of its renewed political
+existence was an organic law laid down by a whole people in their
+primitive capacity in place of a league banding together a group of
+independent little corporations.  The chief attributes of sovereignty--
+the rights of war and peace, of coinage, of holding armies and navies, of
+issuing bills of credit, of foreign relations, of regulating and taxing
+foreign commerce--having been taken from the separate States by the
+united people thereof and bestowed upon a government provided with a
+single executive head, with a supreme tribunal, with a popular house of
+representatives and a senate, and with power to deal directly with the
+life and property of every individual in the land, it was strange indeed
+that the feudal, and in America utterly unmeaning, word Sovereign should
+have been thought an appropriate term for the different States which had
+fused themselves three-quarters of a century before into a Union.
+
+When it is remembered too that the only dissolvent of this Union was the
+intention to perpetuate human slavery, the logic seemed somewhat perverse
+by which the separate sovereignty of the States was deduced from the
+constitution of 1787.
+
+On the other hand, the Union of Utrecht of 1579 was a league of petty
+sovereignties; a compact less binding and more fragile than the Articles
+of Union made almost exactly two hundred years later in America, and the
+worthlessness of which, after the strain of war was over, had been
+demonstrated in the dreary years immediately following the peace of 1783.
+One after another certain Netherland provinces had abjured their
+allegiance to Spain, some of them afterwards relapsing under it, some
+having been conquered by the others, while one of them, Holland, had for
+a long time borne the greater part of the expense and burthen of the war.
+
+"Holland," said the Advocate, "has brought almost all the provinces to
+their liberty.  To receive laws from them or from their clerical people
+now is what our State cannot endure.  It is against her laws and customs,
+in the enjoyment of which the other provinces and his Excellency as
+Governor of Holland are bound to protect us."
+
+And as the preservation of chattel slavery in the one case seemed a
+legitimate ground for destroying a government which had as definite an
+existence as any government known to mankind, so the resolve to impose a
+single religious creed upon many millions of individuals was held by the
+King and government of Great Britain to be a substantial reason for
+imagining a central sovereignty which had never existed at all.  This was
+still more surprising as the right to dispose of ecclesiastical affairs
+and persons had been expressly reserved by the separate provinces in
+perfectly plain language in the Treaty of Union.
+
+"If the King were better informed," said Barneveld, "of our system and
+laws, we should have better hope than now.  But one supposes through
+notorious error in foreign countries that the sovereignty stands with the
+States-General which is not the case, except in things which by the
+Articles of Closer Union have been made common to all the provinces,
+while in other matters, as religion, justice, and polity, the sovereignty
+remains with each province, which foreigners seem unable to comprehend."
+
+Early in June, Carleton took his departure for England on leave of
+absence.  He received a present from the States of 3000 florins, and went
+over in very ill-humour with Barneveld.  "Mr. Ambassador is much offended
+and prejudiced," said the Advocate, "but I know that he will religiously
+carry out the orders of his Majesty.  I trust that his Majesty can admit
+different sentiments on predestination and its consequences, and that in
+a kingdom where the supreme civil authority defends religion the system
+of the Puritans will have no foothold."
+
+Certainly James could not be accused of allowing the system of the
+Puritans much foothold in England, but he had made the ingenious
+discovery that Puritanism in Holland was a very different thing from
+Puritanism in the Netherlands.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Acts of violence which under pretext of religion
+Adulation for inferiors whom they despise
+Calumny is often a stronger and more lasting power than disdain
+Created one child for damnation and another for salvation
+Depths of credulity men in all ages can sink
+Devote himself to his gout and to his fair young wife
+Furious mob set upon the house of Rem Bischop
+Highborn demagogues in that as in every age affect adulation
+In this he was much behind his age or before it
+Logic is rarely the quality on which kings pride themselves
+Necessity of deferring to powerful sovereigns
+Not his custom nor that of his councillors to go to bed
+Partisans wanted not accommodation but victory
+Puritanism in Holland was a very different thing from England
+Seemed bent on self-destruction
+Stand between hope and fear
+The evils resulting from a confederate system of government
+To stifle for ever the right of free enquiry
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext Life of John Barneveld, v8, Motley #94
+by John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND
+
+WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR
+
+By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+
+
+Life and Death of John of Barneveld, v9, 1618
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+     Maurice revolutionizes the Provinces--Danckaert's libellous Pamphlet
+     --Barneveld's Appeal to the Prince--Barneveld'a Remonstrance to the
+     States--The Stadholder at Amsterdam--The Treaty of Truce nearly
+     expired--King of Spain and Archduke Albert--Scheme for recovering
+     the Provinces--Secret Plot to make Maurice Sovereign.
+
+Early in the year (1618) Maurice set himself about revolutionizing the
+provinces on which he could not yet thoroughly rely.  The town of Nymegen
+since its recovery from the Spaniards near the close of the preceding
+century had held its municipal government, as it were, at the option of
+the Prince.  During the war he had been, by the terms of surrender,
+empowered to appoint and to change its magistracy at will.  No change had
+occurred for many years, but as the government had of late fallen into
+the hands of the Barneveldians, and as Maurice considered the Truce to be
+a continuance of the war, he appeared suddenly, in the city at the head
+of a body of troops and surrounded by his lifeguard.  Summoning the whole
+board of magistrates into the townhouse, he gave them all notice to quit,
+disbanding them like a company of mutinous soldiery, and immediately
+afterwards appointed a fresh list of functionaries in their stead.
+
+This done, he proceeded to Arnhem, where the States of Gelderland were in
+session, appeared before that body, and made a brief announcement of the
+revolution which he had so succinctly effected in the most considerable
+town of their province.  The Assembly, which seems, like many other
+assemblies at precisely this epoch, to have had an extraordinary capacity
+for yielding to gentle violence, made but little resistance to the
+extreme measures now undertaken by the Stadholder, and not only highly
+applauded the subjugation of Nymegen, but listened with sympathy to his
+arguments against the Waartgelders and in favour of the Synod.
+
+Having accomplished so much by a very brief visit to Gelderland, the
+Prince proceeded, to Overyssel, and had as little difficulty in bringing
+over the wavering minds of that province into orthodoxy and obedience.
+Thus there remained but two provinces out of seven that were still
+"waartgeldered" and refused to be "synodized."
+
+It was rebellion against rebellion.  Maurice and his adherents accused
+the States' right party of mutiny against himself and the States-General.
+The States' right party accused the Contra-Remonstrants in the cities of
+mutiny against the lawful sovereignty of each province.
+
+The oath of the soldiery, since the foundation of the Republic, had been
+to maintain obedience and fidelity to the States-General, the Stadholder,
+and the province in which they were garrisoned, and at whose expense they
+were paid.  It was impossible to harmonize such conflicting duties and
+doctrines.  Theory had done its best and its worst.  The time was fast
+approaching, as it always must approach, when fact with its violent besom
+would brush away the fine-spun cobwebs which had been so long
+undisturbed.
+
+"I will grind the Advocate and all his party into fine meal," said the
+Prince on one occasion.
+
+A clever caricature of the time represented a pair of scales hung up
+in a great hall.  In the one was a heap of parchments, gold chains, and
+magisterial robes; the whole bundle being marked the "holy right of each
+city."  In the other lay a big square, solid, ironclasped volume, marked
+"Institutes of Calvin."  Each scale was respectively watched by Gomarus
+and by Arminius.  The judges, gowned, furred, and ruffed, were looking
+decorously on, when suddenly the Stadholder, in full military attire, was
+seen rushing into the apartment and flinging his sword into the scale
+with the Institutes.
+
+The civic and legal trumpery was of course made to kick the beam.
+
+Maurice had organized his campaign this year against the Advocate and his
+party as deliberately as he had ever arranged the details of a series of
+battles and sieges against the Spaniard.  And he was proving himself as
+consummate master in political strife as in the great science of war.
+
+He no longer made any secret of his conviction that Barneveld was a
+traitor to his country, bought with Spanish gold.  There was not the
+slightest proof for these suspicions, but he asserted them roundly.
+"The Advocate is travelling straight to Spain," he said to Count
+Cuylenborg.  "But we will see who has got the longest purse."
+
+And as if it had been a part of the campaign, a prearranged diversion to
+the more direct and general assault on the entrenchments of the States'
+right party, a horrible personal onslaught was now made from many
+quarters upon the Advocate.  It was an age of pamphleteering, of
+venomous, virulent, unscrupulous libels.  And never even in that age had
+there been anything to equal the savage attacks upon this great
+statesman.  It moves the gall of an honest man, even after the lapse of
+two centuries and a half, to turn over those long forgotten pages and
+mark the depths to which political and theological party spirit could
+descend.  That human creatures can assimilate themselves so closely to
+the reptile, and to the subtle devil within the reptile, when a party end
+is to be gained is enough to make the very name of man a term of
+reproach.
+
+Day by day appeared pamphlets, each one more poisonous than its
+predecessor.  There was hardly a crime that was not laid at the door of
+Barneveld and all his kindred.  The man who had borne a matchlock in
+early youth against the foreign tyrant in days when unsuccessful
+rebellion meant martyrdom and torture; who had successfully guided the
+councils of the infant commonwealth at a period when most of his accusers
+were in their cradles, and when mistake was ruin to the republic; he on
+whose strong arm the father of his country had leaned for support; the
+man who had organized a political system out of chaos; who had laid down
+the internal laws, negotiated the great indispensable alliances, directed
+the complicated foreign policy, established the system of national
+defence, presided over the successful financial administration of a state
+struggling out of mutiny into national existence; who had rocked the
+Republic in its cradle and ever borne her in his heart; who had made her
+name beloved at home and honoured and dreaded abroad; who had been the
+first, when the great Taciturn had at last fallen a victim to the
+murderous tyrant of Spain, to place the youthful Maurice in his father's
+place, and to inspire the whole country with sublime courage to persist
+rather than falter in purpose after so deadly a blow; who was as truly
+the founder of the Republic as William had been the author of its
+independence,--was now denounced as a traitor, a pope, a tyrant, a venal
+hucksterer of his country's liberties.  His family name, which had long
+been an ancient and knightly one, was defiled and its nobility disputed;
+his father and mother, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, accused
+of every imaginable and unimaginable crime, of murder, incest, robbery,
+bastardy, fraud, forgery, blasphemy.  He had received waggon-loads of
+Spanish pistoles; he had been paid 120,000 ducats by Spain for
+negotiating the Truce; he was in secret treaty with Archduke Albert
+to bring 18,000 Spanish mercenaries across the border to defeat the
+machinations of Prince Maurice, destroy his life, or drive him from the
+country; all these foul and bitter charges and a thousand similar ones
+were rained almost daily upon that grey head.
+
+One day the loose sheets of a more than commonly libellous pamphlet were
+picked up in the streets of the Hague and placed in the Advocate's hands.
+It was the work of the drunken notary Danckaerts already mentioned, then
+resident in Amsterdam, and among the papers thus found was a list of
+wealthy merchants of that city who had contributed to the expense of its
+publication.  The opposition of Barneveld to the West India Corporation
+could never be forgiven.  The Advocate was notified in this production
+that he was soon to be summoned to answer for his crimes.  The country
+was weary of him, he was told, and his life was forfeited.
+
+Stung at last beyond endurance by the persistent malice of his enemies,
+he came before the States of Holland for redress.  Upon his remonstrance
+the author of this vile libel was summoned to answer before the upper
+tribunal at the Hague for his crime.  The city of Amsterdam covered him
+with the shield 'de non evocando,' which had so often in cases of less
+consequence proved of no protective value, and the notary was never
+punished, but on the contrary after a brief lapse of time rewarded as for
+a meritorious action.
+
+Meantime, the States of Holland, by formal act, took the name and honour
+of Barneveld under their immediate protection as a treasure belonging
+specially to themselves.  Heavy penalties were denounced upon the authors
+and printers of these libellous attacks, and large rewards offered for
+their detection.  Nothing came, however, of such measures.
+
+On the 24th April the Advocate addressed a frank, dignified, and
+conciliatory letter to the Prince.  The rapid progress of calumny against
+him had at last alarmed even his steadfast soul, and he thought it best
+to make a last appeal to the justice and to the clear intellect of
+William the Silent's son.
+
+"Gracious Prince," he said, "I observe to my greatest sorrow an entire
+estrangement of your Excellency from me, and I fear lest what was said
+six months since by certain clerical persons and afterwards by some
+politicians concerning your dissatisfaction with me, which until now I
+have not been able to believe, must be true.  I declare nevertheless with
+a sincere heart to have never willingly given cause for any such feeling;
+having always been your very faithful servant and with God's help hoping
+as such to die.  Ten years ago during the negotiations for the Truce I
+clearly observed the beginning of this estrangement, but your Excellency
+will be graciously pleased to remember that I declared to you at that
+time my upright and sincere intention in these negotiations to promote
+the service of the country and the interests of your Excellency, and that
+I nevertheless offered at the time not only to resign all my functions
+but to leave the country rather than remain in office and in the country
+to the dissatisfaction of your Excellency."
+
+He then rapidly reviewed the causes which had produced the alienation of
+which he complained and the melancholy divisions caused by the want of
+mutual religious toleration in the Provinces; spoke of his efforts to
+foster a spirit of conciliation on the dread subject of predestination,
+and referred to the letter of the King of Great Britain deprecating
+discussion and schism on this subject, and urging that those favourable
+to the views of the Remonstrants ought not to be persecuted.  Referring
+to the intimate relations which Uytenbogaert had so long enjoyed with the
+Prince, the Advocate alluded to the difficulty he had in believing that
+his Excellency intended to act in opposition to the efforts of the States
+of Holland in the cause of mutual toleration, to the manifest detriment
+of the country and of many of its best and truest patriots and the
+greater number of the magistrates in all the cities.
+
+He reminded the Prince that all attempts to accommodate these fearful
+quarrels had been frustrated, and that on his departure the previous year
+to Utrecht on account of his health he had again offered to resign all
+his offices and to leave Holland altogether rather than find himself in
+perpetual opposition to his Excellency.
+
+"I begged you in such case," he said, "to lend your hand to the procuring
+for me an honourable discharge from My Lords the States, but your
+Excellency declared that you could in no wise approve such a step and
+gave me hope that some means of accommodating the dissensions would yet
+be proposed."
+
+"I went then to Vianen, being much indisposed; thence I repaired to
+Utrecht to consult my old friend Doctor Saulo Saul, in whose hands I
+remained six weeks, not being able, as I hoped, to pass my seventieth
+birthday on the 24th September last in my birthplace, the city of
+Amersfoort.  All this time I heard not one single word or proposal of
+accommodation.  On the contrary it was determined that by a majority
+vote, a thing never heard of before, it was intended against the solemn
+resolves of the States of Holland, of Utrecht, and of Overyssel to bring
+these religious differences before the Assembly of My Lords the States-
+General, a proceeding directly in the teeth of the Act of Union and other
+treaties, and before a Synod which people called National, and that
+meantime every effort was making to discredit all those who stood up for
+the laws of these Provinces and to make them odious and despicable in the
+eyes of the common people.
+
+"Especially it was I that was thus made the object of hatred and contempt
+in their eyes.  Hundreds of lies and calumnies, circulated in the form of
+libels, seditious pamphlets, and lampoons, compelled me to return from
+Utrecht to the Hague.  Since that time I have repeatedly offered my
+services to your Excellency for the promotion of mutual accommodation and
+reconciliation of differences, but without success."
+
+He then alluded to the publication with which the country was ringing,
+'The Necessary and Living Discourse of a Spanish Counsellor', and which
+was attributed to his former confidential friend, now become his
+deadliest foe, ex-Ambassador Francis Aerssens, and warned the Prince that
+if he chose, which God forbid, to follow the advice of that seditious
+libel, nothing but ruin to the beloved Fatherland and its lovers, to the
+princely house of Orange-Nassau and to the Christian religion could be
+the issue.  "The Spanish government could desire no better counsel,"
+he said, "than this which these fellows give you; to encourage distrust
+and estrangement between your Excellency and the nobles, the cities, and
+the magistrates of the land and to propose high and haughty imaginings
+which are easy enough to write, but most difficult to practise, and which
+can only enure to the advantage of Spain.  Therefore most respectfully I
+beg your Excellency not to believe these fellows, but to reject their
+counsels .  .  .  .  Among them are many malignant hypocrites and
+ambitious men who are seeking their own profit in these changes of
+government--many utterly ragged and beggarly fellows and many infamous
+traitors coming from the provinces which have remained under the dominion
+of the Spaniard, and who are filled with revenge, envy, and jealousy at
+the greater prosperity and bloom of these independent States than they
+find at home.
+
+"I fear," he said in conclusion, "that I have troubled your Excellency
+too long, but to the fulfilment of my duty and discharge of my conscience
+I could not be more brief.  It saddens me deeply that in recompense for
+my long and manifold services I am attacked by so many calumnious, lying,
+seditious, and fraudulent libels, and that these indecencies find their
+pretext and their food in the evil disposition of your Excellency towards
+me.  And although for one-and-thirty years long I have been able to live
+down such things with silence, well-doing, and truth, still do I now find
+myself compelled in this my advanced old age and infirmity to make some
+utterances in defence of myself and those belonging to me, however much
+against my heart and inclinations."
+
+He ended by enclosing a copy of the solemn state paper which he was about
+to lay before the States of Holland in defence of his honour, and
+subscribed himself the lifelong and faithful servant of the Prince.
+
+The Remonstrance to the States contained a summary review of the
+political events of his life, which was indeed nothing more nor less than
+the history of his country and almost of Europe itself during that
+period, broadly and vividly sketched with the hand of a master.  It was
+published at once and strengthened the affection of his friends and the
+wrath of his enemies.  It is not necessary to our purpose to reproduce or
+even analyse the document, the main facts and opinions contained in it
+being already familiar to the reader.  The frankness however with which,
+in reply to the charges so profusely brought against him of having grown
+rich by extortion, treason, and corruption, of having gorged himself with
+plunder at home and bribery from the enemy, of being the great pensioner
+of Europe and the Marshal d'Ancre of the Netherlands--he alluded to the
+exact condition of his private affairs and the growth and sources of his
+revenue, giving, as it were, a kind of schedule of his property, has in
+it something half humorous, half touching in its simplicity.
+
+He set forth the very slender salaries attached to his high offices of
+Advocate of Holland, Keeper of the Seals, and other functions.  He
+answered the charge that he always had at his disposition 120,000 florins
+to bribe foreign agents withal by saying that his whole allowance for
+extraordinary expenses and trouble in maintaining his diplomatic and
+internal correspondence was exactly 500 florins yearly.  He alluded to
+the slanders circulated as to his wealth and its sources by those who
+envied him for his position and hated him for his services.
+
+"But I beg you to believe, My Lords," he continued, "that my property is
+neither so great nor so small as some people represent it to be.
+
+"In the year '75 I married my wife," he said.  "I was pleased with her
+person.  I was likewise pleased with the dowry which was promptly paid
+over to me, with firm expectation of increase and betterment .  .  .  .
+I ac knowledge that forty-three years ago my wife and myself had got
+together so much of real and personal property that we could live
+honourably upon it.  I had at that time as good pay and practice as any
+advocate in the courts which brought me in a good 4000 florins a year;
+there being but eight advocates practising at the time, of whom I was
+certainly not the one least employed.  In the beginning of the year '77
+I came into the service of the city of Rotterdam as 'Pensionary.  Upon my
+salary from that town I was enabled to support my family, having then but
+two children.  Now I can clearly prove that between the years 1577 and
+1616 inclusive I have inherited in my own right or that of my wife, from
+our relatives, for ourselves and our children by lawful succession, more
+than 400 Holland morgens of land (about 800 acres), more than 2000
+florins yearly of redeemable rents, a good house in the city of Delft,
+some houses in the open country, and several thousand florins in ready
+money.  I have likewise reclaimed in the course of the past forty years
+out of the water and swamps by dyking more than an equal number of acres
+to those inherited, and have bought and sold property during the same
+period to the value of 800,000 florins; having sometimes bought 100,000
+florins' worth and sold 60,000 of it for 160,000, and so on."
+
+It was evident that the thrifty Advocate during his long life had
+understood how to turn over his money, and it was not necessary to
+imagine "waggon-loads of Spanish pistoles" and bribes on a gigantic scale
+from the hereditary enemy in order to account for a reasonable opulence
+on his part.
+
+"I have had nothing to do with trade," he continued, "it having been the
+custom of my ancestors to risk no money except where the plough goes.  In
+the great East India Company however, which with four years of hard work,
+public and private, I have helped establish, in order to inflict damage
+on the Spaniards and Portuguese, I have adventured somewhat more than
+5000 florins .  .  .  .  Now even if my condition be reasonably good, I
+think no one has reason to envy me.  Nevertheless I have said it in your
+Lordships' Assembly, and I repeat it solemnly on this occasion, that I
+have pondered the state of my affairs during my recent illness and found
+that in order to leave my children unencumbered estates I must sell
+property to the value of 60,000 or 70,000 florins.  This I would rather
+do than leave the charge to my children.  That I should have got thus
+behindhand through bad management, I beg your Highnesses not to believe.
+But I have inherited, with the succession of four persons whose only heir
+I was and with that of others to whom I was co-heir, many burthens as
+well.  I have bought property with encumbrances, and I have dyked and
+bettered several estates with borrowed money.  Now should it please your
+Lordships to institute a census and valuation of the property of your
+subjects, I for one should be very well pleased.  For I know full well
+that those who in the estimates of capital in the year 1599 rated
+themselves at 50,000 or 60,000 florins now may boast of having twice as
+much property as I have.  Yet in that year out of patriotism I placed
+myself on the list of those liable for the very highest contributions,
+being assessed on a property of 200,000 florins."
+
+The Advocate alluded with haughty contempt to the notorious lies
+circulated by his libellers in regard to his lineage, as if the vast
+services and unquestioned abilities of such a statesman would not have
+illustrated the obscurest origin.  But as he happened to be of ancient
+and honourable descent, he chose to vindicate his position in that
+regard.
+
+"I was born in the city of Amersfoort," he said, "by the father's side
+an Oldenbarneveld; an old and noble race, from generation to generation
+steadfast and true; who have been duly summoned for many hundred years
+to the assembly of the nobles of their province as they are to this day.
+By my mother's side I am sprung from the ancient and knightly family of
+Amersfoort, which for three or four hundred years has been known as
+foremost among the nobles of Utrecht in all state affairs and as landed
+proprietors."
+
+It is only for the sake of opening these domestic and private lights upon
+an historical character whose life was so pre-eminently and almost
+exclusively a public one that we have drawn some attention to this
+stately defence made by the Advocate of his birth, life, and services to
+the State.  The public portions of the state paper belong exclusively to
+history, and have already been sufficiently detailed.
+
+The letter to Prince Maurice was delivered into his hands by Cornelis van
+der Myle, son-in-law of Barneveld.
+
+No reply to it was ever sent, but several days afterwards the Stadholder
+called from his open window to van der Myle, who happened to be passing
+by.  He then informed him that he neither admitted the premises nor the
+conclusion of the Advocate's letter, saying that many things set down in
+it were false.  He furthermore told him a story of a certain old man who,
+having in his youth invented many things and told them often for truth,
+believed them when he came to old age to be actually true and was ever
+ready to stake his salvation upon them.  Whereupon he shut the window and
+left van der Myle to make such application of the parable as he thought
+proper, vouchsafing no further answer to Barneveld's communication.
+
+Dudley Carleton related the anecdote to his government with much glee,
+but it may be doubted whether this bold way of giving the lie to a
+venerable statesman through his son-in-law would have been accounted
+as triumphant argumentation anywhere out of a barrack.
+
+As for the Remonstrance to the States of Holland, although most
+respectfully received in that assembly except by the five opposition
+cities, its immediate effect on the public was to bring down a fresh
+"snow storm"--to use the expression of a contemporary--of pamphlets,
+libels, caricatures, and broadsheets upon the head of the Advocate.
+In every bookseller's and print shop window in all the cities of the
+country, the fallen statesman was represented in all possible ludicrous,
+contemptible, and hateful shapes, while hags and blind beggars about the
+streets screeched filthy and cursing ballads against him, even at his
+very doors.
+
+The effect of energetic, uncompromising calumny has rarely been more
+strikingly illustrated than in the case of this statesman.  Blackened
+daily all over by a thousand trowels, the purest and noblest character
+must have been defiled, and it is no wonder that the incrustation upon
+the Advocate's fame should have lasted for two centuries and a half.  It
+may perhaps endure for as many more: Not even the vile Marshal d'Ancre,
+who had so recently perished, was more the mark of obloquy in a country
+which he had dishonoured, flouted, and picked to the bone than was
+Barneveld in a commonwealth which he had almost created and had served
+faithfully from youth to old age.  It was even the fashion to compare him
+with Concini in order to heighten the wrath of the public, as if any
+parallel between the ignoble, foreign paramour of a stupid and sensual
+queen, and the great statesman, patriot, and jurist of whom civilization
+will be always proud, could ever enter any but an idiot's brain.
+
+Meantime the Stadholder, who had so successfully handled the Assembly of
+Gelderland and Overyssel, now sailed across the Zuiderzee from Kampen to
+Amsterdam.  On his approach to the stately northern Venice, standing full
+of life and commercial bustle upon its vast submerged forest of Norwegian
+pines, he was met by a fleet of yachts and escorted through the water
+gates of the into the city.
+
+Here an immense assemblage of vessels of every class, from the humble
+gondola to the bulky East Indianian and the first-rate ship of war, gaily
+bannered with the Orange colours and thronged from deck to topmast by
+enthusiastic multitudes, was waiting to receive their beloved stadholder.
+A deafening cannonade saluted him on his approach.  The Prince was
+escorted to the Square or Dam, where on a high scaffolding covered with
+blue velvet in front of the stately mediaeval town-hall the burgomasters
+and board of magistrates in their robes of office were waiting to receive
+him.  The strains of that most inspiriting and suggestive of national
+melodies, the 'Wilhelmus van Nassouwen,' rang through the air, and when
+they were silent, the chief magistrate poured forth a very eloquent and
+tedious oration, and concluded by presenting him with a large orange in
+solid gold; Maurice having succeeded to the principality a few months
+before on the death of his half-brother Philip William.
+
+The "Blooming in Love," as one of the Chambers of "Rhetoric " in which
+the hard-handed but half-artistic mechanics and shopkeepers of the
+Netherlands loved to disport themselves was called, then exhibited upon
+an opposite scaffold a magnificent representation of Jupiter astride upon
+an eagle and banding down to the Stadholder as if from the clouds that
+same principality.  Nothing could be neater or more mythological.
+
+The Prince and his escort, sitting in the windows of the town-hall, the
+square beneath being covered with 3000 or 4000 burgher militia in full
+uniform, with orange plumes in their hats and orange scarves on their
+breasts, saw still other sights.  A gorgeous procession set forth by the
+"Netherlandish Academy," another chamber of rhetoric, and filled with
+those emblematic impersonations so dear to the hearts of Netherlanders,
+had been sweeping through all the canals and along the splendid quays of
+the city.  The Maid of Holland, twenty feet high, led the van, followed
+by the counterfeit presentment of each of her six sisters.  An orange
+tree full of flowers and fruit was conspicuous in one barge, while in
+another, strangely and lugubriously enough, lay the murdered William the
+Silent in the arms of his wife and surrounded by his weeping sons and
+daughters all attired in white satin.
+
+In the evening the Netherland Academy, to improve the general hilarity,
+and as if believing exhibitions of murder the most appropriate means of
+welcoming the Prince, invited him to a scenic representation of the
+assassination of Count Florence V. of Holland by Gerrit van Velsen and
+other nobles.  There seemed no especial reason for the selection, unless
+perhaps the local one; one of the perpetrators of this crime against an
+ancient predecessor of William the Silent in the sovereignty of Holland
+having been a former lord proprietor of Amsterdam and the adjacent
+territories, Gysbrecht van Amatel.
+
+Maurice returned to the Hague.  Five of the seven provinces were entirely
+his own.  Utrecht too was already wavering, while there could be no doubt
+of the warm allegiance to himself of the important commercial metropolis
+of Holland, the only province in which Barneveld's influence was still
+paramount.
+
+Owing to the watchfulness and distrust of Barneveld, which had never
+faltered, Spain had not secured the entire control of the disputed
+duchies, but she had at least secured the head of a venerated saint.
+"The bargain is completed for the head of the glorious Saint Lawrence,
+which you know I so much desire," wrote Philip triumphantly to the
+Archduke Albert.  He had, however, not got it for nothing.
+
+The Abbot of Glamart in Julich, then in possession of that treasure, had
+stipulated before delivering it that if at any time the heretics or other
+enemies should destroy the monastery his Majesty would establish them in
+Spanish Flanders and give them the same revenues as they now enjoyed in
+Julich.  Count Herman van den Berg was to give a guarantee to that
+effect.
+
+Meantime the long controversy in the duchies having tacitly come to a
+standstill upon the basis of 'uti possidetis,' the Spanish government had
+leisure in the midst of their preparation for the general crusade upon
+European heresy to observe and enjoy the internal religious dissensions
+in their revolted provinces.  Although they had concluded the convention
+with them as with countries over which they had no pretensions, they had
+never at heart allowed more virtue to the conjunction "as," which really
+contained the essence of the treaty, than grammatically belonged to it.
+Spain still chose to regard the independence of the Seven Provinces as a
+pleasant fiction to be dispelled when, the truce having expired by its
+own limitation, she should resume, as she fully meant to do, her
+sovereignty over all the seventeen Netherlands, the United as well as
+the obedient.  Thus at any rate the question of state rights or central
+sovereignty would be settled by a very summary process.  The Spanish
+ambassador was wroth, as may well be supposed, when the agent of the
+rebel provinces received in London the rank, title, and recognition of
+ambassador.  Gondemar at least refused to acknowledge Noel de Caron as
+his diplomatic equal or even as his colleague, and was vehement in his
+protestations on the subject.  But James, much as he dreaded the Spanish
+envoy and fawned upon his master, was not besotted enough to comply with
+these demands at the expense of his most powerful ally, the Republic of
+the Netherlands.  The Spanish king however declared his ambassador's
+proceedings to be in exact accordance with his instructions.  He was
+sorry, he said, if the affair had caused discontent to the King of Great
+Britain; he intended in all respects to maintain the Treaty of Truce of
+which his Majesty had been one of the guarantors, but as that treaty had
+but a few more years to run, after which he should be reinstated in his
+former right of sovereignty over all the Netherlands, he entirely
+justified the conduct of Count Gondemar.
+
+It may well be conceived that, as the years passed by, as the period of
+the Truce grew nearer and the religious disputes became every day more
+envenomed, the government at Madrid should look on the tumultuous scene
+with saturnine satisfaction.  There was little doubt now, they thought,
+that the Provinces, sick of their rebellion and that fancied independence
+which had led them into a whirlpool of political and religious misery,
+and convinced of their incompetence to govern themselves, would be only
+too happy to seek the forgiving arms of their lawful sovereign.  Above
+all they must have learned that their great heresy had carried its
+chastisement with it, that within something they called a Reformed Church
+other heresies had been developed which demanded condign punishment at
+the hands of that new Church, and that there could be neither rest for
+them in this world nor salvation in the next except by returning to the
+bosom of their ancient mother.
+
+Now was the time, so it was thought, to throw forward a strong force of
+Jesuits as skirmishers into the Provinces by whom the way would be opened
+for the reconquest of the whole territory.
+
+"By the advices coming to us continually from thence," wrote the King of
+Spain to Archduke Albert, "we understand that the disquiets and
+differences continue in Holland on matters relating to their sects, and
+that from this has resulted the conversion of many to the Catholic
+religion.  So it has been taken into consideration whether it would not
+be expedient that some fathers of the company of Jesuits be sent secretly
+from Rome to Holland, who should negotiate concerning the conversion of
+that people.  Before taking a resolution, I have thought best to give an
+account of this matter to your Highness.  I should be glad if you would
+inform me what priests are going to Holland, what fruits they yield, and
+what can be done for the continuance of their labours.  Please to advise
+me very particularly together with any suggestions that may occur to you
+in this matter."
+
+The Archduke, who was nearer the scene, was not so sure that the old
+religion was making such progress as his royal nephew or those who spoke
+in his name believed.  At any rate, if it were not rapidly gaining
+ground, it would be neither for want of discord among the Protestants
+nor for lack of Jesuits to profit by it.
+
+"I do not understand," said he in reply, "nor is it generally considered
+certain that from the differences and disturbances that the Hollanders
+are having among themselves there has resulted the conversion of any of
+them to our blessed Catholic faith, because their disputes are of certain
+points concerning which there are different opinions within their sect.
+There has always been a goodly number of priests here, the greater part
+of whom belong to the Company.  They are very diligent and fervent, and
+the Catholics derive much comfort from them.  To send more of them would
+do more harm than good.  It might be found out, and then they would
+perhaps be driven out of Holland or even chastised.  So it seems better
+to leave things as they are for the present."
+
+The Spanish government was not discouraged however, but was pricking up
+its ears anew at strange communications it was receiving from the very
+bosom of the council of state in the Netherlands.  This body, as will be
+remembered, had been much opposed to Barneveld and to the policy pursued
+under his leadership by the States of Holland.  Some of its members were
+secretly Catholic and still more secretly disposed to effect a revolution
+in the government, the object of which should be to fuse the United
+Provinces with the obedient Netherlands in a single independent monarchy
+to be placed under the sceptre of the son of Philip III.
+
+A paper containing the outlines of this scheme had been sent to Spain,
+and the King at once forwarded it in cipher to the Archduke at Brussels
+for his opinion and co-operation.
+
+"You will see," he said, "the plan which a certain person zealous for the
+public good has proposed for reducing the Netherlanders to my obedience.
+.  .  .  .  You will please advise with Count Frederic van den Berg and
+let me know with much particularity and profound secrecy what is thought,
+what is occurring, and the form in which this matter ought to be
+negotiated, and the proper way to make it march."
+
+Unquestionably the paper was of grave importance.  It informed the King
+of Spain that some principal personages in the United Netherlands,
+members of the council of state, were of opinion that if his Majesty or
+Archduke Albert should propose peace, it could be accomplished at that
+moment more easily than ever before.  They had arrived at the conviction
+that no assistance was to be obtained from the King of France, who was
+too much weakened by tumults and sedition at home, while nothing good
+could be expected from the King of England.  The greater part of the
+Province of Gelderland, they said, with all Friesland, Utrecht,
+Groningen, and Overyssel were inclined to a permanent peace.  Being all
+of them frontier provinces, they were constantly exposed to the brunt of
+hostilities.  Besides this, the war expenses alone would now be more than
+3,000,000 florins a year.  Thus the people were kept perpetually
+harassed, and although evil-intentioned persons approved these burthens
+under the pretence that such heavy taxation served to free them from the
+tyranny of Spain, those of sense and quality reproved them and knew the
+contrary to be true.  "Many here know," continued these traitors in the
+heart of the state council, "how good it would be for the people of the
+Netherlands to have a prince, and those having this desire being on the
+frontier are determined to accept the son of your Majesty for their
+ruler."  The conditions of the proposed arrangement were to be that the
+Prince with his successors who were thus to possess all the Netherlands
+were to be independent sovereigns not subject in any way to the crown of
+Spain, and that the great governments and dignities of the country were
+to remain in the hands then holding them.
+
+This last condition was obviously inserted in the plan for the special
+benefit of Prince Maurice and Count Lewis, although there is not an atom
+of evidence that they had ever heard of the intrigue or doubt that, if
+they had, they would have signally chastised its guilty authors.
+
+It was further stated that the Catholics having in each town a church and
+free exercise of their religion would soon be in a great majority.  Thus
+the political and religious counter-revolution would be triumphantly
+accomplished.
+
+It was proposed that the management of the business should be entrusted
+to some gentleman of the country possessing property there who "under
+pretext of the public good should make people comprehend what a great
+thing it would be if they could obtain this favour from the Spanish King,
+thus extricating themselves from so many calamities and miseries, and
+obtaining free traffic and a prince of their own."  It would be necessary
+for the King and Archduke to write many letters and promise great rewards
+to persons who might otherwise embarrass the good work.
+
+The plot was an ingenious one.  There seemed in the opinion of these
+conspirators in the state council but one great obstacle to its success.
+It should be kept absolutely concealed from the States of Holland.  The
+great stipendiary of Spain, John of Barneveld, whose coffers were filled
+with Spanish pistoles, whose name and surname might be read by all men in
+the account-books at Brussels heading the register of mighty bribe-
+takers, the man who was howled at in a thousand lampoons as a traitor
+ever ready to sell his country, whom even Prince Maurice "partly
+believed" to be the pensionary of Philip, must not hear a whisper of this
+scheme to restore the Republic to Spanish control and place it under the
+sceptre of a Spanish prince.
+
+The States of Holland at that moment and so long as he was a member of
+the body were Barneveld and Barneveld only; thinking his thoughts,
+speaking with his tongue, writing with his pen.  Of this neither friend
+nor foe ever expressed a doubt.  Indeed it was one of the staple
+accusations against him.
+
+Yet this paper in which the Spanish king in confidential cipher and
+profound secrecy communicated to Archduke Albert his hopes and his
+schemes for recovering the revolted provinces as a kingdom for his son
+contained these words of caution.
+
+"The States of Holland and Zealand will be opposed to the plan," it said.
+"If the treaty come to the knowledge of the States and Council of Holland
+before it has been acted upon by the five frontier provinces the whole
+plan will be demolished."
+
+Such was the opinion entertained by Philip himself of the man who was
+supposed to be his stipendiary.  I am not aware that this paper has ever
+been alluded to in any document or treatise private or public from the
+day of its date to this hour.  It certainly has never been published, but
+it lies deciphered in the Archives of the Kingdom at Brussels, and is
+alone sufficient to put to shame the slanderers of the Advocate's
+loyalty.
+
+Yet let it be remembered that in this very summer exactly at the moment
+when these intrigues were going on between the King of Spain and the
+class of men most opposed to Barneveld, the accusations against his
+fidelity were loudest and rifest.
+
+Before the Stadholder had so suddenly slipped down to Brielle in order
+to secure that important stronghold for the Contra-Remonstrant party,
+reports had been carefully strewn among the people that the Advocate
+was about to deliver that place and other fortresses to Spain.
+
+Brielle, Flushing, Rammekens, the very cautionary towns and keys to the
+country which he had so recently and in such masterly manner delivered
+from the grasp of the hereditary ally he was now about to surrender to
+the ancient enemy.
+
+The Spaniards were already on the sea, it was said.  Had it not been for
+his Excellency's watchfulness and promptitude, they would already under
+guidance of Barneveld and his crew have mastered the city of Brielle.
+Flushing too through Barneveld's advice and connivance was open at a
+particular point, in order that the Spaniards, who had their eye upon it,
+might conveniently enter and take possession of the place.  The air was
+full of wild rumours to this effect, and already the humbler classes who
+sided with the Stadholder saw in him the saviour of the country from the
+treason of the Advocate and the renewed tyranny of Spain.
+
+The Prince made no such pretence, but simply took possession of the
+fortress in order to be beforehand with the Waartgelders.  The Contra-
+Remonstrants in Brielle had desired that "men should see who had the
+hardest fists," and it would certainly have been difficult to find harder
+ones than those of the hero of Nieuwpoort.
+
+Besides the Jesuits coming in so skilfully to triumph over the warring
+sects of Calvinists, there were other engineers on whom the Spanish
+government relied to effect the reconquest of the Netherlands.
+Especially it was an object to wreak vengeance on Holland, that head and
+front of the revolt, both for its persistence in rebellion and for the
+immense prosperity and progress by which that rebellion had been
+rewarded.  Holland had grown fat and strong, while the obedient
+Netherlands were withered to the marrow of their bones.  But there was a
+practical person then resident in Spain to whom the Netherlands were well
+known, to whom indeed everything was well known, who had laid before the
+King a magnificent scheme for destroying the commerce and with it the
+very existence of Holland to the great advantage of the Spanish finances
+and of the Spanish Netherlands.  Philip of course laid it before the
+Archduke as usual, that he might ponder it well and afterwards, if
+approved, direct its execution.
+
+The practical person set forth in an elaborate memoir that the Hollanders
+were making rapid progress in commerce, arts, and manufactures, while the
+obedient provinces were sinking as swiftly into decay.  The Spanish
+Netherlands were almost entirely shut off from the sea, the rivers
+Scheldt and Meuse being hardly navigable for them on account of the
+control of those waters by Holland.  The Dutch were attracting to their
+dominions all artisans, navigators, and traders.  Despising all other
+nations and giving them the law, they had ruined the obedient provinces.
+Ostend, Nieuwpoort, Dunkerk were wasting away, and ought to be restored.
+
+"I have profoundly studied forty years long the subjects of commerce and
+navigation," said the practical person, "and I have succeeded in
+penetrating the secrets and acquiring, as it were, universal knowledge--
+let me not be suspected of boasting--of the whole discovered world and of
+the ocean.  I have been assisted by study of the best works of geography
+and history, by my own labours, and by those of my late father, a man of
+illustrious genius and heroical conceptions and very zealous in the
+Catholic faith."
+
+The modest and practical son of an illustrious but anonymous father, then
+coming to the point, said it would be the easiest thing in the world to
+direct the course of the Scheldt into an entirely new channel through
+Spanish Flanders to the sea.  Thus the Dutch ports and forts which had
+been constructed with such magnificence and at such vast expense would be
+left high and dry; the Spaniards would build new ones in Flanders, and
+thus control the whole navigation and deprive the Hollanders of that
+empire of the sea which they now so proudly arrogated.  This scheme was
+much simpler to carry out than the vulgar might suppose, and, when.
+accomplished, it would destroy the commerce, navigation, and fisheries of
+the Hollanders, throwing it all into the hands of the Archdukes.  This
+would cause such ruin, poverty, and tumults everywhere that all would be
+changed.  The Republic of the United States would annihilate itself and
+fall to pieces; the religious dissensions, the war of one sect with
+another, and the jealousy of the House of Nassau, suspected of plans
+hostile to popular liberties, finishing the work of destruction.  "Then
+the Republic," said the man of universal science, warming at sight of the
+picture he was painting, "laden with debt and steeped in poverty, will
+fall to the ground of its own weight, and thus debilitated will crawl
+humbly to place itself in the paternal hands of the illustrious house
+of Austria."
+
+It would be better, he thought, to set about the work, before the
+expiration of the Truce.  At any rate, the preparation for it, or the
+mere threat of it, would ensure a renewal of that treaty on juster terms.
+It was most important too to begin at once the construction of a port on
+the coast of Flanders, looking to the north.
+
+There was a position, he said, without naming it, in which whole navies
+could ride in safety, secure from all tempests, beyond the reach of the
+Hollanders, open at all times to traffic to and from England, France,
+Spain, Norway, Sweden, Russia--a perfectly free commerce, beyond the
+reach of any rights or duties claimed or levied by the insolent republic.
+In this port would assemble all the navigators of the country, and it
+would become in time of war a terror to the Hollanders, English, and all
+northern peoples.  In order to attract, protect, and preserve these
+navigators and this commerce, many great public edifices must be built,
+together with splendid streets of houses and impregnable fortifications.
+It should be a walled and stately city, and its name should be
+Philipopolis.  If these simple projects, so easy of execution, pleased
+his Majesty, the practical person was ready to explain them in all their
+details.
+
+His Majesty was enchanted with the glowing picture, but before quite
+deciding on carrying the scheme into execution thought it best to consult
+the Archduke.
+
+The reply of Albert has not been preserved.  It was probably not
+enthusiastic, and the man who without boasting had declared himself to
+know everything was never commissioned to convert his schemes into
+realities.  That magnificent walled city, Philipopolis, with its gorgeous
+streets and bristling fortresses, remained unbuilt, the Scheldt has
+placidly flowed through its old channel to the sea from that day to this,
+and the Republic remained in possession of the unexampled foreign trade
+with which rebellion had enriched it.
+
+These various intrigues and projects show plainly enough however the
+encouragement given to the enemies of the United Provinces and of
+Protestantism everywhere by these disastrous internal dissensions.  But
+yesterday and the Republic led by Barneveld in council and Maurice of
+Nassau in the field stood at the head of the great army of resistance to
+the general crusade organized by Spain and Rome against all unbelievers.
+And now that the war was absolutely beginning in Bohemia, the Republic
+was falling upon its own sword instead of smiting with it the universal
+foe.
+
+It was not the King of Spain alone that cast longing eyes on the fair
+territory of that commonwealth which the unparalleled tyranny of his
+father had driven to renounce his sceptre.  Both in the Netherlands and
+France, among the extreme orthodox party, there were secret schemes, to
+which Maurice was not privy, to raise Maurice to the sovereignty of the
+Provinces.  Other conspirators with a wider scope and more treasonable
+design were disposed to surrender their country to the dominion of
+France, stipulating of course large rewards and offices for themselves
+and the vice-royalty of what should then be the French Netherlands to
+Maurice.
+
+The schemes were wild enough perhaps, but their very existence, which is
+undoubted, is another proof, if more proof were wanted, of the lamentable
+tendency, in times of civil and religious dissension, of political
+passion to burn out the very first principles of patriotism.
+
+It is also important, on account of the direct influence exerted by these
+intrigues upon subsequent events of the gravest character, to throw a
+beam of light on matters which were thought to have been shrouded for
+ever in impenetrable darkness.
+
+Langerac, the States' Ambassador in Paris, was the very reverse of his
+predecessor, the wily, unscrupulous, and accomplished Francis Aerssens.
+The envoys of the Republic were rarely dull, but Langerac was a
+simpleton.  They were renowned for political experience, skill,
+familiarity with foreign languages, knowledge of literature, history,
+and public law; but he was ignorant, spoke French very imperfectly,
+at a court where not a human being could address him in his own tongue,
+had never been employed in diplomacy or in high office of any kind,
+and could carry but small personal weight at a post where of all others
+the representative of the great republic should have commanded deference
+both for his own qualities and for the majesty of his government.  At a
+period when France was left without a master or a guide the Dutch
+ambassador, under a becoming show of profound respect, might really have
+governed the country so far as regarded at least the all important
+relations which bound the two nations together.  But Langerac was a mere
+picker-up of trifles, a newsmonger who wrote a despatch to-day with
+information which a despatch was written on the morrow to contradict,
+while in itself conveying additional intelligence absolutely certain to
+be falsified soon afterwards.  The Emperor of Germany had gone mad;
+Prince Maurice had been assassinated in the Hague, a fact which his
+correspondents, the States-General, might be supposed already to know, if
+it were one; there had been a revolution in the royal bed-chamber; the
+Spanish cook of the young queen had arrived from Madrid; the Duke of
+Nevers was behaving very oddly at Vienna; such communications, and others
+equally startling, were the staple of his correspondence.
+
+Still he was honest enough, very mild, perfectly docile to Barneveld,
+dependent upon his guidance, and fervently attached to that statesman so
+long as his wheel was going up the hill.  Moreover, his industry in
+obtaining information and his passion for imparting it made it probable
+that nothing very momentous would be neglected should it be laid before
+him, but that his masters, and especially the Advocate, would be enabled
+to judge for themselves as to the attention due to it.
+
+"With this you will be apprised of some very high and weighty matters,"
+he wrote privately and in cipher to Barneveld, "which you will make use
+of according to your great wisdom and forethought for the country's
+service."
+
+He requested that the matter might also be confided to M. van der Myle,
+that he might assist his father-in-law, so overburdened with business, in
+the task of deciphering the communication.  He then stated that he had
+been "very earnestly informed three days before by M. du Agean"--member
+of the privy council of France--"that it had recently come to the King's
+ears, and his Majesty knew it to be authentic, that there was a secret
+and very dangerous conspiracy in Holland of persons belonging to the
+Reformed religion in which others were also mixed.  This party held very
+earnest and very secret correspondence with the factious portion of the
+Contra-Remonstrants both in the Netherlands and France, seeking under
+pretext of the religious dissensions or by means of them to confer the
+sovereignty upon Prince Maurice by general consent of the Contra-
+Remonstrants.  Their object was also to strengthen and augment the force
+of the same religious party in France, to which end the Duc de Bouillon
+and M. de Chatillon were very earnestly co-operating.  Langerac had
+already been informed by Chatillon that the Contra-Remonstrants had
+determined to make a public declaration against the Remonstrants, and
+come to an open separation from them.
+
+"Others propose however," said the Ambassador, "that the King himself
+should use the occasion to seize the sovereignty of the United Provinces
+for himself and to appoint Prince Maurice viceroy, giving him in marriage
+Madame Henriette of France."  The object of this movement would be to
+frustrate the plots of the Contra-Remonstrants, who were known to be
+passionately hostile to the King and to France, and who had been
+constantly traversing the negotiations of M. du Maurier.  There was a
+disposition to send a special and solemn embassy to the States, but it
+was feared that the British king would at once do the same, to the
+immense disadvantage of the Remonstrants.  "M. de Barneveld," said the
+envoy, "is deeply sympathized with here and commiserated.  The Chancellor
+has repeatedly requested me to present to you his very sincere and very
+hearty respects, exhorting you to continue in your manly steadfastness
+and courage."  He also assured the Advocate that the French ambassador,
+M. du Maurier, enjoyed the entire confidence of his government, and of
+the principal members of the council, and that the King, although
+contemplating, as we have seen, the seizure of the sovereignty of the
+country, was most amicably disposed towards it, and so soon as the peace
+of Savoy was settled "had something very good for it in his mind."
+Whether the something very good was this very design to deprive it of
+independence, the Ambassador did not state.  He however recommended the
+use of sundry small presents at the French court--especially to Madame de
+Luynes, wife of the new favourite of Lewis since the death of Concini, in
+which he had aided, now rising rapidly to consideration, and to Madame du
+Agean--and asked to be supplied with funds accordingly.  By these means
+he thought it probable that at least the payment to the States of the
+long arrears of the French subsidy might be secured.
+
+Three weeks later, returning to the subject, the Ambassador reported
+another conversation with M. du Agean.  That politician assured him,
+"with high protestations," as a perfectly certain fact that a Frenchman
+duly qualified had arrived in Paris from Holland who had been in
+communication not only with him but with several of the most confidential
+members of the privy council of France.  This duly qualified gentleman
+had been secretly commissioned to say that in opinion of the conspirators
+already indicated the occasion was exactly offered by these religious
+dissensions in the Netherlands for bringing the whole country under the
+obedience of the King.  This would be done with perfect ease if he would
+only be willing to favour a little the one party, that of the Contra-
+Remonstrants, and promise his Excellency "perfect and perpetual authority
+in the government with other compensations."
+
+The proposition, said du Agean, had been rejected by the privy
+councillors with a declaration that they would not mix themselves up with
+any factions, nor assist any party, but that they would gladly work with
+the government for the accommodation of these difficulties and
+differences in the Provinces.
+
+"I send you all this nakedly," concluded Langerac, "exactly as it has
+been communicated to me, having always answered according to my duty and
+with a view by negotiating with these persons to discover the intentions
+as well of one side as the other."
+
+The Advocate was not profoundly impressed by these revelations.  He was
+too experienced a statesman to doubt that in times when civil and
+religious passion was running high there was never lack of fishers in
+troubled waters, and that if a body of conspirators could secure a
+handsome compensation by selling their country to a foreign prince, they
+would always be ready to do it.
+
+But although believed by Maurice to be himself a stipendiary of Spain,
+he was above suspecting the Prince of any share in the low and stupid
+intrigue which du Agean had imagined or disclosed.  That the Stadholder
+was ambitious of greater power, he hardly doubted, but that he was
+seeking to acquire it by such corrupt and circuitous means, he did not
+dream.  He confidentially communicated the plot as in duty bound to some
+members of the States, and had the Prince been accused in any
+conversation or statement of being privy to the scheme, he would have
+thought himself bound to mention it to him.  The story came to the ears
+of Maurice however, and helped to feed his wrath against the Advocate,
+as if he were responsible for a plot, if plot it were, which had been
+concocted by his own deadliest enemies.  The Prince wrote a letter
+alluding to this communication of Langerac and giving much alarm to that
+functionary.  He thought his despatches must have been intercepted and
+proposed in future to write always by special courier.  Barneveld thought
+that unnecessary except when there were more important matters than those
+appeared to him to be and requiring more haste.
+
+"The letter of his Excellency," said he to the Ambassador, "is caused in
+my opinion by the fact that some of the deputies to this assembly to whom
+I secretly imparted your letter or its substance did not rightly
+comprehend or report it.  You did not say that his Excellency had any
+such design or project, but that it had been said that the Contra-
+Remonstrants were entertaining such a scheme.  I would have shown the
+letter to him myself, but I thought it not fair, for good reasons, to
+make M. du Agean known as the informant.  I do not think it amiss for you
+to write yourself to his Excellency and tell him what is said, but
+whether it would be proper to give up the name of your author, I think
+doubtful.  At all events one must consult about it.  We live in a strange
+world, and one knows not whom to trust."
+
+He instructed the Ambassador to enquire into the foundation of these
+statements of du Agean and send advices by every occasion of this affair
+and others of equal interest.  He was however much more occupied with
+securing the goodwill of the French government, which he no more
+suspected of tampering in these schemes against the independence of the
+Republic than he did Maurice himself.  He relied and he had reason to
+rely on their steady good offices in the cause of moderation and
+reconciliation.  "We are not yet brought to the necessary and much
+desired unity," he said, "but we do not despair, hoping that his
+Majesty's efforts through M. du Maurier, both privately and publicly,
+will do much good.  Be assured that they are very agreeable to all
+rightly disposed people .  .  .  .  My trust is that God the Lord will
+give us a happy issue and save this country from perdition."  He approved
+of the presents to the two ladies as suggested by Langerac if by so doing
+the payment of the arrearages could be furthered.  He was still hopeful
+and confident in the justice of his cause and the purity of his
+conscience.  "Aerssens is crowing like a cock," he said, "but the truth
+will surely prevail."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+     A Deputation from Utrecht to Maurice--The Fair at Utrecht--Maurice
+     and the States' Deputies at Utrecht--Ogle refuses to act in
+     Opposition to the States--The Stadholder disbands the Waartgelders--
+     The Prince appoints forty Magistrates--The States formally disband
+     the Waartgelders.
+
+The eventful midsummer had arrived.  The lime-tree blossoms were fragrant
+in the leafy bowers overshadowing the beautiful little rural capital of
+the Commonwealth.  The anniversary of the Nieuwpoort victory, July 2, had
+come and gone, and the Stadholder was known to be resolved that his
+political campaign this year should be as victorious as that memorable
+military one of eighteen years before.
+
+Before the dog-days should begin to rage, the fierce heats of theological
+and political passion were to wax daily more and more intense.
+
+The party at Utrecht in favour of a compromise and in awe of the
+Stadholder sent a deputation to the Hague with the express but secret
+purpose of conferring with Maurice.  They were eight in number, three of
+whom, including Gillis van Ledenberg, lodged at the house of Daniel
+Tressel, first clerk of the States-General.
+
+The leaders of the Barneveld party, aware of the purport of this mission
+and determined to frustrate it, contrived a meeting between the Utrecht
+commissioners and Grotius, Hoogerbeets, de Haan, and de Lange at
+Tressel's house.
+
+Grotius was spokesman.  Maurice had accused the States of Holland of
+mutiny and rebellion, and the distinguished Pensionary of Rotterdam now
+retorted the charges of mutiny, disobedience, and mischief-making upon
+those who, under the mask of religion, were attempting to violate the
+sovereignty of the States, the privileges and laws of the province,
+the authority of the, magistrates, and to subject them to the power of
+others.  To prevent such a catastrophe many cities had enlisted
+Waartgelders.  By this means they had held such mutineers to their duty,
+as had been seen at Leyden, Haarlem, and other places.  The States of
+Utrecht had secured themselves in the same way.  But the mischiefmakers
+and the ill-disposed had been seeking everywhere to counteract these
+wholesome measures and to bring about a general disbanding of these
+troops.  This it was necessary to resist with spirit.  It was the very
+foundation of the provinces' sovereignty, to maintain which the public
+means must be employed.  It was in vain to drive the foe out of the
+country if one could not remain in safety within one's own doors.  They
+had heard with sorrow that Utrecht was thinking of cashiering its troops,
+and the speaker proceeded therefore to urge with all the eloquence he was
+master of the necessity of pausing before taking so fatal a step.
+
+The deputies of Utrecht answered by pleading the great pecuniary burthen
+which the maintenance of the mercenaries imposed upon that province, and
+complained that there was no one to come to their assistance, exposed as
+they were to a sudden and overwhelming attack from many quarters.  The
+States-General had not only written but sent commissioners to Utrecht
+insisting on the disbandment.  They could plainly see the displeasure of
+the Prince.  It was a very different affair in Holland, but the States of
+Utrecht found it necessary of two evils to choose the least.
+
+They had therefore instructed their commissioners to request the Prince
+to remove the foreign garrison from their capital and to send the old
+companies of native militia in their place, to be in the pay of the
+episcopate.  In this case the States would agree to disband the new
+levies.
+
+Grotius in reply again warned the commissioners against communicating
+with Maurice according to their instructions, intimated that the native
+militia on which they were proposing to rely might have been debauched,
+and he held out hopes that perhaps the States of Utrecht might derive
+some relief from certain financial measures now contemplated in Holland.
+
+The Utrechters resolved to wait at least several days before opening the
+subject of their mission to the Prince.  Meantime Ledenberg made a rough
+draft of a report of what had occurred between them and Grotius and his
+colleagues which it was resolved to lay secretly before the States of
+Utrecht.  The Hollanders hoped that they had at last persuaded the
+commissioners to maintain the Waartgelders.
+
+The States of Holland now passed a solemn resolution to the effect that
+these new levies had been made to secure municipal order and maintain the
+laws from subversion by civil tumults.  If this object could be obtained
+by other means, if the Stadholder were willing to remove garrisons of
+foreign mercenaries on whom there could be no reliance, and supply their
+place with native troops both in Holland and Utrecht, an arrangement
+could be made for disbanding the Waartgelders.
+
+Barneveld, at the head of thirty deputies from the nobles and cities,
+waited upon Maurice and verbally communicated to him this resolution. He
+made a cold and unsatisfactory reply, although it seems to have been
+understood that by according twenty companies of native troops he might
+have contented both Holland and Utrecht.
+
+Ledenberg and his colleagues took their departure from the Hague without
+communicating their message to Maurice.  Soon afterwards the States-
+General appointed a commission to Utrecht with the Stadholder at the head
+of it.
+
+The States of Holland appointed another with Grotius as its chairman.
+
+On the 25th July Grotius and Pensionary Hoogerbeets with two colleagues
+arrived in Utrecht.
+
+Gillis van Ledenberg was there to receive them.  A tall, handsome, bald-
+headed, well-featured, mild, gentlemanlike man was this secretary of the
+Utrecht assembly, and certainly not aware, while passing to and fro on
+such half diplomatic missions between two sovereign assemblies, that he
+was committing high-treason.  He might well imagine however, should
+Maurice discover that it was he who had prevented the commissioners from
+conferring with him as instructed, that it would go hard with him.
+
+Ledenberg forthwith introduced Grotius and his committee to the Assembly
+at Utrecht.
+
+While these great personages were thus holding solemn and secret council,
+another and still greater personage came upon the scene.
+
+The Stadholder with the deputation from the States-General arrived at
+Utrecht.
+
+Evidently the threads of this political drama were converging to a
+catastrophe, and it might prove a tragical one.
+
+Meantime all looked merry enough in the old episcopal city.  There were
+few towns in Lower or in Upper Germany more elegant and imposing than
+Utrecht.  Situate on the slender and feeble channel of the ancient Rhine
+as it falters languidly to the sea, surrounded by trim gardens and
+orchards, and embowered in groves of beeches and limetrees, with busy
+canals fringed with poplars, lined with solid quays, and crossed by
+innumerable bridges; with the stately brick tower of St. Martin's rising
+to a daring height above one of the most magnificent Gothic cathedrals in
+the Netherlands; this seat of the Anglo-Saxon Willebrord, who eight
+hundred years before had preached Christianity to the Frisians, and had
+founded that long line of hard-fighting, indomitable bishops, obstinately
+contesting for centuries the possession of the swamps and pastures about
+them with counts, kings, and emperors, was still worthy of its history
+and its position.
+
+It was here too that sixty-one years before the famous Articles of
+Union were signed.  By that fundamental treaty of the Confederacy,
+the Provinces agreed to remain eternally united as if they were but one
+province, to make no war nor peace save by unanimous consent, while on
+lesser matters a majority should rule; to admit both Catholics and
+Protestants to the Union provided they obeyed its Articles and conducted
+themselves as good patriots, and expressly declared that no province or
+city should interfere with another in the matter of divine worship.
+
+From this memorable compact, so enduring a landmark in the history of
+human freedom, and distinguished by such breadth of view for the times
+both in religion and politics, the city had gained the title of cradle of
+liberty: 'Cunabula libertatis'.
+
+Was it still to deserve the name?  At that particular moment the mass of
+the population was comparatively indifferent to the terrible questions
+pending.  It was the kermis or annual fair, and all the world was keeping
+holiday in Utrecht.  The pedlars and itinerant merchants from all the
+cities and provinces had brought their wares jewellery and crockery,
+ribbons and laces, ploughs and harrows, carriages and horses, cows and
+sheep, cheeses and butter firkins, doublets and petticoats, guns and
+pistols, everything that could serve the city and country-side for months
+to come--and displayed them in temporary booths or on the ground, in
+every street and along every canal.  The town was one vast bazaar.  The
+peasant-women from the country, with their gold and silver tiaras and the
+year's rent of a comfortable farm in their earrings and necklaces, and
+the sturdy Frisian peasants, many of whom had borne their matchlocks in
+the great wars which had lasted through their own and their fathers'
+lifetime, trudged through the city, enjoying the blessings of peace.
+Bands of music and merry-go-rounds in all the open places and squares;
+open-air bakeries of pancakes and waffles; theatrical exhibitions, raree-
+shows, jugglers, and mountebanks at every corner--all these phenomena
+which had been at every kermis for centuries, and were to repeat
+themselves for centuries afterwards, now enlivened the atmosphere of the
+grey, episcopal city.  Pasted against the walls of public edifices were
+the most recent placards and counter-placards of the States-General and
+the States of Utrecht on the great subject of religious schisms and
+popular tumults.  In the shop-windows and on the bookstalls of Contra-
+Remonstrant tradesmen, now becoming more and more defiant as the last
+allies of Holland, the States of Utrecht, were gradually losing courage,
+were seen the freshest ballads and caricatures against the Advocate.
+Here an engraving represented him seated at table with Grotius,
+Hoogerbeets, and others, discussing the National Synod, while a flap of
+the picture being lifted put the head of the Duke of Alva on the legs of
+Barneveld, his companions being transformed in similar manner into
+Spanish priests and cardinals assembled at the terrible Council of Blood-
+with rows of Protestant martyrs burning and hanging in the distance.
+Another print showed Prince Maurice and the States-General shaking the
+leading statesmen of the Commonwealth in a mighty sieve through which
+came tumbling head foremost to perdition the hated Advocate and his
+abettors.  Another showed the Arminians as a row of crest-fallen cocks
+rained upon by the wrath of the Stadholder--Arminians by a detestable pun
+being converted into "Arme haenen" or "Poor cocks."  One represented the
+Pope and King of Spain blowing thousands of ducats out of a golden
+bellows into the lap of the Advocate, who was holding up his official
+robes to receive them, or whole carriage-loads of Arminians starting off
+bag and baggage on the road to Rome, with Lucifer in the perspective
+waiting to give them a warm welcome in his own dominions; and so on, and
+so on.  Moving through the throng, with iron calque on their heads and
+halberd in hand, were groups of Waartgelders scowling fiercely at many
+popular demonstrations such as they had been enlisted to suppress, but
+while off duty concealing outward symptoms of wrath which in many
+instances perhaps would have been far from genuine.
+
+For although these mercenaries knew that the States of Holland, who were
+responsible for the pay of the regular troops then in Utrecht, authorized
+them to obey no orders save from the local authorities, yet it was
+becoming a grave question for the Waartgelders whether their own wages
+were perfectly safe, a circumstance which made them susceptible to the
+atmosphere of Contra-Remonstrantism which was steadily enwrapping the
+whole country.  A still graver question was whether such resistance as
+they could offer to the renowned Stadholder, whose name was magic to
+every soldier's heart not only in his own land but throughout
+Christendom, would not be like parrying a lance's thrust with a bulrush.
+In truth the senior captain of the Waartgelders, Harteveld by name, had
+privately informed the leaders of the Barneveld party in Utrecht that he
+would not draw his sword against Prince Maurice and the States-General.
+"Who asks you to do so?"  said some of the deputies, while Ledenberg on
+the other hand flatly accused him of cowardice.  For this affront the
+Captain had vowed revenge.
+
+And in the midst of this scene of jollity and confusion, that midsummer
+night, entered the stern Stadholder with his fellow commissioners; the
+feeble plans for shutting the gates upon him not having been carried into
+effect.
+
+"You hardly expected such a guest at your fair," said he to the
+magistrates, with a grim smile on his face as who should say, "And what
+do you think of me now I have came?"
+
+Meantime the secret conference of Grotius and colleagues with the States
+of Utrecht proceeded.  As a provisional measure, Sir John Ogle, commander
+of the forces paid by Holland, had been warned as to where his obedience
+was due.  It had likewise been intimated that the guard should be doubled
+at the Amersfoort gate, and a watch set on the river Lek above and below
+the city in order to prevent fresh troops of the States-General from
+being introduced by surprise.
+
+These precautions had been suggested a year before, as we have seen, in a
+private autograph letter from Barneveld to Secretary Ledenberg.
+
+Sir John Ogle had flatly refused to act in opposition to the Stadholder
+and the States-General, whom he recognized as his lawful superiors and
+masters, and he warned Ledenberg and his companions as to the perilous
+nature of the course which they were pursuing.  Great was the indignation
+of the Utrechters and the Holland commissioners in consequence.
+
+Grotius in his speech enlarged on the possibility of violence being used
+by the Stadholder, while some of the members of the Assembly likewise
+thought it likely that he would smite the gates open by force.  Grotius,
+when reproved afterwards for such strong language towards Prince Maurice,
+said that true Hollanders were no courtiers, but were wont to call
+everything by its right name.
+
+He stated in strong language the regret felt by Holland that a majority
+of the States of Utrecht had determined to disband the Waartgelders which
+had been constitutionally enlisted according to the right of each
+province under the 1st Article of the Union of Utrecht to protect itself
+and its laws.
+
+Next day there were conferences between Maurice and the States of Utrecht
+and between him and the Holland deputies.  The Stadholder calmly demanded
+the disbandment and the Synod.  The Hollanders spoke of securing first
+the persons and rights of the magistracy.
+
+"The magistrates are to be protected," said Maurice, "but we must first
+know how they are going to govern.  People have tried to introduce five
+false points into the Divine worship.  People have tried to turn me out
+of the stadholdership and to drive me from the country.  But I have taken
+my measures.  I know well what I am about.  I have got five provinces on
+my side, and six cities of Holland will send deputies to Utrecht to
+sustain me here."
+
+The Hollanders protested that there was no design whatever, so far as
+they knew, against his princely dignity or person.  All were ready to
+recognize his rank and services by every means in their power.  But it
+was desirable by conciliation and compromise, not by stern decree, to
+arrange these religious and political differences.
+
+The Stadholder replied by again insisting on the Synod.  "As for the
+Waartgelders," he continued, "they are worse than Spanish fortresses.
+They must away."
+
+After a little further conversation in this vein the Prince grew more
+excited.
+
+"Everything is the fault of the Advocate," he cried.
+
+"If Barneveld were dead," replied Grotius, "all the rest of us would
+still deem ourselves bound to maintain the laws.  People seem to despise
+Holland and to wish to subject it to the other provinces."
+
+"On the contrary," cried the Prince, "it is the Advocate who wishes to
+make Holland the States-General."
+
+Maurice was tired of argument.  There had been much ale-house talk some
+three months before by a certain blusterous gentleman called van Ostrum
+about the necessity of keeping the Stadholder in check.  "If the Prince
+should undertake," said this pot-valiant hero, "to attack any of the
+cities of Utrecht or Holland with the hard hand, it is settled to station
+8000 or 10,000 soldiers in convenient places.  Then we shall say to the
+Prince, if you don't leave us alone, we shall make an arrangement with
+the Archduke of Austria and resume obedience to him.  We can make such a
+treaty with him as will give us religious freedom and save us from
+tyranny of any kind.  I don't say this for myself, but have heard it on
+good authority from very eminent persons."
+
+This talk had floated through the air to the Stadholder.
+
+What evidence could be more conclusive of a deep design on the part of
+Barneveld to sell the Republic to the Archduke and drive Maurice into
+exile?  Had not Esquire van Ostrum solemnly declared it at a tavern
+table?  And although he had mentioned no names, could the "eminent
+personages" thus cited at second hand be anybody but the Advocate?
+
+Three nights after his last conference with the Hollanders, Maurice
+quietly ordered a force of regular troops in Utrecht to be under arms at
+half past three o'clock next morning.  About 1000 infantry, including
+companies of Ernest of Nassau's command at Arnhem and of Brederode's from
+Vianen, besides a portion of the regular garrison of the place, had
+accordingly been assembled without beat of drum, before half past three
+in the morning, and were now drawn up on the market-place or Neu.  At
+break of day the Prince himself appeared on horseback surrounded by his
+staff on the Neu or Neude, a large, long, irregular square into which the
+seven or eight principal streets and thoroughfares of the town emptied
+themselves.  It was adorned by public buildings and other handsome
+edifices, and the tall steeple of St. Martin's with its beautiful open-
+work spire, lighted with the first rays of the midsummer sun, looked
+tranquilly down upon the scene.
+
+Each of the entrances to the square had been securely guarded by
+Maurice's orders, and cannon planted to command all the streets.  A
+single company of the famous Waartgelders was stationed in the Neu or
+near it.  The Prince rode calmly towards them and ordered them to lay
+down their arms.  They obeyed without a murmur.  He then sent through the
+city to summon all the other companies of Waartgelders to the Neu.  This
+was done with perfect promptness, and in a short space of time the whole
+body of mercenaries, nearly 1000 in number, had laid down their arms at
+the feet of the Prince.
+
+The snaphances and halberds being then neatly stacked in the square, the
+Stadholder went home to his early breakfast.  There was an end to those
+mercenaries thenceforth and for ever.  The faint and sickly resistance to
+the authority of Maurice offered at Utrecht was attempted nowhere else.
+
+For days there had been vague but fearful expectations of a "blood bath,"
+of street battles, rioting, and plunder.  Yet the Stadholder with the
+consummate art which characterized all his military manoeuvres had so
+admirably carried out his measure that not a shot was fired, not a blow
+given, not a single burgher disturbed in his peaceful slumbers.  When the
+population had taken off their nightcaps, they woke to find the awful
+bugbear removed which had so long been appalling them.  The Waartgelders
+were numbered with the terrors of the past, and not a cat had mewed at
+their disappearance.
+
+Charter-books, parchments, 13th Articles, Barneveld's teeth, Arminian
+forts, flowery orations of Grotius, tavern talk of van Ostrum, city
+immunities, States' rights, provincial laws, Waartgelders and all--the
+martial Stadholder, with the orange plume in his hat and the sword of
+Nieuwpoort on his thigh, strode through them as easily as through the
+whirligigs and mountebanks, the wades and fritters, encumbering the
+streets of Utrecht on the night of his arrival.
+
+Secretary Ledenberg and other leading members of the States had escaped
+the night before.  Grotius and his colleagues also took a precipitate
+departure.  As they drove out of town in the twilight, they met the
+deputies of the six opposition cities of Holland just arriving in their
+coach from the Hague.  Had they tarried an hour longer, they would have
+found themselves safely in prison.
+
+Four days afterwards the Stadholder at the head of his body-guard
+appeared at the town-house.  His halberdmen tramped up the broad
+staircase, heralding his arrival to the assembled magistracy.  He
+announced his intention of changing the whole board then and there.
+The process was summary.  The forty members were required to supply
+forty other names, and the Prince added twenty more.  From the hundred
+candidates thus furnished the Prince appointed forty magistrates such
+as suited himself.  It is needless to say that but few of the old bench
+remained, and that those few were devoted to the Synod, the States-
+General, and the Stadholder.  He furthermore announced that these new
+magistrates were to hold office for life, whereas the board had
+previously been changed every year.  The cathedral church was at
+once assigned for the use of the Contra-Remonstrants.
+
+This process was soon to be repeated throughout the two insubordinate
+provinces Utrecht and Holland.
+
+The Prince was accused of aiming at the sovereignty of the whole country,
+and one of his grief's against the Advocate was that he had begged the
+Princess-Widow, Louise de Coligny, to warn her son-in-law of the dangers
+of such ambition.  But so long as an individual, sword in hand, could
+exercise such unlimited sway over the whole municipal, and provincial
+organization of the Commonwealth, it mattered but little whether he was
+called King or Kaiser, Doge or Stadholder.  Sovereign he was for the time
+being at least, while courteously acknowledging the States-General as his
+sovereign.
+
+Less than three weeks afterwards the States-General issued a decree
+formally disbanding the Waartgelders; an almost superfluous edict, as
+they had almost ceased to exist, and there were none to resist the
+measure.  Grotius recommended complete acquiescence.  Barneveld's soul
+could no longer animate with courage a whole people.
+
+The invitations which had already in the month of June been prepared for
+the Synod to meet in the city of Dortor Dordtrecht-were now issued.  The
+States of Holland sent back the notification unopened, deeming it an
+unwarrantable invasion of their rights that an assembly resisted by a
+large majority of their body should be convoked in a city on their own
+territory.  But this was before the disbandment of the Waartgelders and
+the general change of magistracies had been effected.
+
+Earnest consultations were now held as to the possibility of devising
+some means of compromise; of providing that the decisions of the Synod
+should not be considered binding until after having been ratified by the
+separate states.  In the opinion of Barneveld they were within a few
+hours' work of a favourable result when their deliberations were
+interrupted by a startling event.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+     Fruitless Interview between Barneveld and Maurice--The Advocate,
+     warned of his Danger, resolves to remain at the Hague--Arrest of
+     Barneveld, of Qrotius, and of Hoogerbeets--The States-General assume
+     the Responsibility in a "Billet"--The States of Holland protest--
+     The Advocate's Letter to his Family--Audience of Boississe--
+     Mischief-making of Aerssens--The French Ambassadors intercede for
+     Barneveld--The King of England opposes their Efforts--Langerac's
+     Treachery to the Advocate--Maurice continues his Changes in the
+     Magistracy throughout the Country--Vote of Thanks by the States of
+     Holland.
+
+The Advocate, having done what he believed to be his duty, and exhausted
+himself in efforts to defend ancient law and to procure moderation and
+mutual toleration in religion, was disposed to acquiesce in the
+inevitable.  His letters giving official and private information of
+those grave events were neither vindictive nor vehement.
+
+"I send you the last declaration of My Lords of Holland," he said to
+Caron, "in regard to the National Synod, with the counter-declaration of
+Dordtrecht and the other five cities.  Yesterday was begun the debate
+about cashiering the enrolled soldiers called Waartgelders.  To-day the
+late M. van Kereburg was buried."
+
+Nothing could be calmer than his tone.  After the Waartgelders had been
+disbanded, Utrecht revolutionized by main force, the National Synod
+decided upon, and the process of changing the municipal magistracies
+everywhere in the interest of Contra-Remonstrants begun, he continued to
+urge moderation and respect for law.  Even now, although discouraged, he
+was not despondent, and was disposed to make the best even of the Synod.
+
+He wished at this supreme moment to have a personal interview with the
+Prince in order to devise some means for calming the universal agitation
+and effecting, if possible, a reconciliation among conflicting passions
+and warring sects.  He had stood at the side of Maurice and of Maurice's
+great father in darker hours even than these.  They had turned to him on
+all trying and tragical occasions and had never found his courage
+wavering or his judgment at fault.  "Not a friend to the House of Nassau,
+but a father," thus had Maurice with his own lips described the Advocate
+to the widow of William the Silent.  Incapable of an unpatriotic thought,
+animated by sincere desire to avert evil and procure moderate action,
+Barneveld saw no reason whatever why, despite all that had been said and
+done, he should not once more hold council with the Prince.  He had a
+conversation accordingly with Count Lewis, who had always honoured the
+Advocate while differing with him on the religious question.  The
+Stadholder of Friesland, one of the foremost men of his day in military
+and scientific affairs, in administrative ability and philanthropic
+instincts, and, in a family perhaps the most renowned in Europe for
+heroic qualities and achievements, hardly second to any who had borne the
+name, was in favour of the proposed interview, spoke immediately to
+Prince Maurice about it, but was not hopeful as to its results.  He knew
+his cousin well and felt that he was at that moment resentful, perhaps
+implacably so, against the whole Remonstrant party and especially against
+their great leader.
+
+Count Lewis was small of stature, but dignified, not to say pompous, in
+demeanour.  His style of writing to one of lower social rank than himself
+was lofty, almost regal, and full of old world formality.
+
+Noble, severe, right worshipful, highly learned and discreet, special
+good friend," he wrote to Barneveld; "we have spoken to his Excellency
+concerning the expediency of what you requested of us this forenoon.
+We find however that his Excellency is not to be moved to entertain any
+other measure than the National Synod which he has himself proposed in
+person to all the provinces, to the furtherance of which he has made so
+many exertions, and which has already been announced by the States-
+General.
+
+"We will see by what opportunity his Excellency will appoint the
+interview, and so far as lies in us you may rely on our good offices.
+We could not answer sooner as the French ambassadors had audience of us
+this forenoon and we were visiting his Excellency in the afternoon.
+Wishing your worship good evening, we are your very good friend."
+
+Next day Count William wrote again. "We have taken occasion," he said,
+"to inform his Excellency that you were inclined to enter into
+communication with him in regard to an accommodation of the religious
+difficulties and to the cashiering of the Waartgelders.  He answered that
+he could accept no change in the matter of the National Synod, but
+nevertheless would be at your disposal whenever your worship should be
+pleased to come to him."
+
+Two days afterwards Barneveld made his appearance at the apartments of
+the Stadholder.  The two great men on whom the fabric of the Republic had
+so long rested stood face to face once more.
+
+The Advocate, with long grey beard and stern blue eye, haggard with
+illness and anxiety, tall but bent with age, leaning on his staff and
+wrapped in black velvet cloak--an imposing magisterial figure; the
+florid, plethoric Prince in brown doublet, big russet boots, narrow ruff,
+and shabby felt hat with its string of diamonds, with hand clutched on
+swordhilt, and eyes full of angry menace, the very type of the high-born,
+imperious soldier--thus they surveyed each other as men, once friends,
+between whom a gulf had opened.
+
+Barneveld sought to convince the Prince that in the proceedings at
+Utrecht, founded as they were on strict adherence to the laws and
+traditions of the Provinces, no disrespect had been intended to him, no
+invasion of his constitutional rights, and that on his part his lifelong
+devotion to the House of Nassau had suffered no change.  He repeated his
+usual incontrovertible arguments against the Synod, as illegal and
+directly tending to subject the magistracy to the priesthood, a course of
+things which eight-and-twenty years before had nearly brought destruction
+on the country and led both the Prince and himself to captivity in a
+foreign land.
+
+The Prince sternly replied in very few words that the National Synod was
+a settled matter, that he would never draw back from his position, and
+could not do so without singular disservice to the country and to his own
+disreputation.  He expressed his displeasure at the particular oath
+exacted from the Waartgelders.  It diminished his lawful authority and
+the respect due to him, and might be used per indirectum to the
+oppression of those of the religion which he had sworn to maintain.  His
+brow grew black when he spoke of the proceedings at Utrecht, which he
+denounced as a conspiracy against his own person and the constitution of
+the country.
+
+Barneveld used in vain the powers of argument by which he had guided
+kings and republics, cabinets and assemblies, during so many years.  His
+eloquence fell powerless upon the iron taciturnity of the Stadholder.
+Maurice had expressed his determination and had no other argument to
+sustain it but his usual exasperating silence.
+
+The interview ended as hopelessly as Count Lewis William had anticipated,
+and the Prince and the Advocate separated to meet no more on earth.
+
+"You have doubtless heard already," wrote Barneveld to the ambassador in
+London, "of all that has been passing here and in Utrecht.  One must pray
+to God that everything may prosper to his honour and the welfare of the
+country.  They are resolved to go through with the National Synod, the
+government of Utrecht after the change made in it having consented with
+the rest.  I hope that his Majesty, according to your statement, will
+send some good, learned, and peace-loving personages here, giving them
+wholesome instructions to help bring our affairs into Christian unity,
+accommodation, and love, by which his Majesty and these Provinces would
+be best served."
+
+Were these the words of a baffled conspirator and traitor?  Were they
+uttered to produce an effect upon public opinion and avert a merited
+condemnation by all good men?  There is not in them a syllable of
+reproach, of anger, of despair.  And let it be remembered that they were
+not written for the public at all.  They were never known to the public,
+hardly heard of either by the Advocate's enemies or friends, save the one
+to whom they were addressed and the monarch to whom that friend was
+accredited.  They were not contained in official despatches, but in
+private, confidential outpourings to a trusted political and personal
+associate of many years.  From the day they were written until this hour
+they have never been printed, and for centuries perhaps not read.
+
+He proceeded to explain what he considered to be the law in the
+Netherlands with regard to military allegiance.  It is not probable that
+there was in the country a more competent expounder of it; and defective
+and even absurd as such a system was, it had carried the Provinces
+successfully through a great war, and a better method for changing it
+might have been found among so law-loving and conservative a people as
+the Netherlanders than brute force.
+
+"Information has apparently been sent to England," he said, "that My
+Lords of Holland through their commissioners in Utrecht dictated to the
+soldiery standing at their charges something that was unreasonable.  The
+truth is that the States of Holland, as many of them as were assembled,
+understanding that great haste was made to send his Excellency and some
+deputies from the other provinces to Utrecht, while the members of the
+Utrecht assembly were gone to report these difficulties to their
+constituents and get fresh instructions from them, wishing that the
+return of those members should be waited for and that the Assembly of
+Holland might also be complete--a request which was refused--sent a
+committee to Utrecht, as the matter brooked no delay, to give information
+to the States of that province of what was passing here and to offer
+their good offices.
+
+"They sent letters also to his Excellency to move him to reasonable
+accommodation without taking extreme measures in opposition to those
+resolutions of the States of Utrecht which his Excellency had promised to
+conform with and to cause to be maintained by all officers and soldiers.
+Should his Excellency make difficulty in this, the commissioners
+were instructed to declare to him that they were ordered to warn the
+colonels and captains standing in the payment of Holland, by letter and
+word of mouth, that they were bound by oath to obey the States of Holland
+as their paymasters and likewise to carry out the orders of the
+provincial and municipal magistrates in the places where they were
+employed.  The soldiery was not to act or permit anything to be done
+against those resolutions, but help to carry them out, his Excellency
+himself and the troops paid by the States of Holland being indisputably
+bound by oath and duty so to do."
+
+Doubtless a more convenient arrangement from a military point of view
+might be imagined than a system of quotas by which each province in a
+confederacy claimed allegiance and exacted obedience from the troops paid
+by itself in what was after all a general army.  Still this was the
+logical and inevitable result of State rights pushed to the extreme and
+indeed had been the indisputable theory and practice in the Netherlands
+ever since their revolt from Spain.  To pretend that the proceedings and
+the oath were new because they were embarrassing was absurd.  It was only
+because the dominant party saw the extreme inconvenience of the system,
+now that it was turned against itself, that individuals contemptuous of
+law and ignorant of history denounced it as a novelty.
+
+But the strong and beneficent principle that lay at the bottom of the
+Advocate's conduct was his unflagging resolve to maintain the civil
+authority over the military in time of peace.  What liberal or healthy
+government would be possible otherwise?  Exactly as he opposed the
+subjection of the magistracy by the priesthood or the mob, so he now
+defended it against the power of the sword.  There was no justification
+whatever for a claim on the part of Maurice to exact obedience from all
+the armies of the Republic, especially in time of peace.  He was himself
+by oath sworn to obey the States of Holland, of Utrecht, and of the three
+other provinces of which he was governor.  He was not commander-in-chief.
+In two of the seven provinces he had no functions whatever, military or
+civil.  They had another governor.
+
+Yet the exposition of the law, as it stood, by the Advocate and his claim
+that both troops and Stadholder should be held to their oaths was
+accounted a crime.  He had invented a new oath--it was said--and sought
+to diminish the power of the Prince.  These were charges, unjust as they
+were, which might one day be used with deadly effect.
+
+"We live in a world where everything is interpreted to the worst," he
+said.  "My physical weakness continues and is increased by this
+affliction.  I place my trust in God the Lord and in my upright and
+conscientious determination to serve the country, his Excellency, and the
+religion in which through God's grace I hope to continue to the end."
+
+On the 28th August of a warm afternoon, Barneveld was seated on a
+porcelain seat in an arbor in his garden.  Councillor Berkhout,
+accompanied by a friend, called to see him, and after a brief
+conversation gave him solemn warning that danger was impending,
+that there was even a rumour of an intention to arrest him.
+
+The Advocate answered gravely, "Yes, there are wicked men about."
+
+Presently he lifted his hat courteously and said, "I thank you,
+gentlemen, for the warning."
+
+It seems scarcely to have occurred to him that he had been engaged in
+anything beyond a constitutional party struggle in which he had defended
+what in his view was the side of law and order.  He never dreamt of
+seeking safety in flight.  Some weeks before, he had been warmly advised
+to do as both he and Maurice had done in former times in order to escape
+the stratagems of Leicester, to take refuge in some strong city devoted
+to his interests rather than remain at the Hague.  But he had declined
+the counsel.  "I will await the issue of this business," he said, "in the
+Hague, where my home is, and where I have faithfully served my masters.
+I had rather for the sake of the Fatherland suffer what God chooses to
+send me for having served well than that through me and on my account any
+city should fall into trouble and difficulties."
+
+Next morning, Wednesday, at seven o'clock, Uytenbogaert paid him a visit.
+He wished to consult him concerning a certain statement in regard to the
+Synod which he desired him to lay before the States of Holland.  The
+preacher did not find his friend busily occupied at his desk, as usual,
+with writing and other work.  The Advocate had pushed his chair away from
+the table encumbered with books and papers, and sat with his back leaning
+against it, lost in thought.  His stern, stoical face was like that of a
+lion at bay.
+
+Uytenbogaert tried to arouse him from his gloom, consoling him by
+reflections on the innumerable instances, in all countries and ages,
+of patriotic statesmen who for faithful service had reaped nothing but
+ingratitude.
+
+Soon afterwards he took his leave, feeling a presentiment of evil within
+him which it was impossible for him to shake off as he pressed
+Barneveld's hand at parting.
+
+Two hours later, the Advocate went in his coach to the session of the
+States of Holland.  The place of the Assembly as well as that of the
+States-General was within what was called the Binnenhof or Inner Court;
+the large quadrangle enclosing the ancient hall once the residence of the
+sovereign Counts of Holland.  The apartments of the Stadholder composed
+the south-western portion of the large series of buildings surrounding
+this court.  Passing by these lodgings on his way to the Assembly, he was
+accosted by a chamberlain of the Prince and informed that his Highness
+desired to speak with him.  He followed him towards the room where such
+interviews were usually held, but in the antechamber was met by
+Lieutenant Nythof, of the Prince's bodyguard.  This officer told him
+that he had been ordered to arrest him in the name of the States-General.
+The Advocate demanded an interview with the Prince.  It was absolutely
+refused.  Physical resistance on the part of a man of seventy-two,
+stooping with age and leaning on a staff, to military force, of which
+Nythof was the representative, was impossible.  Barneveld put a cheerful
+face on the matter, and was even inclined to converse.  He was at once
+carried off a prisoner and locked up in a room belonging to Maurice's
+apartments.
+
+Soon afterwards, Grotius on his way to the States-General was invited in
+precisely the same manner to go to the Prince, with whom, as he was
+informed, the Advocate was at that moment conferring.  As soon as he had
+ascended the stairs however, he was arrested by Captain van der Meulen in
+the name of the States-General, and taken to a chamber in the same
+apartments, where he was guarded by two halberdmen.  In the evening he
+was removed to another chamber where the window shutters were barred, and
+where he remained three days and nights.  He was much cast down and
+silent.  Pensionary Hoogerbeets was made prisoner in precisely the same
+manner.  Thus the three statesmen--culprits as they were considered by
+their enemies--were secured without noise or disturbance, each without
+knowing the fate that had befallen the other.  Nothing could have been
+more neatly done.  In the same quiet way orders were sent to secure
+Secretary Ledenberg, who had returned to Utrecht, and who now after a
+short confinement in that city was brought to the Hague and imprisoned in
+the Hof.
+
+At the very moment of the Advocate's arrest his son-in-law van der Myle
+happened to be paying a visit to Sir Dudley Carleton, who had arrived
+very late the night before from England.  It was some hours before he or
+any other member of the family learned what had befallen.
+
+The Ambassador reported to his sovereign that the deed was highly
+applauded by the well disposed as the only means left for the security
+of the state.  "The Arminians," he said, "condemn it as violent and
+insufferable in a free republic."
+
+Impartial persons, he thought, considered it a superfluous proceeding now
+that the Synod had been voted and the Waartgelders disbanded.
+
+While he was writing his despatch, the Stadholder came to call upon him,
+attended by his cousin Count Lewis William.  The crowd of citizens
+following at a little distance, excited by the news with which the city
+was now ringing, mingled with Maurice's gentlemen and bodyguards and
+surged up almost into the Ambassador's doors.
+
+Carleton informed his guests, in the course of conversation, as to the
+general opinion of indifferent judges of these events.  Maurice replied
+that he had disbanded the Waartgelders, but it had now become necessary
+to deal with their colonel and the chief captains, meaning thereby
+Barneveld and the two other prisoners.
+
+The news of this arrest was soon carried to the house of Barneveld, and
+filled his aged wife, his son, and sons-in-law with grief and
+indignation.  His eldest son William, commonly called the Seignior van
+Groeneveld, accompanied by his two brothers-in-law, Veenhuyzen, President
+of the Upper Council, and van der Myle, obtained an interview with the
+Stadholder that same afternoon.
+
+They earnestly requested that the Advocate, in consideration of his
+advanced age, might on giving proper bail be kept prisoner in his own
+house.
+
+The Prince received them at first with courtesy.  "It is the work of the
+States-General," he said, " no harm shall come to your father any more
+than to myself."
+
+Veenhuyzen sought to excuse the opposition which the Advocate had made to
+the Cloister Church.
+
+The word was scarcely out of his mouth when the Prince fiercely
+interrupted him--"Any man who says a word against the Cloister Church,"
+he cried in a rage, "his feet shall not carry him from this place."
+
+The interview gave them on the whole but little satisfaction.  Very soon
+afterwards two gentlemen, Asperen and Schagen, belonging to the Chamber
+of Nobles, and great adherents of Barneveld, who had procured their
+enrolment in that branch, forced their way into the Stadholder's
+apartments and penetrated to the door of the room where the Advocate was
+imprisoned.  According to Carleton they were filled with wine as well as
+rage, and made a great disturbance, loudly demanding their patron's
+liberation.  Maurice came out of his own cabinet on hearing the noise in
+the corridor, and ordered them to be disarmed and placed under arrest.
+In the evening however they were released.
+
+Soon afterwards van der Myle fled to Paris, where he endeavoured to make
+influence with the government in favour of the Advocate.  His departure
+without leave, being, as he was, a member of the Chamber of Nobles and of
+the council of state, was accounted a great offence.  Uytenbogaert also
+made his escape, as did Taurinus, author of The Balance, van Moersbergen
+of Utrecht, and many others more or less implicated in these commotions.
+
+There was profound silence in the States of Holland when the arrest of
+Barneveld was announced.  The majority sat like men distraught.  At last
+Matenesse said, "You have taken from us our head, our tongue, and our
+hand, henceforth we can only sit still and look on."
+
+The States-General now took the responsibility of the arrest, which eight
+individuals calling themselves the States-General had authorized by
+secret resolution the day before (28th August).  On the 29th accordingly,
+the following "Billet," as it was entitled, was read to the Assembly and
+ordered to be printed and circulated among the community.  It was without
+date or signature.
+
+"Whereas in the course of the changes within the city of Utrecht and in
+other places brought about by the high and mighty Lords the States-
+General of the United Netherlands, through his Excellency and their
+Lordships' committee to him adjoined, sundry things have been discovered
+of which previously there had been great suspicion, tending to the great
+prejudice of the Provinces in general and of each province in particular,
+not without apparent danger to the state of the country, and that thereby
+not only the city of Utrecht, but various other cities of the United
+Provinces would have fallen into a blood bath; and whereas the chief
+ringleaders in these things are considered to be John van Barneveld,
+Advocate of Holland, Rombout Hoogerbeets, and Hugo Grotius, whereof
+hereafter shall declaration and announcement be made, therefore their
+High Mightinesses, in order to prevent these and similar inconveniences,
+to place the country in security, and to bring the good burghers of all
+the cities into friendly unity again, have resolved to arrest those three
+persons, in order that out of their imprisonment they may be held to
+answer duly for their actions and offences."
+
+The deputies of Holland in the States-General protested on the same day
+against the arrest, declaring themselves extraordinarily amazed at such
+proceedings, without their knowledge, with usurpation of their
+jurisdiction, and that they should refer to their principals for
+instructions in the matter.
+
+They reported accordingly at once to the States of Holland in session in
+the same building.  Soon afterwards however a committee of five from the
+States-General appeared before the Assembly to justify the proceeding.
+On their departure there arose a great debate, the six cities of course
+taking part with Maurice and the general government.  It was finally
+resolved by the majority to send a committee to the Stadholder to
+remonstrate with, and by the six opposition cities another committee
+to congratulate him, on his recent performances.
+
+His answer was to this effect:
+
+"What had happened was not by his order, but had been done by the States-
+General, who must be supposed not to have acted without good cause.
+Touching the laws and jurisdiction of Holland he would not himself
+dispute, but the States of Holland would know how to settle that matter
+with the States-General."
+
+Next day it was resolved in the Holland assembly to let the affair remain
+as it was for the time being.  Rapid changes were soon to be expected in
+that body, hitherto so staunch for the cause of municipal laws and State
+rights.
+
+Meantime Barneveld sat closely guarded in the apartments of the
+Stadholder, while the country and very soon all Europe were ringing with
+the news of his downfall, imprisonment, and disgrace.  The news was a
+thunder-bolt to the lovers of religious liberty, a ray of dazzling
+sunlight after a storm to the orthodox.
+
+The showers of pamphlets, villanous lampoons, and libels began afresh.
+The relatives of the fallen statesman could not appear in the streets
+without being exposed to insult, and without hearing scurrilous and
+obscene verses against their father and themselves, in which neither sex
+nor age was spared, howled in their ears by all the ballad-mongers and
+broadsheet vendors of the town.  The unsigned publication of the States-
+General, with its dark allusions to horrible discoveries and promised
+revelations which were never made, but which reduced themselves at last
+to the gibberish of a pot-house bully, the ingenious libels, the
+powerfully concocted and poisonous calumnies, caricatures, and lampoons,
+had done their work.  People stared at each other in the streets with
+open mouths as they heard how the Advocate had for years and years been
+the hireling of Spain, whose government had bribed him largely to bring
+about the Truce and kill the West India Company; how his pockets and his
+coffers were running over with Spanish ducats; how his plot to sell the
+whole country to the ancient tyrant, drive the Prince of Orange into
+exile, and bring every city of the Netherlands into a "blood-bath," had,
+just in time, been discovered.
+
+And the people believed it and hated the man they had so lately honoured,
+and were ready to tear him to pieces in the streets.  Men feared to
+defend him lest they too should be accused of being stipendiaries of
+Spain.  It was a piteous spectacle; not for the venerable statesman
+sitting alone there in his prison, but for the Republic in its lunacy,
+for human nature in its meanness and shame.  He whom Count Lewis,
+although opposed to his politics, had so lately called one of the two
+columns on which the whole fabric of the States reposed, Prince Maurice
+being the other, now lay prostrate in the dust and reviled of all men.
+
+"Many who had been promoted by him to high places," said a contemporary,
+"and were wont to worship him as a god, in hope that he would lift them
+up still higher, now deserted him, and ridiculed him, and joined the rest
+of the world in heaping dirt upon him."
+
+On the third day of his imprisonment the Advocate wrote this letter to
+his family:--
+
+"My very dear wife, children, children-in-law, and grandchildren,--I know
+that you are sorrowful for the troubles which have come upon me, but I
+beg you to seek consolation from God the Almighty and to comfort each
+other.  I know before the Lord God of having given no single lawful
+reason for the misfortunes which have come upon me, and I will with
+patience await from His Divine hand and from my lawful superiors a happy
+issue, knowing well that you and my other well-wishers will with your
+prayers and good offices do all that you can to that end.
+
+"And so, very dear wife, children, children-in-law, and grandchildren, I
+commend you to God's holy keeping.
+
+"I have been thus far well and honourably treated and accommodated, for
+which I thank his princely Excellency.
+
+"From my chamber of arrest, last of August, anno 1618.
+
+"Your dear husband, father, father-in-law, and grand father,
+
+                                   "JOHN OF BARNEVELD."
+
+
+On the margin was written:
+
+"From the first I have requested and have at last obtained materials for
+writing."
+
+A fortnight before the arrest, but while great troubles were known to
+be impending, the French ambassador extraordinary, de Boississe, had
+audience before the Assembly of the States-General.  He entreated them to
+maintain the cause of unity and peace as the foundation of their state;
+"that state," he said, "which lifts its head so high that it equals or
+surpasses the mightiest republics that ever existed, and which could not
+have risen to such a height of honour and grandeur in so short a time,
+but through harmony and union of all the provinces, through the valour of
+his Excellency, and through your own wise counsels, both sustained by our
+great king, whose aid is continued by his son."--"The King my master," he
+continued, "knows not the cause of your disturbances.  You have not
+communicated them to him, but their most apparent cause is a difference
+of opinion, born in the schools, thence brought before the public, upon a
+point of theology.  That point has long been deemed by many to be so hard
+and so high that the best advice to give about it is to follow what God's
+Word teaches touching God's secrets; to wit, that one should use
+moderation and modesty therein and should not rashly press too far into
+that which he wishes to be covered with the veil of reverence and wonder.
+That is a wise ignorance to keep one's eyes from that which God chooses
+to conceal.  He calls us not to eternal life through subtle and
+perplexing questions."
+
+And further exhorting them to conciliation and compromise, he enlarged
+on the effect of their internal dissensions on their exterior relations.
+"What joy, what rapture you are preparing for your neighbours by your
+quarrels!  How they will scorn you!  How they will laugh!  What a hope
+do you give them of revenging themselves upon you without danger to
+themselves!  Let me implore you to baffle their malice, to turn their
+joy into mourning, to unite yourselves to confound them."
+
+He spoke much more in the same vein, expressing wise and moderate
+sentiments.  He might as well have gone down to the neighbouring beach
+when a south-west gale was blowing and talked of moderation to the waves
+of the German Ocean.  The tempest of passion and prejudice had risen in
+its might and was sweeping all before it.  Yet the speech, like other
+speeches and intercessions made at this epoch by de Boississe and by the
+regular French ambassador, du Maurier, was statesmanlike and reasonable.
+It is superfluous to say that it was in unison with the opinions of
+Barneveld, for Barneveld had probably furnished the text of the oration.
+Even as he had a few years before supplied the letters which King James
+had signed and subsequently had struggled so desperately to disavow, so
+now the Advocate's imperious intellect had swayed the docile and amiable
+minds of the royal envoys into complete sympathy with his policy.  He
+usually dictated their general instructions.  But an end had come to such
+triumphs.  Dudley Carleton had returned from his leave of absence in
+England, where he had found his sovereign hating the Advocate as doctors
+hate who have been worsted in theological arguments and despots who have
+been baffled in their imperious designs.  Who shall measure the influence
+on the destiny of this statesman caused by the French-Spanish marriages,
+the sermons of James through the mouth of Carleton, and the mutual
+jealousy of France and England?
+
+But the Advocate was in prison, and the earth seemed to have closed over
+him.  Hardly a ripple of indignation was perceptible on the calm surface
+of affairs, although in the States-General as in the States of Holland
+his absence seemed to have reduced both bodies to paralysis.
+
+They were the more easily handled by the prudent, skilful, and determined
+Maurice.
+
+The arrest of the four gentlemen had been communicated to the kings of
+France and Great Britain and the Elector-Palatine in an identical letter
+from the States-General.  It is noticeable that on this occasion the
+central government spoke of giving orders to the Prince of Orange, over
+whom they would seem to have had no legitimate authority, while on the
+other hand he had expressed indignation on more than one occasion that
+the respective states of the five provinces where he was governor and to
+whom he had sworn obedience should presume to issue commands to him.
+
+In France, where the Advocate was honoured and beloved, the intelligence
+excited profound sorrow.  A few weeks previously the government of that
+country had, as we have seen, sent a special ambassador to the States,
+M. de Boississe, to aid the resident envoy, du Maurier, in his efforts to
+bring about a reconciliation of parties and a termination of the
+religious feud.  Their exertions were sincere and unceasing.  They
+were as steadily countermined by Francis Aerssens, for the aim of that
+diplomatist was to bring about a state of bad feeling, even at cost of
+rupture, between the Republic and France, because France was friendly
+to the man he most hated and whose ruin he had sworn.
+
+During the summer a bitter personal controversy had been going on,
+sufficiently vulgar in tone, between Aerssens and another diplomatist,
+Barneveld's son-in-law, Cornelis van der Myle.  It related to the recall
+of Aerssens from the French embassy of which enough has already been laid
+before the reader.  Van der Myle by the production of the secret letters
+of the Queen-Dowager and her counsellors had proved beyond dispute that
+it was at the express wish of the French government that the Ambassador
+had retired, and that indeed they had distinctly refused to receive him,
+should he return.  Foul words resulting in propositions for a hostile
+meeting on the frontier, which however came to nothing, were interchanged
+and Aerssens in the course of his altercation with the son-inlaw had
+found ample opportunity for venting his spleen upon his former patron the
+now fallen statesman.
+
+Four days after the arrest of Barneveld he brought the whole matter
+before the States-General, and the intention with which he thus raked up
+the old quarrel with France after the death of Henry, and his charges in
+regard to the Spanish marriages, was as obvious as it was deliberate.
+
+The French ambassadors were furious.  Boississe had arrived not simply
+as friend of the Advocate, but to assure the States of the strong desire
+entertained by the French government to cultivate warmest relations with
+them.  It had been desired by the Contra-Remonstrant party that deputies
+from the Protestant churches of France should participate in the Synod,
+and the French king had been much assailed by the Catholic powers for
+listening to those suggestions.  The Papal nuncius, the Spanish
+ambassador, the envoy of the Archduke, had made a great disturbance at
+court concerning the mission of Boississe.  They urged with earnestness
+that his Majesty was acting against the sentiments of Spain, Rome, and
+the whole Catholic Church, and that he ought not to assist with his
+counsel those heretics who were quarrelling among themselves over points
+in their heretical religion and wishing to destroy each other.
+
+Notwithstanding this outcry the weather was smooth enough until the
+proceedings of Aerssens came to stir up a tempest at the French court.
+A special courier came from Boississe, a meeting of the whole council,
+although it was Sunday, was instantly called, and the reply of the
+States-General to the remonstrance of the Ambassador in the Aerssens
+affair was pronounced to be so great an affront to the King that, but for
+overpowering reasons, diplomatic intercourse would have at once been
+suspended.  "Now instead of friendship there is great anger here," said
+Langerac.  The king forbade under vigorous penalties the departure of any
+French theologians to take part in the Synod, although the royal consent
+had nearly been given.  The government complained that no justice was
+done in the Netherlands to the French nation, that leading personages
+there openly expressed contempt for the French alliance, denouncing the
+country as "Hispaniolized," and declaring that all the council were
+regularly pensioned by Spain for the express purpose of keeping up the
+civil dissensions in the United Provinces.
+
+Aerssens had publicly and officially declared that a majority of the
+French council since the death of Henry had declared the crown in its
+temporal as well as spiritual essence to be dependent on the Pope, and
+that the Spanish marriages had been made under express condition of the
+renunciation of the friendship and alliance of the States.
+
+Such were among the first-fruits of the fall of Barneveld and the triumph
+of Aerssens, for it was he in reality who had won the victory, and he had
+gained it over both Stadholder and Advocate.  Who was to profit by the
+estrangement between the Republic and its powerful ally at a moment too
+when that great kingdom was at last beginning to emerge from the darkness
+and nothingness of many years, with the faint glimmering dawn of a new
+great policy?
+
+Barneveld, whose masterful statesmanship, following out the traditions of
+William the Silent, had ever maintained through good and ill report
+cordial and beneficent relations between the two countries, had always
+comprehended, even as a great cardinal-minister was ere long to teach the
+world, that the permanent identification of France with Spain and the
+Roman League was unnatural and impossible.
+
+Meantime Barneveld sat in his solitary prison, knowing not what was
+passing on that great stage where he had so long been the chief actor,
+while small intriguers now attempted to control events.
+
+It was the intention of Aerssens to return to the embassy in Paris whence
+he had been driven, in his own opinion, so unjustly.  To render himself
+indispensable, he had begun by making himself provisionally formidable to
+the King's government.  Later, there would be other deeds to do before
+the prize was within his grasp.
+
+Thus the very moment when France was disposed to cultivate the most
+earnest friendship with the Republic had been seized for fastening an
+insult upon her.  The Twelve Years' Truce with Spain was running to its
+close, the relations between France and Spain were unusually cold, and
+her friendship therefore more valuable than ever.
+
+On the other hand the British king was drawing closer his relations with
+Spain, and his alliance was demonstrably of small account.  The phantom
+of the Spanish bride had become more real to his excited vision than
+ever, so that early in the year, in order to please Gondemar, he had been
+willing to offer an affront to the French ambassador.
+
+The Prince of Wales had given a splendid masquerade at court, to which
+the envoy of his Most Catholic Majesty was bidden.  Much to his amazement
+the representative of the Most Christian King received no invitation,
+notwithstanding that he had taken great pains to procure one.  M. de
+la Boderie was very angry, and went about complaining to the States'
+ambassador and his other colleagues of the slight, and darkened the
+lives of the court functionaries having charge of such matters with his
+vengeance and despair.  It was represented to him that he had himself
+been asked to a festival the year before when Count Gondemar was left
+out.  It was hinted to him that the King had good reasons for what he
+did, as the marriage with the daughter of Spain was now in train, and it
+was desirable that the Spanish ambassador should be able to observe the
+Prince's disposition and make a more correct report of it to his
+government.  It was in vain.  M. de la Boderie refused to be comforted,
+and asserted that one had no right to leave the French ambassador
+uninvited to any "festival or triumph" at court.  There was an endless
+disturbance.  De la Boderie sent his secretary off to Paris to complain
+to the King that his ambassador was of no account in London, while much
+favour was heaped upon the Spaniard.  The Secretary returned with
+instructions from Lewis that the Ambassador was to come home immediately,
+and he went off accordingly in dudgeon.  "I could see that he was in the
+highest degree indignant," said Caron, who saw him before he left, "and I
+doubt not that his departure will increase and keep up the former
+jealousy between the governments."
+
+The ill-humor created by this event lasted a long time, serving to
+neutralize or at least perceptibly diminish the Spanish influence
+produced in France by the Spanish marriages.  In the autumn, Secretary de
+Puysieux by command of the King ordered every Spaniard to leave the
+French court.  All the "Spanish ladies and gentlemen, great and small,"
+who had accompanied the Queen from Madrid were included in this expulsion
+with the exception of four individuals, her Majesty's father confessor,
+physician, apothecary, and cook.
+
+The fair young queen was much vexed and shed bitter tears at this
+calamity, which, as she spoke nothing but Spanish, left her isolated at
+the court, but she was a little consoled by the promise that thenceforth
+the King would share her couch.  It had not yet occurred to him that he
+was married.
+
+The French envoys at the Hague exhausted themselves in efforts, both
+private and public, in favour of the prisoners, but it was a thankless
+task.  Now that the great man and his chief pupils and adherents were out
+of sight, a war of shameless calumny was began upon him, such as has
+scarcely a parallel in political history.
+
+It was as if a whole tribe of noxious and obscene reptiles were swarming
+out of the earth which had suddenly swallowed him.  But it was not alone
+the obscure or the anonymous who now triumphantly vilified him.  Men in
+high places who had partaken of his patronage, who had caressed him and
+grovelled before him, who had grown great through his tuition and rich
+through his bounty, now rejoiced in his ruin or hastened at least to save
+themselves from being involved in it.  Not a man of them all but fell
+away from him like water.  Even the great soldier forgot whose respectful
+but powerful hand it was which, at the most tragical moment, had lifted
+him from the high school at Leyden into the post of greatest power and
+responsibility, and had guided his first faltering footsteps by the light
+of his genius and experience.  Francis Aerssens, master of the field, had
+now become the political tutor of the mature Stadholder.  Step by step we
+have been studying the inmost thoughts of the Advocate as revealed in his
+secret and confidential correspondence, and the reader has been enabled
+to judge of the wantonness of the calumny which converted the determined
+antagonist into the secret friend of Spain.  Yet it had produced its
+effect upon Maurice.
+
+He told the French ambassadors a month after the arrest that Barneveld
+had been endeavouring, during and since the Truce negotiations, to bring
+back the Provinces, especially Holland, if not under the dominion of, at
+least under some kind of vassalage to Spain.  Persons had been feeling
+the public pulse as to the possibility of securing permanent peace by
+paying tribute to Spain, and this secret plan of Barneveld had so
+alienated him from the Prince as to cause him to attempt every possible
+means of diminishing or destroying altogether his authority.  He had
+spread through many cities that Maurice wished to make himself master
+of the state by using the religious dissensions to keep the people
+weakened and divided.
+
+There is not a particle of evidence, and no attempt was ever made to
+produce any, that the Advocate had such plan, but certainly, if ever, man
+had made himself master of a state, that man was Maurice.  He continued
+however to place himself before the world as the servant of the States-
+General, which he never was, either theoretically or in fact.
+
+The French ambassadors became every day more indignant and more
+discouraged.  It was obvious that Aerssens, their avowed enemy, was
+controlling the public policy of the government.  Not only was there no
+satisfaction to be had for the offensive manner in which he had filled
+the country with his ancient grievances and his nearly forgotten charges
+against the Queen-Dowager and those who had assisted her in the regency,
+but they were repulsed at every turn when by order of their sovereign
+they attempted to use his good offices in favour of the man who had ever
+been the steady friend of France.
+
+The Stadholder also professed friendship for that country, and referred
+to Colonel-General Chatillon, who had for a long time commanded the
+French regiments in the Netherlands, for confirmation of his uniform
+affection for those troops and attachment to their sovereign.
+
+He would do wonders, he said, if Lewis would declare war upon Spain by
+land and sea.
+
+"Such fruits are not ripe," said Boississe, "nor has your love for France
+been very manifest in recent events."
+
+"Barneveld," replied the Prince, "has personally offended me, and has
+boasted that he would drive me out of the country like Leicester.  He is
+accused of having wished to trouble the country in order to bring it back
+under the yoke of Spain.  Justice will decide.  The States only are
+sovereign to judge this question.  You must address yourself to them."
+
+"The States," replied the ambassadors, "will require to be aided by your
+counsels."
+
+The Prince made no reply and remained chill and "impregnable."  The
+ambassadors continued their intercessions in behalf of the prisoners
+both by public address to the Assembly and by private appeals to the
+Stadholder and his influential friends.  In virtue of the intimate
+alliance and mutual guarantees existing between their government and the
+Republic they claimed the acceptance of their good offices.  They
+insisted upon a regular trial of the prisoners according to the laws of
+the land, that is to say, by the high court of Holland, which alone had
+jurisdiction in the premises.  If they had been guilty of high-treason,
+they should be duly arraigned.  In the name of the signal services of
+Barneveld and of the constant friendship of that great magistrate for
+France, the King demanded clemency or proof of his crimes.  His Majesty
+complained through his ambassadors of the little respect shown for his
+counsels and for his friendship.  "In times past you found ever prompt
+and favourable action in your time of need."
+
+"This discourse," said Maurice to Chatillon, "proceeds from evil
+intention."
+
+Thus the prisoners had disappeared from human sight, and their enemies
+ran riot in slandering them.  Yet thus far no public charges had been
+made.
+
+"Nothing appears against them," said du Maurier, "and people are
+beginning to open their mouths with incredible freedom.  While waiting
+for the condemnation of the prisoners, one is determined to dishonour
+them."
+
+The French ambassadors were instructed to intercede to the last, but they
+were steadily repulsed--while the King of Great Britain, anxious to gain
+favour with Spain by aiding in the ruin of one whom he knew and Spain
+knew to be her determined foe, did all he could through his ambassador to
+frustrate their efforts and bring on a catastrophe.  The States-General
+and Maurice were now on as confidential terms with Carleton as they were
+cold and repellent to Boississe and du Maurier.
+
+"To recall to them the benefits of the King," said du Maurier, "is to
+beat the air.  And then Aerssens bewitches them, and they imagine that
+after having played runaway horses his Majesty will be only too happy to
+receive them back, caress them, and, in order to have their friendship,
+approve everything they have been doing right or wrong."
+
+Aerssens had it all his own way, and the States-General had just paid him
+12,000 francs in cash on the ground that Langerac's salary was larger
+than his had been when at the head of the same embassy many years before.
+
+His elevation into the body of nobles, which Maurice had just stocked
+with five other of his partisans, was accounted an additional affront
+to France, while on the other hand the Queen-Mother, having through
+Epernon's assistance made her escape from Blois, where she had been
+kept in durance since the death of Concini, now enumerated among other
+grievances for which she was willing to take up arms against her son
+that the King's government had favoured Barneveld.
+
+It was strange that all the devotees of Spain--Mary de' Medici, and
+Epernon, as well as James I. and his courtiers--should be thus embittered
+against the man who had sold the Netherlands to Spain.
+
+At last the Prince told the French ambassadors that the "people of the
+Provinces considered their persistent intercessions an invasion of their
+sovereignty."  Few would have anything to say to them.  "No one listens
+to us, no one replies to us," said du Maurier, "everyone visiting us is
+observed, and it is conceived a reproach here to speak to the ambassadors
+of France."
+
+Certainly the days were changed since Henry IV. leaned on the arm of
+Barneveld, and consulted with him, and with him only, among all the
+statesmen of Europe on his great schemes for regenerating Christendom
+and averting that general war which, now that the great king had been
+murdered and the Advocate imprisoned, had already begun to ravage Europe.
+
+Van der Myle had gone to Paris to make such exertions as he could among
+the leading members of the council in favour of his father-in-law.
+Langerac, the States' ambassador there, who but yesterday had been
+turning at every moment to the Advocate for light and warmth as to the
+sun, now hastened to disavow all respect or regard for him.  He scoffed
+at the slender sympathy van der Myle was finding in the bleak political
+atmosphere.  He had done his best to find out what he had been
+negotiating with the members of the council and was glad to say that it
+was so inconsiderable as to be not worth reporting.  He had not spoken
+with or seen the King.  Jeannin, his own and his father-in-law's
+principal and most confidential friend, had only spoken with him half an
+hour and then departed for Burgundy, although promising to confer with
+him sympathetically on his return.  "I am very displeased at his coming
+here," said Langerac, " .  .  .  .  .  but he has found little friendship
+or confidence, and is full of woe and apprehension."
+
+The Ambassador's labours were now confined to personally soliciting the
+King's permission for deputations from the Reformed churches of France
+to go to the Synod, now opened (13th November) at Dordtrecht, and to
+clearing his own skirts with the Prince and States-General of any
+suspicion of sympathy with Barneveld.
+
+In the first object he was unsuccessful, the King telling him at last
+"with clear and significant words that this was impossible, on account of
+his conscience, his respect for the Catholic religion, and many other
+reasons."
+
+In regard to the second point he acted with great promptness.
+
+He received a summons in January 1619 from the States-General and the
+Prince to send them all letters that he had ever received from Barneveld.
+He crawled at once to Maurice on his knees, with the letters in his hand.
+
+"Most illustrious, high-born Prince, most gracious Lord," he said;
+"obeying the commands which it has pleased the States and your princely
+Grace to give me, I send back the letters of Advocate Barneveld.  If your
+princely Grace should find anything in them showing that the said
+Advocate had any confidence in me, I most humbly beg your princely Grace
+to believe that I never entertained any affection for, him, except only
+in respect to and so far as he was in credit and good authority with the
+government, and according to the upright zeal which I thought I could see
+in him for the service of My high and puissant Lords the States-General
+and of your princely Grace."
+
+Greater humbleness could be expected of no ambassador.  Most nobly did
+the devoted friend and pupil of the great statesman remember his duty to
+the illustrious Prince and their High Mightinesses.  Most promptly did he
+abjure his patron now that he had fallen into the abyss.
+
+"Nor will it be found," he continued, "that I have had any sympathy or
+communication with the said Advocate except alone in things concerning my
+service.  The great trust I had in him as the foremost and oldest
+counsellor of the state, as the one who so confidentially instructed me
+on my departure for France, and who had obtained for himself so great
+authority that all the most important affairs of the country were
+entrusted to him, was the cause that I simply and sincerely wrote
+to him all that people were in the habit of saying at this court.
+
+"If I had known in the least or suspected that he was not what he ought
+to be in the service of My Lords the States and of your princely Grace
+and for the welfare and tranquillity of the land, I should have been well
+on my guard against letting myself in the least into any kind of
+communication with him whatever."
+
+The reader has seen how steadily and frankly the Advocate had kept
+Langerac as well as Caron informed of passing events, and how little
+concealment he made of his views in regard to the Synod, the
+Waartgelders, and the respective authority of the States-General and
+States-Provincial.  Not only had Langerac no reason to suspect that
+Barneveld was not what he ought to be, but he absolutely knew the
+contrary from that most confidential correspondence with him which
+he was now so abjectly repudiating.  The Advocate, in a protracted
+constitutional controversy, had made no secret of his views either
+officially or privately.  Whether his positions were tenable or flimsy,
+they had been openly taken.
+
+"What is more," proceeded the Ambassador, "had I thought that any account
+ought to be made of what I wrote to him concerning the sovereignty of the
+Provinces, I should for a certainty not have failed to advise your Grace
+of it above all."
+
+He then, after profuse and maudlin protestations of his most dutiful zeal
+all the days of his life for "the service, honour, reputation, and
+contentment of your princely Grace," observed that he had not thought it
+necessary to give him notice of such idle and unfounded matters, as being
+likely to give the Prince annoyance and displeasure.  He had however
+always kept within himself the resolution duly to notify him in case he
+found that any belief was attached to the reports in Paris.  "But the
+reports," he said, "were popular and calumnious inventions of which no
+man had ever been willing or able to name to him the authors."
+
+The Ambassador's memory was treacherous, and he had doubtless neglected
+to read over the minutes, if he had kept them, of his wonderful
+disclosures on the subject of the sovereignty before thus exculpating
+himself.  It will be remembered that he had narrated the story of the
+plot for conferring sovereignty upon Maurice not as a popular calumny
+flying about Paris with no man to father it, but he had given it to
+Barneveld on the authority of a privy councillor of France and of the
+King himself.  "His Majesty knows it to be authentic," he had said in his
+letter.  That letter was a pompous one, full of mystery and so secretly
+ciphered that he had desired that his friend van der Myle, whom he was
+now deriding for his efforts in Paris to save his father-inlaw from his
+fate, might assist the Advocate in unravelling its contents.  He had now
+discovered that it had been idle gossip not worthy of a moment's
+attention.
+
+The reader will remember too that Barneveld, without attaching much
+importance to the tale, had distinctly pointed out to Langerac that the
+Prince himself was not implicated in the plot and had instructed the
+Ambassador to communicate the story to Maurice.  This advice had not been
+taken, but he had kept the perilous stuff upon his breast.  He now sought
+to lay the blame, if it were possible to do so, upon the man to whom he
+had communicated it and who had not believed it.
+
+The business of the States-General, led by the Advocate's enemies this
+winter, was to accumulate all kind of tales, reports, and accusations to
+his discredit on which to form something like a bill of indictment.  They
+had demanded all his private and confidential correspondence with Caron
+and Langerae.  The ambassador in Paris had been served, moreover, with a
+string of nine interrogatories which he was ordered to answer on oath and
+honour.  This he did and appended the reply to his letter.
+
+The nine questions had simply for their object to discover what Barneveld
+had been secretly writing to the Ambassador concerning the Synod, the
+enlisted troops, and the supposed projects of Maurice concerning the
+sovereignty.  Langerac was obliged to admit in his replies that nothing
+had been written except the regular correspondence which he endorsed, and
+of which the reader has been able to see the sum and substance in the
+copious extracts which have been given.
+
+He stated also that he had never received any secret instructions save
+the marginal notes to the list of questions addressed by him, when about
+leaving for Paris in 1614, to Barneveld.  Most of these were of a trivial
+and commonplace nature.
+
+They had however a direct bearing on the process to be instituted against
+the Advocate, and the letter too which we have been examining will prove
+to be of much importance.  Certainly pains enough were taken to detect
+the least trace of treason in a very loyal correspondence.  Langerac
+concluded by enclosing the Barneveld correspondence since the beginning
+of the year 1614, protesting that not a single letter had been kept back
+or destroyed.  "Once more I recommend myself to mercy, if not to favour,"
+he added, "as the most faithful, most obedient, most zealous servant of
+their High Mightinesses and your princely Grace, to whom I have devoted
+and sacrificed my honour and life in most humble service; and am now and
+forever the most humble, most obedient, most faithful servant of my most
+serene, most illustrious, most highly born Prince, most gracious Lord and
+princeliest Grace."
+
+The former adherent of plain Advocate Barneveld could hardly find
+superlatives enough to bestow upon the man whose displeasure that
+prisoner had incurred.
+
+Directly after the arrest the Stadholder had resumed his tour through
+the Provinces in order to change the governments.  Sliding over any
+opposition which recent events had rendered idle, his course in every
+city was nearly the same.  A regiment or two and a train of eighty or a
+hundred waggons coming through the city-gate preceded by the Prince and
+his body-guard of 300, a tramp of halberdmen up the great staircase of
+the town-hall, a jingle of spurs in the assembly-room, and the whole
+board of magistrates were summoned into the presence of the Stadholder.
+They were then informed that the world had no further need of their
+services, and were allowed to bow themselves out of the presence.  A new
+list was then announced, prepared beforehand by Maurice on the suggestion
+of those on whom he could rely.  A faint resistance was here and there
+attempted by magistrates and burghers who could not forget in a moment
+the rights of self-government and the code of laws which had been enjoyed
+for centuries.  At Hoorn, for instance, there was deep indignation among
+the citizens.  An imprudent word or two from the authorities might have
+brought about a "blood-bath."
+
+The burgomaster ventured indeed to expostulate.  They requested the
+Prince not to change the magistracy.  "This is against our privileges,"
+they said, "which it is our duty to uphold.  You will see what deep
+displeasure will seize the burghers, and how much disturbance and tumult
+will follow.  If any faults have been committed by any member of the
+government, let him be accused and let him answer for them.  Let your
+Excellency not only dismiss but punish such as cannot properly justify
+themselves."
+
+But his Excellency summoned them all to the town-house and as usual
+deposed them all.  A regiment was drawn up in half-moon on the square
+beneath the windows.  To the magistrates asking why they were deposed,
+he briefly replied, "The quiet of the land requires it.  It is necessary
+to have unanimous resolutions in the States-General at the Hague.  This
+cannot be accomplished without these preliminary changes.  I believe that
+you had good intentions and have been faithful servants of the
+Fatherland.  But this time it must be so."
+
+And so the faithful servants of the Fatherland were dismissed into space.
+Otherwise how could there be unanimous voting in parliament?  It must be
+regarded perhaps as fortunate that the force of character, undaunted
+courage, and quiet decision of Maurice enabled him to effect this violent
+series of revolutions with such masterly simplicity.  It is questionable
+whether the Stadholder's commission technically empowered him thus to
+trample on municipal law; it is certain that, if it did, the boasted
+liberties of the Netherlands were a dream; but it is equally true that,
+in the circumstances then existing, a vulgar, cowardly, or incompetent
+personage might have marked his pathway with massacres without restoring
+tranquillity.
+
+Sometimes there was even a comic aspect to these strokes of state.
+The lists of new magistrates being hurriedly furnished by the Prince's
+adherents to supply the place of those evicted, it often happened that
+men not quahified by property, residence, or other attributes were
+appointed to the government, so that many became magistrates before
+they were citizens.
+
+On being respectfully asked sometimes who such a magistrate might be
+whose face and name were equally unknown to his colleagues and to the
+townsmen in general; "Do I know the fellows?" he would say with a
+cheerful laugh.  And indeed they might have all been dead men, those new
+functionaries, for aught he did know.  And so on through Medemblik and
+Alkmaar, Brielle, Delft, Monnikendam, and many other cities progressed
+the Prince, sowing new municipalities broadcast as he passed along.  At
+the Hague on his return a vote of thanks to the Prince was passed by the
+nobles and most of the cities for the trouble he had taken in this
+reforming process.  But the unanimous vote had not yet been secured, the
+strongholds of Arminianism, as it was the fashion to call them, not being
+yet reduced.
+
+The Prince, in reply to the vote of thanks, said that "in what he had
+done and was going to do his intention sincerely and uprightly had been
+no other than to promote the interests and tranquillity of the country,
+without admixture of anything personal and without prejudice to the
+general commonwealth or the laws and privileges of the cities."  He
+desired further that "note might be taken of this declaration as record
+of his good and upright intentions."
+
+But the sincerest and most upright intentions may be refracted by party
+atmosphere from their aim, and the purest gold from the mint elude the
+direct grasp through the clearest fluid in existence.  At any rate it
+would have been difficult to convince the host of deposed magistrates
+hurled from office, although recognized as faithful servants of the
+Fatherland, that such violent removal had taken place without detriment
+to the laws and privileges.
+
+And the Stadholder went to the few cities where some of the leaven still
+lingered.
+
+He arrived at Leyden on the 22nd October, "accompanied by a great suite
+of colonels, ritmeesters, and captains," having sent on his body-guard
+to the town strengthened by other troops.  He was received by the
+magistrates at the "Prince's Court" with great reverence and entertained
+by them in the evening at a magnificent banquet.
+
+Next morning he summoned the whole forty of them to the town-house,
+disbanded them all, and appointed new ones in their stead; some of the
+old members however who could be relied upon being admitted to the
+revolutionized board.
+
+The populace, mainly of the Stadholder's party, made themselves merry
+over the discomfited "Arminians".  They hung wisps of straw as derisive
+wreaths of triumph over the dismantled palisade lately encircling the
+town-hall, disposed of the famous "Oldenbarneveld's teeth" at auction in
+the public square, and chased many a poor cock and hen, with their
+feathers completely plucked from their bodies, about the street, crying
+"Arme haenen, arme haenen"--Arminians or poor fowls--according to the
+practical witticism much esteemed at that period.  Certainly the
+unfortunate Barneveldians or Arminians, or however the Remonstrants
+might be designated, had been sufficiently stripped of their plumes.
+
+The Prince, after having made proclamation from the town-house enjoining
+"modesty upon the mob" and a general abstention from "perverseness and
+petulance," went his way to Haarlem, where he dismissed the magistrates
+and appointed new ones, and then proceeded to Rotterdam, to Gouda, and to
+Amsterdam.
+
+It seemed scarcely necessary to carry, out the process in the commercial
+capital, the abode of Peter Plancius, the seat of the West India Company,
+the head-quarters of all most opposed to the Advocate, most devoted to
+the Stadholder.  But although the majority of the city government was an
+overwhelming one, there was still a respectable minority who, it was
+thought possible, might under a change of circumstances effect much
+mischief and even grow into a majority.
+
+The Prince therefore summoned the board before him according to his usual
+style of proceeding and dismissed them all.  They submitted without a
+word of remonstrance.
+
+Ex-Burgomaster Hooft, a man of seventy-two-father of the illustrious
+Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft, one of the greatest historians of the
+Netherlands or of any country, then a man of thirty-seven-shocked at the
+humiliating silence, asked his colleagues if they had none of them a word
+to say in defence of their laws and privileges.
+
+They answered with one accord "No."
+
+The old man, a personal friend of Barneveld and born the same year, then
+got on his feet and addressed the Stadholder.  He spoke manfully and
+well, characterizing the summary deposition of the magistracy as illegal
+and unnecessary, recalling to the memory of those who heard him that he
+had been thirty-six years long a member of the government and always a
+warm friend of the House of Nassau, and respectfully submitting that the
+small minority in the municipal government, while differing from their
+colleagues and from the greater number of the States-General, had limited
+their opposition to strictly constitutional means, never resorting to
+acts of violence or to secret conspiracy.
+
+Nothing could be more truly respectable than the appearance of this
+ancient magistrate, in long black robe with fur edgings, high ruff around
+his thin, pointed face, and decent skull-cap covering his bald old head,
+quavering forth to unsympathetic ears a temperate and unanswerable
+defence of things which in all ages the noblest minds have deemed most
+valuable.
+
+His harangue was not very long.  Maurice's reply was very short.
+
+"Grandpapa," he said, "it must be so this time.  Necessity and the
+service of the country require it."
+
+With that he dismissed the thirty-six magistrates and next day appointed
+a new board, who were duly sworn to fidelity to the States-General.  Of
+course a large proportion of the old members were renominated.
+
+Scarcely had the echo of the Prince's footsteps ceased to resound through
+the country as he tramped from one city to another, moulding each to his
+will, when the States of Holland, now thoroughly reorganized, passed a
+solemn vote of thanks to him for all that he had done.  The six cities of
+the minority had now become the majority, and there was unanimity at the
+Hague.  The Seven Provinces, States-General and States-Provincial, were
+as one, and the Synod was secured.  Whether the prize was worth the
+sacrifices which it had cost and was still to cost might at least be
+considered doubtful.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Affection of his friends and the wrath of his enemies
+Depths theological party spirit could descend
+Extraordinary capacity for yielding to gentle violence
+Human nature in its meanness and shame
+It had not yet occurred to him that he was married
+Make the very name of man a term of reproach
+Never lack of fishers in troubled waters
+Opposed the subjection of the magistracy by the priesthood
+Pot-valiant hero
+Resolve to maintain the civil authority over the military
+Tempest of passion and prejudice
+The effect of energetic, uncompromising calumny
+Yes, there are wicked men about
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext Life of John Barneveld, v9, Motley #95
+by John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND
+
+WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR
+
+By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+
+
+Life and Death of John of Barneveld, v10, 1618-19
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+     Rancour between the Politico-Religious Parties--Spanish Intrigues
+     Inconsistency of James--Brewster and Robinson's Congregation at
+     Leyden--They decide to leave for America--Robinson's Farewell Sermon
+     and Prayer at Parting.
+
+During this dark and mournful winter the internal dissensions and, as a
+matter of course, the foreign intrigues had become more dangerous than
+ever.  While the man who for a whole generation had guided the policy of
+the Republic and had been its virtual chief magistrate lay hidden from
+all men's sight, the troubles which he had sought to avert were not
+diminished by his removal from the scene.  The extreme or Gomarist party
+which had taken a pride in secret conventicles where they were in a
+minority, determined, as they said, to separate Christ from Belial and,
+meditating the triumph which they had at last secured, now drove the
+Arminians from the great churches.  Very soon it was impossible for these
+heretics to enjoy the rights of public worship anywhere.  But they were
+not dismayed.  The canons of Dordtrecht had not yet been fulminated.
+They avowed themselves ready to sacrifice worldly goods and life itself
+in defence of the Five Points.  In Rotterdam, notwithstanding a garrison
+of fifteen companies, more than a thousand Remonstrants assembled on
+Christmas-day in the Exchange for want of a more appropriate place of
+meeting and sang the 112th Psalm in mighty chorus.  A clergyman of their
+persuasion accidentally passing through the street was forcibly laid
+hands upon and obliged to preach to them, which he did with great
+unction.  The magistracy, where now the Contra-Remonstrants had the
+control, forbade, under severe penalties, a repetition of such scenes.
+It was impossible not to be reminded of the days half a century before,
+when the early Reformers had met in the open fields or among the dunes,
+armed to the teeth, and with outlying pickets to warn the congregation of
+the approach of Red Rod and the functionaries of the Holy Inquisition.
+
+In Schoonhoven the authorities attempted one Sunday by main force to
+induct a Contra-Remonstrant into the pulpit from which a Remonstrant had
+just been expelled.  The women of the place turned out with their
+distaffs and beat them from the field.  The garrison was called out, and
+there was a pitched battle in the streets between soldiers, police
+officers, and women, not much to the edification certainly of the
+Sabbath-loving community on either side, the victory remaining with the
+ladies.
+
+In short it would be impossible to exaggerate the rancour felt between
+the different politico-religious parties.  All heed for the great war now
+raging in the outside world between the hostile elements of Catholicism
+and Protestantism, embattled over an enormous space, was lost in the din
+of conflict among the respective supporters of conditional and
+unconditional damnation within the pale of the Reformed Church.  The
+earthquake shaking Europe rolled unheeded, as it was of old said to have
+done at Cannae, amid the fierce shock of mortal foes in that narrow
+field.
+
+The respect for authority which had so long been the distinguishing
+characteristic of the Netherlanders seemed to have disappeared.  It was
+difficult--now that the time-honoured laws and privileges in defence of
+which, and of liberty of worship included in them, the Provinces had made
+war forty years long had been trampled upon by military force--for those
+not warmed by the fire of Gomarus to feel their ancient respect for the
+magistracy.  The magistracy at that moment seemed to mean the sword.
+
+The Spanish government was inevitably encouraged by the spectacle thus
+presented.  We have seen the strong hopes entertained by the council at
+Madrid, two years before the crisis now existing had occurred.  We have
+witnessed the eagerness with which the King indulged the dream of
+recovering the sovereignty which his father had lost, and the vast
+schemes which he nourished towards that purpose, founded on the internal
+divisions which were reducing the Republic to impotence.  Subsequent
+events had naturally made him more sanguine than ever.  There was now a
+web of intrigue stretching through the Provinces to bring them all back
+under the sceptre of Spain.  The imprisonment of the great stipendiary,
+the great conspirator, the man who had sold himself and was on the point
+of selling his country, had not terminated those plots.  Where was the
+supposed centre of that intrigue?  In the council of state of the
+Netherlands, ever fiercely opposed to Barneveld and stuffed full of his
+mortal enemies.  Whose name was most familiar on the lips of the Spanish
+partisans engaged in these secret schemes?  That of Adrian Manmaker,
+President of the Council, representative of Prince Maurice as first noble
+of Zealand in the States-General, chairman of the committee sent by that
+body to Utrecht to frustrate the designs of the Advocate, and one of the
+twenty-four commissioners soon to be appointed to sit in judgment upon
+him.
+
+The tale seems too monstrous for belief, nor is it to be admitted with
+certainty, that Manmaker and the other councillors implicated had
+actually given their adhesion to the plot, because the Spanish emissaries
+in their correspondence with the King assured him of the fact.  But if
+such a foundation for suspicion could have been found against Barneveld
+and his friends, the world would not have heard the last of it from that
+hour to this.
+
+It is superfluous to say that the Prince was entirely foreign to these
+plans.  He had never been mentioned as privy to the little arrangements
+of Councillor du Agean and others, although he was to benefit by them.
+In the Spanish schemes he seems to have been considered as an impediment,
+although indirectly they might tend to advance him.
+
+"We have managed now, I hope, that his Majesty will be recognized as
+sovereign of the country," wrote the confidential agent of the King of
+Spain in the Netherlands, Emmanuel Sueyro, to the government of Madrid.
+"The English will oppose it with all their strength.  But they can do
+nothing except by making Count Maurice sovereign of Holland and duke of
+Julich and Cleve.  Maurice will also contrive to make himself master of
+Wesel, so it is necessary for the Archduke to be beforehand with him and
+make sure of the place.  It is also needful that his Majesty should
+induce the French government to talk with the Netherlanders and convince
+them that it is time to prolong the Truce."
+
+This was soon afterwards accomplished.  The French minister at Brussels
+informed Archduke Albert that du Maurier had been instructed to propose
+the prolongation, and that he had been conferring with the Prince of
+Orange and the States-General on the subject.  At first the Prince had
+expressed disinclination, but at the last interview both he and the
+States had shown a desire for it, and the French King had requested from
+the Archduke a declaration whether the Spanish government would be
+willing to treat for it.  In such case Lewis would offer himself as
+mediator and do his best to bring about a successful result.
+
+But it was not the intention of the conspirators in the Netherlands that
+the Truce should be prolonged.  On the contrary the negotiation for it
+was merely to furnish the occasion for fully developing their plot.
+"The States and especially those of Zealand will reply that they no
+longer wish the Truce," continued Sueyro, "and that they would prefer war
+to such a truce.  They desire to put ships on the coast of Flanders, to
+which the Hollanders are opposed because it would be disagreeable to the
+French.  So the Zealanders will be the first to say that the
+Netherlanders must come back to his Majesty.  This their President
+Hanmaker has sworn.  The States of Overyssel will likewise give their
+hand to this because they say they will be the first to feel the shock of
+the war.  Thus we shall very easily carry out our design, and as we shall
+concede to the Zealanders their demands in regard to the navigation they
+at least will place themselves under the dominion of his Majesty as will
+be the case with Friesland as well as Overyssel."
+
+It will be observed that in this secret arrangement for selling the
+Republic to its ancient master it was precisely the Provinces and the
+politicians most steadily opposed to Barneveld that took the lead.
+Zealand, Friesland, Overyssel were in the plot, but not a word was said
+of Utrecht.  As for Holland itself, hopes were founded on the places
+where hatred to the Advocate was fiercest.
+
+"Between ourselves," continued the agent, "we are ten here in the
+government of Holland to support the plan, but we must not discover
+ourselves for fear of suffering what has happened to Barneveld."
+
+He added that the time for action had not yet come, and that if movements
+were made before the Synod had finished its labours, "The Gomarists would
+say that they were all sold."  He implored the government at Madrid to
+keep the whole matter for the present profoundly secret because "Prince
+Maurice and the Gomarists had the forces of the country at their
+disposition."  In case the plot was sprung too suddenly therefore, he
+feared that with the assistance of England Maurice might, at the head of
+the Gomarists and the army, make himself sovereign of Holland and Duke of
+Cleve, while he and the rest of the Spanish partisans might be in prison
+with Barneveld for trying to accomplish what Barneveld had been trying to
+prevent.
+
+The opinions and utterances of such a man as James I. would be of little
+worth to our history had he not happened to occupy the place he did.  But
+he was a leading actor in the mournful drama which filled up the whole
+period of the Twelve Years' Truce.  His words had a direct influence on
+great events.  He was a man of unquestionable erudition, of powers of
+mind above the average, while the absolute deformity of his moral
+constitution made him incapable of thinking, feeling, or acting rightly
+on any vital subject, by any accident or on any occasion.  If there were
+one thing that he thoroughly hated in the world, it was the Reformed
+religion.  If in his thought there were one term of reproach more
+loathsome than another to be applied to a human creature, it was the word
+Puritan.  In the word was subversion of all established authority in
+Church and State--revolution, republicanism, anarchy.  "There are degrees
+in Heaven," he was wont to say, "there are degrees in Hell, there must be
+degrees on earth."
+
+He forbade the Calvinist Churches of Scotland to hold their customary
+Synod in 1610, passionately reviling them and their belief, and declaring
+"their aim to be nothing else than to deprive kings and princes of their
+sovereignty, and to reduce the whole world to a popular form of
+government where everybody would be master."
+
+When the Prince of Neuburg embraced Catholicism, thus complicating
+matters in the duchies and strengthening the hand of Spain and the
+Emperor in the debateable land, he seized the occasion to assure the
+agent of the Archduke in London, Councillor Boissetot, of his warm
+Catholic sympathies.  "They say that I am the greatest heretic in the
+world!"  he exclaimed; "but I will never deny that the true religion is
+that of Rome even if corrupted."  He expressed his belief in the real
+presence, and his surprise that the Roman Catholics did not take the
+chalice for the blood of Christ.  The English bishops, he averred,
+drew their consecration through the bishops in Mary Tudor's time
+from the Pope.
+
+As Philip II., and Ferdinand II. echoing the sentiments of his
+illustrious uncle, had both sworn they would rather reign in a wilderness
+than tolerate a single heretic in their dominions, so James had said "he
+would rather be a hermit in a forest than a king over such people as the
+pack of Puritans were who overruled the lower house."
+
+For the Netherlanders he had an especial hatred, both as rebels and
+Puritans.  Soon after coming to the English throne he declared that their
+revolt, which had been going on all his lifetime and of which he never
+expected to see the end, had begun by petition for matters of religion.
+"His mother and he from their cradles," he said, "had been haunted with a
+Puritan devil, which he feared would not leave him to his grave.  And he
+would hazard his crown but he would suppress those malicious spirits."
+It seemed a strange caprice of Destiny that assigned to this hater of
+Netherlanders, of Puritans, and of the Reformed religion, the decision of
+disputed points between Puritans and anti-Puritans in the Reformed Church
+of the Netherlands.
+
+It seemed stranger that his opinions should be hotly on the side of the
+Puritans.
+
+Barneveld, who often used the expression in later years, as we have seen
+in his correspondence, was opposed to the Dutch Puritans because they had
+more than once attempted subversion of the government on pretext of
+religion, especially at the memorable epoch of Leicester's government.
+
+The business of stirring up these religious conspiracies against the
+magistracy he was apt to call "Flanderizing," in allusion to those
+disastrous days and to the origin of the ringleaders in those tumults.
+But his main object, as we have seen, was to effect compromises and
+restore good feeling between members of the one church, reserving the
+right of disposing over religious matters to the government of the
+respective provinces.
+
+But James had remedied his audacious inconsistency by discovering that
+Puritanism in England and in the Netherlands resembled each other no more
+than certain letters transposed into totally different words meant one
+and the same thing.  The anagrammatic argument had been neatly put by Sir
+Dudley Carleton, convincing no man.  Puritanism in England "denied the
+right of human invention or imposition in religious matters."  Puritanism
+in the Netherlands denied the right of the legal government to impose its
+authority in religious matters.  This was the great matter of debate in
+the Provinces.  In England the argument had been settled very summarily
+against the Puritans by sheriffs' officers, bishops' pursuivants, and
+county jails.
+
+As the political tendencies, so too the religious creed and observances
+of the English Puritans were identical with that of the Contra-
+Remonstrants, whom King James had helped to their great triumph.  This
+was not very difficult to prove.  It so happened that there were some
+English Puritans living at that moment in Leyden.  They formed an
+independent society by themselves, which they called a Congregational
+Church, and in which were some three hundred communicants.  The length of
+their residence there was almost exactly coeval with the Twelve Years'
+Truce.  They knew before leaving England that many relics of the Roman
+ceremonial, with which they were dissatisfied, and for the discontinuance
+of which they had in vain petitioned the crown--the ring, the sign of the
+cross, white surplices, and the like--besides the whole hierarchical
+system, had been disused in the Reformed Churches of France, Switzerland,
+and the United Provinces, where the forms of worship in their view had
+been brought more nearly to the early apostolic model.  They admitted for
+truth the doctrinal articles of the Dutch Reformed Churches.  They had
+not come to the Netherlands without cause.  At an early period of King
+James's reign this congregation of seceders from the establishment had
+been wont to hold meetings at Scrooby in Nottinghamshire, once a manor of
+the Archbishop of York, but then the residence of one William Brewster.
+This was a gentleman of some fortune, educated at Cambridge, a good
+scholar, who in Queen Elizabeth's time had been in the service of William
+Davison when Secretary of State.  He seemed to have been a confidential
+private secretary of that excellent and unlucky statesman, who found him
+so discreet and faithful as to deserve employment before all others in
+matters of trust and secrecy.  He was esteemed by Davison "rather as a
+son than a servant," and he repaid his confidence by doing him many
+faithful offices in the time of his troubles.  He had however long since
+retired from connection with public affairs, living a retired life,
+devoted to study, meditation, and practical exertion to promote the cause
+of religion, and in acts of benevolence sometimes beyond his means.
+
+The pastor of the Scrooby Church, one John Robinson, a graduate of
+Cambridge, who had been a benefited clergyman in Norfolk, was a man of
+learning, eloquence, and lofty intellect.  But what were such good gifts
+in the possession of rebels, seceders, and Puritans?  It is needless to
+say that Brewster and Robinson were baited, persecuted, watched day and
+night, some of the congregation often clapped into prison, others into
+the stocks, deprived of the means of livelihood, outlawed, famished,
+banned.  Plainly their country was no place for them.  After a few years
+of such work they resolved to establish themselves in Holland, where at
+least they hoped to find refuge and toleration.
+
+But it proved as difficult for them to quit the country as to remain in
+it.  Watched and hunted like gangs of coiners, forgers, or other felons
+attempting to flee from justice, set upon by troopers armed with "bills
+and guns and other weapons," seized when about to embark, pillaged and
+stripped by catchpoles, exhibited as a show to grinning country folk,
+the women and children dealt with like drunken tramps, led before
+magistrates, committed to jail; Mr. Brewster and six other of the
+principal ones being kept in prison and bound over to the assizes; they
+were only able after attempts lasting through two years' time to effect
+their escape to Amsterdam.  After remaining there a year they had removed
+to Leyden, which they thought "a fair and beautiful city, and of a sweet
+situation."
+
+They settled in Leyden in the very year in which Arminius was buried
+beneath the pavement of St. Peter's Church in that town.  It was the year
+too in which the Truce was signed.  They were a singularly tranquil and
+brotherly community.  Their pastor, who was endowed with remarkable
+gentleness and tact in dealing with his congregation, settled amicably
+all their occasional disputes.  The authorities of the place held them
+up as a model.  To a Walloon congregation in which there were many
+troublesome and litigious members they said: "These English have lived
+among us ten years, and yet we never had any suit or accusation against
+any of them, but your quarrels are continual."
+
+Although many of them were poor, finding it difficult to earn their
+living in a foreign land among people speaking a strange tongue, and with
+manners and habits differing from their own, and where they were obliged
+to learn new trades, having most of them come out of an agricultural
+population, yet they enjoyed a singular reputation for probity.  Bakers
+and butchers and the like willingly gave credit to the poorest of these
+English, and sought their custom if known to be of the congregation.
+Mr. Brewster, who had been reduced almost to poverty by his charities and
+munificent aid to his struggling brethren, earned his living by giving
+lessons in English, having first composed a grammar according to the
+Latin model for the use of his pupils.  He also set up a printing
+establishment, publishing many controversial works prohibited in England,
+a proceeding which roused the wrath of Carleton, impelling him to do his
+best to have him thrown into prison.
+
+It was not the first time that this plain, mechanical, devout Englishman,
+now past middle age, had visited the Netherlands.  More than twenty-five
+years before he had accompanied William Davison on his famous embassy to
+the States, as private secretary.
+
+When the keys of Flushing, one of the cautionary towns, were committed to
+the Ambassador, he confided them to the care of Brewster, who slept with
+them under his pillow.  The gold chain which Davison received as a
+present from the provincial government on leaving the country was
+likewise placed in his keeping, with orders to wear it around his neck
+until they should appear before the Queen.  To a youth of ease and
+affluence, familiar with ambassadors and statesmen and not unknown at
+courts, had succeeded a mature age of obscurity, deep study, and poverty.
+No human creature would have heard of him had his career ended with his
+official life.  Two centuries and a half have passed away and the name of
+the outlawed Puritan of Scrooby and Leyden is still familiar to millions
+of the English race.
+
+All these Englishmen were not poor.  Many of them occupied houses of fair
+value, and were admitted to the freedom of the city.  The pastor with
+three of his congregation lived in a comfortable mansion, which they had
+purchased for the considerable sum of 8000 florins, and on the garden of
+which they subsequently erected twenty-one lesser tenements for the use
+of the poorer brethren.
+
+Mr. Robinson was himself chosen a member of the famous university and
+admitted to its privileges.  During his long residence in Leyden, besides
+the daily care of his congregation, spiritual and temporal, he wrote many
+learned works.
+
+Thus the little community, which grew gradually larger by emigration from
+England, passed many years of tranquillity.  Their footsteps were not
+dogged by constables and pursuivants, they were not dragged daily before
+the magistrates, they were not thrown into the town jails, they were not
+hunted from place to place with bows and bills and mounted musketeers.
+They gave offence to none, and were respected by all.  "Such was their
+singleheartedness and sincere affection one towards another," says their
+historian and magistrate, "that they came as near the primitive pattern
+of the first churches as any other church of these later times has done,
+according to their rank and quality."
+
+Here certainly were English Puritans more competent than any men else in
+the world to judge if it were a slander upon the English government to
+identify them with Dutch Puritans.  Did they sympathize with the party in
+Holland which the King, who had so scourged and trampled upon themselves
+in England, was so anxious to crush, the hated Arminians?  Did they abhor
+the Contra-Remonstrants whom James and his ambassador Carleton doted upon
+and whom Barneveld called "Double Puritans" and "Flanderizers?"
+
+Their pastor may answer for himself and his brethren.
+
+"We profess before God and men," said Robinson in his Apologia, "that we
+agree so entirely with the Reformed Dutch Churches in the matter of
+religion as to be ready to subscribe to all and each of their articles
+exactly as they are set forth in the Netherland Confession.  We
+acknowledge those Reformed Churches as true and genuine, we profess and
+cultivate communion with them as much as in us lies.  Those of us who
+understand the Dutch language attend public worship under their pastors.
+We administer the Holy Supper to such of their members as, known to us,
+appear at our meetings."  This was the position of the Puritans.
+Absolute, unqualified accordance with the Contra-Remonstrants.
+
+As the controversy grew hot in the university between the Arminians and
+their adversaries, Mr. Robinson, in the language of his friend Bradford,
+became "terrible to the Arminians .  .  .  .  who so greatly molested the
+whole state and that city in particular."
+
+When Episcopius, the Arminian professor of theology, set forth sundry
+theses, challenging all the world to the onset, it was thought that "none
+was fitter to buckle with them" than Robinson.  The orthodox professor
+Polyander so importuned the English Puritan to enter the lists on behalf
+of the Contra-Remonstrants that at last he consented and overthrew the
+challenger, horse and man, in three successive encounters.  Such at least
+was the account given by his friend and admirer the historian. "The Lord
+did so help him to defend the truth and foil this adversary as he put him
+to an apparent nonplus in this great and public audience.  And the like
+he did a second or third time upon such like occasions," said Bradford,
+adding that, if it had not been for fear of offending the English
+government, the university would have bestowed preferments and honours
+upon the champion.
+
+We are concerned with this ancient and exhausted controversy only for the
+intense light it threw, when burning, on the history which occupies us.
+
+Of the extinct volcano itself which once caused such devastation, and in
+which a great commonwealth was well-nigh swallowed up, little is left but
+slag and cinders.  The past was made black and barren with them.  Let us
+disturb them as little as possible.
+
+The little English congregation remained at Leyden till toward the end of
+the Truce, thriving, orderly, respected, happy.  They were witnesses to
+the tumultuous, disastrous, and tragical events which darkened the
+Republic in those later years, themselves unobserved and unmolested.  Not
+a syllable seems to remain on record of the views or emotions which may
+have been excited by those scenes in their minds, nor is there a trace
+left on the national records of the Netherlands of their protracted
+residence on the soil.
+
+They got their living as best they might by weaving, printing, spinning,
+and other humble trades; they borrowed money on mortgages, they built
+houses, they made wills, and such births, deaths, and marriages as
+occurred among them were registered by the town-clerk.
+
+And at last for a variety of reasons they resolved to leave the
+Netherlands.  Perhaps the solution of the problem between Church and
+State in that country by the temporary subjection of State to Church may
+have encouraged them to realize a more complete theocracy, if a sphere of
+action could be found where the experiment might be tried without a
+severe battle against time-hallowed institutions and vested rights.
+Perhaps they were appalled by the excesses into which men of their own
+religious sentiments had been carried by theological and political
+passion.  At any rate depart they would; the larger half of the
+congregation remaining behind however till the pioneers should have
+broken the way, and in their own language "laid the stepping-stones."
+
+They had thought of the lands beneath the Equator, Raleigh having
+recently excited enthusiasm by his poetical descriptions of Guiana.
+But the tropical scheme was soon abandoned.  They had opened negotiations
+with the Stadholder and the States-General through Amsterdam merchants in
+regard to settling in New Amsterdam, and offered to colonize that country
+if assured of the protection of the United Provinces.  Their petition had
+been rejected.  They had then turned their faces to their old master and
+their own country, applying to the Virginia Company for a land-patent,
+which they were only too happy to promise, and to the King for liberty
+of religion in the wilderness confirmed under his broad seal, which his
+Majesty of course refused.  It was hinted however that James would
+connive at them and not molest them if they carried themselves peaceably.
+So they resolved to go without the seal, for, said their magistrate very
+wisely, "if there should be a purpose or desire to wrong them, a seal
+would not serve their turn though it were as broad as the house-floor."
+
+Before they left Leyden, their pastor preached to them a farewell sermon,
+which for loftiness of spirit and breadth of vision has hardly a parallel
+in that age of intolerance.  He laid down the principle that criticism of
+the Scriptures had not been exhausted merely because it had been begun;
+that the human conscience was of too subtle a nature to be imprisoned
+for ever in formulas however ingeniously devised; that the religious
+reformation begun a century ago was not completed; and that the Creator
+had not necessarily concluded all His revelations to mankind.
+
+The words have long been familiar to students of history, but they can
+hardly be too often laid to heart.
+
+Noble words, worthy to have been inscribed over the altar of the first
+church to be erected by the departing brethren, words to bear fruit after
+centuries should go by.  Had not the deeply injured and misunderstood
+Grotius already said, "If the trees we plant do not shade us, they will
+yet serve for our descendants?"
+
+Yet it is passing strange that the preacher of that sermon should be the
+recent champion of the Contra-Remonstrants in the great controversy; the
+man who had made himself so terrible to the pupils of the gentle and
+tolerant Arminius.
+
+And thus half of that English congregation went down to Delftshaven,
+attended by the other half who were to follow at a later period with
+their beloved pastor.  There was a pathetic leave-taking.  Even many of
+the Hollanders, mere casual spectators, were in tears.
+
+Robinson, kneeling on the deck of the little vessel, offered a prayer and
+a farewell.  Who could dream that this departure of an almost nameless
+band of emigrants to the wilderness was an epoch in the world's history?
+Yet these were the Pilgrim Fathers of New England, the founders of what
+was to be the mightiest republic of modern history, mighty and stable
+because it had been founded upon an idea.
+
+They were not in search of material comfort and the chances of elevating
+their condition, by removing from an overpeopled country to an organized
+Commonwealth, offering a wide field for pauper labourers.  Some of them
+were of good social rank and highest education, most of them in decent
+circumstances, none of them in absolute poverty.  And a few years later
+they were to be joined by a far larger company with leaders and many
+brethren of ancient birth and landed possessions, men of "education,
+figure; and estate," all ready to convert property into cash and to place
+it in joint-stock, not as the basis of promising speculation, but as the
+foundation of a church.
+
+It signifies not how much or how little one may sympathize with their
+dogma or their discipline now.  To the fact that the early settlement
+of that wilderness was by self-sacrificing men of earnestness and faith,
+who were bent on "advancing the Gospel of Christ in remote parts of the
+world," in the midst of savage beasts, more savage men, and unimaginable
+difficulties and dangers, there can be little doubt that the highest
+forms of Western civilization are due.  Through their provisional
+theocracy, the result of the independent church system was to establish
+the true purport of the Reformation, absolute religious equality.  Civil
+and political equality followed as a matter of course.
+
+Two centuries and a half have passed away.
+
+There are now some seventy or eighty millions of the English-speaking
+race on both sides the Atlantic, almost equally divided between the
+United Kingdom and the United Republic, and the departure of those
+outcasts of James has interest and significance for them all.
+
+Most fitly then, as a distinguished American statesman has remarked, does
+that scene on board the little English vessel, with the English pastor
+uttering his farewell blessing to a handful of English exiles for
+conscience sake; depicted on canvas by eminent artists, now adorn the
+halls of the American Congress and of the British Parliament.  Sympathy
+with one of the many imperishable bonds of union between the two great
+and scarcely divided peoples.
+
+We return to Barneveld in his solitary prison.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+     Barneveld's Imprisonment--Ledenberg's Examination and Death--
+     Remonstrance of De Boississe--Aerssens admitted to the order of
+     Knights--Trial of the Advocate--Barneveld's Defence--The States
+     proclaim a Public Fast--Du Maurier's Speech before the Assembly--
+     Barneveld's Sentence--Barneveld prepares for Death--Goes to
+     Execution.
+
+The Advocate had been removed within a few days after the arrest from the
+chamber in Maurice's apartments, where he had originally been confined,
+and was now in another building.
+
+It was not a dungeon nor a jail.  Indeed the commonplace and domestic
+character of the scenery in which these great events were transacted has
+in it something pathetic.  There was and still remains a two-storied
+structure, then of modern date, immediately behind the antique hall of
+the old Counts within the Binnenhof.  On the first floor was a courtroom
+of considerable extent, the seat of one of the chief tribunals of justice
+The story above was divided into three chambers with a narrow corridor
+on each side.  The first chamber, on the north-eastern side, was
+appropriated for the judges when the state prisoners should be tried.
+In the next Hugo Grotius was imprisoned.  In the third was Barneveld.
+There was a tower at the north-east angle of the building, within which
+a winding and narrow staircase of stone led up to the corridor and so to
+the prisoners' apartments.  Rombout Hoogerbeets was confined in another
+building.
+
+As the Advocate, bent with age and a life of hard work, and leaning on
+his staff, entered the room appropriated to him, after toiling up the
+steep staircase, he observed--
+
+"This is the Admiral of Arragon's apartment."
+
+It was true.  Eighteen years before, the conqueror of Nieuwpoort had
+assigned this lodging to the chief prisoner of war in that memorable
+victory over the Spaniards, and now Maurice's faithful and trusted
+counsellor at that epoch was placed in durance here, as the result of the
+less glorious series of victories which had just been achieved.
+
+It was a room of moderate dimensions, some twenty-five feet square, with
+a high vaulted roof and decently furnished.  Below and around him in the
+courtyard were the scenes of the Advocate's life-long and triumphant
+public services.  There in the opposite building were the windows of the
+beautiful "Hall of Truce," with its sumptuous carvings and gildings, its
+sculptures and portraits, where he had negotiated with the
+representatives of all the great powers of Christendom the famous Treaty
+which had suspended the war of forty years, and where he was wont almost
+daily to give audience to the envoys of the greatest sovereigns or the
+least significant states of Europe and Asia, all of whom had been ever
+solicitous of his approbation and support.
+
+Farther along in the same building was the assembly room of the States-
+General, where some of the most important affairs of the Republic and
+of Europe had for years been conducted, and where he had been so
+indispensable that, in the words of a contemporary who loved him not,
+"absolutely nothing could be transacted in his absence, all great affairs
+going through him alone."
+
+There were two dull windows, closely barred, looking northward over an
+irregular assemblage of tile-roofed houses and chimney-stacks, while
+within a stone's throw to the west, but unseen, was his own elegant
+mansion on the Voorhout, surrounded by flower gardens and shady pleasure
+grounds, where now sat his aged wife and her children all plunged in deep
+affliction.
+
+He was allowed the attendance of a faithful servant, Jan Franken by name,
+and a sentinel stood constantly before his door.  His papers had been
+taken from him, and at first he was deprived of writing materials.
+
+He had small connection with the outward world.  The news of the
+municipal revolution which had been effected by the Stadholder had not
+penetrated to his solitude, but his wife was allowed to send him fruit
+from their garden.  One day a basket of fine saffron pears was brought to
+him.  On slicing one with a knife he found a portion of a quill inside
+it.  Within the quill was a letter on thinnest paper, in minutest
+handwriting in Latin.  It was to this effect.
+
+"Don't rely upon the States of Holland, for the Prince of Orange has
+changed the magistracies in many cities.  Dudley Carleton is not your
+friend."
+
+A sergeant of the guard however, before bringing in these pears, had put
+a couple of them in his pocket to take home to his wife.  The letter,
+copies of which perhaps had been inserted for safety in several of them,
+was thus discovered and the use of this ingenious device prevented for
+the future.
+
+Secretary Ledenberg, who had been brought to the Hague in the early days
+of September, was the first of the prisoners subjected to examination.
+He was much depressed at the beginning of it, and is said to have
+exclaimed with many sighs, "Oh Barneveld, Barneveld, what have you
+brought us to!"
+
+He confessed that the Waartgelders at Utrecht had been enlisted on
+notification by the Utrecht deputies in the Hague with knowledge of
+Barneveld, and in consequence of a resolution of the States in order to
+prevent internal tumults.  He said that the Advocate had advised in the
+previous month of March a request to the Prince not to come to Utrecht;
+that the communication of the message, in regard to disbanding the
+Waartgelders, to his Excellency had been postponed after the deputies of
+the States of Holland had proposed a delay in that disbandment; that
+those deputies had come to Utrecht of their own accord; .  .  .  .  that
+they had judged it possible to keep everything in proper order in Utrecht
+if the garrison in the city paid by Holland were kept quiet, and if the
+States of Utrecht gave similar orders to the Waartgelders; for they did
+not believe that his Excellency would bring in troops from the outside.
+He said that he knew nothing of a new oath to be demanded of the
+garrison.  He stated that the Advocate, when at Utrecht, had exhorted
+the States, according to his wont, to maintain their liberties and
+privileges, representing to them that the right to decide on the Synod
+and the Waartgelders belonged to them.  Lastly, he denied knowing who
+was the author of The Balance, except by common report.
+
+Now these statements hardly amounted to a confession of abominable and
+unpardonable crimes by Ledenberg, nor did they establish a charge of
+high-treason and corrupt correspondence with the enemy against Barneveld.
+It is certain that the extent of the revelations seemed far from
+satisfactory to the accusers, and that some pressure would be necessary
+in order to extract anything more conclusive.  Lieutenant Nythof told
+Grotius that Ledenberg had accordingly been threatened with torture, and
+that the executioner had even handled him for that purpose.  This was
+however denied by the judges of instruction who had been charged with the
+preliminary examination.
+
+That examination took place on the 27th September.  After it had been
+concluded, Ledenberg prayed long and earnestly on returning to prison.
+He then entrusted a paper written in French to his son Joost, a boy of
+eighteen, who did not understand that language.  The youth had been
+allowed to keep his father company in his confinement, and slept in the
+same room.
+
+The next night but one, at two o'clock, Joost heard his father utter a
+deep groan.  He was startled, groped in the darkness towards his bed and
+felt his arm, which was stone cold.  He spoke to him and received no
+answer.  He gave the alarm, the watch came in with lights, and it was
+found that Ledenberg had given himself two mortal wounds in the abdomen
+with a penknife and then cut his throat with a table-knife which he had
+secreted, some days before, among some papers.
+
+The paper in French given to his son was found to be to this effect.
+
+"I know that there is an inclination to set an example in my person,
+to confront me with my best friends, to torture me, afterwards to convict
+me of contradictions and falsehoods as they say, and then to found an
+ignominious sentence upon points and trifles, for this it will be
+necessary to do in order to justify the arrest and imprisonment.  To
+escape all this I am going to God by the shortest road.  Against a dead
+man there can be pronounced no sentence of confiscation of property.
+Done 17th September (o. s.) 1618."
+
+The family of the unhappy gentleman begged his body for decent burial.
+The request was refused.  It was determined to keep the dead secretary
+above ground and in custody until he could be tried, and, if possible,
+convicted and punished.  It was to be seen whether it were so easy to
+baffle the power of the States-General, the Synod, and the Stadholder,
+and whether "going to God by the shortest road" was to save a culprit's
+carcass from ignominy, and his property from confiscation.
+
+The French ambassadors, who had been unwearied in their endeavour to
+restore harmony to the distracted Commonwealth before the arrest of the
+prisoners, now exerted themselves to throw the shield of their
+sovereign's friendship around the illustrious statesman and his fellow-
+sufferers.
+
+"It is with deepest sorrow," said de Boississe, "that I have witnessed
+the late hateful commotions.  Especially from my heart I grieve for the
+arrest of the Seignior Barneveld, who with his discretion and wise
+administration for the past thirty years has so drawn the hearts of all
+neighbouring princes to himself, especially that of the King my master,
+that on taking up my pen to apprize him of these events I am gravely
+embarrassed, fearing to infringe on the great respect due to your
+Mightinesses or against the honour and merits of the Seignior Barneveld.
+.  .  .  My Lords, take heed to your situation, for a great discontent is
+smouldering among your citizens.  Until now, the Union has been the chief
+source of your strength.  And I now fear that the King my master, the
+adviser of your renowned Commonwealth, maybe offended that you have taken
+this resolution after consulting with others, and without communicating
+your intention to his ambassador .  .  .  .  It is but a few days that an
+open edict was issued testifying to the fidelity of Barneveld, and can it
+be possible that within so short a time you have discovered that you have
+been deceived?  I summon you once more in the name of the King to lay
+aside all passion, to judge these affairs without partiality, and to
+inform me what I am to say to the King.  Such very conflicting accounts
+are given of these transactions that I must beg you to confide to me the
+secret of the affair.  The wisest in the land speak so strongly of these
+proceedings that it will be no wonder if the King my master should give
+me orders to take the Seignior Barneveld under his protection.  Should
+this prove to be the case, your Lordships will excuse my course .  .  .
+I beg you earnestly in your wisdom not to give cause of offence to
+neighbouring princes, especially to my sovereign, who wishes from his
+heart to maintain your dignity and interests and to assure you of his
+friendship."
+
+The language was vigorous and sincere, but the Ambassador forgot that the
+France of to-day was not the France of yesterday; that Louis XIII.  was
+not Henry IV.; that it was but a cheerful fiction to call the present
+King the guide and counsellor of the Republic, and that, distraught as
+she was by the present commotions, her condition was strength and
+tranquillity compared with the apparently decomposing and helpless state
+of the once great kingdom of France.  De Boississe took little by his
+demonstration.
+
+On the 12th December both de Boississe and du Maurier came before the
+States-General once more, and urged a speedy and impartial trial for the
+illustrious prisoners.  If they had committed acts of treason and
+rebellion, they deserved exemplary punishment, but the ambassadors warned
+the States-General with great earnestness against the dangerous doctrine
+of constructive treason, and of confounding acts dictated by violence of
+party spirit at an excited period with the crime of high-treason against
+the sovereignty of the State.
+
+"Barneveld so honourable," they said, "for his immense and long continued
+services has both this Republic and all princes and commonwealths for his
+witnesses.  It is most difficult to believe that he has attempted the
+destruction of his fatherland, for which you know that he has toiled so
+faithfully."
+
+They admitted that so grave charges ought now to be investigated.  "To
+this end," said the ambassadors, "you ought to give him judges who are
+neither suspected nor impassioned, and who will decide according to the
+laws of the land, and on clear and undeniable evidence .  .  .  .  So
+doing you will show to the whole world that you are worthy to possess and
+to administer this Commonwealth to whose government God has called you."
+
+Should they pursue another and a sterner course, the envoys warned the
+Assembly that the King would be deeply offended, deeming it thus proved
+how little value they set upon his advice and his friendship.
+
+The States-General replied on the 19th December, assuring the ambassadors
+that the delay in the trial was in order to make the evidence of the
+great conspiracy complete, and would not tend to the prejudice of the
+prisoners "if they had a good consciousness of their innocence."  They
+promised that the sentence upon them when pronounced would give entire
+satisfaction to all their allies and to the King of France in particular,
+of whom they spoke throughout the document in terms of profound respect.
+But they expressed their confidence that "his Majesty would not place the
+importunate and unfounded solicitations of a few particular criminals or
+their supporters before the general interests of the dignity and security
+of the Republic."
+
+On the same day the States-General addressed a letter filled with very
+elaborate and courteous commonplaces to the King, in which they expressed
+a certainty that his Majesty would be entirely satisfied with their
+actions.
+
+The official answer of the States-General to the ambassadors, just cited,
+gave but little comfort to the friends of the imprisoned statesman and
+his companions.  Such expressions as "ambitious and factious spirits,"
+--"authors and patrons of the faction,"--"attempts at novelty through
+changes in religion, in justice and in the fundamental laws of all orders
+of polity," and the frequent mention of the word "conspiracy" boded
+little good.
+
+Information of this condition of affairs was conveyed to Hoogerbeets and
+Grotius by means of an ingenious device of the distinguished scholar, who
+was then editing the Latin works of the Hague poet, Janus Secundus.
+
+While the sheets were going through the press, some of the verses were
+left out, and their place supplied by others conveying the intelligence
+which it was desired to send to the prisoners.  The pages which contained
+the secret were stitched together in such wise that in cutting the book
+open they were not touched but remained closed.  The verses were to this
+effect.  "The examination of the Advocate proceeds slowly, but there is
+good hope from the serious indignation of the French king, whose envoys
+are devoted to the cause of the prisoners, and have been informed that
+justice will be soon rendered.  The States of Holland are to assemble on
+the 15th January, at which a decision will certainly be taken for
+appointing judges.  The preachers here at Leyden are despised, and men
+are speaking strongly of war.  The tumult which lately occurred at
+Rotterdam may bring forth some good."
+
+The quick-wited Grotius instantly discovered the device, read the
+intelligence thus communicated in the proofsheets of Secundus, and made
+use of the system to obtain further intelligence.
+
+Hoogerbeets laid the book aside, not taking much interest at that time
+in the works of the Hague poet.  Constant efforts made to attract his
+attention to those poems however excited suspicion among his keepers,
+and the scheme was discovered before the Leyden pensionary had found
+the means to profit by it.'
+
+The allusions to the trial of the Advocate referred to the preliminary
+examination which took place, like the first interrogatories of Grotius
+and Hoogerbeets, in the months of November and December.
+
+The thorough manner in which Maurice had reformed the States of Holland
+has been described.  There was one department of that body however which
+still required attention.  The Order of Knights, small in number but
+potential in influence, which always voted first on great occasions, was
+still through a majority of its members inclined to Barneveld.  Both his
+sons-in-law had seats in that college.  The Stadholder had long believed
+in a spirit of hostility on the part of those nobles towards himself.
+He knew that a short time before this epoch there had been a scheme for
+introducing his young brother, Frederic Henry, into the Chamber of
+Knights.  The Count had become proprietor of the barony of Naaldwyk, a
+property which he had purchased of the Counts of Arenberg, and which
+carried with it the hereditary dignity of Great Equerry of the Counts of
+Holland.  As the Counts of Holland had ceased to exist, although their
+sovereignty had nearly been revived and conferred upon William the
+Silent, the office of their chief of the stables might be deemed a
+sinecure.  But the jealousy of Maurice was easily awakened, especially by
+any movement made or favoured by the Advocate.  He believed that in the
+election of Frederic Henry as a member of the College of Knights a plan
+lay concealed to thrust him into power and to push this elder brother
+from his place.  The scheme, if scheme it were, was never accomplished,
+but the Prince's rancour remained.
+
+He now informed the nobles that they must receive into their body Francis
+Aerssens, who had lately purchased the barony of Sommelsdyk, and Daniel
+de Hartaing, Seignior of Marquette.  With the presence of this deadly
+enemy of Barneveld and another gentleman equally devoted to the
+Stadholder's interest it seemed probable that the refractory majority of
+the board of nobles would be overcome.  But there were grave objections
+to the admission of these new candidates.  They were not eligible.  The
+constitution of the States and of the college of nobles prescribed that
+Hollanders only of ancient and noble race and possessing estates in the
+province could sit in that body.  Neither Aerssens nor Hartaing was born
+in Holland or possessed of the other needful qualifications.
+Nevertheless, the Prince, who had just remodelled all the municipalities
+throughout the Union which offered resistance to his authority, was not
+to be checked by so trifling an impediment as the statutes of the House
+of Nobles.  He employed very much the same arguments which he had used to
+"good papa" Hooft.  "This time it must be so."  Another time it might not
+be necessary.  So after a controversy which ended as controversies are
+apt to do when one party has a sword in his hand and the other is seated
+at a green-baize-covered table, Sommelsdyk and Marquette took their seats
+among the knights.  Of course there was a spirited protest.  Nothing was
+easier for the Stadholder than to concede the principle while trampling
+it with his boot-heels in practice.
+
+"Whereas it is not competent for the said two gentlemen to be admitted to
+our board," said the nobles in brief, "as not being constitutionally
+eligible, nevertheless, considering the strong desire of his Excellency
+the Prince of Orange, we, the nobles and knights of Holland, admit them
+with the firm promise to each other by noble and knightly faith ever in
+future for ourselves and descendants to maintain the privileges of our
+order now violated and never again to let them be directly or indirectly
+infringed."
+
+And so Aerssens, the unscrupulous plotter, and dire foe of the Advocate
+and all his house, burning with bitter revenge for all the favours he had
+received from him during many years, and the author of the venomous
+pamphlets and diatribes which had done so much of late to blacken the
+character of the great statesman before the public, now associated
+himself officially with his other enemies, while the preliminary
+proceedings for the state trials went forward.
+
+Meantime the Synod had met at Dordtrecht.  The great John Bogerman, with
+fierce, handsome face, beak and eye of a bird of prey, and a deluge of
+curly brown beard reaching to his waist, took his seat as president.
+Short work was made with the Armenians.  They and their five Points were
+soon thrust out into outer darkness.
+
+It was established beyond all gainsaying that two forms of Divine worship
+in one country were forbidden by God's Word, and that thenceforth by
+Netherland law there could be but one religion, namely, the Reformed or
+Calvinistic creed.
+
+It was settled that one portion of the Netherlanders and of the rest of
+the human race had been expressly created by the Deity to be for ever
+damned, and another portion to be eternally blessed.  But this history
+has little to do with that infallible council save in the political
+effect of its decrees on the fate of Barneveld.  It was said that the
+canons of Dordtrecht were likely to shoot off the head of the Advocate.
+Their sessions and the trial of the Advocate were simultaneous, but not
+technically related to each other.
+
+The conclusions of both courts were preordained, for the issue of the
+great duel between Priesthood and State had been decided when the
+military chieftain threw his sword into the scale of the Church.
+
+There had been purposely a delay, before coming to a decision as to the
+fate of the state prisoners, until the work of the Synod should have
+approached completion.
+
+It was thought good that the condemnation of the opinions of the
+Arminians and the chastisement of their leaders should go hand-in-hand.
+
+On the 23rd April 1619, the canons were signed by all the members of the
+Synod.  Arminians were pronounced heretics, schismatics, teachers of
+false doctrines.  They were declared incapable of filling any clerical or
+academical post.  No man thenceforth was to teach children, lecture to
+adolescents, or preach to the mature, unless a subscriber to the
+doctrines of the unchanged, unchangeable, orthodox church.  On the 30th
+April and 1st May the Netherland Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism
+were declared to be infallible.  No change was to be possible in either
+formulary.
+
+Schools and pulpits were inexorably bound to the only true religion.
+
+On the 6th May there was a great festival at Dordtrecht in honour of the
+conclusion of the Synod.  The canons, the sentence, and long prayers and
+orations in Latin by President Bogerman gladdened the souls of an immense
+multitude, which were further enlivened by the decree that both Creed and
+Catechism had stood the test of several criticisms and come out unchanged
+by a single hair.  Nor did the orator of the occasion forget to render
+thanks "to the most magnanimous King James of Great Britain, through
+whose godly zeal, fiery sympathy, and truly royal labour God had so often
+refreshed the weary Synod in the midst of their toil."
+
+The Synod held one hundred and eighty sessions between the 13th November
+1618 and 29th May 1619,  all the doings of which have been recorded in
+chronicles innumerable.  There need be no further mention of them here.
+
+Barneveld and the companions of his fate remained in prison.
+
+On the 7th March the trial of the great Advocate began.  He had sat in
+prison since the 18th of the preceding August.  For nearly seven months
+he had been deprived of all communication with the outward world save
+such atoms of intelligence as could be secretly conveyed to him in the
+inside of a quill concealed in a pear and by other devices.  The man who
+had governed one of the most important commonwealths of the world for
+nearly a generation long--during the same period almost controlling the
+politics of Europe--had now been kept in ignorance of the most
+insignificant everyday events.  During the long summer-heat of the dog-
+days immediately succeeding his arrest, and the long, foggy, snowy, icy
+winter of Holland which ensued, he had been confined in that dreary
+garret-room to which he had been brought when he left his temporary
+imprisonment in the apartments of Prince Maurice.
+
+There was nothing squalid in the chamber, nothing specially cruel or
+repulsive in the arrangements of his captivity.  He was not in fetters,
+nor fed upon bread and water.  He was not put upon the rack, nor even
+threatened with it as Ledenberg had been.  He was kept in a mean,
+commonplace, meagerly furnished, tolerably spacious room, and he was
+allowed the services of his faithful domestic servant John Franken.  A
+sentinel paced day and night up the narrow corridor before his door.  As
+spring advanced, the notes of the nightingale came through the prison-
+window from the neighbouring thicket.  One day John Franken, opening the
+window that his master might the better enjoy its song, exchanged
+greeting with a fellow-servant in the Barneveld mansion who happened to
+be crossing the courtyard.  Instantly workmen were sent to close and
+barricade the windows, and it was only after earnest remonstrances and
+pledges that this resolve to consign the Advocate to darkness was
+abandoned.
+
+He was not permitted the help of lawyer, clerk, or man of business.
+Alone and from his chamber of bondage, suffering from bodily infirmities
+and from the weakness of advancing age, he was compelled to prepare his
+defence against a vague, heterogeneous collection of charges, to meet
+which required constant reference, not only to the statutes, privileges,
+and customs of the country and to the Roman law, but to a thousand minute
+incidents out of which the history of the Provinces during the past dozen
+years or more had been compounded.
+
+It is true that no man could be more familiar with the science and
+practice of the law than he was, while of contemporary history he was
+himself the central figure.  His biography was the chronicle of his
+country.  Nevertheless it was a fearful disadvantage for him day by day
+to confront two dozen hostile judges comfortably seated at a great table
+piled with papers, surrounded by clerks with bags full of documents and
+with a library of authorities and precedents duly marked and dog's-eared
+and ready to their hands, while his only library and chronicle lay in his
+brain.  From day to day, with frequent intermissions, he was led down
+through the narrow turret-stairs to a wide chamber on the floor
+immediately below his prison, where a temporary tribunal had been
+arranged for the special commission.
+
+There had been an inclination at first on the part of his judges to
+treat him as a criminal, and to require him to answer, standing, to the
+interrogatories propounded to him.  But as the terrible old man advanced
+into the room, leaning on his staff, and surveying them with the air of
+haughty command habitual to him, they shrank before his glance; several
+involuntarily, rising uncovered, to salute him and making way for him to
+the fireplace about which many were standing that wintry morning.
+
+He was thenceforth always accommodated with a seat while he listened to
+and answered 'ex tempore' the elaborate series of interrogatories which
+had been prepared to convict him.
+
+Nearly seven months he had sat with no charges brought against him.  This
+was in itself a gross violation of the laws of the land, for according to
+all the ancient charters of Holland it was provided that accusation
+should follow within six weeks of arrest, or that the prisoner should go
+free.  But the arrest itself was so gross a violation of law that respect
+for it was hardly to be expected in the subsequent proceedings.  He was a
+great officer of the States of Holland.  He had been taken under their
+especial protection.  He was on his way to the High Council.  He was in
+no sense a subject of the States-General.  He was in the discharge of his
+official duty.  He was doubly and trebly sacred from arrest.  The place
+where he stood was on the territory of Holland and in the very sanctuary
+of her courts and House of Assembly.  The States-General were only as
+guests on her soil, and had no domain or jurisdiction there whatever.
+He was not apprehended by any warrant or form of law.  It was in time of
+peace, and there was no pretence of martial law.  The highest civil
+functionary of Holland was invited in the name of its first military
+officer to a conference, and thus entrapped was forcibly imprisoned.
+
+At last a board of twenty-four commissioners was created, twelve from
+Holland and two from each of the other six provinces.  This affectation
+of concession to Holland was ridiculous.  Either the law 'de non
+evocando'--according to which no citizen of Holland could be taken out
+of the province for trial--was to be respected or it was to be trampled
+upon.  If it was to be trampled upon, it signified little whether more
+commissioners were to be taken from Holland than from each of the other
+provinces, or fewer, or none at all.  Moreover it was pretended that a
+majority of the whole board was to be assigned to that province.  But
+twelve is not a majority of twenty-four.  There were three fascals or
+prosecuting officers, Leeuwen of Utrecht, Sylla of Gelderland, and Antony
+Duyck of Holland.  Duyck was notoriously the deadly enemy of Barneveld,
+and was destined to succeed to his offices.  It would have been as well
+to select Francis Aerssens himself.
+
+It was necessary to appoint a commission because there was no tribunal
+appertaining to the States-General.  The general government of the
+confederacy had no power to deal with an individual.  It could only
+negotiate with the sovereign province to which the individual was
+responsible, and demand his punishment if proved guilty of an offence.
+There was no supreme court of appeal.  Machinery was provided for
+settling or attempting to settle disputes among the members of the
+confederacy, and if there was a culprit in this great process it was
+Holland itself.  Neither the Advocate nor any one of his associates had
+done any act except by authority, express or implied, of that sovereign
+State.  Supposing them unquestionably guilty of blackest crimes against
+the Generality, the dilemma was there which must always exist by the very
+nature of things in a confederacy.  No sovereign can try a fellow
+sovereign.  The subject can be tried at home by no sovereign but his own.
+
+The accused in this case were amenable to the laws of Holland only.
+
+It was a packed tribunal.  Several of the commissioners, like Pauw and
+Muis for example, were personal enemies of Barneveld.  Many of them were
+totally ignorant of law.  Some of them knew not a word of any language
+but their mother tongue, although much of the law which they were to
+administer was written in Latin.
+
+Before such a court the foremost citizen of the Netherlands, the first
+living statesman of Europe, was brought day by day during a period of
+nearly three months; coming down stairs from the mean and desolate room
+where he was confined to the comfortable apartment below, which had been
+fitted up for the commission.
+
+There was no bill of indictment, no arraignment, no counsel.  There were
+no witnesses and no arguments.  The court-room contained, as it were,
+only a prejudiced and partial jury to pronounce both on law and fact
+without a judge to direct them, or advocates to sift testimony and
+contend for or against the prisoner's guilt.  The process, for it could
+not be called a trial, consisted of a vast series of rambling and tangled
+interrogatories reaching over a space of forty years without apparent
+connection or relevancy, skipping fantastically about from one period to
+another, back and forthwith apparently no other intent than to puzzle the
+prisoner, throw him off his balance, and lead him into self-
+contradiction.
+
+The spectacle was not a refreshing one.  It was the attempt of a
+multitude of pigmies to overthrow and bind the giant.
+
+Barneveld was served with no articles of impeachment.  He asked for a
+list in writing of the charges against him, that he might ponder his
+answer.  The demand was refused.  He was forbidden the use of pen and ink
+or any writing materials.  His papers and books were all taken from him.
+
+He was allowed to consult neither with an advocate nor even with a single
+friend.  Alone in his chamber of bondage he was to meditate on his
+defence.  Out of his memory and brain, and from these alone, he was to
+supply himself with the array of historical facts stretching over a
+longer period than the lifetime of many of his judges, and with the
+proper legal and historical arguments upon those facts for the
+justification of his course.  That memory and brain were capacious and
+powerful enough for the task.  It was well for the judges that they had
+bound themselves, at the outset, by an oath never to make known what
+passed in the courtroom, but to bury all the proceedings in profound
+secrecy forever.  Had it been otherwise, had that been known to the
+contemporary public which has only been revealed more than two centuries
+later, had a portion only of the calm and austere eloquence been heard in
+which the Advocate set forth his defence, had the frivolous and ignoble
+nature of the attack been comprehended, it might have moved the very
+stones in the streets to mutiny.  Hateful as the statesman had been made
+by an organized system of calumny, which was continued with unabated
+vigour and increased venom sine he had been imprisoned, there was enough
+of justice and of gratitude left in the hearts of Netherlanders to resent
+the tyranny practised against their greatest man, and the obloquy thus
+brought against a nation always devoted to their liberties and laws.
+
+That the political system of the country was miserably defective was no
+fault of Barneveld.  He was bound by oath and duty to administer, not
+make the laws.  A handful of petty feudal sovereignties such as had once
+covered the soil of Europe, a multitude of thriving cities which had
+wrested or purchased a mass of liberties, customs, and laws from their
+little tyrants, all subjected afterwards, without being blended together,
+to a single foreign family, had at last one by one, or two by two,
+shaken off that supremacy, and, resuming their ancient and as it were
+decapitated individualities, had bound themselves by treaty in the midst
+of a war to stand by each other, as if they were but one province, for
+purposes of common defence against the common foe.
+
+There had been no pretence of laying down a constitution, of enacting an
+organic law.  The day had not come for even the conception of a popular
+constitution.  The people had not been invented.  It was not provinces
+only, but cities, that had contracted with each other, according to the
+very first words of the first Article of Union.  Some of these cities,
+like Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp, were Catholic by overwhelming majority, and
+had subsequently either fallen away from the confederacy or been
+conquered.
+
+And as if to make assurance doubly sure, the Articles of Union not only
+reserved to each province all powers not absolutely essential for
+carrying on the war in common, but by an express article (the 13th),
+declared that Holland and Zealand should regulate the matter of religion
+according to their own discretion, while the other provinces might
+conform to the provisions of the "Religious Peace" which included mutual
+protection for Catholics and Protestants--or take such other order as
+seemed most conducive to the religious and secular rights of the
+inhabitants.  It was stipulated that no province should interfere with
+another in such matters, and that every individual in them all should
+remain free in his religion, no man being molested or examined on account
+of his creed.  A farther declaration in regard to this famous article was
+made to the effect that no provinces or cities which held to the Roman
+Catholic religion were to be excluded from the League of Union if they
+were ready to conform to its conditions and comport themselves
+patriotically.  Language could not be devised to declare more plainly
+than was done by this treaty that the central government of the League
+had neither wish nor right to concern itself with the religious affairs
+of the separate cities or provinces.  If it permitted both Papists and
+Protestants to associate themselves against the common foe, it could
+hardly have been imagined, when the Articles were drawn, that it would
+have claimed the exclusive right to define the minutest points in a
+single Protestant creed.
+
+And if the exclusively secular parts of the polity prevailing in the
+country were clumsy, irregular, and even monstrous, and if its defects
+had been flagrantly demonstrated by recent events, a more reasonable
+method of reforming the laws might have been found than the imprisonment
+of a man who had faithfully administered them forty years long.
+
+A great commonwealth had grown out of a petty feudal organism, like an
+oak from an acorn in a crevice, gnarled and distorted, though wide-
+spreading and vigorous.  It seemed perilous to deal radically with such a
+polity, and an almost timid conservatism on the part of its guardians in
+such an age of tempests might be pardonable.
+
+Moreover, as before remarked, the apparent imbecility resulting from
+confederacy and municipalism combined was for a season remedied by the
+actual preponderance of Holland.  Two-thirds of the total wealth and
+strength of the seven republics being concentrated in one province, the
+desired union seemed almost gained by the practical solution of all in
+that single republic.  But this was one great cause of the general
+disaster.
+
+It would be a thankless and tedious task to wander through the wilderness
+of interrogatories and answers extending over three months of time, which
+stood in the place of a trial.  The defence of Barneveld was his own
+history, and that I have attempted to give in the preceding pages.  A
+great part of the accusation was deduced from his private and official
+correspondence, and it is for this reason that I have laid such copious
+extracts from it before the reader.  No man except the judges and the
+States-General had access to those letters, and it was easy therefore, if
+needful, to give them a false colouring.  It is only very recently that
+they have been seen at all, and they have never been published from that
+day to this.
+
+Out of the confused mass of documents appertaining to the trial, a few
+generalizations can be made which show the nature of the attack upon him.
+He was accused of having permitted Arminius to infuse new opinions into
+the University of Leyden, and of having subsequently defended the
+appointment of Vorstius to the same place.  He had opposed the National
+Synod.  He had made drafts of letters for the King of Great Britain to
+sign, recommending mutual toleration on the five disputed points
+regarding predestination.  He was the author of the famous Sharp
+Resolution.  He had recommended the enlistment by the provinces and towns
+of Waartgelders or mercenaries.  He had maintained that those mercenaries
+as well as the regular troops were bound in time of peace to be obedient
+and faithful, not only to the Generality and the stadholders, but to the
+magistrates of the cities and provinces where they were employed, and to
+the states by whom they were paid.  He had sent to Leyden, warning the
+authorities of the approach of the Prince.  He had encouraged all the
+proceedings at Utrecht, writing a letter to the secretary of that
+province advising a watch to be kept at the city gates as well as in the
+river, and ordering his letter when read to be burned.  He had received
+presents from foreign potentates.  He had attempted to damage the
+character of his Excellency the Prince by declaring on various occasions
+that he aspired to the sovereignty of the country.  He had held a
+ciphered correspondence on the subject with foreign ministers of the
+Republic.  He had given great offence to the King of Great Britain by
+soliciting from him other letters in the sense of those which his Majesty
+had written in 1613, advising moderation and mutual toleration.  He had
+not brought to condign punishment the author of 'The Balance', a pamphlet
+in which an oration of the English ambassador had been criticised, and
+aspersions made on the Order of the Garter.  He had opposed the formation
+of the West India Company.  He had said many years before to Nicolas van
+Berk that the Provinces had better return to the dominion of Spain.  And
+in general, all his proceedings had tended to put the Provinces into a
+"blood bath."
+
+There was however no accusation that he had received bribes from the
+enemy or held traitorous communication with him, or that he had committed
+any act of high-treason.
+
+His private letters to Caron and to the ambassadors in Paris, with which
+the reader has been made familiar, had thus been ransacked to find
+treasonable matter, but the result was meagre in spite of the minute and
+microscopic analysis instituted to detect traces of poison in them.
+
+But the most subtle and far-reaching research into past transactions was
+due to the Greffier Cornelis Aerssens, father of the Ambassador Francis,
+and to a certain Nicolas van Berk, Burgomaster of Utrecht.
+
+The process of tale-bearing, hearsay evidence, gossip, and invention went
+back a dozen years, even to the preliminary and secret conferences in
+regard to the Treaty of Truce.
+
+Readers familiar with the history of those memorable negotiations are
+aware that Cornelis van Aerssens had compromised himself by accepting a
+valuable diamond and a bill of exchange drawn by Marquis Spinola on a
+merchant in Amsterdam, Henry Beekman by name, for 80,000 ducats.  These
+were handed by Father Neyen, the secret agent of the Spanish government,
+to the Greffier as a prospective reward for his services in furthering
+the Truce.  He did not reject them, but he informed Prince Maurice and
+the Advocate of the transaction.  Both diamond and bill of exchange were
+subsequently deposited in the hands of the treasurer of the States-
+General, Joris de Bie, the Assembly being made officially acquainted with
+the whole course of the affair.
+
+It is passing strange that this somewhat tortuous business, which
+certainly cast a shade upon the fair fame of the elder Aerssens, and
+required him to publish as good a defence as he could against the
+consequent scandal, should have furnished a weapon wherewith to strike
+at the Advocate of Holland some dozen years later.
+
+But so it was.  Krauwels, a relative of Aerssens, through whom Father
+Neyen had first obtained access to the Greffier, had stated, so it
+seemed, that the monk had, in addition to the bill, handed to him another
+draft of Spinola's for 100,000 ducats, to be given to a person of more
+consideration than Aerssens.  Krauwels did not know who the person was,
+nor whether he took the money.  He expressed his surprise however that
+leading persons in the government "even old and authentic beggars"--
+should allow themselves to be so seduced as to accept presents from the
+enemy.  He mentioned two such persons, namely, a burgomaster at Delft and
+a burgomaster at Haarlem.  Aerssens now deposed that he had informed the
+Advocate of this story, who had said, "Be quiet about it, I will have it
+investigated," and some days afterwards on being questioned stated that
+he had made enquiry and found there was something in it.
+
+So the fact that Cornelis Aerssens had taken bribes, and that two
+burgomasters were strongly suspected by Aerssens of having taken bribes,
+seems to have been considered as evidence that Barneveld had taken a
+bribe.  It is true that Aerssens by advice of Maurice and Barneveld had
+made a clean breast of it to the States-General and had given them over
+the presents.  But the States-General could neither wear the diamond nor
+cash the bill of exchange, and it would have been better for the Greffier
+not to contaminate his fingers with them, but to leave the gifts in the
+monk's palm.  His revenge against the Advocate for helping him out of his
+dilemma, and for subsequently advancing his son Francis in a brilliant
+diplomatic career, seems to have been--when the clouds were thickening
+and every man's hand was against the fallen statesman--to insinuate that
+he was the anonymous personage who had accepted the apocryphal draft for
+100,000 ducats.
+
+The case is a pregnant example of the proceedings employed to destroy the
+Advocate.
+
+The testimony of Nicolas van Berk was at any rate more direct.
+
+On the 21st December 1618 the burgomaster testified that the Advocate had
+once declared to him that the differences in regard to Divine Worship
+were not so great but that they might be easily composed; asking him at
+the same time "whether it would not be better that we should submit
+ourselves again to the King of Spain."  Barneveld had also referred, so
+said van Berk, to the conduct of the Spanish king towards those who had
+helped him to the kingdom of Portugal.  The Burgomaster was unable
+however to specify the date, year, or month in which the Advocate had
+held this language.  He remembered only that the conversation occurred
+when Barneveld was living on the Spui at the Hague, and that having been
+let into the house through the hall on the side of the vestibule, he had
+been conducted by the Advocate down a small staircase into the office.
+
+The only fact proved by the details seems to be that the story had lodged
+in the tenacious memory of the Burgomaster for eight years, as Barneveld
+had removed from the Spui to Arenberg House in the Voorhout in the year
+1611.
+
+No other offers from the King of Spain or the Archdukes had ever been
+made to him, said van Berk, than those indicated in this deposition
+against the Advocate as coming from that statesman.  Nor had Barneveld
+ever spoken to him upon such subjects except on that one occasion.
+
+It is not necessary and would be wearisome to follow the unfortunate
+statesman through the long line of defence which he was obliged to make,
+in fragmentary and irregular form, against these discursive and confused
+assaults upon him.  A continuous argument might be built up with the
+isolated parts which should be altogether impregnable.  It is
+superfluous.
+
+Always instructive to his judges as he swept at will through the record
+of nearly half a century of momentous European history, in which he was
+himself a conspicuous figure, or expounding the ancient laws and customs
+of the country with a wealth and accuracy of illustration which testified
+to the strength of his memory, he seemed rather like a sage expounding
+law and history to a class of pupils than a criminal defending himself
+before a bench of commissioners.  Moved occasionally from his austere
+simplicity, the majestic old man rose to a strain of indignant eloquence
+which might have shaken the hall of a vast assembly and found echo in the
+hearts of a thousand hearers as he denounced their petty insults or
+ignoble insinuations; glaring like a caged lion at his tormentors, who
+had often shrunk before him when free, and now attempted to drown his
+voice by contradictions, interruptions, threats, and unmeaning howls.
+
+He protested, from the outset and throughout the proceedings, against the
+jurisdiction of the tribunal.  The Treaty of Union on which the Assembly
+and States-General were founded gave that assembly no power over him.
+They could take no legal cognizance of his person or his acts.  He had
+been deprived of writing materials, or he would have already drawn up his
+solemn protest and argument against the existence of the commission.  He
+demanded that they should be provided for him, together with a clerk to
+engross his defence.  It is needless to say that the demand was refused.
+
+It was notorious to all men, he said, that on the day when violent
+hands were laid upon him he was not bound to the States-General by oath,
+allegiance, or commission.  He was a well-known inhabitant of the Hague,
+a householder there, a vassal of the Commonwealth of Holland, enfeoffed
+of many notable estates in that country, serving many honourable offices
+by commission from its government.  By birth, promotion, and conferred
+dignities he was subject to the supreme authority of Holland, which for
+forty years had been a free state possessed of all the attributes of
+sovereignty, political, religious, judicial, and recognizing no superior
+save God Almighty alone.
+
+He was amenable to no tribunal save that of their Mightinesses the States
+of Holland and their ordinary judges.  Not only those States but the
+Prince of Orange as their governor and vassal, the nobles of Holland,
+the colleges of justice, the regents of cities, and all other vassals,
+magistrates, and officers were by their respective oaths bound to
+maintain and protect him in these his rights.
+
+After fortifying this position by legal argument and by an array of
+historical facts within his own experience, and alluding to the repeated
+instances in which, sorely against his will, he had been solicited and
+almost compelled to remain in offices of which he was weary, he referred
+with dignity to the record of his past life.  From the youthful days when
+he had served as a volunteer at his own expense in the perilous sieges of
+Haarlem and Leyden down to the time of his arrest, through an unbroken
+course of honourable and most arduous political services, embassies, and
+great negotiations, he had ever maintained the laws and liberties of the
+Fatherland and his own honour unstained.
+
+That he should now in his seventy-second year be dragged, in violation of
+every privilege and statute of the country, by extraordinary means,
+before unknown judges, was a grave matter not for himself alone but for
+their Mightinesses the States of Holland and for the other provinces.
+The precious right 'de non evocando' had ever been dear to all the
+provinces, cities, and inhabitants of the Netherlands.  It was the most
+vital privilege in their possession as well in civil as criminal, in
+secular as in ecclesiastical affairs.
+
+When the King of Spain in 1567, and afterwards, set up an extraordinary
+tribunal and a course of extraordinary trials, it was an undeniable fact,
+he said, that on the solemn complaint of the States all princes, nobles,
+and citizens not only in the Netherlands but in foreign countries, and
+all foreign kings and sovereigns, held those outrages to be the foremost
+and fundamental reason for taking up arms against that king, and
+declaring him to have forfeited his right of sovereignty.
+
+Yet that monarch was unquestionably the born and accepted sovereign
+of each one of the provinces, while the General Assembly was but a
+gathering of confederates and allies, in no sense sovereign.  It was an
+unimaginable thing, he said, that the States of each province should
+allow their whole authority and right of sovereignty to be transferred to
+a board of commissioners like this before which he stood.  If, for
+example, a general union of France, England, and the States of the United
+Netherlands should be formed (and the very words of the Act of Union
+contemplated such possibility), what greater absurdity could there be
+than to suppose that a college of administration created for the specific
+purposes of such union would be competent to perform acts of sovereignty
+within each of those countries in matters of justice, polity, and
+religion?
+
+It was known to mankind, he said, that when negotiations were entered
+into for bestowing the sovereignty of the Provinces on France and on
+England, special and full powers were required from, and furnished by,
+the States of each individual province.
+
+Had the sovereignty been in the assembly of the States-General, they
+might have transferred it of their own motion or kept it for themselves.
+
+Even in the ordinary course of affairs the commissioners from each
+province to the General Assembly always required a special power from
+their constituents before deciding any matter of great importance.
+
+In regard to the defence of the respective provinces and cities, he had
+never heard it doubted, he said, that the states or the magistrates of
+cities had full right to provide for it by arming a portion of their own
+inhabitants or by enlisting paid troops.  The sovereign counts of Holland
+and bishops of Utrecht certainly possessed and exercised that right for
+many hundred years, and by necessary tradition it passed to the states
+succeeding to their ancient sovereignty.  He then gave from the stores of
+his memory innumerable instances in which soldiers had been enlisted by
+provinces and cities all over the Netherlands from the time of the
+abjuration of Spain down to that moment.  Through the whole period of
+independence in the time of Anjou, Matthias, Leicester, as well as under
+the actual government, it had been the invariable custom thus to provide
+both by land and sea and on the rivers against robbers, rebels, pirates,
+mischief-makers, assailing thieves, domestic or foreign.  It had been
+done by the immortal William the Silent on many memorable occasions, and
+in fact the custom was so notorious that soldiers so enlisted were known
+by different and peculiar nicknames in the different provinces and towns.
+
+That the central government had no right to meddle with religious
+matters was almost too self-evident an axiom to prove.  Indeed the
+chief difficulty under which the Advocate laboured throughout this whole
+process was the monstrous assumption by his judges of a political and
+judicial system which never had any existence even in imagination.  The
+profound secrecy which enwrapped the proceedings from that day almost to
+our own and an ignorant acquiescence of a considerable portion of the
+public in accomplished facts offer the only explanation of a mystery
+which must ever excite our wonder.  If there were any impeachment at all,
+it was an impeachment of the form of government itself.  If language
+could mean anything whatever, a mere perusal of the Articles of Union
+proved that the prisoner had never violated that fundamental pact.  How
+could the general government prescribe an especial formulary for the
+Reformed Church, and declare opposition to its decrees treasonable, when
+it did not prohibit, but absolutely admitted and invited, provinces and
+cities exclusively Catholic to enter the Union, guaranteeing to them
+entire liberty of religion?
+
+Barneveld recalled the fact that when the stadholdership of Utrecht
+thirty years before had been conferred on Prince Maurice the States of
+that province had solemnly reserved for themselves the disposition over
+religious matters in conformity with the Union, and that Maurice had
+sworn to support that resolution.
+
+Five years later the Prince had himself assured a deputation from Brabant
+that the States of each province were supreme in religious matters, no
+interference the one with the other being justifiable or possible.  In
+1602 the States General in letters addressed to the States of the
+obedient provinces under dominion of the Archdukes had invited them to
+take up arms to help drive the Spaniards from the Provinces and to join
+the Confederacy, assuring them that they should regulate the matter of
+religion at their good pleasure, and that no one else should be allowed
+to interfere therewith.
+
+The Advocate then went into an historical and critical disquisition, into
+which we certainly have no need to follow him, rapidly examining the
+whole subject of predestination and conditional and unconditional
+damnation from the days of St. Augustine downward, showing a thorough
+familiarity with a subject of theology which then made up so much of the
+daily business of life, political and private, and lay at the bottom of
+the terrible convulsion then existing in the Netherlands.  We turn from
+it with a shudder, reminding the reader only how persistently the
+statesman then on his trial had advocated conciliation, moderation, and
+kindness between brethren of the Reformed Church who were not able to
+think alike on one of the subtlest and most mysterious problems that
+casuistry has ever propounded.
+
+For fifty years, he said, he had been an enemy of all compulsion of the
+human conscience.  He had always opposed rigorous ecclesiastical decrees.
+He had done his best to further, and did not deny having inspired, the
+advice given in the famous letters from the King of Great Britain to the
+States in 1613, that there should be mutual toleration and abstinence
+from discussion of disputed doctrines, neither of them essential to
+salvation.  He thought that neither Calvin nor Beza would have opposed
+freedom of opinion on those points.  For himself he believed that the
+salvation of mankind would be through God's unmerited grace and the
+redemption of sins though the Saviour, and that the man who so held and
+persevered to the end was predestined to eternal happiness, and that his
+children dying before the age of reason were destined not to Hell but to
+Heaven.  He had thought fifty years long that the passion and sacrifice
+of Christ the Saviour were more potent to salvation than God's wrath and
+the sin of Adam and Eve to damnation.  He had done his best practically
+to avert personal bickerings among the clergy.  He had been, so far as
+lay in his power, as friendly to Remonstrants as to Contra-Remonstrants,
+to Polyander and Festus Hommius as to Uytenbogaert and Episcopius.  He
+had almost finished a negotiation with Councillor Kromhout for the
+peaceable delivery of the Cloister Church on the Thursday preceding the
+Sunday on which it had been forcibly seized by the Contra-Remonstrants.
+
+When asked by one of his judges how he presumed to hope for toleration
+between two parties, each of which abhorred the other's opinions, and
+likened each other to Turks and devil-worshippers, he replied that he had
+always detested and rebuked those mutual revilings by every means in his
+power, and would have wished to put down such calumniators of either
+persuasion by the civil authority, but the iniquity of the times and the
+exasperation of men's humours had prevented him.
+
+Being perpetually goaded by one judge after another as to his
+disrespectful conduct towards the King of Great Britain, and asked why
+his Majesty had not as good right to give the advice of 1617 as the
+recommendation of tolerance in 1613, he scrupulously abstained, as he had
+done in all his letters, from saying a disrespectful word as to the
+glaring inconsistency between the two communications, or to the hostility
+manifested towards himself personally by the British ambassador.  He had
+always expressed the hope, he said, that the King would adhere to his
+original position, but did not dispute his right to change his mind, nor
+the good faith which had inspired his later letters.  It had been his
+object, if possible, to reconcile the two different systems recommended
+by his Majesty into one harmonious whole.
+
+His whole aim had been to preserve the public peace as it was the duty of
+every magistrate, especially in times of such excitement, to do.  He
+could never comprehend why the toleration of the Five Points should be a
+danger to the Reformed religion.  Rather, he thought, it would strengthen
+the Church and attract many Lutherans, Baptists, Catholics, and other
+good patriots into its pale.  He had always opposed the compulsory
+acceptance by the people of the special opinions of scribes and doctors.
+He did not consider, he said, the difference in doctrine on this disputed
+point between the Contra-Remonstrants and Remonstrants as one-tenth the
+value of the civil authority and its right to make laws and ordinances
+regulating ecclesiastical affairs.
+
+He believed the great bulwark of the independence of the country to be
+the Reformed Church, and his efforts had ever been to strengthen that
+bulwark by preventing the unnecessary schism which might prove its ruin.
+Many questions of property, too, were involved in the question--the
+church buildings, lands and pastures belonging to the Counts of Holland
+and their successors--the States having always exercised the right of
+church patronage--'jus patronatus'--a privilege which, as well as
+inherited or purchased advowsons, had been of late flagrantly interfered
+with.
+
+He was asked if he had not said that it had never been the intention of
+the States-General to carry on the war for this or that religion.
+
+He replied that he had told certain clergymen expressing to him their
+opinion that the war had been waged solely for the furtherance of their
+especial shade of belief, that in his view the war had been undertaken
+for the conservation of the liberties and laws of the land, and of its
+good people.  Of that freedom the first and foremost point was the true
+Christian religion and liberty of conscience and opinion.  There must be
+religion in the Republic, he had said, but that the war was carried on to
+sustain the opinion of one doctor of divinity or another on--differential
+points was something he had never heard of and could never believe.  The
+good citizens of the country had as much right to hold by Melancthon as
+by Calvin or Beza.  He knew that the first proclamations in regard to the
+war declared it to be undertaken for freedom of conscience, and so to
+his, own knowledge it had been always carried on.
+
+He was asked if he had not promised during the Truce negotiations so to
+direct matters that the Catholics with time might obtain public exercise
+of their religion.
+
+He replied that this was a notorious falsehood and calumny, adding that
+it ill accorded with the proclamation against the Jesuits drawn up by
+himself some years after the Truce.  He furthermore stated that it was
+chiefly by his direction that the discourse of President Jeannin--urging
+on part of the French king that liberty of worship might be granted to
+the Papists--was kept secret, copies of it not having been furnished even
+to the commissioners of the Provinces.
+
+His indignant denial of this charge, especially taken in connection with
+his repeated assertions during the trial, that among the most patriotic
+Netherlanders during and since the war were many adherents of the ancient
+church, seems marvellously in contradiction with his frequent and most
+earnest pleas for liberty of conscience.  But it did not appear
+contradictory even to his judges nor to any contemporary.  His position
+had always been that the civil authority of each province was supreme in
+all matters political or ecclesiastical.  The States-General, all the
+provinces uniting in the vote, had invited the Catholic provinces on more
+than one occasion to join the Union, promising that there should be no
+interference on the part of any states or individuals with the internal
+affairs religious or otherwise of the provinces accepting the invitation.
+But it would have been a gross contradiction of his own principle if he
+had promised so to direct matters that the Catholics should have public
+right of worship in Holland where he knew that the civil authority was
+sure to refuse it, or in any of the other six provinces in whose internal
+affairs he had no voice whatever.  He was opposed to all tyranny over
+conscience, he would have done his utmost to prevent inquisition into
+opinion, violation of domicile, interference with private worship,
+compulsory attendance in Protestant churches of those professing the
+Roman creed.  This was not attempted.  No Catholic was persecuted on
+account of his religion.  Compared with the practice in other countries
+this was a great step in advance.  Religious tolerance lay on the road to
+religious equality, a condition which had hardly been imagined then and
+scarcely exists in Europe even to this day.  But among the men in history
+whose life and death contributed to the advancement of that blessing, it
+would be vain to deny that Barneveld occupies a foremost place.
+
+Moreover, it should be remembered that religious equality then would have
+been a most hazardous experiment.  So long as Church and State were
+blended, it was absolutely essential at that epoch for the preservation
+of Protestantism to assign the predominance to the State.  Should the
+Catholics have obtained religious equality, the probable result would
+before long have been religious inequality, supremacy of the Catholics
+in the Church, and supremacy of the Church over the State.  The fruits of
+the forty years' war would have become dust and ashes.  It would be mere
+weak sentimentalism to doubt--after the bloody history which had just
+closed and the awful tragedy, then reopening--that every spark of
+religious liberty would have soon been trodden out in the Netherlands.
+The general onslaught of the League with Ferdinand, Maximilian of
+Bavaria, and Philip of Spain at its head against the distracted,
+irresolute, and wavering line of Protestantism across the whole of Europe
+was just preparing.  Rather a wilderness to reign over than a single
+heretic, was the war-cry of the Emperor.  The King of Spain, as we have
+just been reading in his most secret, ciphered despatches to the Archduke
+at Brussels, was nursing sanguine hopes and weaving elaborate schemes for
+recovering his dominion over the United Netherlands, and proposing to
+send an army of Jesuits thither to break the way to the reconquest.
+To play into his hands then, by granting public right of worship to the
+Papists, would have been in Barneveld's opinion like giving up Julich and
+other citadels in the debatable land to Spain just as the great war
+between Catholicism and Protestantism was breaking out.  There had been
+enough of burning and burying alive in the Netherlands during the century
+which had closed.  It was not desirable to give a chance for their
+renewal now.
+
+In regard to the Synod, Barneveld justified his course by a simple
+reference to the 13th Article of the Union.  Words could not more plainly
+prohibit the interference by the States-General with the religious
+affairs of any one of the Provinces than had been done by that celebrated
+clause.  In 1583 there had been an attempt made to amend that article by
+insertion of a pledge to maintain the Evangelical, Reformed, religion
+solely, but it was never carried out.  He disdained to argue so self-
+evident a truth, that a confederacy which had admitted and constantly
+invited Catholic states to membership, under solemn pledge of
+noninterference with their religious affairs, had no right to lay down
+formulas for the Reformed Church throughout all the Netherlands.  The
+oath of stadholder and magistrates in Holland to maintain the Reformed
+religion was framed before this unhappy controversy on predestination had
+begun, and it was mere arrogant assumption on the part of the Contra-
+Remonstrants to claim a monopoly of that religion, and to exclude the
+Remonstrants from its folds.
+
+He had steadily done his utmost to assuage those dissensions while
+maintaining the laws which he was sworn to support.  He had advocated a
+provincial synod to be amicably assisted by divines from neighbouring
+countries.  He had opposed a National Synod unless unanimously voted by
+the Seven Provinces, because it would have been an open violation of the
+fundamental law of the confederacy, of its whole spirit, and of liberty
+of conscience.  He admitted that he had himself drawn up a protest on the
+part of three provinces (Holland, Utrecht, and Overyssel) against the
+decree for the National Synod as a breach of the Union, declaring it to
+be therefore null and void and binding upon no man.  He had dictated the
+protest as oldest member present, while Grotius as the youngest had acted
+as scribe.  He would have supported the Synod if legally voted, but would
+have preferred the convocation, under the authority of all the provinces,
+of a general, not a national, synod, in which, besides clergy and laymen
+from the Netherlands, deputations from all Protestant states and churches
+should take part; a kind of Protestant oecumenical council.
+
+As to the enlistment, by the States of a province, of soldiers to keep
+the peace and suppress tumults in its cities during times of political
+and religious excitement, it was the most ordinary of occurrences.  In
+his experience of more than forty years he had never heard the right even
+questioned.  It was pure ignorance of law and history to find it a
+novelty.
+
+To hire temporarily a sufficient number of professional soldiers, he
+considered a more wholesome means of keeping the peace than to enlist one
+portion of the citizens of a town against another portion, when party and
+religious spirit was running high.  His experience had taught him that
+the mutual hatred of the inhabitants, thus inflamed, became more lasting
+and mischievous than the resentment caused through suppression of
+disorder by an armed and paid police of strangers.
+
+It was not only the right but the most solemn duty of the civil authority
+to preserve the tranquillity, property, and lives of citizens committed
+to their care.  "I have said these fifty years," said Barneveld, "that it
+is better to be governed by magistrates than mobs.  I have always
+maintained and still maintain that the most disastrous, shameful, and
+ruinous condition into which this land can fall is that in which the
+magistrates are overcome by the rabble of the towns and receive laws
+from them.  Nothing but perdition can follow from that."
+
+There had been good reason to believe that the French garrisons as
+well as some of the train bands could not be thoroughly relied upon
+in emergencies like those constantly breaking out, and there had been
+advices of invasion by sympathizers from neighbouring countries.  In many
+great cities the civil authority had been trampled upon and mob rule had
+prevailed.  Certainly the recent example in the great commercial capital
+of the country--where the house of a foremost citizen had been besieged,
+stormed, and sacked, and a virtuous matron of the higher class hunted
+like a wild beast through the streets by a rabble grossly ignorant of the
+very nature of the religious quibble which had driven them mad, pelted
+with stones, branded with vilest names, and only saved by accident from
+assassination, while a church-going multitude looked calmly on--with
+constantly recurring instances in other important cities were sufficient
+reasons for the authorities to be watchful.
+
+He denied that he had initiated the proceedings at Utrecht in
+conversation with Ledenberg or any one else, but he had not refused, he
+said, his approval of the perfectly legal measures adopted for keeping
+the peace there when submitted to him.  He was himself a born citizen of
+that province, and therefore especially interested in its welfare, and
+there was an old and intimate friendship between Utrecht and Holland.  It
+would have been painful to him to see that splendid city in the control
+of an ignorant mob, making use of religious problems, which they did not
+comprehend, to plunder the property and take the lives of peaceful
+citizens more comfortably housed than themselves.
+
+He had neither suggested nor controlled the proceedings at Utrecht.  On
+the contrary, at an interview with the Prince and Count William on the
+13th July, and in the presence of nearly thirty members of the general
+assembly, he had submitted a plan for cashiering the enlisted soldiery
+and substituting for them other troops, native-born, who should be sworn
+in the usual form to obey the laws of the Union.  The deputation from
+Holland to Utrecht, according to his personal knowledge, had received no
+instructions personal or oral to authorize active steps by the troops of
+the Holland quota, but to abstain from them and to request the Prince
+that they should not be used against the will and commands of the States
+of Utrecht, whom they were bound by oath to obey so long as they were in
+garrison there.
+
+No man knew better than he whether the military oath which was called
+new-fangled were a novelty or not, for he had himself, he said, drawn it
+up thirty years before at command of the States-General by whom it was
+then ordained.  From that day to this he had never heard a pretence that
+it justified anything not expressly sanctioned by the Articles of Union,
+and neither the States of Holland nor those of Utrecht had made any
+change in the oath.  The States of Utrecht were sovereign within their
+own territory, and in the time of peace neither the Prince of Orange
+without their order nor the States-General had the right to command the
+troops in their territory.  The governor of a province was sworn to obey
+the laws of the province and conform to the Articles of the General
+Union.
+
+He was asked why he wrote the warning letter to Ledenberg, and why he was
+so anxious that the letter should be burned; as if that were a deadly
+offence.
+
+He said that he could not comprehend why it should be imputed to him
+as a crime that he wished in such turbulent times to warn so important
+a city as Utrecht, the capital of his native province, against tumults,
+disorders, and sudden assaults such as had often happened to her in times
+past.  As for the postscript requesting that the letter might be put in
+the fire, he said that not being a member of, the government of that
+province he was simply unwilling to leave a record that "he had been too
+curious in aliens republics, although that could hardly be considered a
+grave offence."
+
+In regard to the charge that he had accused Prince Maurice of aspiring to
+the sovereignty of the country, he had much to say.  He had never brought
+such accusation in public or private.  He had reason to believe however--
+he had indeed convincing proofs--that many people, especially those
+belonging to the Contra-Remonstrant party, cherished such schemes.  He
+had never sought to cast suspicion on the Prince himself on account of
+those schemes.  On the contrary, he had not even formally opposed them.
+What he wished had always been that such projects should be discussed
+formally, legally, and above board.  After the lamentable murder of the
+late Prince he had himself recommended to the authorities of some of the
+cities that the transaction for bestowing the sovereignty of Holland upon
+William, interrupted by his death, "should be completed in favour of
+Prince Maurice in despite of the Spaniard."  Recently he had requested
+Grotius to look up the documents deposited in Rotterdam belonging to this
+affair, in order that they might be consulted.
+
+He was asked whether according to Buzenval, the former French ambassador,
+Prince Maurice had not declared he would rather fling himself from the
+top of the Hague tower than accept the sovereignty.  Barneveld replied
+that the Prince according to the same authority had added "under the
+conditions which had been imposed upon his father;" a clause which
+considerably modified the self-denying statement.  It was desirable
+therefore to search the acts for the limitations annexed to the
+sovereignty.
+
+Three years long there had been indications from various sources that a
+party wished to change the form of government.  He had not heard nor ever
+intimated that the Prince suggested such intrigues.  In anonymous
+pamphlets and common street and tavern conversations the Contra-
+Remonstrants were described by those of their own persuasion as
+"Prince's Beggars" and the like.  He had received from foreign countries
+information worthy of attention, that it was the design of the Contra-
+Remonstrants to raise the Prince to the sovereignty.  He had therefore in
+1616 brought the matter before the nobles and cities in a communication
+setting forth to the best of his recollection that under these religious
+disputes something else was intended.  He had desired ripe conclusions on
+the matter, such as should most conduce to the service of the country.
+This had been in good faith both to the Prince and the Provinces, in
+order that, should a change in the government be thought desirable,
+proper and peaceful means might be employed to bring it about.  He had
+never had any other intention than to sound the inclinations of those
+with whom he spoke, and he had many times since that period, by word of
+mouth and in writing, so lately as the month of April last assured the
+Prince that he had ever been his sincere and faithful servant and meant
+to remain so to the end of his life, desiring therefore that he would
+explain to him his wishes and intentions.
+
+Subsequently he had publicly proposed in full Assembly of Holland that
+the States should ripely deliberate and roundly declare if they were
+discontented with the form of government, and if so, what change they
+would desire.  He had assured their Mightinesses that they might rely
+upon him to assist in carrying out their intentions whatever they might
+be.  He had inferred however from the Prince's intimations, when he had
+broached the subject to him in 1617, that he was not inclined towards
+these supposed projects, and had heard that opinion distinctly expressed
+from the mouth of Count William.
+
+That the Contra-Remonstrants secretly entertained these schemes,
+he had been advised from many quarters, at home and abroad.  In the year
+1618 he had received information to that effect from France.  Certain
+confidential counsellors of the Prince had been with him recently to
+confer on the subject.  He had told them that, if his Excellency chose
+to speak to him in regard to it, would listen to his reasoning about it,
+both as regarded the interests of the country and the Prince himself,
+and then should desire him to propose and advocate it before the
+Assembly, he would do so with earnestness, zeal, and affection.  He had
+desired however that, in case the attempt failed, the Prince would allow
+him to be relieved from service and to leave the country.  What he wished
+from the bottom of his heart was that his Excellency would plainly
+discover to him the exact nature of his sentiments in regard to the
+business.
+
+He fully admitted receiving a secret letter from Ambassador Langerac,
+apprising him that a man of quality in France had information of the
+intention of the Contra-Remonstrants throughout the Provinces, should
+they come into power, to raise Prince Maurice to the sovereignty.  He
+had communicated on the subject with Grotius and other deputies in order
+that, if this should prove to be the general inclination, the affair
+might be handled according to law, without confusion or disorder.  This,
+he said, would be serving both the country and the Prince most
+judiciously.
+
+He was asked why he had not communicated directly with Maurice.  He
+replied that he had already seen how unwillingly the Prince heard him
+allude to the subject, and that moreover there was another clause in
+the letter of different meaning, and in his view worthy of grave
+consideration by the States.
+
+No question was asked him as to this clause, but we have seen that it
+referred to the communication by du Agean to Langerac of a scheme for
+bestowing the sovereignty of the Provinces on the King of France.  The
+reader will also recollect that Barneveld had advised the Ambassador to
+communicate the whole intelligence to the Prince himself.
+
+Barneveld proceeded to inform the judges that he had never said a word to
+cast suspicion upon the Prince, but had been actuated solely by the
+desire to find out the inclination of the States.  The communications
+which he had made on the subject were neither for discrediting the Prince
+nor for counteracting the schemes for his advancement.  On the contrary,
+he had conferred with deputies from great cities like Dordtrecht,
+Enkhuyzen, and Amsterdam, most devoted to the Contra-Remonstrant party,
+and had told them that, if they chose to propose the subject themselves,
+he would conduct himself to the best of his abilities in accordance with
+the wishes of the Prince.
+
+It would seem almost impossible for a statesman placed in Barneveld's
+position to bear himself with more perfect loyalty both to the country
+and to the Stadholder.  His duty was to maintain the constitution and
+laws so long as they remained unchanged.  Should it appear that the
+States, which legally represented the country, found the constitution
+defective, he was ready to aid in its amendment by fair public and legal
+methods.
+
+If Maurice wished to propose himself openly as a candidate for the
+sovereignty, which had a generation before been conferred upon his
+father, Barneveld would not only acquiesce in the scheme, but propose it.
+
+Should it fail, he claimed the light to lay down all his offices and go
+into exile.
+
+He had never said that the Prince was intriguing for, or even desired,
+the sovereignty.  That the project existed among the party most opposed
+to himself, he had sufficient proof.  To the leaders of that party
+therefore he suggested that the subject should be publicly discussed,
+guaranteeing freedom of debate and his loyal support so far as lay within
+his power.
+
+This was his answer to the accusation that he had meanly, secretly, and
+falsely circulated statements that the Prince was aspiring to the
+sovereignty.
+
+     [Great pains were taken, in the course of the interrogatories, to
+     elicit proof that the Advocate had concealed important diplomatic
+     information from the Prince.  He was asked why, in his secret
+     instructions to Ambassador Langerac, he ordered him by an express
+     article to be very cautious about making communications to the
+     Prince.  Searching questions were put in regard to these secret
+     instructions, which I have read in the Archives, and a copy of which
+     now lies before me.  They are in the form of questions, some of them
+     almost puerile ones, addressed to Barneveld by the Ambassador then
+     just departing on his mission to France in 1614, with the answers
+     written in the margin by the Advocate.  The following is all that
+     has reference to the Prince:
+     "Of what matters may I ordinarily write to his Excellency?"
+     Answer--"Of all great and important matters."
+     It was difficult to find much that was treasonable in that.]
+
+Among the heterogeneous articles of accusation he was asked why he had
+given no attention to those who had so, frequently proposed the formation
+of the West India Company.
+
+He replied that it had from old time been the opinion of the States of
+Holland, and always his own, that special and private licenses for
+traffic, navigation, and foreign commerce, were prejudicial to the
+welfare of the land.  He had always been most earnestly opposed to them,
+detesting monopolies which interfered with that free trade and navigation
+which should be common to all mankind.  He had taken great pains however
+in the years 1596 and 1597 to study the nature of the navigation and
+trade to the East Indies in regard to the nations to be dealt with in
+those regions, the nature of the wares bought and sold there, the
+opposition to be encountered from the Spaniards and Portuguese against
+the commerce of the Netherlanders, and the necessity of equipping vessels
+both for traffic and defence, and had come to the conclusion that these
+matters could best be directed by a general company.  He explained in
+detail the manner in which he had procured the blending of all the
+isolated chambers into one great East India Corporation, the enormous
+pains which it had cost him to bring it about, and the great commercial
+and national success which had been the result.  The Admiral of Aragon,
+when a prisoner after the battle of Nieuwpoort, had told him, he said,
+that the union of these petty corporations into one great whole had been
+as disastrous a blow to the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal as the Union
+of the Provinces at Utrecht had been.  In regard to the West India
+Company, its sole object, so far as he could comprehend it, had been to
+equip armed vessels, not for trade but to capture and plunder Spanish
+merchantmen and silver fleets in the West Indies and South America.  This
+was an advantageous war measure which he had favoured while the war
+lasted.  It was in no sense a commercial scheme however, and when the
+Truce had been made--the company not having come into existence--he
+failed to comprehend how its formation could be profitable for the
+Netherlanders.  On the contrary it would expressly invite or irritate the
+Spaniards into a resumption of the war, an object which in his humble
+opinion was not at all desirable.
+
+Certainly these ideas were not especially reprehensible, but had they
+been as shallow and despicable as they seem to us enlightened, it is
+passing strange that they should have furnished matter for a criminal
+prosecution.
+
+It was doubtless a disappointment for the promoters of the company, the
+chief of whom was a bankrupt, to fail in obtaining their charter, but it
+was scarcely high-treason to oppose it.  There is no doubt however that
+the disapprobation with which Barneveld regarded the West India Company,
+the seat of which was at Amsterdam, was a leading cause of the deadly
+hostility entertained for him by the great commercial metropolis.
+
+It was bad enough for the Advocate to oppose unconditional predestination
+and the damnation of infants, but to frustrate a magnificent system of
+privateering on the Spaniards in time of truce was an unpardonable crime.
+
+The patience with which the venerable statesman submitted to the taunts,
+ignorant and insolent cross-questionings, and noisy interruptions of his
+judges, was not less remarkable than the tenacity of memory which enabled
+him thus day after day, alone, unaided by books, manuscripts, or friendly
+counsel, to reconstruct the record of forty years, and to expound the
+laws of the land by an array of authorities, instances, and illustrations
+in a manner that would be deemed masterly by one who had all the
+resources of libraries, documents, witnesses, and secretaries at command.
+
+Only when insidious questions were put tending to impute to him
+corruption, venality, and treacherous correspondence with the enemy--for
+they never once dared formally to accuse him of treason--did that almost
+superhuman patience desert him.
+
+He was questioned as to certain payments made by him to a certain van der
+Vecken in Spanish coin.  He replied briefly at first that his money
+transactions with that man of business extended over a period of twenty
+or thirty years, and amounted to many hundred thousands of florins,
+growing out of purchases and sales of lands, agricultural enterprises on
+his estates, moneys derived from his professional or official business
+and the like.  It was impossible for him to remember the details of every
+especial money payment that might have occurred between them.
+
+Then suddenly breaking forth into a storm of indignation; he could mark
+from these questions, he said, that his enemies, not satisfied with
+having wounded his heart with their falsehoods, vile forgeries, and
+honour-robbing libels, were determined to break it.  This he prayed that
+God Almighty might avert and righteously judge between him and them.
+
+It was plain that among other things they were alluding to the stale and
+senseless story of the sledge filled with baskets of coin sent by the
+Spanish envoys on their departure from the Hague, on conclusion of the
+Truce, to defray expenses incurred by them for board and lodging of
+servants, forage of horses, and the like-which had accidentally stopped
+at Barneveld's door and was forthwith sent on to John Spronssen,
+superintendent of such affairs.  Passing over this wanton bit of calumny
+with disgust, he solemnly asserted that he had never at any period of his
+life received one penny nor the value of one penny from the King of
+Spain, the Archdukes, Spinola, or any other person connected with the
+enemy, saving only the presents publicly and mutually conferred according
+to invariable custom by the high contracting parties, upon the respective
+negotiators at conclusion of the Treaty of Truce.  Even these gifts
+Barneveld had moved his colleagues not to accept, but proposed that they
+should all be paid into the public treasury.  He had been overruled, he
+said, but that any dispassionate man of tolerable intelligence could
+imagine him, whose whole life had been a perpetual offence to Spain,
+to be in suspicious relations with that power seemed to him impossible.
+The most intense party spirit, yea, envy itself, must confess that he had
+been among the foremost to take up arms for his country's liberties, and
+had through life never faltered in their defence.  And once more in that
+mean chamber, and before a row of personal enemies calling themselves
+judges, he burst into an eloquent and most justifiable sketch of the
+career of one whom there was none else to justify and so many to assail.
+
+From his youth, he said, he had made himself by his honourable and
+patriotic deeds hopelessly irreconcilable with the Spaniards.  He was one
+of the advocates practising in the Supreme Court of Holland, who in the
+very teeth of the Duke of Alva had proclaimed him a tyrant and had sworn
+obedience to the Prince of Orange as the lawful governor of the land.  He
+was one of those who in the same year had promoted and attended private
+gatherings for the advancement of the Reformed religion.  He had helped
+to levy, and had contributed to, funds for the national defence in the
+early days of the revolt.  These were things which led directly to the
+Council of Blood and the gibbet.  He had borne arms himself on various
+bloody fields and had been perpetually a deputy to the rebel camps.  He
+had been the original mover of the Treaty of Union which was concluded
+between the Provinces at Utrecht.  He had been the first to propose and
+to draw up the declaration of Netherland independence and the abjuration
+of the King of Spain.  He had been one of those who had drawn and passed
+the Act establishing the late Prince of Orange as stadholder.  Of the
+sixty signers of these memorable declarations none were now living save
+himself and two others.  When the Prince had been assassinated, he had
+done his best to secure for his son Maurice the sovereign position of
+which murder had so suddenly deprived the father.  He had been member of
+the memorable embassies to France and England by which invaluable support
+for the struggling Provinces had been obtained.
+
+And thus he rapidly sketched the history of the great war of independence
+in which he had ever been conspicuously employed on the patriotic side.
+When the late King of France at the close of the century had made peace
+with Spain, he had been sent as special ambassador to that monarch, and
+had prevailed on him, notwithstanding his treaty with the enemy, to
+continue his secret alliance with the States and to promise them a large
+subsidy, pledges which had been sacredly fulfilled.  It was on that
+occasion that Henry, who was his debtor for past services, professional,
+official, and perfectly legitimate, had agreed, when his finances should
+be in better condition, to discharge his obligations; over and above the
+customary diplomatic present which he received publicly in common with
+his colleague Admiral Nassau.  This promise, fulfilled a dozen years
+later, had been one of the senseless charges of corruption brought
+against him.  He had been one of the negotiators of the Truce in which
+Spain had been compelled to treat with her revolted provinces as with
+free states and her equals.  He had promoted the union of the Protestant
+princes and their alliance with France and the United States in
+opposition to the designs of Spain and the League.  He had organized and
+directed the policy by which the forces of England, France, and
+Protestant Germany had possessed themselves of the debateable land.  He
+had resisted every scheme by which it was hoped to force the States from
+their hold of those important citadels.  He had been one of the foremost
+promoters of the East India Company, an organization which the Spaniards
+confessed had been as damaging to them as the Union of the Provinces
+itself had been.
+
+The idiotic and circumstantial statements, that he had conducted
+Burgomaster van Berk through a secret staircase of his house into his
+private study for the purpose of informing him that the only way for the
+States to get out of the war was to submit themselves once more to their
+old masters, so often forced upon him by the judges, he contradicted with
+disdain and disgust.  He had ever abhorred and dreaded, he said, the
+House of Spain, Austria, and Burgundy.  His life had passed in open
+hostility to that house, as was known to all mankind.  His mere personal
+interests, apart from higher considerations, would make an approach to
+the former sovereign impossible, for besides the deeds he had already
+alluded to, he had committed at least twelve distinct and separate acts,
+each one of which would be held high-treason by the House of Austria, and
+he had learned from childhood that these are things which monarchs never
+forget.  The tales of van Berk were those of a personal enemy, falsehoods
+scarcely worth contradicting.
+
+He was grossly and enormously aggrieved by the illegal constitution of
+the commission.  He had protested and continued to protest against it.
+If that protest were unheeded, he claimed at least that those men should
+be excluded from the board and the right to sit in judgment upon his
+person and his deeds who had proved themselves by words and works to be
+his capital enemies, of which fact he could produce irrefragable
+evidence.  He claimed that the Supreme Court of Holland, or the High
+Council, or both together, should decide upon that point.  He held as his
+personal enemies, he said, all those who had declared that he, before or
+since the Truce down to the day of his arrest, had held correspondence
+with the Spaniards, the Archdukes, the Marquis Spinola, or any one on
+that side, had received money, money value, or promises of money from
+them, and in consequence had done or omitted to do anything whatever.
+He denounced such tales as notorious, shameful, and villainous
+falsehoods, the utterers and circulators of them as wilful liars, and
+this he was ready to maintain in every appropriate way for the
+vindication of the truth and his own honour.  He declared solemnly before
+God Almighty to the States-General and to the States of Holland that his
+course in the religious matter had been solely directed to the
+strengthening of the Reformed religion and to the political security of
+the provinces and cities.  He had simply desired that, in the awful and
+mysterious matter of predestination, the consciences of many preachers
+and many thousands of good citizens might be placed in tranquillity, with
+moderate and Christian limitations against all excesses.
+
+From all these reasons, he said, the commissioners, the States-General,
+the Prince, and every man in the land could clearly see, and were bound
+to see, that he was the same man now that he was at the beginning of the
+war, had ever been, and with God's help should ever remain.
+
+The proceedings were kept secret from the public and, as a matter of
+course, there had been conflicting rumours from day to day as to the
+probable result of these great state trials.  In general however it was
+thought that the prisoner would be acquitted of the graver charges, or
+that at most he would be permanently displaced from all office and
+declared incapable thenceforth to serve the State.  The triumph of the
+Contra-Remonstrants since the Stadholder had placed himself at the head
+of them, and the complete metamorphosis of the city governments even in
+the strongholds of the Arminian party seemed to render the permanent
+political disgrace of the Advocate almost a matter of certainty.
+
+The first step that gave rise to a belief that he might be perhaps more
+severely dealt with than had been anticipated was the proclamation by the
+States-General of a public fast and humiliation for the 17th April.
+
+In this document it was announced that "Church and State--during several
+years past having been brought into great danger of utter destruction
+through certain persons in furtherance of their ambitious designs--had
+been saved by the convocation of a National Synod; that a lawful sentence
+was soon to be expected upon those who had been disturbing the
+Commonwealth; that through this sentence general tranquillity would
+probably be restored; and that men were now to thank God for this result,
+and pray to Him that He would bring the wicked counsels and stratagems of
+the enemy against these Provinces to naught."
+
+All the prisoners were asked if they too would like in their chambers
+of bondage to participate in the solemnity, although the motive for the
+fasting and prayer was not mentioned to them.  Each of them in his
+separate prison room, of course without communication together, selected
+the 7th Psalm and sang it with his servant and door-keeper.
+
+From the date of this fast-day Barneveld looked upon the result of his
+trial as likely to be serious.
+
+Many clergymen refused or objected to comply with the terms of this
+declaration.  Others conformed with it greedily, and preached lengthy
+thanksgiving sermons, giving praise to God that, He had confounded the
+devices of the ambitious and saved the country from the "blood bath"
+which they had been preparing for it.
+
+The friends of Barneveld became alarmed at the sinister language of this
+proclamation, in which for the first time allusions had been made to a
+forthcoming sentence against the accused.
+
+Especially the staunch and indefatigable du Maurier at once addressed
+himself again to the States-General.  De Boississe had returned to
+France, having found that the government of a country torn, weakened, and
+rendered almost impotent by its own internecine factions, was not likely
+to exert any very potent influence on the fate of the illustrious
+prisoner.
+
+The States had given him to understand that they were wearied with his
+perpetual appeals, intercessions, and sermons in behalf of mercy.  They
+made him feel in short that Lewis XIII. and Henry IV.  were two entirely
+different personages.
+
+Du Maurier however obtained a hearing before the Assembly on the 1st May,
+where he made a powerful and manly speech in presence of the Prince,
+urging that the prisoners ought to be discharged unless they could be
+convicted of treason, and that the States ought to show as much deference
+to his sovereign as they had always done to Elizabeth of England.  He
+made a personal appeal to Prince Maurice, urging upon him how much it
+would redound to his glory if he should now in generous and princely
+fashion step forward in behalf of those by whom he deemed himself to have
+been personally offended.
+
+His speech fell upon ears hardened against such eloquence and produced no
+effect.
+
+Meantime the family of Barneveld, not yet reduced to despair, chose to
+take a less gloomy view of the proclamation.  Relying on the innocence of
+the great statesman, whose aims, in their firm belief, had ever been for
+the welfare and glory of his fatherland, and in whose heart there had
+never been kindled one spark of treason, they bravely expected his
+triumphant release from his long and, as they deemed it, his iniquitous
+imprisonment.
+
+On this very 1st of May, in accordance with ancient custom, a may-pole
+was erected on the Voorhout before the mansion of the captive statesman,
+and wreaths of spring flowers and garlands of evergreen decorated the
+walls within which were such braised and bleeding hearts.  These
+demonstrations of a noble hypocrisy, if such it were, excited the wrath,
+not the compassion, of the Stadholder, who thought that the aged matron
+and her sons and daughters, who dwelt in that house of mourning, should
+rather have sat in sackcloth with ashes on their heads than indulge in
+these insolent marks of hope and joyful expectation.
+
+It is certain however that Count William Lewis, who, although most
+staunch on the Contra-Remonstrant side, had a veneration for the Advocate
+and desired warmly to save him, made a last and strenuous effort for that
+purpose.
+
+It was believed then, and it seems almost certain, that, if the friends
+of the Advocate had been willing to implore pardon for him, the sentence
+would have been remitted or commuted.  Their application would have been
+successful, for through it his guilt would seem to be acknowledged.
+
+Count William sent for the Fiscal Duyck.  He asked him if there were no
+means of saving the life of a man who was so old and had done the country
+so much service.  After long deliberation, it was decided that Prince
+Maurice should be approached on the subject.  Duyck wished that the Count
+himself would speak with his cousin, but was convinced by his reasoning
+that it would be better that the Fiscal should do it.  Duyck had a long
+interview accordingly with Maurice, which was followed by a very secret
+one between them both and Count William.  The three were locked up
+together, three hours long, in the Prince's private cabinet.  It was
+then decided that Count William should go, as if of his own accord,
+to the Princess-Dowager Louise, and induce her to send for some one of
+Barneveld's children and urge that the family should ask pardon for him.
+She asked if this was done with the knowledge of the Prince of Orange, or
+whether he would not take it amiss.  The Count eluded the question, but
+implored her to follow his advice.
+
+The result was an interview between the Princess and Madame de
+Groeneveld, wife of the eldest son.  That lady was besought to apply,
+with the rest of the Advocate's children, for pardon to the Lords States,
+but to act as if it were done of her own impulse, and to keep their
+interview profoundly secret.
+
+Madame de Groeneveld took time to consult the other members of the family
+and some friends.  Soon afterwards she came again to the Princess, and
+informed her that she had spoken with the other children, and that they
+could not agree to the suggestion.  "They would not move one step in it--
+no, not if it should cost him his head."
+
+The Princess reported the result of this interview to Count William, at
+which both were so distressed that they determined to leave the Hague.
+
+There is something almost superhuman in the sternness of this
+stoicism.  Yet it lay in the proud and highly tempered character of
+the Netherlanders.  There can be no doubt that the Advocate would have
+expressly dictated this proceeding if he had been consulted.  It was
+precisely the course adopted by himself.  Death rather than life with a
+false acknowledgment of guilt and therefore with disgrace.  The loss of
+his honour would have been an infinitely greater triumph to his enemies
+than the loss of his head.
+
+There was no delay in drawing up the sentence.  Previously to this
+interview with the widow of William the Silent, the family of the
+Advocate had presented to the judges three separate documents, rather in
+the way of arguments than petitions, undertaking to prove by elaborate
+reasoning and citations of precedents and texts of the civil law that the
+proceedings against him were wholly illegal, and that he was innocent of
+every crime.
+
+No notice had been taken of those appeals.
+
+Upon the questions and answers as already set forth the sentence soon
+followed, and it may be as well that the reader should be aware, at this
+point in the narrative, of the substance of that sentence so soon to be
+pronounced.  There had been no indictment, no specification of crime.
+There had been no testimony or evidence.  There had been no argument for
+the prosecution or the defence.  There had been no trial whatever.  The
+prisoner was convicted on a set of questions to which he had put in
+satisfactory replies.  He was sentenced on a preamble.  The sentence was
+a string of vague generalities, intolerably long, and as tangled as the
+interrogatories.  His proceedings during a long career had on the whole
+tended to something called a "blood bath"--but the blood bath had never
+occurred.
+
+With an effrontery which did not lack ingenuity, Barneveld's defence was
+called by the commissioners his confession, and was formally registered
+as such in the process and the sentence; while the fact that he had not
+been stretched upon the rack during his trial, nor kept in chains for the
+eight months of his imprisonment, were complacently mentioned as proofs
+of exceptionable indulgence.
+
+"Whereas the prisoner John of Barneveld," said the sentence, "without
+being put to the torture and without fetters of iron, has confessed .  .
+.  .  to having perturbed religion, greatly afflicted the Church of God,
+and carried into practice exorbitant and pernicious maxims of State .  .
+.  .  inculcating by himself and accomplices that each province had the
+right to regulate religious affairs within its own territory, and that
+other provinces were not to concern themselves therewith"--therefore and
+for many other reasons he merited punishment.
+
+He had instigated a protest by vote of three provinces against the
+National Synod.  He had despised the salutary advice of many princes and
+notable personages.  He had obtained from the King of Great Britain
+certain letters furthering his own opinions, the drafts of which he had
+himself suggested, and corrected and sent over to the States' ambassador
+in London, and when written out, signed, and addressed by the King to the
+States-General, had delivered them without stating how they had been
+procured.
+
+Afterwards he had attempted to get other letters of a similar nature from
+the King, and not succeeding had defamed his Majesty as being a cause of
+the troubles in the Provinces.  He had permitted unsound theologians to
+be appointed to church offices, and had employed such functionaries in
+political affairs as were most likely to be the instruments of his own
+purposes.  He had not prevented vigorous decrees from being enforced in
+several places against those of the true religion.  He had made them
+odious by calling them Puritans, foreigners, and "Flanderizers," although
+the United Provinces had solemnly pledged to each other their lives,
+fortunes, and blood by various conventions, to some of which the prisoner
+was himself a party, to maintain the Reformed, Evangelical, religion
+only, and to, suffer no change in it to be made for evermore.
+
+In order to carry out his design and perturb the political state of the
+Provinces he had drawn up and caused to be enacted the Sharp Resolution
+of 4th August 1617.  He had thus nullified the ordinary course of
+justice.  He had stimulated the magistrates to disobedience, and advised
+them to strengthen themselves with freshly enlisted military companies.
+He had suggested new-fangled oaths for the soldiers, authorizing them to
+refuse obedience to the States-General and his Excellency.  He had
+especially stimulated the proceedings at Utrecht.  When it was understood
+that the Prince was to pass through Utrecht, the States of that province
+not without the prisoner's knowledge had addressed a letter to his
+Excellency, requesting him not to pass through their city.  He had
+written a letter to Ledenberg suggesting that good watch should be held
+at the town gates and up and down the river Lek.  He had desired that
+Ledenberg having read that letter should burn it.  He had interfered with
+the cashiering of the mercenaries at Utrecht.  He had said that such
+cashiering without the consent of the States of that province was an act
+of force which would justify resistance by force.
+
+Although those States had sent commissioners to concert measures
+with the Prince for that purpose, he had advised them to conceal their
+instructions until his own plan for the disbandment could be carried out.
+At a secret meeting in the house of Tresel, clerk of the States-General,
+between Grotius, Hoogerbeets, and other accomplices, it was decided that
+this advice should be taken.  Report accordingly was made to the
+prisoner.  He had advised them to continue in their opposition to the
+National Synod.
+
+He had sought to calumniate and blacken his Excellency by saying
+that he aspired to the sovereignty of the Provinces.  He had received
+intelligence on that subject from abroad in ciphered letters.
+
+He had of his own accord rejected a certain proposed, notable alliance
+of the utmost importance to this Republic.
+
+     [This refers, I think without doubt, to the conversation between
+     King James and Caron at the end of the year 1815.]
+
+
+He had received from foreign potentates various large sums of money and
+other presents.
+
+All "these proceedings tended to put the city of Utrecht into a blood-
+bath, and likewise to bring the whole country, and the person of his
+Excellency into the uttermost danger."
+
+This is the substance of the sentence, amplified by repetitions and
+exasperating tautology into thirty or forty pages.
+
+It will have been perceived by our analysis of Barneveld's answers to the
+commissioners that all the graver charges which he was now said to have
+confessed had been indignantly denied by him or triumphantly justified.
+
+It will also be observed that he was condemned for no categorical crime--
+lese-majesty, treason, or rebellion.  The commissioners never ventured to
+assert that the States-General were sovereign, or that the central
+government had a right to prescribe a religious formulary for all the
+United Provinces.  They never dared to say that the prisoner had been
+in communication with the enemy or had received bribes from him.
+
+Of insinuation and implication there was much, of assertion very little,
+of demonstration nothing whatever.
+
+But supposing that all the charges had been admitted or proved, what
+course would naturally be taken in consequence?  How was a statesman who
+adhered to the political, constitutional, and religious opinions on which
+he had acted, with the general acquiescence, during a career of more than
+forty years, but which were said to be no longer in accordance with
+public opinion, to be dealt with?  Would the commissioners request him
+to retire honourably from the high functions which he had over and over
+again offered to resign?  Would they consider that, having fairly
+impeached and found him guilty of disturbing the public peace by
+continuing to act on his well-known legal theories, they might deprive
+him summarily of power and declare him incapable of holding office again?
+
+The conclusion of the commissioners was somewhat more severe than either
+of these measures.  Their long rambling preamble ended with these
+decisive words:
+
+"Therefore the judges, in name of the Lords States-General, condemn the
+prisoner to be taken to the Binnenhof, there to be executed with the
+sword that death may follow, and they declare all his property
+confiscated."
+
+The execution was to take place so soon as the sentence had been read to
+the prisoner.
+
+After the 1st of May Barneveld had not appeared before his judges.  He
+had been examined in all about sixty times.
+
+In the beginning of May his servant became impatient.  "You must not be
+impatient," said his master.  "The time seems much longer because we get
+no news now from the outside.  But the end will soon come.  This delay
+cannot last for ever."
+
+Intimation reached him on Saturday the 11th May that the sentence was
+ready and would soon be pronounced.
+
+"It is a bitter folk," said Barneveld as he went to bed.  "I have
+nothing good to expect of them."  Next day was occupied in sewing up and
+concealing his papers, including a long account of his examination, with
+the questions and answers, in his Spanish arm-chair.  Next day van der
+Meulen said to the servant, "I will bet you a hundred florins that you'll
+not be here next Thursday."
+
+The faithful John was delighted, not dreaming of the impending result.
+
+It was Sunday afternoon, 12th May, and about half past five o'clock.
+Barneveld sat in his prison chamber, occupied as usual in writing,
+reviewing the history of the past, and doing his best to reduce into
+something like order the rambling and miscellaneous interrogatories, out
+of which his trial had been concocted, while the points dwelt in his
+memory, and to draw up a concluding argument in his own defence.  Work
+which according to any equitable, reasonable, or even decent procedure
+should have been entrusted to the first lawyers of the country--preparing
+the case upon the law and the facts with the documents before them, with
+the power of cross-questioning witnesses and sifting evidence, and
+enlightened by constant conferences with the illustrious prisoner
+himself--came entirely upon his own shoulders, enfeebled as he was
+by age, physical illness, and by the exhaustion of along imprisonment.
+Without books, notes of evidence, or even copies of the charges of which
+he stood accused, he was obliged to draw up his counter-arguments against
+the impeachment and then by aid of a faithful valet to conceal his
+manuscript behind the tapestry of the chamber, or cause them to be sewed
+up in the lining of his easy-chair, lest they should be taken from him by
+order of the judges who sat in the chamber below.
+
+While he was thus occupied in preparations for his next encounter with
+the tribunal, the door opened, and three gentlemen entered.  Two were the
+prosecuting officers of the government, Fiscal Sylla and Fiscal van
+Leeuwen.  The other was the provost-marshal, Carel de Nijs.  The servant
+was directed to leave the room.
+
+Barneveld had stepped into his dressing-room on hearing footsteps, but
+came out again with his long furred gown about him as the three entered.
+He greeted them courteously and remained standing, with his hands placed
+on the back of his chair and with one knee resting carelessly against the
+arm of it.  Van Leeuwen asked him if he would not rather be seated, as
+they brought a communication from the judges.  He answered in the
+negative.  Von Leeuwen then informed him that he was summoned to appear
+before the judges the next morning to hear his sentence of death.
+
+"The sentence of death!" he exclaimed, without in the least changing his
+position; "the sentence of death!  the sentence of death!" saying the
+words over thrice, with an air of astonishment rather than of horror.
+"I never expected that!  I thought they were going to hear my defence
+again.  I had intended to make some change in my previous statements,
+having set some things down when beside myself with choler."
+
+He then made reference to his long services.  Van Leeuwen expressed
+himself as well acquainted with them.  "He was sorry," he said, "that his
+lordship took this message ill of him."
+
+"I do not take it ill of you," said Barneveld, "but let them," meaning
+the judges, "see how they will answer it before God.  Are they thus to
+deal with a true patriot?  Let me have pen, ink, and paper, that for the
+last time I may write farewell to my wife."
+
+"I will go ask permission of the judges," said van Leenwen, "and I cannot
+think that my lord's request will be refused."
+
+While van Leeuwen was absent, the Advocate exclaimed, looking at the
+other legal officer:
+
+"Oh, Sylla, Sylla, if your father could only have seen to what uses they
+would put you!"
+
+Sylla was silent.
+
+Permission to write the letter was soon received from de Voogt, president
+of the commission.  Pen, ink, and paper were brought, and the prisoner
+calmly sat down to write, without the slightest trace of discomposure
+upon his countenance or in any of his movements.
+
+While he was writing, Sylla said with some authority, "Beware, my lord,
+what you write, lest you put down something which may furnish cause for
+not delivering the letter."
+
+Barneveld paused in his writing, took the glasses from his eyes, and
+looked Sylla in the face.
+
+"Well, Sylla," he said very calmly, "will you in these my last moments
+lay down the law to me as to what I shall write to my wife?"
+
+He then added with a half-smile, "Well, what is expected of me?"
+
+"We have no commission whatever to lay down the law," said van Leeuwen.
+"Your worship will write whatever you like."
+
+While he was writing, Anthony Walaeus came in, a preacher and professor
+of Middelburg, a deputy to the Synod of Dordtrecht, a learned and amiable
+man, sent by the States-General to minister to the prisoner on this
+supreme occasion; and not unworthy to be thus selected.
+
+The Advocate, not knowing him, asked him why he came.
+
+"I am not here without commission," said the clergyman.  "I come to
+console my lord in his tribulation."
+
+"I am a man," said Barneveld; "have come to my present age, and I know
+how to console myself.  I must write, and have now other things to do."
+
+The preacher said that he would withdraw and return when his worship was
+at leisure.
+
+"Do as you like," said the Advocate, calmly going on with his writing.
+
+When the letter was finished, it was sent to the judges for their
+inspection, by whom it was at once forwarded to the family mansion in the
+Voorhout, hardly a stone's throw from the prison chamber.
+
+Thus it ran:
+
+"Very dearly beloved wife, children, sons-in-law, and grandchildren,
+I greet you altogether most affectionately.  I receive at this moment the
+very heavy and sorrowful tidings that I, an old man, for all my services
+done well and faithfully to the Fatherland for so many years (after
+having performed all respectful and friendly offices to his Excellency
+the Prince with upright affection so far as my official duty and vocation
+would permit, shown friendship to many people of all sorts, and wittingly
+injured no man), must prepare myself to die to-morrow.
+
+"I console myself in God the Lord, who knows all hearts, and who will
+judge all men.  I beg you all together to do the same.  I have steadily
+and faithfully served My Lords the States of Holland and their nobles and
+cities.  To the States of Utrecht as sovereigns of my own Fatherland I
+have imparted at their request upright and faithful counsel, in order to
+save them from tumults of the populace, and from the bloodshed with which
+they had so long been threatened.  I had the same views for the cities of
+Holland in order that every one might be protected and no one injured.
+
+"Live together in love and peace.  Pray for me to Almighty God, who will
+graciously hold us all in His holy keeping.
+
+"From my chamber of sorrow, the 12th May 1619.
+
+"Your very dear husband, father, father-in-law, and grandfather,
+
+                                   "JOHN OF BARNEVELD."
+
+It was thought strange that the judges should permit so simple and clear
+a statement, an argument in itself, to be forwarded.  The theory of his
+condemnation was to rest before the public on his confessions of guilt,
+and here in the instant of learning the nature of the sentence in a few
+hours to be pronounced upon him he had in a few telling periods declared
+his entire innocence.  Nevertheless the letter had been sent at once to
+its address.
+
+So soon as this sad business had been disposed of, Anthony Walaeus
+returned.  The Advocate apologized to the preacher for his somewhat
+abrupt greeting on his first appearance.  He was much occupied and did
+not know him, he said, although he had often heard of him.  He begged
+him, as well as the provost-marshal, to join him at supper, which was
+soon brought.
+
+Barneveld ate with his usual appetite, conversed cheerfully on various
+topics, and pledged the health of each of his guests in a glass of beer.
+Contrary to his wont he drank at that repast no wine.  After supper he
+went out into the little ante-chamber and called his servant, asking him
+how he had been faring.  Now John Franken had just heard with grief
+unspeakable the melancholy news of his master's condemnation from two
+soldiers of the guard, who had been sent by the judges to keep additional
+watch over the prisoner.  He was however as great a stoic as his master,
+and with no outward and superfluous manifestations of woe had simply
+implored the captain-at-arms, van der Meulen, to intercede with the
+judges that he might be allowed to stay with his lord to the last.
+Meantime he had been expressly informed that he was to say nothing to the
+Advocate in secret, and that his master was not to speak to him in a low
+tone nor whisper in his ear.
+
+When the Advocate came out into the ante-chamber and looking over his
+shoulder saw the two soldiers he at once lowered his voice.
+
+"Hush-speak low," he whispered; "this is too cruel."  John then informed
+him of van der Meulen's orders, and that the soldiers had also been
+instructed to look to it sharply that no word was exchanged between
+master and man except in a loud voice.
+
+"Is it possible," said the Advocate, "that so close an inspection is held
+over me in these last hours?  Can I not speak a word or two in freedom?
+This is a needless mark of disrespect."
+
+The soldiers begged him not to take their conduct amiss as they were
+obliged strictly to obey orders.
+
+He returned to his chamber, sat down in his chair, and begged Walaeus to
+go on his behalf to Prince Maurice.
+
+"Tell his Excellency," said he, "that I have always served him with
+upright affection so far as my office, duties, and principles permitted.
+If I, in the discharge of my oath and official functions, have ever done
+anything contrary to his views, I hope that he will forgive it, and that
+he will hold my children in his gracious favour."
+
+It was then ten o'clock.  The preacher went downstairs and crossed the
+courtyard to the Stadholder's apartments, where he at once gained
+admittance.
+
+Maurice heard the message with tears in his eyes, assuring Walaeus that
+he felt deeply for the Advocate's misfortunes.  He had always had much
+affection for him, he said, and had often warned him against his mistaken
+courses.  Two things, however, had always excited his indignation.  One
+was that Barneveld had accused him of aspiring to sovereignty.  The other
+that he had placed him in such danger at Utrecht.  Yet he forgave him
+all.  As regarded his sons, so long as they behaved themselves well they
+might rely on his favour.
+
+As Walaeus was about to leave the apartment, the Prince called him back.
+
+"Did he say anything of a pardon?" he asked, with some eagerness.
+
+"My Lord," answered the clergyman, "I cannot with truth say that I
+understood him to make any allusion to it."
+
+Walaeus returned immediately to the prison chamber and made his report of
+the interview.  He was unwilling however to state the particulars of the
+offence which Maurice declared himself to have taken at the acts of the
+Advocate.
+
+But as the prisoner insisted upon knowing, the clergyman repeated the
+whole conversation.
+
+"His Excellency has been deceived in regard to the Utrecht business,"
+said Barneveld, "especially as to one point.  But it is true that I had
+fear and apprehension that he aspired to the sovereignty or to more
+authority in the country.  Ever since the year 1600 I have felt this fear
+and have tried that these apprehensions might be rightly understood."
+
+While Walaeus had been absent, the Reverend Jean la Motte (or Lamotius)
+and another clergyman of the Hague had come to the prisoner's apartment.
+La Motte could not look upon the Advocate's face without weeping, but the
+others were more collected.  Conversation now ensued among the four; the
+preachers wishing to turn the doomed statesman's thought to the
+consolations of religion.
+
+But it was characteristic of the old lawyer's frame of mind that even now
+he looked at the tragical position in which he found himself from a
+constitutional and controversial point of view.  He was perfectly calm
+and undaunted at the awful fate so suddenly and unexpectedly opened
+before his eyes, but he was indignant at what he esteemed the ignorance,
+injustice, and stupidity of the sentence to be pronounced against him.
+
+"I am ready enough to die," he said to the three clergymen, "but I cannot
+comprehend why I am to die.  I have done nothing except in obedience to
+the laws and privileges of the land and according to my oath, honour, and
+conscience."
+
+"These judges," he continued, "come in a time when other maxims prevail
+in the State than those of my day.  They have no right therefore to sit
+in judgment upon me."
+
+The clergymen replied that the twenty-four judges who had tried the case
+were no children and were conscientious men; that it was no small thing
+to condemn a man, and that they would have to answer it before the
+Supreme Judge of all.
+
+"I console myself," he answered, "in the Lord my God, who knows all
+hearts and shall judge all men.  God is just.
+
+"They have not dealt with me," he continued, "as according to law and
+justice they were bound to deal.  They have taken away from me my own
+sovereign lords and masters and deposed them.  To them alone I was
+responsible.  In their place they have put many of my enemies who were
+never before in the government, and almost all of whom are young men who
+have not seen much or read much.  I have seen and read much, and know
+that from such examples no good can follow.  After my death they will
+learn for the first time what governing means."
+
+"The twenty-four judges are nearly all of them my enemies.  What they
+have reproached me with, I have been obliged to hear.  I have appealed
+against these judges, but it has been of no avail.  They have examined me
+in piecemeal, not in statesmanlike fashion.  The proceedings against
+me have been much too hard.  I have frequently requested to see the notes
+of my examination as it proceeded, and to confer upon it with aid and
+counsel of friends, as would be the case in all lands governed by law.
+The request was refused.  During this long and wearisome affliction and
+misery I have not once been allowed to speak to my wife and children.
+These are indecent proceedings against a man seventy-two years of age,
+who has served his country faithfully for three-and-forty years.  I bore
+arms with the volunteers at my own charges at the siege of Haarlem and
+barely escaped with life."
+
+It was not unnatural that the aged statesman's thoughts should revert in
+this supreme moment to the heroic scenes in which he had been an actor
+almost a half-century before.  He could not but think with bitterness of
+those long past but never forgotten days when he, with other patriotic
+youths, had faced the terrible legions of Alva in defence of the
+Fatherland, at a time when the men who were now dooming him to a
+traitor's death were unborn, and who, but for his labours, courage,
+wisdom, and sacrifices, might have never had a Fatherland to serve,
+or a judgment-seat on which to pronounce his condemnation.
+
+Not in a spirit of fretfulness, but with disdainful calm, he criticised
+and censured the proceedings against himself as a violation of the laws
+of the land and of the first principles of justice, discussing them as
+lucidly and steadily as if they had been against a third person.
+
+The preachers listened, but had nothing to say.  They knew not of such
+matters, they said, and had no instructions to speak of them.  They had
+been sent to call him to repentance for his open and hidden sins and to
+offer the consolations of religion.
+
+"I know that very well," he said, "but I too have something to say
+notwithstanding."  The conversation then turned upon religious topics,
+and the preachers spoke of predestination.
+
+"I have never been able to believe in the matter of high predestination,"
+said the Advocate.  "I have left it in the hands of God the Lord.  I hold
+that a good Christian man must believe that he through God's grace and by
+the expiation of his sin through our Redeemer Jesus Christ is predestined
+to be saved, and that this belief in his salvation, founded alone on
+God's grace and the merits of our Redeemer Jesus Christ, comes to him
+through the same grace of God.  And if he falls into great sins, his firm
+hope and confidence must be that the Lord God will not allow him to
+continue in them, but that, through prayer for grace and repentance, he
+will be converted from evil and remain in the faith to the end of his
+life."
+
+These feelings, he said, he had expressed fifty-two years before to three
+eminent professors of theology in whom he confided, and they had assured
+him that he might tranquilly continue in such belief without examining
+further.  "And this has always been my creed," he said.
+
+The preachers replied that faith is a gift of God and not given to all
+men, that it must be given out of heaven to a man before he could be
+saved.  Hereupon they began to dispute, and the Advocate spoke so
+earnestly and well that the clergymen were astonished and sat for
+a time listening to him in silence.
+
+He asked afterwards about the Synod, and was informed that its decrees
+had not yet been promulgated, but that the Remonstrants had been
+condemned.
+
+"It is a pity," said he.  "One is trying to act on the old Papal system,
+but it will never do.  Things have gone too far.  As to the Synod, if My
+Lords the States of Holland had been heeded there would have been first a
+provincial synod and then a national one."--"But," he added, looking the
+preachers in the face, "had you been more gentle with each other, matters
+would not have taken so high a turn.  But you have been too fierce one
+against the other, too full of bitter party spirit."
+
+They replied that it was impossible for them to act against their
+conscience and the supreme authority.  And then they asked him if there
+was nothing that troubled him in, his conscience in the matters for which
+he must die; nothing for which he repented and sorrowed, and for which he
+would call upon God for mercy.
+
+"This I know well," he said, "that I have never willingly done wrong to
+any man.  People have been ransacking my letters to Caron--confidential
+ones written several years ago to an old friend when I was troubled and
+seeking for counsel and consolation.  It is hard that matter of
+impeachment against me to-day should be sought for thus."
+
+And then he fell into political discourse again on the subject of the
+Waartgelders and the State rights, and the villainous pasquils and libels
+that had circulated so long through the country.
+
+"I have sometimes spoken hastily, I confess," he said; "but that was
+when I was stung by the daily swarm of infamous and loathsome pamphlets,
+especially those directed against my sovereign masters the States of
+Holland.  That I could not bear.  Old men cannot well brush such things
+aside.  All that was directly aimed at me in particular I endeavoured to
+overcome with such patience as I could muster.  The disunion and mutual
+enmity in the country have wounded me to the heart.  I have made use
+of all means in my power to accommodate matters, to effect with all
+gentleness a mutual reconciliation.  I have always felt a fear lest
+the enemy should make use of our internal dissensions to strike a blow
+against us.  I can say with perfect truth that ever since the year '77
+I have been as resolutely and unchangeably opposed to the Spaniards and
+their adherents, and their pretensions over these Provinces, as any man
+in the world, no one excepted, and as ready to sacrifice property and
+shed my blood in defence of the Fatherland.  I have been so devoted to
+the service of the country that I have not been able to take the
+necessary care of my own private affairs."
+
+So spoke the great statesman in the seclusion of his prison, in the
+presence of those clergymen whom he respected, at a supreme moment, when,
+if ever, a man might be expected to tell the truth.  And his whole life
+which belonged to history, and had been passed on the world's stage
+before the eyes of two generations of spectators, was a demonstration of
+the truth of his words.
+
+But Burgomaster van Berk knew better.  Had he not informed the twenty-
+four commissioners that, twelve years before, the Advocate wished to
+subject the country to Spain, and that Spinola had drawn a bill of
+exchange for 100,000 ducats as a compensation for his efforts?
+
+It was eleven o'clock.  Barneveld requested one of the brethren to say an
+evening prayer.  This was done by La Motte, and they were then requested
+to return by three or four o'clock next morning.  They had been directed,
+they said, to remain with him all night.  "That is unnecessary," said the
+Advocate, and they retired.
+
+His servant then helped his master to undress, and he went to bed as
+usual.  Taking off his signet-ring, he gave it to John Franken.
+
+"For my eldest son," he said.
+
+The valet sat down at the head of his bed in order that his master might
+speak to him before he slept.  But the soldiers ordered him away and
+compelled him to sit in a distant part of the room.
+
+An hour after midnight, the Advocate having been unable to lose himself,
+his servant observed that Isaac, one of the soldiers, was fast asleep.
+He begged the other, Tilman Schenk by name, to permit him some private
+words with his master.  He had probably last messages, he thought, to
+send to his wife and children, and the eldest son, M. de Groeneveld,
+would no doubt reward him well for it.  But the soldier was obstinate in
+obedience to the orders of the judges.
+
+Barneveld, finding it impossible to sleep, asked his servant to read to
+him from the Prayer-book.  The soldier called in a clergyman however,
+another one named Hugo Bayerus, who had been sent to the prison, and who
+now read to him the Consolations of the Sick.  As he read, he made
+exhortations and expositions, which led to animated discussion, in which
+the Advocate expressed himself with so much fervour and eloquence that
+all present were astonished, and the preacher sat mute a half-hour long
+at the bed-side.
+
+"Had there been ten clergymen," said the simple-hearted sentry to the
+valet, "your master would have enough to say to all of them."
+
+Barneveld asked where the place had been prepared in which he was to die.
+
+"In front of the great hall, as I understand," said Bayerus, "but I don't
+know the localities well, having lived here but little."
+
+"Have you heard whether my Grotius is to die, and Hoogerbeets also?" he
+asked?
+
+I have heard nothing to that effect," replied the clergyman.
+
+"I should most deeply grieve for those two gentlemen," said Barneveld,
+"were that the case.  They may yet live to do the land great service.
+That great rising light, de Groot, is still young, but a very wise and
+learned gentleman, devoted to his Fatherland with all zeal, heart, and
+soul, and ready to stand up for her privileges, laws, and rights.  As for
+me, I am an old and worn-out man.  I can do no more.  I have already done
+more than I was really able to do.  I have worked so zealously in public
+matters that I have neglected my private business.  I had expressly
+ordered my house at Loosduinen" [a villa by the seaside] "to be got
+ready, that I might establish myself there and put my affairs in order.
+I have repeatedly asked the States of Holland for my discharge, but could
+never obtain it.  It seems that the Almighty had otherwise disposed of
+me."
+
+He then said he would try once more if he could sleep.  The clergyman and
+the servant withdrew for an hour, but his attempt was unsuccessful.
+After an hour he called for his French Psalm Book and read in it for
+some time.  Sometime after two o'clock the clergymen came in again and
+conversed with him.  They asked him if he had slept, if he hoped to meet
+Christ, and if there was anything that troubled his conscience.
+
+"I have not slept, but am perfectly tranquil," he replied.  "I am ready
+to die, but cannot comprehend why I must die.  I wish from my heart that,
+through my death and my blood, all disunion and discord in this land may
+cease."
+
+He bade them carry his last greetings to his fellow prisoners.  "Say
+farewell for me to my good Grotius," said he, "and tell him that I must
+die."
+
+The clergymen then left him, intending to return between five and six
+o'clock.
+
+He remained quiet for a little while and then ordered his valet to cut
+open the front of his shirt.  When this was done, he said, "John, are you
+to stay by me to the last?"
+
+"Yes," he replied, "if the judges permit it."
+
+"Remind me to send one of the clergymen to the judges with the request,"
+said his master.
+
+The faithful John, than whom no servant or friend could be more devoted,
+seized the occasion, with the thrift and stoicism of a true Hollander, to
+suggest that his lord might at the same time make some testamentary
+disposition in his favour.
+
+"Tell my wife and children," said the Advocate, "that they must console
+each other in mutual love and union.  Say that through God's grace I am
+perfectly at ease, and hope that they will be equally tranquil.  Tell my
+children that I trust they will be loving and friendly to their mother
+during the short time she has yet to live.  Say that I wish to recommend
+you to them that they may help you to a good situation either with
+themselves or with others.  Tell them that this was my last request."
+
+He bade him further to communicate to the family the messages sent that
+night through Walaeus by the Stadholder.
+
+The valet begged his master to repeat these instructions in presence of
+the clergyman, or to request one of them to convey them himself to the
+family.  He promised to do so.
+
+"As long as I live," said the grateful servant, "I shall remember your
+lordship in my prayers."
+
+"No, John," said the Advocate, "that is Popish.  When I am dead, it is
+all over with prayers.  Pray for me while I still live.  Now is the time
+to pray.  When one is dead, one should no longer be prayed for."
+
+La Motte came in.  Barneveld repeated his last wishes exactly as he
+desired them to be communicated to his wife and children.  The preacher
+made no response.  "Will you take the message?" asked the prisoner.  La
+Motte nodded, but did not speak, nor did he subsequently fulfil the
+request.
+
+Before five o'clock the servant heard the bell ring in the apartment of
+the judges directly below the prison chamber, and told his master he had
+understood that they were to assemble at five o'clock.
+
+"I may as well get up then," said the Advocate; "they mean to begin
+early, I suppose.  Give me my doublet and but one pair of stockings."
+
+He was accustomed to wear two or three pair at a time.
+
+He took off his underwaistcoat, saying that the silver bog which was in
+one of the pockets was to be taken to his wife, and that the servant
+should keep the loose money there for himself.  Then he found an
+opportunity to whisper to him, "Take good care of the papers which are in
+the apartment."  He meant the elaborate writings which he had prepared
+during his imprisonment and concealed in the tapestry and within the
+linings of the chair.
+
+As his valet handed him the combs and brushes, he said with a smile,
+"John, this is for the last time."
+
+When he was dressed, he tried, in rehearsal of the approaching scene, to
+pull over his eyes the silk skull-cap which he usually wore under his
+hat.  Finding it too tight he told the valet to put the nightcap in his
+pocket and give it him when he should call for it.  He then swallowed a
+half-glass of wine with a strengthening cordial in it, which he was wont
+to take.
+
+The clergymen then re-entered, and asked if he had been able to sleep.
+He answered no, but that he had been much consoled by many noble things
+which he had been reading in the French Psalm Book.  The clergymen said
+that they had been thinking much of the beautiful confession of faith
+which he had made to them that evening.  They rejoiced at it, they said,
+on his account, and had never thought it of him.  He said that such had
+always been his creed.
+
+At his request Walaeus now offered a morning prayer Barneveld fell on his
+knees and prayed inwardly without uttering a sound.  La Motte asked when
+he had concluded, "Did my Lord say Amen?"--"Yes, Lamotius," he replied;
+"Amen."--"Has either of the brethren," he added, "prepared a prayer to be
+offered outside there?"
+
+La Motte informed him that this duty had been confided to him.  Some
+passages from Isaiah were now read aloud, and soon afterwards Walaeus
+was sent for to speak with the judges.  He came back and said to the
+prisoner, "Has my Lord any desire to speak with his wife or children, or
+any of his friends?"  It was then six o'clock, and Barneveld replied:
+
+"No, the time is drawing near.  It would excite a new emotion."  Walaeus
+went back to the judges with this answer, who thereupon made this
+official report:
+
+"The husband and father of the petitioners, being asked if he desired
+that any of the petitioners should come to him, declared that he did not
+approve of it, saying that it would cause too great an emotion for
+himself as well as for them.  This is to serve as an answer to the
+petitioners."
+
+Now the Advocate knew nothing of the petition.  Up to the last moment his
+family had been sanguine as to his ultimate acquittal and release.  They
+relied on a promise which they had received or imagined that they had
+received from the Stadholder that no harm should come to the prisoner in
+consequence of the arrest made of his person in the Prince's apartments
+on the 8th of August.  They had opened this tragical month of May with
+flagstaffs and flower garlands, and were making daily preparations to
+receive back the revered statesman in triumph.
+
+The letter written by him from his "chamber of sorrow," late in the
+evening of 12th May, had at last dispelled every illusion.  It would be
+idle to attempt to paint the grief and consternation into which the
+household in the Voorhout was plunged, from the venerable dame at its
+head, surrounded by her sons and daughters and children's children, down
+to the humblest servant in their employment.  For all revered and loved
+the austere statesman, but simple and benignant father and master.
+
+No heed had been taken of the three elaborate and argumentative petitions
+which, prepared by learned counsel in name of the relatives, had been
+addressed to the judges.  They had not been answered because they were
+difficult to answer, and because it was not intended that the accused
+should have the benefit of counsel.
+
+An urgent and last appeal was now written late at night, and signed by
+each member of the family, to his Excellency the Prince and the judge
+commissioners, to this effect:
+
+"The afflicted wife and children of M. van Barneveld humbly show that
+having heard the sorrowful tidings of his coming execution, they humbly
+beg that it may be granted them to see and speak to him for the last
+time."
+
+The two sons delivered this petition at four o'clock in the morning into
+the hands of de Voogd, one of the judges.  It was duly laid before the
+commission, but the prisoner was never informed, when declining a last
+interview with his family, how urgently they had themselves solicited the
+boon.
+
+Louise de Coligny, on hearing late at night the awful news, had been
+struck with grief and horror.  She endeavoured, late as it was, to do
+something to avert the doom of one she so much revered, the man on whom
+her illustrious husband had leaned his life long as on a staff of iron.
+She besought an interview of the Stadholder, but it was refused.  The
+wife of William the Silent had no influence at that dire moment with her
+stepson.  She was informed at first that Maurice was asleep, and at four
+in the morning that all intervention was useless.
+
+The faithful and energetic du Maurier, who had already exhausted himself
+in efforts to save the life of the great prisoner, now made a last
+appeal.  He, too, heard at four o'clock in the morning of the 13th that
+sentence of death was to be pronounced.  Before five o'clock he made
+urgent application to be heard before the Assembly of the States-General
+as ambassador of a friendly sovereign who took the deepest interest in
+the welfare of the Republic and the fate of its illustrious statesman.
+The appeal was refused.  As a last resource he drew up an earnest and
+eloquent letter to the States-General, urging clemency in the name of his
+king.  It was of no avail.  The letter may still be seen in the Royal
+Archives at the Hague, drawn up entirely in du Maurier's clear and
+beautiful handwriting.  Although possibly a, first draft, written as it
+was under such a mortal pressure for time, its pages have not one erasure
+or correction.
+
+It was seven o'clock.  Barneveld having observed by the preacher (La
+Motte's) manner that he was not likely to convey the last messages which
+he had mentioned to his wife and children, sent a request to the judges
+to be allowed to write one more letter.  Captain van der Meulen came back
+with the permission, saying he would wait and take it to the judges for
+their revision.
+
+The letter has been often published.
+
+"Must they see this too?  Why, it is only a line in favour of John," said
+the prisoner, sitting quietly down to write this letter:
+
+"Very dear wife and children, it is going to an end with me.  I am,
+through the grace of God, very tranquil.  I hope that you are equally so,
+and that you may by mutual love, union, and peace help each other to
+overcome all things, which I pray to the Omnipotent as my last request.
+John Franken has served me faithfully for many years and throughout all
+these my afflictions, and is to remain with me to the end.  He deserves
+to be recommended to you and to be furthered to good employments with you
+or with others.  I request you herewith to see to this.
+
+"I have requested his Princely Excellency to hold my sons and children in
+his favour, to which he has answered that so long as you conduct
+yourselves well this shall be the case.  I recommend this to you in the
+best form and give you all into God's holy keeping.  Kiss each other and
+all my grandchildren, for the last time in my name, and fare you well.
+Out of the chamber of sorrow, 13th May 1619.  Your dear husband and
+father,
+                                   JOHN OF BARNEVELD.
+
+"P.S.  You will make John Franken a present in memory of me."
+
+Certainly it would be difficult to find a more truly calm, courageous,
+or religious spirit than that manifested by this aged statesman at an
+hour when, if ever, a human soul is tried and is apt to reveal its
+innermost depths or shallows.  Whatever Gomarus or Bogerman, or the whole
+Council of Dordtrecht, may have thought of his theology, it had at least
+taught him forgiveness of his enemies, kindness to his friends, and
+submission to the will of the Omnipotent.  Every moment of his last days
+on earth had been watched and jealously scrutinized, and his bitterest
+enemies had failed to discover one trace of frailty, one manifestation of
+any vacillating, ignoble, or malignant sentiment.
+
+The drums had been sounding through the quiet but anxiously expectant
+town since four o'clock that morning, and the tramp of soldiers marching
+to the Inner Court had long been audible in the prison chamber.
+
+Walaeus now came back with a message from the judges.  "The high
+commissioners," he said, "think it is beginning.  Will my Lord please to
+prepare himself?"
+
+"Very well, very well," said the prisoner.  "Shall we go at once?"
+
+But Walaeus suggested a prayer.  Upon its conclusion, Barneveld gave his
+hand to the provost-marshal and to the two soldiers, bidding them adieu,
+and walked downstairs, attended by them, to the chamber of the judges.
+As soon as he appeared at the door, he was informed that there had been a
+misunderstanding, and he was requested to wait a little.  He accordingly
+went upstairs again with perfect calmness, sat down in his chamber again,
+and read in his French Psalm Book.  Half an hour later he was once more
+summoned, the provost-marshal and Captain van der Meulen reappearing to
+escort him.  "Mr. Provost," said the prisoner, as they went down the
+narrow staircase, "I have always been a good friend to you."--"It is
+true," replied that officer, "and most deeply do I grieve to see you in
+this affliction."
+
+He was about to enter the judges' chamber as usual, but was informed
+that the sentence would be read in the great hall of judicature.  They
+descended accordingly to the basement story, and passed down the narrow
+flight of steps which then as now connected the more modern structure,
+where the Advocate had been imprisoned and tried, with what remained of
+the ancient palace of the Counts of Holland.  In the centre of the vast
+hall--once the banqueting chamber of those petty sovereigns; with its
+high vaulted roof of cedar which had so often in ancient days rung with
+the sounds of mirth and revelry--was a great table at which the twenty-
+four judges and the three prosecuting officers were seated, in their
+black caps and gowns of office.  The room was lined with soldiers and
+crowded with a dark, surging mass of spectators, who had been waiting
+there all night.
+
+A chair was placed for the prisoner.  He sat down, and the clerk of the
+commission, Pots by name, proceeded at once to read the sentence.
+A summary of this long, rambling, and tiresome paper has been already
+laid before the reader.  If ever a man could have found it tedious to
+listen to his own death sentence, the great statesman might have been in
+that condition as he listened to Secretary Pots.
+
+During the reading of the sentence the Advocate moved uneasily on his
+seat, and seemed about to interrupt the clerk at several passages which
+seemed to him especially preposterous.  But he controlled himself by a
+strong effort, and the clerk went steadily on to the conclusion.
+
+Then Barneveld said:
+
+"The judges have put down many things which they have no right to draw
+from my confession.  Let this protest be added."
+
+"I thought too," he continued, "that My Lords the States-General would
+have had enough in my life and blood, and that my wife and children might
+keep what belongs to them.  Is this my recompense for forty-three years'
+service to these Provinces?"
+
+President de Voogd rose:
+
+"Your sentence has been pronounced," he said.  "Away! away!  "So saying
+he pointed to the door into which one of the great windows at the south-
+eastern front of the hall had been converted.
+
+Without another word the old man rose from his chair and strode, leaning
+on his staff, across the hall, accompanied by his faithful valet and the
+provost and escorted by a file of soldiers.  The mob of spectators flowed
+out after him at every door into the inner courtyard in front of the
+ancient palace.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Better to be governed by magistrates than mobs
+Burning with bitter revenge for all the favours he had received
+Death rather than life with a false acknowledgment of guilt
+Enemy of all compulsion of the human conscience
+Heidelberg Catechism were declared to be infallible
+I know how to console myself
+Implication there was much, of assertion very little
+John Robinson
+Magistracy at that moment seemed to mean the sword
+Only true religion
+Rather a wilderness to reign over than a single heretic
+William Brewster
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext Life of John Barneveld, v10, Motley #96
+by John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND
+
+WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR
+
+By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+
+
+Life and Death of John of Barneveld, v11, 1619-23
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+     Barneveld's Execution--The Advocate's Conduct on the Scaffold--The
+     Sentence printed and sent to the Provinces--The Proceedings
+     irregular and inequitable.
+
+In the beautiful village capital of the "Count's Park," commonly called
+the Hague, the most striking and picturesque spot then as now was that
+where the transformed remains of the old moated castle of those feudal
+sovereigns were still to be seen.  A three-storied range of simple,
+substantial buildings in brown brickwork, picked out with white stone in
+a style since made familiar both in England and America, and associated
+with a somewhat later epoch in the history of the House of Orange,
+surrounded three sides of a spacious inner paved quadrangle called the
+Inner Court, the fourth or eastern side being overshadowed by a beechen
+grove.  A square tower flanked each angle, and on both sides of the
+south-western turret extended the commodious apartments of the
+Stadholder.  The great gateway on the south-west opened into a wide open
+space called the Outer Courtyard.  Along the north-west side a broad and
+beautiful sheet of water, in which the walls, turrets, and chapel-spires
+of the enclosed castle mirrored themselves, was spread between the mass
+of buildings and an umbrageous promenade called the Vyverberg, consisting
+of a sextuple alley of lime-trees and embowering here and there a stately
+villa.  A small island, fringed with weeping willows and tufted all over
+with lilacs, laburnums, and other shrubs then in full flower, lay in the
+centre of the miniature lake, and the tall solid tower of the Great
+Church, surmounted by a light openwork spire, looked down from a little
+distance over the scene.
+
+It was a bright morning in May.  The white swans were sailing tranquilly
+to and fro over the silver basin, and the mavis, blackbird, and
+nightingale, which haunted the groves surrounding the castle and the
+town, were singing as if the daybreak were ushering in a summer festival.
+
+But it was not to a merry-making that the soldiers were marching and the
+citizens.  thronging so eagerly from every street and alley towards the
+castle.  By four o'clock the Outer and Inner Courts had been lined with
+detachments of the Prince's guard and companies of other regiments to the
+number of 1200 men.  Occupying the north-eastern side of the court rose
+the grim, time-worn front of the ancient hall, consisting of one tall
+pyramidal gable of ancient grey brickwork flanked with two tall slender
+towers, the whole with the lancet-shaped windows and severe style of the
+twelfth century, excepting a rose-window in the centre with the decorated
+mullions of a somewhat later period.
+
+In front of the lower window, with its Gothic archway hastily converted
+into a door, a shapeless platform of rough, unhewn planks had that night
+been rudely patched together.  This was the scaffold.  A slight railing
+around it served to protect it from the crowd, and a heap of coarse sand
+had been thrown upon it.  A squalid, unclean box of unplaned boards,
+originally prepared as a coffin for a Frenchman who some time before had
+been condemned to death for murdering the son of Goswyn Meurskens, a
+Hague tavern-keeper, but pardoned by the Stadholder--lay on the scaffold.
+It was recognized from having been left for a long time, half forgotten,
+at the public execution-place of the Hague.
+
+Upon this coffin now sat two common soldiers of ruffianly aspect playing
+at dice, betting whether the Lord or the Devil would get the soul of
+Barneveld.  Many a foul and ribald jest at the expense of the prisoner
+was exchanged between these gamblers, some of their comrades, and a few
+townsmen, who were grouped about at that early hour.  The horrible
+libels, caricatures, and calumnies which had been circulated, exhibited,
+and sung in all the streets for so many months had at last thoroughly
+poisoned the minds of the vulgar against the fallen statesman.
+
+The great mass of the spectators had forced their way by daybreak into
+the hall itself to hear the sentence, so that the Inner Courtyard had
+remained comparatively empty.
+
+At last, at half past nine o'clock, a shout arose, "There he comes!
+there he comes!" and the populace flowed out from the hall of judgment
+into the courtyard like a tidal wave.
+
+In an instant the Binnenhof was filled with more than three thousand
+spectators.
+
+The old statesman, leaning on his staff, walked out upon the scaffold and
+calmly surveyed the scene.  Lifting his eyes to Heaven, he was heard to
+murmur, "O God! what does man come to!"  Then he said bitterly once more:
+"This, then, is the reward of forty years' service to the State!"
+
+La Motte, who attended him, said fervently: "It is no longer time to
+think of this.  Let us prepare your coming before God."
+
+"Is there no cushion or stool to kneel upon?"  said Barneveld, looking
+around him.
+
+The provost said he would send for one, but the old man knelt at once
+on the bare planks.  His servant, who waited upon him as calmly and
+composedly as if he had been serving him at dinner, held him by the arm.
+It was remarked that neither master nor man, true stoics and Hollanders
+both, shed a single tear upon the scaffold.
+
+La Motte prayed for a quarter of an hour, the Advocate remaining on his
+knees.
+
+He then rose and said to John Franken, "See that he does not come near
+me," pointing to the executioner who stood in the background grasping his
+long double-handed sword.  Barneveld then rapidly unbuttoned his doublet
+with his own hands and the valet helped him off with it.  "Make haste!
+make haste!" said his master.
+
+The statesman then came forward and said in a loud, firm voice to the
+people:
+
+"Men, do not believe that I am a traitor to the country.  I have ever
+acted uprightly and loyally as a good patriot, and as such I shall die."
+
+The crowd was perfectly silent.
+
+He then took his cap from John Franken, drew it over his eyes, and went
+forward towards the sand, saying:
+
+"Christ shall be my guide.  O Lord, my heavenly Father, receive my
+spirit."
+
+As he was about to kneel with his face to the south, the provost said:
+
+"My lord will be pleased to move to the other side, not where the sun is
+in his face."
+
+He knelt accordingly with his face towards his own house.  The servant
+took farewell of him, and Barneveld said to the executioner:
+
+"Be quick about it.  Be quick."
+
+The executioner then struck his head off at a single blow.
+
+Many persons from the crowd now sprang, in spite of all opposition, upon
+the scaffold and dipped their handkerchiefs in his blood, cut wet
+splinters from the boards, or grubbed up the sand that was steeped in it;
+driving many bargains afterwards for these relics to be treasured, with
+various feelings of sorrow, joy, glutted or expiated vengeance.
+
+It has been recorded, and has been constantly repeated to this day, that
+the Stadholder, whose windows exactly faced the scaffold, looked out upon
+the execution with a spy-glass; saying as he did so:
+
+"See the old scoundrel, how he trembles!  He is afraid of the stroke."
+
+But this is calumny.  Colonel Hauterive declared that he was with Maurice
+in his cabinet during the whole period of the execution, that by order of
+the Prince all the windows and shutters were kept closed, that no person
+wearing his livery was allowed to be abroad, that he anxiously received
+messages as to the proceedings, and heard of the final catastrophe with
+sorrowful emotion.
+
+It must be admitted, however, that the letter which Maurice wrote on the
+same morning to his cousin William Lewis does not show much pathos.
+
+"After the judges," he said, "have been busy here with the sentence
+against the Advocate Barneveld for several days, at last it has been
+pronounced, and this morning, between nine o'clock and half past, carried
+into execution with the sword, in the Binnenhof before the great hall.
+
+"The reasons they had for this you will see from the sentence, which will
+doubtless be printed, and which I will send you.
+
+"The wife of the aforesaid Barneveld and also some of his sons and sons-
+in-law or other friends have never presented any supplication for his
+pardon, but till now have vehemently demanded that law and justice should
+be done to him, and have daily let the report run through the people that
+he would soon come out.  They also planted a may-pole before their house
+adorned with garlands and ribbands, and practised other jollities and
+impertinences, while they ought to have conducted themselves in a humble
+and lowly fashion.  This is no proper manner of behaving, and moreover
+not a practical one to move the judges to any favour even if they had
+been thereto inclined."
+
+The sentence was printed and sent to the separate provinces.  It was
+accompanied by a declaration of the States-General that they had received
+information from the judges of various points, not mentioned in the
+sentence, which had been laid to the charge of the late Advocate, and
+which gave much reason to doubt whether he had not perhaps turned his
+eyes toward the enemy.  They could not however legally give judgment to
+that effect without a sharper investigation, which on account of his
+great age and for other reasons it was thought best to spare him.
+
+A meaner or more malignant postscript to a state paper recounting the
+issue of a great trial it would be difficult to imagine.  The first
+statesman of the country had just been condemned and executed on a
+narrative, without indictment of any specified crime.  And now, by a kind
+of apologetic after-thought, six or eight individuals calling themselves
+the States-General insinuated that he had been looking towards the enemy,
+and that, had they not mercifully spared him the rack, which is all that
+could be meant by their sharper investigation, he would probably have
+confessed the charge.
+
+And thus the dead man's fame was blackened by those who had not hesitated
+to kill him, but had shrunk from enquiring into his alleged crime.
+
+Not entirely without semblance of truth did Grotius subsequently say that
+the men who had taken his life would hardly have abstained from torturing
+him if they had really hoped by so doing to extract from him a confession
+of treason.
+
+The sentence was sent likewise to France, accompanied with a statement
+that Barneveld had been guilty of unpardonable crimes which had not been
+set down in the act of condemnation.  Complaints were also made of the
+conduct of du Maurier in thrusting himself into the internal affairs of
+the States and taking sides so ostentatiously against the government.
+The King and his ministers were indignant with these rebukes, and
+sustained the Ambassador.  Jeannin and de Boississe expressed the opinion
+that he had died innocent of any crime, and only by reason of his strong
+political opposition to the Prince.
+
+The judges had been unanimous in finding him guilty of the acts recorded
+in their narrative, but three of them had held out for some time in
+favour of a sentence of perpetual imprisonment rather than decapitation.
+
+They withdrew at last their opposition to the death penalty for the
+wonderful reason that reports had been circulated of attempts likely to
+be made to assassinate Prince Maurice.  The Stadholder himself treated
+these rumours and the consequent admonition of the States-General that
+he would take more than usual precautions for his safety with perfect
+indifference, but they were conclusive with the judges of Barneveld.
+
+"Republica poscit exemplum," said Commissioner Junius, one of the three,
+as he sided with the death-warrant party.
+
+The same Doctor Junius a year afterwards happened to dine, in company of
+one of his fellow-commissioners, with Attorney-General Sylla at Utrecht,
+and took occasion to ask them why it was supposed that Barneveld had been
+hanging his head towards Spain, as not one word of that stood in the
+sentence.
+
+The question was ingenuous on the part of one learned judge to his
+colleagues in one of the most famous state trials of history, propounded
+as a bit of after-dinner casuistry, when the victim had been more than a
+year in his grave.
+
+But perhaps the answer was still more artless.  His brother lawyers
+replied that the charge was easily to be deduced from the sentence,
+because a man who breaks up the foundation of the State makes the country
+indefensible, and therefore invites the enemy to invade it.  And this
+Barneveld had done, who had turned the Union, religion, alliances, and
+finances upside down by his proceedings.
+
+Certainly if every constitutional minister, accused by the opposition
+party of turning things upside down by his proceedings, were assumed to
+be guilty of deliberately inviting a hostile invasion of his country,
+there would have been few from that day to this to escape hanging.
+
+Constructive treason could scarcely go farther than it was made to do in
+these attempts to prove, after his death, that the Advocate had, as it
+was euphuistically expressed, been looking towards the enemy.
+
+And no better demonstrations than these have ever been discovered.
+
+He died at the age of seventy-one years seven months and eighteen days.
+
+His body and head were huddled into the box upon which the soldiers had
+been shaking the dice, and was placed that night in the vault of the
+chapel in the Inner Court.
+
+It was subsequently granted as a boon to the widow and children that it
+might be taken thence and decently buried in the family vault at
+Amersfoort.
+
+On the day of the execution a formal entry was made in the register of
+the States of Holland.
+
+"Monday, 13th May 1619.  To-day was executed with the sword here in the
+Hague, on a scaffold thereto erected in the Binnenhof before the steps of
+the great hall, Mr. John of Barneveld, in his life Knight, Lord of
+Berkel, Rodenrys, &c., Advocate of Holland and West Friesland, for
+reasons expressed in the sentence and otherwise, with confiscation of his
+property, after he had served the State thirty-three years two months and
+five days since 8th March 1586.; a man of great activity, business,
+memory, and wisdom--yes, extraordinary in every respect.  He that stands
+let him see that he does not fall, and may God be merciful to his soul.
+Amen?"
+
+A year later-on application made by the widow and children of the
+deceased to compound for the confiscation of his property by payment of a
+certain sum, eighty florins or a similar trifle, according to an ancient
+privilege of the order of nobility--the question was raised whether he
+had been guilty of high-treason, as he had not been sentenced for such a
+crime, and as it was only in case of sentence for lese-majesty that this
+composition was disallowed.  It was deemed proper therefore to ask the
+court for what crime the prisoner had been condemned.  Certainly a more
+sarcastic question could not have been asked.  But the court had ceased
+to exist.  The commission had done its work and was dissolved.  Some of
+its members were dead.  Letters however were addressed by the States-
+General to the individual commissioners requesting them to assemble at
+the Hague for the purpose of stating whether it was because the prisoners
+had committed lese-majesty that their property had been confiscated.
+They never assembled.  Some of them were perhaps ignorant of the exact
+nature of that crime.  Several of them did not understand the words.
+Twelve of them, among whom were a few jurists, sent written answers to
+the questions proposed.  The question was, "Did you confiscate the
+property because the crime was lese-majesty?"  The reply was, "The crime
+was lese-majesty, although not so stated in the sentence, because we
+confiscated the property."  In one of these remarkable documents this was
+stated to be "the unanimous opinion of almost all the judges."
+
+The point was referred to the commissioners, some of whom attended the
+court of the Hague in person, while others sent written opinions.  All
+agreed that the criminal had committed high-treason because otherwise his
+property would not have been confiscated.
+
+A more wonderful example of the argument in a circle was never heard of.
+Moreover it is difficult to understand by what right the high commission,
+which had been dissolved a year before, after having completed its work,
+could be deemed competent to emit afterwards a judicial decision.  But
+the fact is curious as giving one more proof of the irregular,
+unphilosophical, and inequitable nature of these famous proceedings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+     Grotius urged to ask Forgiveness--Grotius shows great Weakness--
+     Hoogerbeets and Grotius imprisoned for Life--Grotius confined at
+     Loevestein--Grotius' early Attainments--Grotius' Deportment in
+     Prison--Escape of Grotius--Deventer's Rage at Grotius' Escape.
+
+Two days after the execution of the Advocate, judgment was pronounced
+upon Gillis van Ledenberg.  It would have been difficult to try him, or
+to extort a confession of high-treason from him by the rack or otherwise,
+as the unfortunate gentleman had been dead for more than seven months.
+
+Not often has a court of justice pronounced a man, without trial, to be
+guilty of a capital offence.  Not often has a dead man been condemned and
+executed.  But this was the lot of Secretary Ledenberg.  He was sentenced
+to be hanged, his property declared confiscated.
+
+His unburied corpse, reduced to the condition of a mummy, was brought out
+of its lurking-place, thrust into a coffin, dragged on a hurdle to the
+Golgotha outside the Hague, on the road to Ryswyk, and there hung on a
+gibbet in company of the bodies of other malefactors swinging there in
+chains.
+
+His prudent scheme to save his property for his children by committing
+suicide in prison was thus thwarted.
+
+The reading of the sentence of Ledenberg, as had been previously the case
+with that of Barneveld, had been heard by Grotius through the open window
+of his prison, as he lay on his bed.  The scaffold on which the Advocate
+had suffered was left standing, three executioners were still in the
+town, and there was every reason for both Grotius and Hoogerbeets to
+expect a similar doom.  Great efforts were made to induce the friends of
+the distinguished prisoners to sue for their pardon.  But even as in the
+case of the Barneveld family these attempts were fruitless.  The austere
+stoicism both on the part of the sufferers and their relatives excites
+something like wonder.
+
+Three of the judges went in person to the prison chamber of Hoogerbeets,
+urging him to ask forgiveness himself or to allow his friends to demand
+it for him.
+
+"If my wife and children do ask," he said, "I will protest against it.
+I need no pardon.  Let justice take its course.  Think not, gentlemen,
+that I mean by asking for pardon to justify your proceedings."
+
+He stoutly refused to do either.  The judges, astonished, took their
+departure, saying:
+
+"Then you will fare as Barneveld.  The scaffold is still standing."
+
+He expected consequently nothing but death, and said many years
+afterwards that he knew from personal experience how a man feels who
+goes out of prison to be beheaded.
+
+The wife of Grotius sternly replied to urgent intimations from a high
+source that she should ask pardon for her husband, "I shall not do it.
+If he has deserved it, let them strike off his head."
+
+Yet no woman could be more devoted to her husband than was Maria van
+Reigersbergen to Hugo de Groot, as time was to prove.  The Prince
+subsequently told her at a personal interview that "one of two roads
+must be taken, that of the law or that of pardon."
+
+Soon after the arrest it was rumoured that Grotius was ready to make
+important revelations if he could first be assured of the Prince's
+protection.
+
+His friends were indignant at the statement.  His wife stoutly denied its
+truth, but, to make sure, wrote to her husband on the subject.
+
+"One thing amazes me," she said; "some people here pretend to say that
+you have stated to one gentleman in private that you have something to
+disclose greatly important to the country, but that you desired
+beforehand to be taken under the protection of his Excellency.  I have
+not chosen to believe this, nor do I, for I hold that to be certain which
+you have already told me--that you know no secrets.  I see no reason
+therefore why you should require the protection of any man.  And there is
+no one to believe this, but I thought best to write to you of it.  Let
+me, in order that I may contradict the story with more authority, have by
+the bearer of this a simple Yes or No.  Study quietly, take care of your
+health, have some days' patience, for the Advocate has not yet been
+heard."
+
+The answer has not been preserved, but there is an allusion to the
+subject in an unpublished memorandum of Grotius written while he was in
+prison.
+
+It must be confessed that the heart of the great theologian and jurist
+seems to have somewhat failed him after his arrest, and although he was
+incapable of treachery--even if he had been possessed of any secrets,
+which certainly was not the case--he did not show the same Spartan
+firmness as his wife, and was very far from possessing the heroic calm of
+Barneveld.  He was much disposed to extricate himself from his unhappy
+plight by making humble, if not abject, submission to Maurice.  He
+differed from his wife in thinking that he had no need of the Prince's
+protection.  "I begged the Chamberlain, Matthew de Cors," he said, a few
+days after his arrest, "that I might be allowed to speak with his
+Excellency of certain things which I would not willingly trust to the
+pen.  My meaning was to leave all public employment and to offer my
+service to his Excellency in his domestic affairs.  Thus I hoped that the
+motives for my imprisonment would cease.  This was afterwards
+misinterpreted as if I had had wonderful things to reveal."
+
+But Grotius towards the end of his trial showed still greater weakness.
+After repeated refusals, he had at last obtained permission of the judges
+to draw up in writing the heads of his defence.  To do this he was
+allowed a single sheet of paper, and four hours of time, the trial having
+lasted several months.  And in the document thus prepared he showed
+faltering in his faith as to his great friend's innocence, and admitted,
+without any reason whatever, the possibility of there being truth in some
+of the vile and anonymous calumnies against him.
+
+"The friendship of the Advocate of Holland I had always highly prized,"
+he said, "hoping from the conversation of so wise and experienced a
+person to learn much that was good .  .  .  .  I firmly believed that his
+Excellency, notwithstanding occasional differences as to the conduct of
+public affairs, considered him a true and upright servant of the land
+.  .  .  I have been therefore surprised to understand, during my
+imprisonment, that the gentlemen had proofs in hand not alone of his
+correspondence with the enemy, but also of his having received money from
+them.
+
+"He being thus accused, I have indicated by word of mouth and afterwards
+resumed in writing all matters which I thought--the above-mentioned
+proofs being made good--might be thereto indirectly referred, in order to
+show that for me no friendships were so dear as the preservation of the
+freedom of the land.  I wish that he may give explanation of all to the
+contentment of the judges, and that therefore his actions--which,
+supposing the said correspondence to be true, are subject to a bad
+interpretation--may be taken in another sense."
+
+Alas! could the Advocate--among whose first words after hearing of his
+own condemnation to death were, "And must my Grotius die too?" adding,
+with a sigh of relief when assured of the contrary, "I should deeply
+grieve for that; he is so young and may live to do the State much service
+"could he have read those faltering and ungenerous words from one he so
+held in his heart, he would have felt them like the stab of Brutus.
+
+Grotius lived to know that there were no such proofs, that the judges did
+not dare even allude to the charge in their sentence, and long years
+afterwards he drew a picture of the martyred patriot such as one might
+have expected from his pen.
+
+But these written words of doubt must have haunted him to his grave.
+
+On the 18th May 1619--on the fifty-first anniversary, as Grotius
+remarked, of the condemnation of Egmont and Hoorn by the Blood Tribunal
+of Alva--the two remaining victims were summoned to receive their doom.
+The Fiscal Sylla, entering de Groot's chamber early in the morning to
+conduct him before the judges, informed him that he was not instructed to
+communicate the nature of the sentence.  "But," he said, maliciously,
+"you are aware of what has befallen the Advocate."
+
+"I have heard with my own ears," answered Grotius, "the judgment
+pronounced upon Barneveld and upon Ledenberg.  Whatever may be my fate, I
+have patience to bear it."
+
+The sentence, read in the same place and in the same manner as had been
+that upon the Advocate, condemned both Hoogerbeets and Grotius to
+perpetual imprisonment.
+
+The course of the trial and the enumeration of the offences were nearly
+identical with the leading process which has been elaborately described.
+
+Grotius made no remark whatever in the court-room.  On returning to his
+chamber he observed that his admissions of facts had been tortured into
+confessions of guilt, that he had been tried and sentenced against all
+principles and forms of law, and that he had been deprived of what the
+humblest criminal could claim, the right of defence and the examination
+of testimony.  In regard to the penalty against him, he said, there was
+no such thing as perpetual imprisonment except in hell.  Alluding to the
+leading cause of all these troubles, he observed that it was with the
+Stadholder and the Advocate as Cato had said of Caesar and Pompey.  The
+great misery had come not from their being enemies, but from their having
+once been friends.
+
+On the night of 5th June the prisoners were taken from their prison in
+the Hague and conveyed to the castle of Loevestein.
+
+This fortress, destined thenceforth to be famous in history and--from
+its frequent use in after-times as a state-prison for men of similar
+constitutional views to those of Grotius and the Advocate--to give its
+name to a political party, was a place of extraordinary strength.  Nature
+and art had made it, according to military ideas of that age, almost
+impregnable.  As a prison it seemed the very castle of despair.
+"Abandon all hope ye who enter" seemed engraven over its portal.
+
+Situate in the very narrow, acute angle where the broad, deep, and turbid
+Waal--the chief of the three branches into which the Rhine divides itself
+on entering the Netherlands--mingles its current with the silver Meuse
+whose name it adopts as the united rivers roll to the sea, it was guarded
+on many sides by these deep and dangerous streams.  On the land-side it
+was surrounded by high walls and a double foss, which protected it
+against any hostile invasion from Brabant.  As the Twelve Years' Truce
+was running to its close, it was certain that pains would be taken to
+strengthen the walls and deepen the ditches, that the place might be
+proof against all marauders and land-robbers likely to swarm over from
+the territory of the Archdukes.  The town of Gorcum was exactly opposite
+on the northern side of the Waal, while Worcum was about a league's
+distance from the castle on the southern side, but separated from it by
+the Meuse.
+
+The prisoners, after crossing the drawbridge, were led through thirteen
+separate doors, each one secured by iron bolts and heavy locks, until
+they reached their separate apartments.
+
+They were never to see or have any communication with each other.  It had
+been accorded by the States-General however that the wives of the two
+gentlemen were to have access to their prison, were to cook for them in
+the castle kitchen, and, if they chose to inhabit the fortress, might
+cross to the neighbouring town of Gorcum from time to time to make
+purchases, and even make visits to the Hague.  Twenty-four stuivers, or
+two shillings, a day were allowed by the States-General for the support
+of each prisoner and his family.  As the family property of Grotius was
+at once sequestered, with a view to its ultimate confiscation, it was
+clear that abject indigence as well as imprisonment was to be the
+lifelong lot of this illustrious person, who had hitherto lived in modest
+affluence, occupying the most considerable of social positions.
+
+The commandant of the fortress was inspired from the outset with a desire
+to render the prisoner's situation as hateful as it was in his power to
+make it.  And much was in his power.  He resolved that the family should
+really live upon their daily pittance.  Yet Madame de Groot, before the
+final confiscation of her own and her husband's estates, had been able to
+effect considerable loans, both to carry on process against government
+for what the prisoners contended was an unjust confiscation, and for
+providing for the household on a decent scale and somewhat in accordance
+with the requirements of the prisoner's health.  Thus there was a
+wearisome and ignoble altercation, revived from day to day, between the
+Commandant and Madame de Groot.  It might have been thought enough of
+torture for this virtuous and accomplished lady, but twenty-nine years of
+age and belonging to one of the eminent families of the country, to see
+her husband, for his genius and accomplishments the wonder of Europe,
+thus cut off in the flower of his age and doomed to a living grave.
+She was nevertheless to be subjected to the perpetual inquisition of the
+market-basket, which she was not ashamed with her maid to take to and
+from Gorcum, and to petty wrangles about the kitchen fire where she was
+proud to superintend the cooking of the scanty fare for her husband and
+her five children.
+
+There was a reason for the spite of the military jailer.  Lieutenant
+Prouninx, called Deventer, commandant of Loevestein, was son of the
+notorious Gerard Prouninx, formerly burgomaster of Utrecht, one of the
+ringleaders of the Leicester faction in the days when the Earl made his
+famous attempts upon the four cities.  He had sworn revenge upon all
+those concerned in his father's downfall, and it was a delight therefore
+to wreak a personal vengeance on one who had since become so illustrious
+a member of that party by which the former burgomaster had been deposed,
+although Grotius at the time of Leicester's government had scarcely left
+his cradle.
+
+Thus these ladies were to work in the kitchen and go to market from time
+to time, performing this menial drudgery under the personal inspection of
+the warrior who governed the garrison and fortress, but who in vain
+attempted to make Maria van Reigersbergen tremble at his frown.
+
+Hugo de Groot, when thus for life immured, after having already undergone
+a preliminary imprisonment of nine months, was just thirty-six years of
+age.  Although comparatively so young, he had been long regarded as one
+of the great luminaries of Europe for learning and genius.  Of an ancient
+and knightly race, his immediate ancestors had been as famous for
+literature, science, and municipal abilities as their more distant
+progenitors for deeds of arms in the feudal struggles of Holland in the
+middle ages.
+
+His father and grandfather had alike been eminent for Hebrew, Greek, and
+Latin scholarship, and both had occupied high positions in the University
+of Leyden from its beginning.  Hugo, born and nurtured under such
+quickening influences, had been a scholar and poet almost from his
+cradle.  He wrote respectable Latin verses at the age of seven, he was
+matriculated at Leyden at the age of eleven.  That school, founded amid
+the storms and darkness of terrible war, was not lightly to be entered.
+It was already illustrated by a galaxy of shining lights in science and
+letters, which radiated over Christendom.  His professors were Joseph
+Scaliger, Francis Junius, Paulus Merula, and a host of others.  His
+fellow-students were men like Scriverius, Vossius, Baudius, Daniel
+Heinsius.  The famous soldier and poet Douza, who had commanded the
+forces of Leyden during the immortal siege, addressed him on his
+admission to the university as "Magne peer magni dignissime cura
+parentis," in a copy of eloquent verses.
+
+When fourteen years old, he took his bachelor's degree, after a
+rigorous examination not only in the classics but astronomy, mathematics,
+jurisprudence, and theology, at an age when most youths would have been
+accounted brilliant if able to enter that high school with credit.
+
+On leaving the University he was attached to the embassy of Barneveld and
+Justinus van Nassau to the court of Henry IV.  Here he attracted the
+attention of that monarch, who pointed him out to his courtiers as the
+"miracle of Holland," presented him with a gold chain with his miniature
+attached to it, and proposed to confer on him the dignity of knighthood,
+which the boy from motives of family pride appears to have refused.
+While in France he received from the University of Orleans, before the
+age of fifteen, the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws in a very
+eulogistic diploma.  On his return to Holland he published an edition of
+the poet Johannes Capella with valuable annotations, besides giving to
+the public other learned and classical works and several tragedies of
+more or less merit.  At the age of seventeen he was already an advocate
+in full practice before the supreme tribunals of the Hague, and when
+twenty-three years old he was selected by Prince Maurice from a list of
+three candidates for the important post of Fiscal or Attorney-General of
+Holland.  Other civic dignities, embassies, and offices of various kinds,
+had been thrust upon him one after another, in all of which he had
+acquitted himself with dignity and brilliancy.  He was but twenty-six
+when he published his argument for the liberty of the sea, the famous
+Mare Liberum, and a little later appeared his work on the Antiquity of
+the Batavian Republic, which procured for him in Spain the title of "Hugo
+Grotius, auctor damnatus."  At the age of twenty-nine he had completed
+his Latin history of the Netherlands from the period immediately
+preceding the war of independence down to the conclusion of the Truce,
+1550-1609--a work which has been a classic ever since its appearance,
+although not published until after his death.  A chief magistrate of
+Rotterdam, member of the States of Holland and the States-General,
+jurist, advocate, attorney-general, poet, scholar, historian, editor of
+the Greek and Latin classics, writer of tragedies, of law treatises, of
+theological disquisitions, he stood foremost among a crowd of famous
+contemporaries.  His genius, eloquence, and learning were esteemed among
+the treasures not only of his own country but of Europe.  He had been
+part and parcel of his country's history from his earliest manhood, and
+although a child in years compared to Barneveld, it was upon him that the
+great statesman had mainly relied ever since the youth's first appearance
+in public affairs.  Impressible, emotional, and susceptive, he had been
+accused from time to time, perhaps not entirely without reason, of
+infirmity of purpose, or at least of vacillation in opinion; but his
+worst enemies had never assailed the purity of his heart or integrity of
+his character.  He had not yet written the great work on the 'Rights of
+War and Peace', which was to make an epoch in the history of civilization
+and to be the foundation of a new science, but the materials lay already
+in the ample storehouse of his memory and his brain.
+
+Possessed of singular personal beauty--which the masterly portraits of
+Miereveld attest to the present day--tall, brown-haired; straight-
+featured, with a delicate aquiline nose and piercing dark blue eyes, he
+was also athletic of frame and a proficient in manly exercises.  This was
+the statesman and the scholar, of whom it is difficult to speak but in
+terms of affectionate but not exaggerated eulogy, and for whom the
+Republic of the Netherlands could now find no better use than to shut him
+up in the grim fortress of Loevestein for the remainder of his days.  A
+commonwealth must have deemed itself rich in men which, after cutting off
+the head of Barneveld, could afford to bury alive Hugo Grotius.
+
+His deportment in prison was a magnificent moral lesson.  Shut up in a
+kind of cage consisting of a bedroom and a study, he was debarred from
+physical exercise, so necessary for his mental and bodily health.  Not
+choosing for the gratification of Lieutenant Deventer to indulge in weak
+complaints, he procured a huge top, which he employed himself in whipping
+several hours a day; while for intellectual employment he plunged once
+more into those classical, juridical, and theological studies which had
+always employed his leisure hours from childhood upwards.
+
+It had been forbidden by the States-General to sell his likeness in the
+shops.  The copper plates on which they had been engraved had as far as
+possible been destroyed.
+
+The wish of the government, especially of his judges, was that his name
+and memory should die at once and for ever.  They were not destined to be
+successful, for it would be equally difficult to-day to find an educated
+man in Christendom ignorant of the name of Hugo Grotius, or acquainted
+with that of a single one of his judges.
+
+And his friends had not forgotten him as he lay there living in his tomb.
+Especially the learned Scriverius, Vossius, and other professors, were
+permitted to correspond with him at intervals on literary subjects, the
+letters being subjected to preliminary inspection.  Scriverius sent him
+many books from his well-stocked library, de Groot's own books and papers
+having been confiscated by the government.  At a somewhat later period
+the celebrated Orientalist Erpenius sent him from time to time a large
+chest of books, the precious freight being occasionally renewed and the
+chest passing to and from Loevestein by way of Gorcum.  At this town
+lived a sister of Erpenius, married to one Daatselaer, a considerable
+dealer in thread and ribbons, which he exported to England.  The house of
+Daatselaer became a place of constant resort for Madame de Groot as well
+as the wife of Hoogerbeets, both dames going every few days from the
+castle across the Waal to Gorcum, to make their various purchases for the
+use of their forlorn little households in the prison.  Madame Daatselaer
+therefore received and forwarded into Loevestein or into Holland many
+parcels and boxes, besides attending to the periodical transmission of
+the mighty chest of books.
+
+Professor Vossius was then publishing a new edition of the tragedies of
+Seneca, and at his request Grotius enriched that work, from his prison,
+with valuable notes.  He employed himself also in translating the moral
+sentences extracted by Stobaeus from the Greek tragedies; drawing
+consolation from the ethics and philosophy of the ancient dramatists,
+whom he had always admired, especially the tragedies of Euripides; he
+formed a complete moral anthology from that poet and from the works of
+Sophocles, Menander, and others, which he translated into fluent Dutch
+verse.  Becoming more and more interested in the subject, he executed a
+masterly rhymed translation of the 'Theban Brothers' of Euripides, thus
+seeking distraction from his own tragic doom in the portraiture of
+antique, distant, and heroic sorrow.
+
+Turning again to legal science, he completed an Introduction to the
+Jurisprudence of Holland, a work which as soon as published became
+thenceforward a text-book and an oracle in the law courts and the high
+schools of the country.  Not forgetting theology, he composed for the use
+of the humbler classes, especially for sailors, in whose lot, so exposed
+to danger and temptation, be ever took deep interest, a work on the
+proofs of Christianity in easy and familiar rhyme--a book of gold, as it
+was called at once, which became rapidly popular with those for whom it
+was designed.
+
+At a somewhat later period Professor Erpenius, publishing a new edition
+of the New Testament in Greek, with translations in Arabic, Syriac, and
+Ethiopian, solicited his friend's help both in translations and in the
+Latin commentaries and expositions with which he proposed to accompany
+the work.  The prisoner began with a modest disclaimer, saying that after
+the labours of Erasmus and Beza, Maldonatus and Jasenius, there was
+little for him to glean.  Becoming more enthusiastic as he went on, he
+completed a masterly commentary on the Four Evangelists, a work for which
+the learned and religious world has ever recognized a kind of debt of
+gratitude to the castle of Loevestein, and hailed in him the founder of a
+school of manly Biblical criticism.
+
+And thus nearly two years wore away.  Spinning his great top for
+exercise; soothing his active and prolific brain with Greek tragedy,
+with Flemish verse, with jurisprudence, history, theology; creating,
+expounding, adorning, by the warmth of his vivid intellect; moving the
+world, and doing good to his race from the depths of his stony sepulchre;
+Hugo Grotius rose superior to his doom and took captivity captive.  The
+man is not to be envied who is not moved by so noble an example of great
+calamity manfully endured.
+
+The wife of Hoogerbeets, already advanced in years, sickened during the
+imprisonment and died at Loevestein after a lingering illness, leaving
+six children to the care of her unfortunate husband.  Madame de Groot had
+not been permitted by the prison authorities to minister to her in
+sickness, nor to her children after her death.
+
+Early in the year 1621 Francis Aerssens, Lord of Sommelsdyk, the arch
+enemy of Barneveld and of Grotius, was appointed special ambassador to
+Paris.  The intelligence--although hardly unexpected, for the stratagems
+of Aerssens had been completely successful--moved the prisoner deeply.
+He felt that this mortal enemy, not glutted with vengeance by the
+beheading of the Advocate and the perpetual imprisonment of his friend,
+would do his best at the French court to defame and to blacken him.  He
+did what he could to obviate this danger by urgent letters to friends on
+whom he could rely.
+
+At about the same time Muis van Holy, one of the twenty-four
+commissioners, not yet satisfied with the misery he had helped to
+inflict, informed the States-General that Madame de Groot had been buying
+ropes at Gorcum.  On his motion a committee was sent to investigate the
+matter at Castle Loevestein, where it was believed that the ropes had
+been concealed for the purpose of enabling Grotius to make his escape
+from prison.
+
+Lieutenant Deventer had heard nothing of the story.  He was in high
+spirits at the rumour however, and conducted the committee very eagerly
+over the castle, causing minute search to be made in the apartment of
+Grotius for the ropes which, as they were assured by him and his wife,
+had never existed save in the imagination of Judge Muis.  They succeeded
+at least in inflicting much superfluous annoyance on their victims, and
+in satisfying themselves that it would be as easy for the prisoner to fly
+out of the fortress on wings as to make his escape with ropes, even if he
+had them.
+
+Grotius soon afterwards addressed a letter to the States-General
+denouncing the statement of Muis as a fable, and these persistent
+attempts to injure him as cowardly and wicked.
+
+A few months later Madame de Groot happened to be in the house of
+Daatselaer on one of her periodical visits to Gorcum.  Conversation
+turning on these rumours March of attempts at escape, she asked Madame
+Daatselaer if she would not be much embarrassed, should Grotius suddenly
+make his appearance there.
+
+"Oh no," said the good woman with a laugh; "only let him come.  We will
+take excellent care of him."
+
+At another visit one Saturday, 20th March, (1621) Madame de Groot asked
+her friend why all the bells of Gorcum march were ringing.
+
+"Because to-morrow begins our yearly fair," replied Dame Daatselaer.
+
+"Well, I suppose that all exiles and outlaws may come to Gorcum on this
+occasion," said Madame de Groot.
+
+"Such is the law, they say," answered her friend.
+
+"And my husband might come too?"
+
+"No doubt," said Madame Daatselaer with a merry laugh, rejoiced at
+finding the wife of Grotius able to speak so cheerfully of her husband in
+his perpetual and hopeless captivity.  "Send him hither.  He shall have,
+a warm welcome."
+
+"What a good woman you are!" said Madame de Groot with a sigh as she rose
+to take leave.  "But you know very well that if he were a bird he could
+never get out of the castle, so closely, he is caged there."
+
+Next morning a wild equinoctial storm was howling around the battlements
+of the castle.  Of a sudden Cornelia, daughter of the de Groots, nine
+years of age, said to her mother without any reason whatever,
+
+"To-morrow Papa must be off to Gorcum, whatever the weather may be."
+
+De Groot, as well as his wife, was aghast at the child's remark, and took
+it as a direct indication from Heaven.
+
+For while Madame Daatselaer had considered the recent observations of her
+visitor from Loevestein as idle jests, and perhaps wondered that Madame
+de Groot could be frivolous and apparently lighthearted on so dismal a
+topic, there had been really a hidden meaning in her words.
+
+For several weeks past the prisoner had been brooding over a means of
+escape.  His wife, whose every thought was devoted to him, had often cast
+her eyes on the great chest or trunk in which the books of Erpenius had
+been conveyed between Loevestein and Gorcum for the use of the prisoner.
+At first the trunk had been carefully opened and its contents examined
+every time it entered or left the castle.  As nothing had ever been found
+in it save Hebrew, Greek, and Latin folios, uninviting enough to the
+Commandant, that warrior had gradually ceased to inspect the chest very
+closely, and had at last discontinued the practice altogether.
+
+It had been kept for some weeks past in the prisoner's study.  His wife
+thought--although it was two finger breadths less than four feet in
+length, and not very broad or deep in proportion--that it might be
+possible for him to get into it.  He was considerably above middle
+height, but found that by curling himself up very closely he could just
+manage to lie in it with the cover closed.  Very secretly they had many
+times rehearsed the scheme which had now taken possession of their minds,
+but had not breathed a word of it to any one.  He had lain in the chest
+with the lid fastened, and with his wife sitting upon the top of it, two
+hours at a time by the hour-glass.  They had decided at last that the
+plan, though fraught with danger, was not absolutely impossible, and they
+were only waiting now for a favourable opportunity.  The chance remark of
+the child Cornelia settled the time for hazarding the adventure.  By a
+strange coincidence, too, the commandant of the fortress, Lieutenant
+Deventer, had just been promoted to a captaincy, and was to go to Heusden
+to receive his company.  He left the castle for a brief absence that very
+Sunday evening.  As a precautionary measure, the trunk filled with books
+had been sent to Gorcum and returned after the usual interval only a few
+days before.
+
+The maid-servant of the de Groots, a young girl of twenty, Elsje van
+Houwening by name, quick, intelligent, devoted, and courageous, was now
+taken into their confidence.  The scheme was explained to her, and she
+was asked if she were willing to take the chest under her charge with her
+master in it, instead of the usual freight of books, and accompany it to
+Gorcum.
+
+She naturally asked what punishment could be inflicted upon her in case
+the plot were discovered.
+
+"None legally," answered her master; "but I too am innocent of any crime,
+and you see to what sufferings I have been condemned."
+
+"Whatever come of it," said Elsje stoutly; "I will take the risk and
+accompany my master."
+
+Every detail was then secretly arranged, and it was provided beforehand,
+as well as possible, what should be said or done in the many
+contingencies that might arise.
+
+On Sunday evening Madame de Groot then went to the wife of the
+Commandant, with whom she had always been on more friendly terms than
+with her malicious husband.  She had also recently propitiated her
+affections by means of venison and other dainties brought from Gorcum.
+She expressed the hope that, notwithstanding the absence of Captain
+Deventer, she might be permitted to send the trunk full of books next day
+from the castle.
+
+"My husband is wearing himself out," she said, "with his perpetual
+studies.  I shall be glad for a little time to be rid of some of these
+folios."
+
+The Commandant's wife made no objection to this slight request.
+
+On Monday morning the gale continued to beat with unabated violence on
+the turrets.  The turbid Waal, swollen by the tempest, rolled darkly and
+dangerously along the castle walls.
+
+But the die was cast.  Grotius rose betimes, fell on his knees, and
+prayed fervently an hour long.  Dressed only in linen underclothes with a
+pair of silk stockings, he got into the chest with the help of his wife.
+The big Testament of Erpenius, with some bunches of thread placed upon
+it, served him as a pillow.  A few books and papers were placed in the
+interstices left by the curves of his body, and as much pains as possible
+taken to prevent his being seriously injured or incommoded during the
+hazardous journey he was contemplating.  His wife then took solemn
+farewell of him, fastened the lock, which she kissed, and gave the key to
+Elsje.
+
+The usual garments worn by the prisoner were thrown on a chair by the
+bedside and his slippers placed before it.  Madame de Groot then returned
+to her bed, drew the curtains close, and rang the bell.
+
+It was answered by the servant who usually waited on the prisoner, and
+who was now informed by the lady that it had been her intention to go
+herself to Gorcum, taking charge of the books which were valuable.  As
+the weather was so tempestuous however, and as she was somewhat
+indisposed, it had been decided that Elsje should accompany the trunk.
+
+She requested that some soldiers might be sent as usual to take it down
+to the vessel.  Two or three of the garrison came accordingly, and seeing
+the clothes and slippers of Grotius lying about, and the bed-curtains
+closed, felt no suspicion.
+
+On lifting the chest, however, one of them said, half in jest:
+
+"The Arminian must be in it himself, it seems so heavy,"
+
+"Not the Arminian," replied Madame de Groot, in a careless voice, from
+the bed; "only heavy Arminian books."
+
+Partly lifting, partly dragging the ponderous box, the soldiers managed
+to get it down the stairs and through the thirteen barred and bolted
+doors.  Four several times one or other of the soldiers expressed the
+opinion that Grotius himself must be locked within it, but they never
+spoke quite seriously, and Elsje was ever ready to turn aside the remark
+with a jest.  A soldier's wife, just as the box was approaching the
+wharf, told a story of a malefactor who had once been carried out of the
+castle in a chest.
+
+"And if a malefactor, why not a lawyer?" she added.  A soldier said he
+would get a gimlet and bore a hole into the Arminian.  "Then you must get
+a gimlet that will reach to the top of the castle, where the Arminian
+lies abed and asleep," said Elsje.
+
+Not much heed was given to this careless talk, the soldiers, before
+leaving the chamber of Grotius, having satisfied themselves that there
+were no apertures in the chest save the keyhole, and that it would be
+impossible by that means alone for sufficient air to penetrate to keep a
+man enclosed in it from smothering.
+
+Madame Deventer was asked if she chose to inspect the contents of the
+trunk, and she enquired whether the Commandant had been wont so to do.
+When told that such search had been for a long time discontinued, as
+nothing had ever been found there but books, she observed that there was
+no reason why she should be more strict than her husband, and ordered the
+soldiers to take their heavy load to the vessel.
+
+Elsje insisted that the boatmen should place a doubly thick plank for
+sliding the box on board, as it seemed probable, she said, that the usual
+one would break in two, and then the valuable books borrowed of Professor
+Erpenius would be damaged or destroyed.  The request caused much further
+grumbling, but was complied with at last and the chest deposited on the
+deck.  The wind still continued to blow with great fury, and as soon as
+the sails were set the vessel heeled over so much, that Elsje implored
+the skipper to cause the box to be securely lashed, as it seemed in
+imminent danger, at the first lurch of the vessel, of sliding into the
+sea.
+
+This done, Elsje sat herself down and threw her white handkerchief over
+her head, letting it flutter in the wind.  One of the crew asked her why
+she did so, and she replied that the servant in the castle had been
+tormenting her, saying that she would never dare to sail to Gorcum in
+such tempestuous weather, and she was now signalling him that she had
+been as good as her word.  Whereupon she continued to wave the
+handkerchief.
+
+In reality the signal was for her mistress, who was now straining her
+eyes from the barred window which looked out upon the Waal, and with whom
+the maid had agreed that if all went prosperously she would give this
+token of success.  Otherwise she would sit with her head in her hands.
+
+During the voyage an officer of the garrison, who happened to be on
+board, threw himself upon the chest as a convenient seat, and began
+drumming and pounding with his heels upon it.  The ever watchful Elsje,
+feeling the dreadful inconvenience to the prisoner of these proceedings,
+who perhaps was already smothering and would struggle for air if not
+relieved, politely addressed the gentleman and induced him to remove to
+another seat by telling him that, besides the books, there was some
+valuable porcelain in the chest which might easily be broken.
+
+No further incident occurred.  The wind, although violent, was
+favourable, and Gorcum in due time was reached.  Elsje insisted upon
+having her own precious freight carried first into the town, although the
+skipper for some time was obstinately bent on leaving it to the very
+last, while all the other merchandise in the vessel should be previously
+unshipped.
+
+At last on promise of payment of ten stuivers, which was considered an
+exorbitant sum, the skipper and son agreed to transport the chest between
+them on a hand-barrow.  While they were trudging with it to the town, the
+son remarked to his father that there was some living thing in the box.
+For the prisoner in the anguish of his confinement had not been able to
+restrain a slight movement.
+
+"Do you hear what my son says?" cried the skipper to Elsje.  "He says you
+have got something alive in your trunk."
+
+"Yes, yes," replied the cheerful maid-servant; "Arminian books are always
+alive, always full of motion and spirit."
+
+They arrived at Daatselaer's house, moving with difficulty through the
+crowd which, notwithstanding the boisterous weather, had been collected
+by the annual fair.  Many people were assembled in front of the building,
+which was a warehouse of great resort, while next door was a book-
+seller's shop thronged with professors, clergymen, and other literary
+persons.  The carriers accordingly entered by the backway, and Elsje,
+deliberately paying them their ten stuivers, and seeing them depart, left
+the box lying in a room at the rear and hastened to the shop in front.
+
+Here she found the thread and ribbon dealer and his wife, busy with their
+customers, unpacking and exhibiting their wares.  She instantly whispered
+in Madame Daatselaer's ear, "I have got my master here in your back
+parlour."
+
+The dame turned white as a sheet, and was near fainting on the spot.  It
+was the first imprudence Elsje had committed.  The good woman recovered
+somewhat of her composure by a strong effort however, and instantly went
+with Elsje to the rear of the house.
+
+"Master! master!" cried Elsje, rapping on the chest.
+
+There was no answer.
+
+"My God! my God!" shrieked the poor maid-servant.  "My poor master is
+dead."
+
+"Ah!" said Madame Daatselaer, "your mistress has made a bad business of
+it.  Yesterday she had a living husband.  Now she has a dead one."
+
+But soon there was a vigorous rap on the inside of the lid, and a cry
+from the prisoner:
+
+"Open the chest!  I am not dead, but did not at first recognize your
+voice."
+
+The lock was instantly unfastened, the lid thrown open, and Grotius arose
+in his linen clothing, like a dead man from his coffin.
+
+The dame instantly accompanied the two through a trapdoor into an upper
+room.
+
+Grotius asked her if she was always so deadly pale.
+
+"No," she replied, "but I am frightened to see you here.  My lord is no
+common person.  The whole world is talking of you.  I fear this will
+cause the loss of all my property and perhaps bring my husband into
+prison in your place."
+
+Grotius rejoined: "I made my prayers to God before as much as this had
+been gained, and I have just been uttering fervent thanks to Him for my
+deliverance so far as it has been effected.  But if the consequences are
+to be as you fear, I am ready at once to get into the chest again and be
+carried back to prison."
+
+But she answered, "No; whatever comes of it, we have you here and will do
+all that we can to help you on."
+
+Grotius being faint from his sufferings, the lady brought him a glass of
+Spanish wine, but was too much flustered to find even a cloak or shawl to
+throw over him.  Leaving him sitting there in his very thin attire, just
+as he had got out of the chest, she went to the front warehouse to call
+her husband.  But he prudently declined to go to his unexpected guest.
+It would be better in the examination sure to follow, he said, for him to
+say with truth that he had not seen him and knew nothing of the escape,
+from first to last.
+
+Grotius entirely approved of the answer when told to him.  Meantime
+Madame Daatselaer had gone to her brother-in-law van der Veen, a clothier
+by trade, whom she found in his shop talking with an officer of the
+Loevestein garrison.  She whispered in the clothier's ear, and he, making
+an excuse to the officer, followed her home at once.  They found Grotius
+sitting where he had been left.  Van der Veen gave him his hand, saying:
+
+"Sir, you are the man of whom the whole country is talking?"
+
+"Yes, here I am," was the reply, "and I put myself in your hands--"
+
+"There isn't a moment to lose," replied the clothier.  "We must help you
+away at once."
+
+He went immediately in search of one John Lambertsen, a man in whom he
+knew he could confide, a Lutheran in religion, a master-mason by
+occupation.  He found him on a scaffold against the gable-end of a house,
+working at his trade.
+
+He told him that there was a good deed to be done which he could do
+better than any man, that his conscience would never reproach him for it,
+and that he would at the same time earn no trifling reward.
+
+He begged the mason to procure a complete dress as for a journeyman, and
+to follow him to the house of his brother-in-law Daatselaer.
+
+Lambertsen soon made his appearance with the doublet, trunk-hose, and
+shoes of a bricklayer, together with trowel and measuring-rod.  He was
+informed who his new journeyman was to be, and Grotius at once put on the
+disguise.
+
+The doublet did not reach to the waistband of the trunkhose, while those
+nether garments stopped short of his knees; the whole attire belonging to
+a smaller man than the unfortunate statesman.  His delicate white hands,
+much exposed by the shortness of the sleeves, looked very unlike those of
+a day-labourer, and altogether the new mason presented a somewhat
+incongruous and wobegone aspect.  Grotius was fearful too lest some of
+the preachers and professors frequenting the book-shop next door would
+recognize him through his disguise.  Madame Daatselaer smeared his face
+and hands with chalk and plaster however and whispered encouragement, and
+so with a felt hat slouched over his forehead and a yardstick in his
+hand, he walked calmly forth into the thronged marketplace and through
+the town to the ferry, accompanied by the friendly Lambertsen.  It had
+been agreed that van der Veen should leave the house in another direction
+and meet them at the landing-place.
+
+When they got to the ferry, they found the weather as boisterous as ever.
+The boatmen absolutely refused to make the dangerous crossing of the
+Merwede over which their course lay to the land of Altona, and so into
+the Spanish Netherlands, for two such insignificant personages as this
+mason and his scarecrow journeyman.
+
+Lambertsen assured them that it was of the utmost importance that he
+should cross the water at once.  He had a large contract for purchasing
+stone at Altona for a public building on which he was engaged.  Van der
+Veen coming up added his entreaties, protesting that he too was
+interested in this great stone purchase, and so by means of offering a
+larger price than they at first dared to propose, they were able to
+effect their passage.
+
+After landing, Lambertsen and Grotius walked to Waalwyk, van der Veen
+returning the same evening to Gorcum.  It was four o'clock in the
+afternoon when they reached Waalwyk, where a carriage was hired to convey
+the fugitive to Antwerp.  The friendly mason here took leave of his
+illustrious journeyman, having first told the driver that his companion
+was a disguised bankrupt fleeing from Holland into foreign territory to
+avoid pursuit by his creditors.  This would explain his slightly
+concealing his face in passing through a crowd in any village.
+
+Grotius proved so ignorant of the value of different coins in making
+small payments on the road, that the honest waggoner, on being
+occasionally asked who the odd-looking stranger was, answered that he was
+a bankrupt, and no wonder, for he did not know one piece of money from
+another.  For, his part he thought him little better than a fool.
+
+Such was the depreciatory opinion formed by the Waalwyk coachman as to
+the "rising light of the world" and the "miracle of Holland."  They
+travelled all night and, arriving on the morning of the 21st within a few
+leagues of Antwerp, met a patrol of soldiers, who asked Grotius for his
+passport.  He enquired in whose service they were, and was told in that
+of "Red Rod," as the chief bailiff of Antwerp was called.  That
+functionary happened to be near, and the traveller approaching him said
+that his passport was on his feet, and forthwith told him his name and
+story.
+
+Red Rod treated him at once with perfect courtesy, offered him a horse
+for himself with a mounted escort, and so furthered his immediate
+entrance to Antwerp.  Grotius rode straight to the house of a banished
+friend of his, the preacher Grevinkhoven.  He was told by the daughter of
+that clergyman that her father was upstairs ministering at the bedside of
+his sick wife.  But so soon as the traveller had sent up his name, both
+the preacher and the invalid came rushing downstairs to fall upon the
+neck of one who seemed as if risen from the dead.
+
+The news spread, and Episcopius and other exiled friends soon thronged to
+the house of Grevinkhoven, where they all dined together in great glee,
+Grotius, still in his journeyman's clothes, narrating the particulars of
+his wonderful escape.
+
+He had no intention of tarrying in his resting-place at Antwerp longer
+than was absolutely necessary.  Intimations were covertly made to him
+that a brilliant destiny might be in store for him should he consent to
+enter the service of the Archdukes, nor were there waning rumours,
+circulated as a matter of course by his host of enemies, that he was
+about to become a renegade to country and religion.  There was as much
+truth in the slanders as in the rest of the calumnies of which he had
+been the victim during his career.  He placed on record a proof of his
+loyal devotion to his country in the letters which he wrote from Antwerp
+within a week of his arrival there.  With his subsequent history, his
+appearance and long residence at the French court as ambassador of
+Sweden, his memorable labours in history, diplomacy, poetry, theology,
+the present narrative is not concerned.  Driven from the service of his
+Fatherland, of which his name to all time is one of the proudest
+garlands, he continued to be a benefactor not only to her but to all
+mankind.  If refutation is sought of the charge that republics are
+ungrateful, it will certainly not be found in the history of Hugo Grotius
+or John of Barneveld.
+
+Nor is there need to portray the wrath of Captain Deventer when he
+returned to Castle Loevestein.
+
+"Here is the cage, but your bird is flown," said corpulent Maria Grotius
+with a placid smile.  The Commandant solaced himself by uttering
+imprecations on her, on her husband, and on Elsje van Houwening.  But
+these curses could not bring back the fugitive.  He flew to Gorcum to
+browbeat the Daatselaers and to search the famous trunk.  He found in it
+the big New Testament and some skeins of thread, together with an octavo
+or two of theology and of Greek tragedies; but the Arminian was not in
+it, and was gone from the custody of the valiant Deventer for ever.
+
+After a brief period Madame de Groot was released and rejoined her
+husband.  Elsje van Houwening, true heroine of the adventure, was
+subsequently married to the faithful servant of Grotius, who during the
+two years' imprisonment had been taught Latin and the rudiments of law by
+his master, so that he subsequently rose to be a thriving and respectable
+advocate at the tribunals of Holland.
+
+The Stadholder, when informed of the escape of the prisoner, observed,
+"I always thought the black pig was deceiving me," making not very
+complimentary allusion to the complexion and size of the lady who had
+thus aided the escape of her husband.
+
+He is also reported as saying that it "is no wonder they could not keep
+Grotius in prison, as he has more wit than all his judges put together."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+     Barneveld's Sons plot against Maurice--The Conspiracy betrayed to
+     Maurice--Escape of Stoutenburg--Groeneveld is arrested--Mary of
+     Barneveld appeals to the Stadholder--Groeneveld condemned to Death--
+     Execution of Groeneveld.
+
+The widow of Barneveld had remained, since the last scene of the fatal
+tragedy on the Binnenhof, in hopeless desolation.  The wife of the man
+who during a whole generation of mankind had stood foremost among the
+foremost of the world, and had been one of those chief actors and
+directors in human affairs to whom men's eyes turned instinctively from
+near and from afar, had led a life of unbroken prosperity.  An heiress in
+her own right, Maria van Utrecht had laid the foundation of her husband's
+wealth by her union with the rising young lawyer and statesman.  Her two
+sons and two daughters had grown up around her, all four being married
+into the leading families of the land, and with apparently long lives of
+prosperity and usefulness before them.  And now the headsman's sword had
+shivered all this grandeur and happiness at a blow.  The name of the
+dead statesman had become a word of scoffing and reproach; vagabond
+mountebanks enacted ribald scenes to his dishonour in the public squares
+and streets; ballad-mongers yelled blasphemous libels upon him in the
+very ears of his widow and children.  For party hatred was not yet
+glutted with the blood it had drunk.
+
+It would be idle to paint the misery of this brokenhearted woman.
+
+The great painters of the epoch have preserved her face to posterity; the
+grief-stricken face of a hard-featured but commanding and not uncomely
+woman, the fountains of whose tears seem exhausted; a face of austere and
+noble despair.  A decorous veil should be thrown over the form of that
+aged matron, for whose long life and prosperity Fate took such merciless
+vengeance at last.
+
+For the woes of Maria of Barneveld had scarcely begun.  Desolation had
+become her portion, but dishonour had not yet crossed her threshold.
+There were sterner strokes in store for her than that which smote her
+husband on the scaffold.
+
+She had two sons, both in the prime of life.  The eldest, Reinier, Lord
+of Groeneveld, who had married a widow of rank and wealth, Madame de
+Brandwyk, was living since the death of his father in comparative ease,
+but entire obscurity.  An easy-tempered, genial, kindly gentleman, he had
+been always much beloved by his friends and, until the great family
+catastrophe, was popular with the public, but of an infirm and
+vacillating character, easily impressed by others, and apt to be led by
+stronger natures than his own.  He had held the lucrative office of head
+forester of Delfland of which he had now been deprived.
+
+The younger son William, called, from an estate conferred on him by his
+father, Lord of Stoutenburg, was of a far different mould.  We have seen
+him at an earlier period of this narrative attached to the embassy of
+Francis Aerssens in Paris, bearing then from another estate the unmusical
+title of Craimgepolder, and giving his subtle and dangerous chief great
+cause of complaint by his irregular, expensive habits.  He had been
+however rather a favourite with Henry IV., who had so profound a respect
+for the father as to consult him, and him only of all foreign statesmen,
+in the gravest affairs of his reign, and he had even held an office of
+honour and emolument at his court.  Subsequently he had embraced the
+military career, and was esteemed a soldier of courage and promise.  As
+captain of cavalry and governor of the fortress of Bergen op Zoom, he
+occupied a distinguished and lucrative position, and was likely, so soon
+as the Truce ran to its close, to make a name for himself in that
+gigantic political and religious war which had already opened in Bohemia,
+and in which it was evident the Republic would soon be desperately
+involved.  His wife, Walburg de Marnix, was daughter to one of the
+noblest characters in the history of the Netherlands, or of any history,
+the illustrious Sainte-Aldegonde.  Two thousand florins a year from his
+father's estate had been settled on him at his marriage, which, in
+addition to his official and military income, placed him in a position of
+affluence.
+
+After the death of his father the family estates were confiscated, and he
+was likewise deprived of his captaincy and his governorship.  He was
+reduced at a blow from luxury and high station to beggary and obscurity.
+At the renewal of the war he found himself, for no fault of his own,
+excluded from the service of his country.  Yet the Advocate almost in his
+last breath had recommended his sons to the Stadholder, and Maurice had
+sent a message in response that so long as the sons conducted themselves
+well they might rely upon his support.
+
+Hitherto they had not conducted themselves otherwise than well.
+Stoutenburg, who now dwelt in his house with his mother, was of a dark,
+revengeful, turbulent disposition.  In the career of arms he had a right
+to look forward to success, but thus condemned to brood in idleness on
+the cruel wrongs to himself and his house it was not improbable that he
+might become dangerous.
+
+Years long he fed on projects of vengeance as his daily bread.  He was
+convinced that his personal grievances were closely entwined with the
+welfare of the Commonwealth, and he had sworn to avenge the death of his
+father, the misery of his mother, and the wrongs which he was himself
+suffering, upon the Stadholder, whom he considered the author of all
+their woe.  To effect a revolution in the government, and to bring back
+to power all the municipal regents whom Maurice had displaced so
+summarily, in order, as the son believed, to effect the downfall of the
+hated Advocate, this was the determination of Stoutenburg.
+
+He did not pause to reflect whether the arm which had been strong enough
+to smite to nothingness the venerable statesman in the plenitude of his
+power would be too weak to repel the attack of an obscure and disarmed
+partisan.  He saw only a hated tyrant, murderer, and oppressor, as he
+considered him, and he meant to have his life.
+
+He had around him a set of daring and desperate men to whom he had from
+time to time half confided his designs.  A certain unfrocked preacher of
+the Remonstrant persuasion, who, according to the fashion of the learned
+of that day, had translated his name out of Hendrik Sleet into Henricus
+Slatius, was one of his most unscrupulous instruments.  Slatius, a big,
+swarthy, shag-eared, beetle-browed Hollander, possessed learning of no
+ordinary degree, a tempestuous kind of eloquence, and a habit of dealing
+with men; especially those of the humbler classes.  He was passionate,
+greedy, overbearing, violent, and loose of life.  He had sworn vengeance
+upon the Remonstrants in consequence of a private quarrel, but this did
+not prevent him from breathing fire and fury against the Contra-
+Remonstrants also, and especially against the Stadholder, whom he
+affected to consider the arch-enemy of the whole Commonwealth.
+
+Another twelvemonth went by.  The Advocate had been nearly four years in
+his grave.  The terrible German war was in full blaze.  The Twelve Years'
+Truce had expired, the Republic was once more at war, and Stoutenburg,
+forbidden at the head of his troop to campaign with the Stadholder
+against the Archdukes, nourished more fiercely than ever his plan against
+the Stadholder's life.
+
+Besides the ferocious Slatius he had other associates.  There was his
+cousin by marriage, van der Dussen, a Catholic gentleman, who had married
+a daughter of Elias Barneveld, and who shared all Stoutenburg's feelings
+of resentment towards Maurice.  There was Korenwinder, another Catholic,
+formerly occupying an official position of responsibility as secretary of
+the town of Berkel, a man of immense corpulence, but none the less an
+active and dangerous conspirator.
+
+There was van Dyk, a secretary of Bleiswyk, equally active and dangerous,
+and as lean and hungry as Korenwinder was fat.  Stoutenburg, besides
+other rewards, had promised him a cornetcy of cavalry, should their plans
+be successful.  And there was the brother-in-law of Slatius, one Cornelis
+Gerritaen, a joiner by trade, living at Rotterdam, who made himself very
+useful in all the details of the conspiracy.
+
+For the plot was now arranged, the men just mentioned being its active
+agents and in constant communication with Stoutenburg.
+
+Korenwinder and van Dyk in the last days of December 1622 drew up a
+scheme on paper, which was submitted to their chief and met with his
+approval.  The document began with a violent invective against the crimes
+and tyranny of the Stadholder, demonstrated the necessity of a general
+change in the government, and of getting rid of Maurice as an
+indispensable preliminary, and laid down the means and method
+of doing this deed.
+
+The Prince was in the daily habit of driving, unattended by his body-
+guard, to Ryswyk, about two miles from the Hague.  It would not be
+difficult for a determined band of men divided into two parties to set
+upon him between the stables and his coach, either when alighting from or
+about to enter it--the one party to kill him while the other protected
+the retreat of the assassins, and beat down such defence as the few
+lackeys of the Stadholder could offer.
+
+The scheme, thus mapped out, was submitted to Stoutenburg, who gave it
+his approval after suggesting a few amendments.  The document was then
+burnt.  It was estimated that twenty men would be needed for the job, and
+that to pay them handsomely would require about 6000 guilders.
+
+The expenses and other details of the infamous plot were discussed as
+calmly as if it had been an industrial or commercial speculation.  But
+6000 guilders was an immense sum to raise, and the Seigneur de
+Stoutenburg was a beggar.  His associates were as forlorn as himself, but
+his brother-in-law, the ex-Ambassador van der Myle, was living at
+Beverwyk under the supervision of the police, his property not having
+been confiscated.  Stoutenburg paid him a visit, accompanied by the
+Reverend Slatius, in hopes of getting funds from him, but at the first
+obscure hint of the infamous design van der Myle faced them with such
+looks, gestures, and words of disgust and indignation that the murderous
+couple recoiled, the son of Barneveld saying to the expreacher: "Let us
+be off, Slaet,'tis a mere cur.  Nothing is to be made of him."
+
+The other son of Barneveld, the Seigneur de Groeneveld, had means and
+credit.  His brother had darkly hinted to him the necessity of getting
+rid of Maurice, and tried to draw him into the plot.  Groeneveld, more
+unstable than water, neither repelled nor encouraged these advances.  He
+joined in many conversations with Stoutenburg, van Dyk, and Korenwinder,
+but always weakly affected not to know what they were driving at.  "When
+we talk of business," said van Dyk to him one day, "you are always
+turning off from us and from the subject.  You had better remain."
+Many anonymous letters were sent to him, calling on him to strike for
+vengeance on the murderer of his father, and for the redemption of his
+native land and the Remonstrant religion from foul oppression.
+
+At last yielding to the persuasions and threats of his fierce younger
+brother, who assured him that the plot would succeed, the government be
+revolutionized, and that then all property would be at the mercy of the
+victors, he agreed to endorse certain bills which Korenwinder undertook
+to negotiate.  Nothing could be meaner, more cowardly, and more murderous
+than the proceedings of the Seigneur de Groeneveld.  He seems to have
+felt no intense desire of vengeance upon Maurice, which certainly would
+not have been unnatural, but he was willing to supply money for his
+assassination.  At the same time he was careful to insist that this
+pecuniary advance was by no means a free gift, but only a loan to be
+repaid by his more bloodthirsty brother upon demand with interest.
+With a businesslike caution, in ghastly contrast with the foulness of the
+contract, he exacted a note of hand from Stoutenburg covering the whole
+amount of his disbursements.  There might come a time, he thought, when
+his brother's paper would be more negotiable than it was at that moment.
+
+Korenwinder found no difficulty in discounting Groeneveld's bills, and
+the necessary capital was thus raised for the vile enterprise.  Van Dyk,
+the lean and hungry conspirator, now occupied himself vigorously in
+engaging the assassins, while his corpulent colleague remained as
+treasurer of the company.  Two brothers Blansaerts, woollen manufacturers
+at Leyden--one of whom had been a student of theology in the Remonstrant
+Church and had occasionally preached--and a certain William Party, a
+Walloon by birth, but likewise a woollen worker at Leyden, agreed to the
+secretary's propositions.  He had at first told, them that their services
+would be merely required for the forcible liberation of two Remonstrant
+clergymen, Niellius and Poppius, from the prison at Haarlem.
+Entertaining his new companions at dinner, however, towards the end of
+January, van Dyk, getting very drunk, informed them that the object of
+the enterprise was to kill the Stadholder; that arrangements had been
+made for effecting an immediate change in the magistracies in all the
+chief cities of Holland so soon as the deed was done; that all the
+recently deposed regents would enter the Hague at once, supported by a
+train of armed peasants from the country; and that better times for the
+oppressed religion, for the Fatherland, and especially for everyone
+engaged in the great undertaking, would begin with the death of the
+tyrant.  Each man taking direct part in the assassination would receive
+at least 300 guilders, besides being advanced to offices of honour and
+profit according to his capacity.
+
+The Blansaerts assured their superior that entire reliance might be
+placed on their fidelity, and that they knew of three or four other men
+in Leyden "as firm as trees and fierce as lions," whom they would engage
+--a fustian worker, a tailor, a chimney-sweeper, and one or two other
+mechanics.  The looseness and utter recklessness with which this hideous
+conspiracy was arranged excites amazement.  Van Dyk gave the two brothers
+100 pistoles in gold--a coin about equal to a guinea--for their immediate
+reward as well as for that of the comrades to be engaged.  Yet it seems
+almost certain from subsequent revelations that they were intending all
+the time to deceive him, to take as much money as they could get from
+him, "to milk, the cow as long as she would give milk," as William Party
+expressed it, and then to turn round upon and betray him.  It was a
+dangerous game however, which might not prove entirely successful.
+
+Van Dyk duly communicated with Stoutenburg, who grew more and more
+feverish with hatred and impatience as the time for gratifying those
+passions drew nigh, and frequently said that he would like to tear the
+Stadholder to pieces with his own hands.  He preferred however to act
+as controlling director over the band of murderers now enrolled.
+
+For in addition to the Leyden party, the Reverend Slatius, supplied with
+funds by van Dyk, had engaged at Rotterdam his brother-in-law Gerritsen,
+a joiner, living in that city, together with three sailors named
+respectively Dirk, John, and Herman.
+
+The ex-clergyman's house was also the arsenal of the conspiracy, and here
+were stored away a stock of pistols, snaphances, and sledge-hammers--
+together with that other death-dealing machinery, the whole edition of
+the 'Clearshining Torch', an inflammatory, pamphlet by Slatius--all to
+be used on the fatal day fast approaching.
+
+On the 1st February van Dyk visited Slatius at Rotterdam.  He found
+Gerritsen hard at work.
+
+There in a dark back kitchen, by the lurid light of the fire in a dim
+wintry afternoon, stood the burly Slatius, with his swarthy face and
+heavy eyebrows, accompanied by his brother-in-law the joiner, both in
+workman's dress, melting lead, running bullets, drying powder, and
+burnishing and arranging the fire-arms and other tools to be used in the
+great crime now so rapidly maturing.  The lean, busy, restless van Dyk,
+with his adust and sinister visage, came peering in upon the couple thus
+engaged, and observed their preparations with warm approval.
+
+He recommended that in addition to Dirk, John, and Herman, a few more
+hardy seafaring men should be engaged, and Slatius accordingly secured
+next day the services of one Jerome Ewouts and three other sailors.  They
+were not informed of the exact nature of the enterprise, but were told
+that it was a dangerous although not a desperate one, and sure to be of
+great service to the Fatherland.  They received, as all the rest had
+done, between 200 and 300 guilders in gold, that they would all be
+promoted to be captains and first mates.
+
+It was agreed that all the conspirators should assemble four days later
+at the Hague on Sunday, the 5th February, at the inn of the "Golden
+Helmet."  The next day, Monday the 6th, had been fixed by Stoutenburg for
+doing the deed.  Van Dyk, who had great confidence in the eloquence of
+William Party, the Walloon wool manufacturer, had arranged that he should
+make a discourse to them all in a solitary place in the downs between
+that city and the sea-shore, taking for his theme or brief the
+Clearshining Torch of Slatius.
+
+On Saturday that eminent divine entertained his sister and her husband
+Gerritsen, Jerome Ewouts, who was at dinner but half informed as to the
+scope of the great enterprise, and several other friends who were
+entirely ignorant of it.  Slatius was in high spirits, although his
+sister, who had at last become acquainted with the vile plot, had done
+nothing but weep all day long.  They had better be worms, with a promise
+of further reward and an intimation she said, and eat dirt for their
+food, than crawl in so base a business.  Her brother comforted her with
+assurances that the project was sure to result in a triumph for religion
+and Fatherland, and drank many healths at his table to the success of all
+engaged in it.  That evening he sent off a great chest filled with arms
+and ammunition to the "Golden Helmet" at the Hague under the charge of
+Jerome Ewouts and his three mates.  Van Dyk had already written a letter
+to the landlord of that hostelry engaging a room there, and saying that
+the chest contained valuable books and documents to be used in a lawsuit,
+in which he was soon to be engaged, before the supreme tribunal.
+
+On the Sunday this bustling conspirator had John Blansaert and William
+Party to dine with him at the "Golden Helmet" in the Hague, and produced
+seven packages neatly folded, each containing gold pieces to the amount
+of twenty pounds sterling.  These were for themselves and the others whom
+they had reported as engaged by them in Leyden.  Getting drunk as usual,
+he began to bluster of the great political revolution impending, and
+after dinner examined the carbines of his guests.  He asked if those
+weapons were to be relied upon.  "We can blow a hair to pieces with them
+at twenty paces," they replied.  "Ah!  would that I too could be of the
+party," said van Dyk, seizing one of the carbines.  "No, no," said John
+Blansaert, "we can do the deed better without you than with you.  You
+must look out for the defence."
+
+Van Dyk then informed them that they, with one of the Rotterdam sailors,
+were to attack Maurice as he got out of his coach at Ryswyk, pin him
+between the stables and the coach, and then and there do him to death.
+"You are not to leave him," he cried, "till his soul has left his body."
+
+The two expressed their hearty concurrence with this arrangement, and
+took leave of their host for the night, going, they said, to distribute
+the seven packages of blood-money.  They found Adam Blansaert waiting for
+them in the downs, and immediately divided the whole amount between
+themselves and him--the chimney-sweeper, tailor, and fustian worker,
+"firm as trees and fierce as lions," having never had any existence
+save in their fertile imaginations.
+
+On Monday, 6th February, van Dyk had a closing interview with Stoutenburg
+and his brother at the house of Groeneveld, and informed them that the
+execution of the plot had been deferred to the following day.
+Stoutenburg expressed disgust and impatience at the delay.  "I should
+like to tear the Stadholder to pieces with my own hands!" he cried.  He
+was pacified on hearing that the arrangements had been securely made for
+the morrow, and turning to his brother observed, "Remember that you can
+never retract.  You are in our power and all your estates at our mercy."
+He then explained the manner in which the magistracies of Leyden, Gouda,
+Rotterdam, and other cities were to be instantly remodelled after the
+death of Maurice, the ex-regents of the Hague at the head of a band of
+armed peasants being ready at a moment's warning to take possession of
+the political capital.
+
+Prince Frederic Henry moreover, he hinted darkly and falsely, but in a
+manner not to be mistaken, was favourable to the movement, and would
+after the murder of Maurice take the government into his hands.
+
+Stoutenburg then went quietly home to pass the day and sleep at his
+mother's house awaiting the eventful morning of Tuesday.
+
+Van Dyk went back to his room at the "Golden Helmet" and began inspecting
+the contents of the arms and ammunition chest which Jerome Ewouts and his
+three mates had brought the night before from Rotterdam.  He had been
+somewhat unquiet at having seen nothing of those mariners during the day;
+when looking out of window, he saw one of them in conference with some
+soldiers.  A minute afterwards he heard a bustle in the rooms below, and
+found that the house was occupied by a guard, and that Gerritsen, with
+the three first engaged sailors Dirk, Peter, and Herman, had been
+arrested at the Zotje.  He tried in vain to throw the arms back into the
+chest and conceal it under the bed, but it was too late.  Seizing his hat
+and wrapping himself in his cloak, with his sword by his side, he walked
+calmly down the stairs looking carelessly at the group of soldiers and
+prisoners who filled the passages.  A waiter informed the provost-marshal
+in command that the gentleman was a respectable boarder at the tavern,
+well known to him for many years.  The conspirator passed unchallenged
+and went straight to inform Stoutenburg.
+
+The four mariners, last engaged by Slatius at Rotterdam, had signally
+exemplified the danger of half confidences.  Surprised that they should
+have been so mysteriously entrusted with the execution of an enterprise
+the particulars of which were concealed from them, and suspecting that
+crime alone could command such very high prices as had been paid and
+promised by the ex-clergyman, they had gone straight to the residence of
+the Stadholder, after depositing the chest at the "Golden Helmet."
+
+Finding that he had driven as usual to Ryswyk, they followed him thither,
+and by dint of much importunity obtained an audience.  If the enterprise
+was a patriotic one, they reasoned, he would probably know of it and
+approve it.  If it were criminal, it would be useful for them to reveal
+and dangerous to conceal it.
+
+They told the story so far as they knew it to the Prince and showed him
+the money, 300 florins apiece, which they had already received from
+Slatius.  Maurice hesitated not an instant.  It was evident that a dark
+conspiracy was afoot.  He ordered the sailors to return to the Hague by
+another and circuitous road through Voorburg, while he lost not a moment
+himself in hurrying back as fast as his horses would carry him.
+Summoning the president and several councillors of the chief tribunal,
+he took instant measures to take possession of the two taverns, and
+arrest all the strangers found in them.
+
+Meantime van Dyk came into the house of the widow Barneveld and found
+Stoutenburg in the stable-yard.  He told him the plot was discovered, the
+chest of arms at the "Golden Helmet" found.  "Are there any private
+letters or papers in the bog?" asked Stoutenburg.  "None relating to the
+affair," was the answer.
+
+"Take yourself off as fast as possible," said Stoutenburg.  Van Dyk
+needed no urging.  He escaped through the stables and across the fields
+in the direction of Leyden.  After skulking about for a week however and
+making very little progress, he was arrested at Hazerswoude, having
+broken through the ice while attempting to skate across the inundated and
+frozen pastures in that region.
+
+Proclamations were at once made, denouncing the foul conspiracy in
+which the sons of the late Advocate Barneveld, the Remonstrant clergyman
+Slatius, and others, were the ringleaders, and offering 4000 florins each
+for their apprehension.  A public thanksgiving for the deliverance was
+made in all the churches on the 8th February.
+
+On the 12th February the States-General sent letters to all their
+ambassadors and foreign agents, informing them of this execrable plot to
+overthrow the Commonwealth and take the life of the Stadholder, set on
+foot by certain Arminian preachers and others of that faction, and this
+too in winter, when the ice and snow made hostile invasion practicable,
+and when the enemy was encamped in so many places in the neighbourhood.
+"The Arminians," said the despatch, "are so filled with bitterness that
+they would rather the Republic should be lost than that their pretended
+grievances should go unredressed."  Almost every pulpit shook with
+Contra-Remonstrant thunder against the whole society of Remonstrants, who
+were held up to the world as rebels and prince-murderers; the criminal
+conspiracy being charged upon them as a body.  Hardly a man of that
+persuasion dared venture into the streets and public places, for fear of
+being put to death by the rabble.  The Chevalier William of Nassau,
+natural son of the Stadholder, was very loud and violent in all the
+taverns and tap-rooms, drinking mighty draughts to the damnation of the
+Arminians.
+
+Many of the timid in consequence shrank away from the society and
+joined the Contra-Remonstrant Church, while the more courageous members,
+together with the leaders of that now abhorred communion, published long
+and stirring appeals to the universal sense of justice, which was
+outraged by the spectacle of a whole sect being punished for a crime
+committed by a few individuals, who had once been unworthy members of it.
+
+Meantime hue and cry was made after the fugitive conspirators.  The
+Blansaerts and William Party having set off from Leyden towards the Hague
+on Monday night, in order, as they said, to betray their employers, whose
+money they had taken, and whose criminal orders they had agreed to
+execute, attempted to escape, but were arrested within ten days.  They
+were exhibited at their prison at Amsterdam to an immense concourse at a
+shilling a peep, the sums thus collected being distributed to the poor.
+Slatius made his way disguised as a boor into Friesland, and after
+various adventures attempted to cross the Bourtange Moors to Lingen.
+Stopping to refresh himself at a tavern near Koevorden, he found himself
+in the tap-room in presence of Quartermaster Blau and a company of
+soldiers from the garrison.  The dark scowling boor, travel-stained and
+weary, with felt hat slouched over his forbidding visage, fierce and
+timorous at once like a hunted wild beast, excited their suspicion.
+Seeing himself watched, he got up, paid his scot, and departed,
+leaving his can of beer untasted.  This decided the quartermaster, who
+accordingly followed the peasant out of the house, and arrested him as a
+Spanish spy on the watch for the train of specie which the soldiers were
+then conveying into Koevorden Castle.
+
+Slatius protested his innocence of any such design, and vehemently
+besought the officer to release him, telling him as a reason for his
+urgency and an explanation of his unprepossessing aspect--that he was
+an oculist from Amsterdam, John Hermansen by name, that he had just
+committed a homicide in that place, and was fleeing from justice.
+
+The honest quartermaster saw no reason why a suspected spy should go
+free because he proclaimed himself a murderer, nor why an oculist should
+escape the penalties of homicide.  "The more reason," he said, "why thou
+shouldst be my prisoner."  The ex-preacher was arrested and shut up in
+the state prison at the Hague.
+
+The famous engraver Visser executed a likeness on copper-plate of the
+grim malefactor as he appeared in his boor's disguise.  The portrait,
+accompanied by a fiercely written broadsheet attacking the Remonstrant
+Church, had a great circulation, and deepened the animosity against the
+sect upon which the unfrocked preacher had sworn vengeance.  His evil
+face and fame thus became familiar to the public, while the term Hendrik
+Slaet became a proverb at pot-houses, being held equivalent among
+tipplers to shirking the bottle.
+
+Korenwinder, the treasurer of the association, coming to visit
+Stoutenburg soon after van Dyk had left him, was informed of the
+discovery of the plot and did his best to escape, but was arrested
+within a fortnight's time.
+
+Stoutenburg himself acted with his usual promptness and coolness.  Having
+gone straightway to his brother to notify him of the discovery and to
+urge him to instant flight, he contrived to disappear.  A few days later
+a chest of merchandise was brought to the house of a certain citizen of
+Rotterdam, who had once been a fiddler, but was now a man of considerable
+property.  The chest, when opened, was found to contain the Seigneur de
+Stoutenburg, who in past times had laid the fiddler under obligations,
+and in whose house he now lay concealed for many days, and until the
+strictness with which all roads and ferries in the neighbourhood were
+watched at first had somewhat given way.  Meantime his cousin van der
+Dussen had also effected his escape, and had joined him in Rotterdam.
+The faithful fiddler then, for a thousand florins, chartered a trading
+vessel commanded by one Jacob Beltje to take a cargo of Dutch cheese to
+Wesel on the Rhine.  By this means, after a few adventures, they effected
+their escape, and, arriving not long afterwards at Brussels, were
+formally taken under the protection of the Archduchess Isabella.
+
+Stoutenburg afterwards travelled in France and Italy, and returned to
+Brussels.  His wife, loathing his crime and spurning all further
+communication with him, abandoned him to his fate.  The daughter of
+Marnix of Sainte-Aldegonde had endured poverty, obscurity, and unmerited
+obloquy, which had become the lot of the great statesman's family after
+his tragic end, but she came of a race that would not brook dishonour.
+The conspirator and suborner of murder and treason, the hirer and
+companion of assassins, was no mate for her.
+
+Stoutenburg hesitated for years as to his future career, strangely
+enough keeping up a hope of being allowed to return to his country.
+
+Subsequently he embraced the cause of his country's enemies, converted
+himself to the Roman Church, and obtained a captaincy of horse in the
+Spanish service.  He was seen one day, to the disgust of many spectators,
+to enter Antwerp in black foreign uniform, at the head of his troopers,
+waving a standard with a death's-head embroidered upon it, and wearing,
+like his soldiers, a sable scarf and plume.  History disdains to follow
+further the career of the renegade, traitor, end assassin.
+
+When the Seigneur de Groeneveld learned from his younger brother, on the
+eventful 6th of February, that the plot had been discovered, he gave
+himself up for lost.  Remorse and despair, fastening upon his naturally
+feeble character, seemed to render him powerless.  His wife, of more
+hopeful disposition than himself and of less heroic mould than Walburg de
+Marnix, encouraged him to fly.  He fled accordingly, through the desolate
+sandy downs which roll between the Hague and the sea, to Scheveningen,
+then an obscure fishing village on the coast, at a league's distance from
+the capital.  Here a fisherman, devoted to him and his family, received
+him in his hut, disguised him in boatman's attire, and went with him to
+the strand, proposing to launch his pinkie, put out at once to sea, and
+to land him on the English coast, the French coast, in Hamburg--where he
+would.
+
+The sight of that long, sandy beach stretching for more than seventy
+miles in an unbroken, melancholy line, without cove, curve, or
+indentation to break its cruel monotony, and with the wild waves of the
+German Ocean, lashed by a wintry storm, breaking into white foam as far
+as the eye could reach, appalled the fugitive criminal.  With the
+certainty of an ignominious death behind him, he shrank abjectly from
+the terrors of the sea, and, despite the honest fisherman's entreaties,
+refused to enter the boat and face the storm.  He wandered feebly along
+the coast, still accompanied by his humble friend, to another little
+village, where the fisherman procured a waggon, which took them as far as
+Sandvoort.  Thence he made his way through Egmond and Petten and across
+the Marsdiep to Tegel, where not deeming himself safe he had himself
+ferried over to the neighbouring island of Vlieland.  Here amongst the
+quicksands, whirlpools, and shallows which mark the last verge of
+habitable Holland, the unhappy fugitive stood at bay.
+
+Meantime information had come to the authorities that a suspicious
+stranger had been seen at Scheveningen.  The fisherman's wife was
+arrested.  Threatened with torture she at last confessed with whom her
+husband had fled and whither.  Information was sent to the bailiff of
+Vlieland, who with a party of followers made a strict search through his
+narrow precincts.  A group of seamen seated on the sands was soon
+discovered, among whom, dressed in shaggy pea jacket with long
+fisherman's boots, was the Seigneur de Groeneveld, who, easily recognized
+through his disguise, submitted to his captors without a struggle.  The
+Scheveningen fisherman, who had been so faithful to him, making a sudden
+spring, eluded his pursuers and disappeared; thus escaping the gibbet
+which would probably have been his doom instead of the reward of 4000
+golden guilders which he might have had for betraying him.  Thus a
+sum more than double the amount originally furnished by Groeneveld,
+as the capital of the assassination company, had been rejected by the
+Rotterdam boatman who saved Stoutenburg, and by the Scheveningen
+fisherman who was ready to save Groeneveld.  On the 19th February, within
+less than a fortnight from the explosion of the conspiracy, the eldest
+son of Barneveld was lodged in the Gevangen Poort or state prison of the
+Hague.
+
+The awful news of the 6th February had struck the widow of Barneveld as
+with a thunderbolt.  Both her sons were proclaimed as murderers and
+suborners of assassins, and a price put upon their heads.  She remained
+for days neither speaking nor weeping; scarcely eating, drinking, or
+sleeping.  She seemed frozen to stone.  Her daughters and friends could
+not tell whether she were dying or had lost her reason.  At length the
+escape of Stoutenburg and the capture of Groeneveld seemed to rouse her
+from her trance.  She then stooped to do what she had sternly refused to
+do when her husband was in the hands of the authorities.  Accompanied by
+the wife and infant son of Groeneveld she obtained an audience of the
+stern Stadholder, fell on her knees before him, and implored mercy and
+pardon for her son.
+
+Maurice received her calmly and not discourteously, but held out no hopes
+of pardon.  The criminal was in the hands of justice, he said, and he had
+no power to interfere.  But there can scarcely be a doubt that he had
+power after the sentence to forgive or to commute, and it will be
+remembered that when Barneveld himself was about to suffer, the Prince
+had asked the clergyman Walaeus with much anxiety whether the prisoner
+in his message had said nothing of pardon.
+
+Referring to the bitter past, Maurice asked Madame de Barneveld why she
+not asked mercy for her son, having refused to do so for her husband.
+
+Her answer was simple and noble:
+
+"My husband was innocent of crime," she said; "my son is guilty."
+
+The idea of pardon in this case was of course preposterous.  Certainly if
+Groeneveld had been forgiven, it would have been impossible to punish the
+thirteen less guilty conspirators, already in the hands of justice, whom
+he had hired to commit the assassination.  The spectacle of the two
+cowardly ringleaders going free while the meaner criminals were gibbeted
+would have been a shock to the most rudimentary ideas of justice.  It
+would have been an equal outrage to pardon the younger Barnevelds for
+intended murder, in which they had almost succeeded, when their great
+father had already suffered for a constructive lese-majesty, the guilt of
+which had been stoutly denied.  Yet such is the dreary chain of cause and
+effect that it is certain, had pardon been nobly offered to the
+statesman, whose views of constitutional law varied from those of the
+dominant party, the later crime would never have been committed.  But
+Francis Aerssens--considering his own and other partisans lives at stake
+if the States' right party did not fall--had been able to bear down all
+thoughts of mercy.  He was successful, was called to the house of nobles,
+and regained the embassy of Paris, while the house of Barneveld was
+trodden into the dust of dishonour and ruin.  Rarely has an offended
+politician's revenge been more thorough than his.  Never did the mocking
+fiend betray his victims into the hands of the avenger more sardonically
+than was done in this sombre tragedy.
+
+The trials of the prisoners were rapidly conducted.  Van Dyk, cruelly
+tortured, confessed on the rack all the details of the conspiracy as they
+were afterwards embodied in the sentences and have been stated in the
+preceding narrative.  Groeneveld was not tortured.  His answers to the
+interrogatories were so vague as to excite amazement at his general
+ignorance of the foul transaction or at the feebleness of his memory,
+while there was no attempt on his part to exculpate himself from the
+damning charge.  That it was he who had furnished funds for the proposed
+murder and mutiny, knowing the purpose to which they were to be applied,
+was proved beyond all cavil and fully avowed by him.
+
+On the 28th May, he, Korenwinder, and van Dyk were notified that they
+were to appear next day in the courthouse to hear their sentence, which
+would immediately afterwards be executed.
+
+That night his mother, wife, and son paid him a long visit of farewell
+in his prison.  The Gevangen Poort of the Hague, an antique but mean
+building of brown brick and commonplace aspect, still stands in one of
+the most public parts of the city.  A gloomy archway, surmounted by
+windows grimly guarded by iron lattice-work, forms the general
+thoroughfare from the aristocratic Plaats and Kneuterdyk and Vyverberg
+to the inner court of the ancient palace.  The cells within are dark,
+noisome, and dimly lighted, and even to this day the very instruments of
+torture, used in the trials of these and other prisoners, may be seen by
+the curious.  Half a century later the brothers de Witt were dragged from
+this prison to be literally torn to pieces by an infuriated mob.
+
+The misery of that midnight interview between the widow of Barneveld, her
+daughter-in-law, and the condemned son and husband need not be described.
+As the morning approached, the gaoler warned the matrons to take their
+departure that the prisoner might sleep.
+
+"What a woful widow you will be," said Groeneveld to his wife, as she
+sank choking with tears upon the ground.  The words suddenly aroused in
+her the sense of respect for their name.
+
+"At least for all this misery endured," she said firmly, "do me enough
+honour to die like a gentleman."  He promised it.  The mother then took
+leave of the son, and History drops a decorous veil henceforth over the
+grief-stricken form of Mary of Barneveld.
+
+Next morning the life-guards of the Stadholder and other troops were
+drawn up in battle-array in the outer and inner courtyard of the supreme
+tribunal and palace.  At ten o'clock Groeneveld came forth from the
+prison.  The Stadholder had granted as a boon to the family that he might
+be neither fettered nor guarded as he walked to the tribunal.  The
+prisoner did not forget his parting promise to his wife.  He appeared
+full-dressed in velvet cloak and plumed hat, with rapier by his side,
+walking calmly through the inner courtyard to the great hall.  Observing
+the windows of the Stadholder's apartments crowded with spectators, among
+whom he seemed to recognize the Prince's face, he took off his hat and
+made a graceful and dignified salute.  He greeted with courtesy many
+acquaintances among the crowd through which he passed.  He entered the
+hall and listened in silence to the sentence condemning him to be
+immediately executed with the sword.  Van Dyk and Korenwinder shared the
+same doom, but were provisionally taken back to prison.
+
+Groeneveld then walked calmly and gracefully as before from the hall to
+the scaffold, attended by his own valet, and preceded by the provost-
+marshal and assistants.  He was to suffer, not where his father had been
+beheaded, but on the "Green Sod."  This public place of execution for
+ordinary criminals was singularly enough in the most elegant and
+frequented quarter of the Hague.  A few rods from the Gevangen Poort,
+at the western end of the Vyverberg, on the edge of the cheerful triangle
+called the Plaats, and looking directly down the broad and stately
+Kneuterdyk, at the end of which stood Aremberg House, lately the
+residence of the great Advocate, was the mean and sordid scaffold.
+
+Groeneveld ascended it with perfect composure.  The man who had been
+browbeaten into crime by an overbearing and ferocious brother, who had
+quailed before the angry waves of the North Sea, which would have borne
+him to a place of entire security, now faced his fate with a smile upon
+his lips.  He took off his hat, cloak, and sword, and handed them to his
+valet.  He calmly undid his ruff and wristbands of pointlace, and tossed
+them on the ground.  With his own hands and the assistance of his servant
+he unbuttoned his doublet, laying breast and neck open without suffering
+the headsman's hands to approach him.
+
+He then walked to the heap of sand and spoke a very few words to the vast
+throng of spectators.
+
+"Desire of vengeance and evil counsel," he said, "have brought me here.
+If I have wronged any man among you, I beg him for Christ's sake to
+forgive me."
+
+Kneeling on the sand with his face turned towards his father's house at
+the end of the Kneuterdyk, he said his prayers.  Then putting a red
+velvet cap over his eyes, he was heard to mutter:
+
+"O God!  what a man I was once, and what am I now?"
+
+Calmly folding his hands, he said, "Patience."
+
+The executioner then struck off his head at a blow.  His body, wrapped in
+a black cloak, was sent to his house and buried in his father's tomb.
+
+Van Dyk and Korenwinder were executed immediately afterwards.  They were
+quartered and their heads exposed on stakes.  The joiner Gerritsen and
+the three sailors had already been beheaded.  The Blansaerts and William
+Party, together with the grim Slatius, who was savage and turbulent to
+the last, had suffered on the 5th of May.
+
+Fourteen in all were executed for this crime, including an unfortunate
+tailor and two other mechanics of Leyden, who had heard something
+whispered about the conspiracy, had nothing whatever to do with it, but
+from ignorance, apathy, or timidity did not denounce it.  The ringleader
+and the equally guilty van der Dussen had, as has been seen, effected
+their escape.
+
+Thus ended the long tragedy of the Barnevelds.  The result of this foul
+conspiracy and its failure to effect the crime proposed strengthened
+immensely the power, popularity, and influence of the Stadholder, made
+the orthodox church triumphant, and nearly ruined the sect of the
+Remonstrants, the Arminians--most unjustly in reality, although with a
+pitiful show of reason--being held guilty of the crime of Stoutenburg
+and Slatius.
+
+The Republic--that magnificent commonwealth which in its infancy had
+confronted, single-handed, the greatest empire of the earth, and had
+wrested its independence from the ancient despot after a forty years'
+struggle--had now been rent in twain, although in very unequal portions,
+by the fiend of political and religious hatred.  Thus crippled, she was
+to go forth and take her share in that awful conflict now in full blaze,
+and of which after-ages were to speak with a shudder as the Thirty Years'
+War.
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Argument in a circle
+He that stands let him see that he does not fall
+If he has deserved it, let them strike off his head
+Misery had come not from their being enemies
+O God! what does man come to!
+Party hatred was not yet glutted with the blood it had drunk
+Rose superior to his doom and took captivity captive
+This, then, is the reward of forty years' service to the State
+To milk, the cow as long as she would give milk
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext Life of John Barneveld, v11, Motley #97
+by John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS, ENTIRE JOHN OF BARNEVELD, 1614-23:
+
+Acts of violence which under pretext of religion
+Adulation for inferiors whom they despise
+Affection of his friends and the wrath of his enemies
+And give advice.  Of that, although always a spendthrift
+Argument in a circle
+Better to be governed by magistrates than mobs
+Burning with bitter revenge for all the favours he had received
+Calumny is often a stronger and more lasting power than disdain
+Casual outbursts of eternal friendship
+Changed his positions and contradicted himself day by day
+Conciliation when war of extermination was intended
+Considered it his special mission in the world to mediate
+Created one child for damnation and another for salvation
+Death rather than life with a false acknowledgment of guilt
+Denoungced as an obstacle to peace
+Depths theological party spirit could descend
+Depths of credulity men in all ages can sink
+Devote himself to his gout and to his fair young wife
+Enemy of all compulsion of the human conscience
+Extraordinary capacity for yielding to gentle violence
+France was mourning Henry and waiting for Richelieu
+Furious mob set upon the house of Rem Bischop
+Hardly a sound Protestant policy anywhere but in Holland
+He that stands let him see that he does not fall
+Heidelberg Catechism were declared to be infallible
+Highborn demagogues in that as in every age affect adulation
+History has not too many really important and emblematic men
+Human nature in its meanness and shame
+I hope and I fear
+I know how to console myself
+If he has deserved it, let them strike off his head
+Implication there was much, of assertion very little
+In this he was much behind his age or before it
+It had not yet occurred to him that he was married
+John Robinson
+King who thought it furious madness to resist the enemy
+Logic is rarely the quality on which kings pride themselves
+Magistracy at that moment seemed to mean the sword
+Make the very name of man a term of reproach
+Misery had come not from their being enemies
+Mockery of negotiation in which nothing could be negotiated
+More apprehension of fraud than of force
+Necessity of deferring to powerful sovereigns
+Never lack of fishers in troubled waters
+Not his custom nor that of his councillors to go to bed
+O God! what does man come to!
+Only true religion
+Opening an abyss between government and people
+Opposed the subjection of the magistracy by the priesthood
+Partisans wanted not accommodation but victory
+Party hatred was not yet glutted with the blood it had drunk
+Pot-valiant hero
+Puritanism in Holland was a very different thing from England
+Rather a wilderness to reign over than a single heretic
+Resolve to maintain the civil authority over the military
+Rose superior to his doom and took captivity captive
+Seemed bent on self-destruction
+Stand between hope and fear
+Successful in this step, he is ready for greater ones
+Tempest of passion and prejudice
+That he tries to lay the fault on us is pure malice
+The magnitude of this wonderful sovereign's littleness
+The effect of energetic, uncompromising calumny
+The evils resulting from a confederate system of government
+This, then, is the reward of forty years' service to the State
+This wonderful sovereign's littleness oppresses the imagination
+To milk, the cow as long as she would give milk
+To stifle for ever the right of free enquiry
+William Brewster
+Wise and honest a man, although he be somewhat longsome
+Yes, there are wicked men about
+Yesterday is the preceptor of To-morrow
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext Entire John of Barneveld 1614-23
+by John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS, ENTIRE JOHN OF BARNEVELD 1609-1623:
+
+Abstinence from inquisition into consciences and private parlour
+Acts of violence which under pretext of religion
+Adulation for inferiors whom they despise
+Advanced orthodox party-Puritans
+Affection of his friends and the wrath of his enemies
+Allowed the demon of religious hatred to enter into its body
+Almost infinite power of the meanest of passions
+And give advice.  Of that, although always a spendthrift
+And now the knife of another priest-led fanatic
+Argument in a circle
+Aristocracy of God's elect
+As with his own people, keeping no back-door open
+At a blow decapitated France
+Atheist, a tyrant, because he resisted dictation from the clergy
+Behead, torture, burn alive, and bury alive all heretics
+Better to be governed by magistrates than mobs
+Burning with bitter revenge for all the favours he had received
+Calumny is often a stronger and more lasting power than disdain
+Casual outbursts of eternal friendship
+Changed his positions and contradicted himself day by day
+Christian sympathy and a small assistance not being sufficient
+Conciliation when war of extermination was intended
+Conclusive victory for the allies seemed as predestined
+Considered it his special mission in the world to mediate
+Contained within itself the germs of a larger liberty
+Could not be both judge and party in the suit
+Covered now with the satirical dust of centuries
+Created one child for damnation and another for salvation
+Deadly hatred of Puritans in England and Holland
+Death rather than life with a false acknowledgment of guilt
+Denoungced as an obstacle to peace
+Depths of credulity men in all ages can sink
+Depths theological party spirit could descend
+Determined to bring the very name of liberty into contempt
+Devote himself to his gout and to his fair young wife
+Disputing the eternal damnation of young children
+Doctrine of predestination in its sternest and strictest sense
+Emperor of Japan addressed him as his brother monarch
+Enemy of all compulsion of the human conscience
+Epernon, the true murderer of Henry
+Estimating his character and judging his judges
+Everybody should mind his own business
+Extraordinary capacity for yielding to gentle violence
+Fate, free will, or absolute foreknowledge
+Father Cotton, who was only too ready to betray the secrets
+France was mourning Henry and waiting for Richelieu
+Furious mob set upon the house of Rem Bischop
+Give him advice if he asked it, and money when he required
+Great war of religion and politics was postponed
+Hardly a sound Protestant policy anywhere but in Holland
+He was not imperial of aspect on canvas or coin
+He who would have all may easily lose all
+He who spreads the snare always tumbles into the ditch himself
+He was a sincere bigot
+He that stands let him see that he does not fall
+Heidelberg Catechism were declared to be infallible
+Highborn demagogues in that as in every age affect adulation
+History has not too many really important and emblematic men
+Human nature in its meanness and shame
+I know how to console myself
+I hope and I fear
+If he has deserved it, let them strike off his head
+Impatience is often on the part of the non-combatants
+Implication there was much, of assertion very little
+In this he was much behind his age or before it
+Intense bigotry of conviction
+International friendship, the self-interest of each
+It had not yet occurred to him that he was married
+It was the true religion, and there was none other
+James of England, who admired, envied, and hated Henry
+Jealousy, that potent principle
+Jesuit Mariana--justifying the killing of excommunicated kings
+John Robinson
+King who thought it furious madness to resist the enemy
+King's definite and final intentions, varied from day to day
+Language which is ever living because it is dead
+Logic is rarely the quality on which kings pride themselves
+Louis XIII.
+Ludicrous gravity
+Magistracy at that moment seemed to mean the sword
+Make the very name of man a term of reproach
+Misery had come not from their being enemies
+Mockery of negotiation in which nothing could be negotiated
+More apprehension of fraud than of force
+More fiercely opposed to each other than to Papists
+Most detestable verses that even he had ever composed
+Necessity of deferring to powerful sovereigns
+Neither kings nor governments are apt to value logic
+Never lack of fishers in troubled waters
+No man pretended to think of the State
+No man can be neutral in civil contentions
+No synod had a right to claim Netherlanders as slaves
+None but God to compel me to say more than I choose to say
+Not his custom nor that of his councillors to go to bed
+O God! what does man come to!
+Only true religion
+Opening an abyss between government and people
+Opposed the subjection of the magistracy by the priesthood
+Outdoing himself in dogmatism and inconsistency
+Partisans wanted not accommodation but victory
+Party hatred was not yet glutted with the blood it had drunk
+Philip IV.
+Pot-valiant hero
+Power the poison of which it is so difficult to resist
+Practised successfully the talent of silence
+Presents of considerable sums of money to the negotiators made
+Priests shall control the state or the state govern the priests
+Princes show what they have in them at twenty-five  or never
+Puritanism in Holland was a very different thing from England
+Putting the cart before the oxen
+Queen is entirely in the hands of Spain and the priests
+Rather a wilderness to reign over than a single heretic
+Religion was made the strumpet of Political Ambition
+Religious toleration, which is a phrase of insult
+Resolve to maintain the civil authority over the military
+Rose superior to his doom and took captivity captive
+Safest citadel against an invader and a tyrant is distrust
+Schism in the Church had become a public fact
+Secure the prizes of war without the troubles and dangers
+Seemed bent on self-destruction
+Senectus edam maorbus est
+She declined to be his procuress
+Small matter which human folly had dilated into a great one
+Smooth words, in the plentiful lack of any substantial
+So much in advance of his time as to favor religious equality
+Stand between hope and fear
+Stroke of a broken table knife sharpened on a carriage wheel
+Successful in this step, he is ready for greater ones
+Tempest of passion and prejudice
+That he tries to lay the fault on us is pure malice
+That cynical commerce in human lives
+The effect of energetic, uncompromising calumny
+The evils resulting from a confederate system of government
+The vehicle is often prized more than the freight
+The voice of slanderers
+The truth in shortest about matters of importance
+The assassin, tortured and torn by four horses
+The defence of the civil authority against the priesthood
+The magnitude of this wonderful sovereign's littleness
+The Catholic League and the Protestant Union
+Their own roofs were not quite yet in a blaze
+Theological hatred was in full blaze throughout the country
+Theology and politics were one
+There was no use in holding language of authority to him
+There was but one king in Europe, Henry the Bearnese
+Therefore now denounced the man whom he had injured
+They have killed him, 'e ammazato,' cried Concini
+Things he could tell which are too odious and dreadful
+Thirty Years' War tread on the heels of the forty years
+This wonderful sovereign's littleness oppresses the imagination
+This, then, is the reward of forty years' service to the State
+To milk, the cow as long as she would give milk
+To stifle for ever the right of free enquiry
+To look down upon their inferior and lost fellow creatures
+Uncouple the dogs and let them run
+Unimaginable outrage as the most legitimate industry
+Vows of an eternal friendship of several weeks' duration
+What could save the House of Austria, the cause of Papacy
+Whether repentance could effect salvation
+Whether dead infants were hopelessly damned
+Whose mutual hatred was now artfully inflamed by partisans
+William Brewster
+Wise and honest a man, although he be somewhat longsome
+Wish to appear learned in matters of which they are ignorant
+Work of the aforesaid Puritans and a few Jesuits
+Wrath of the Jesuits at this exercise of legal authority
+Yes, there are wicked men about
+Yesterday is the preceptor of To-morrow
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF JOHN OF BARNEVELD, 1609-23 ***
+
+************This file should be named jm99v10.txt or jm99v10.zip ************
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, jm99v11.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, jm99v10a.txt
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
+even years after the official publication date.
+
+Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our Web sites at:
+http://gutenberg.net or
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
+Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
+eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement
+can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03
+
+Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text
+files per month:  1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+
+We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks!
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):
+
+eBooks Year Month
+
+    1  1971 July
+   10  1991 January
+  100  1994 January
+ 1000  1997 August
+ 1500  1998 October
+ 2000  1999 December
+ 2500  2000 December
+ 3000  2001 November
+ 4000  2001 October/November
+ 6000  2002 December*
+ 9000  2003 November*
+10000  2004 January*
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
+to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
+and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
+Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
+Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
+Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
+Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
+Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
+Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
+Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
+
+We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones
+that have responded.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
+will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
+Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+In answer to various questions we have received on this:
+
+We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
+request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
+you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
+just ask.
+
+While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
+not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
+donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
+donate.
+
+International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
+how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
+deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
+ways.
+
+Donations by check or money order may be sent to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655-4109
+
+Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
+method other than by check or money order.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
+the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
+[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
+tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fund-raising
+requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
+made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information online at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
+you can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
+
+We would prefer to send you information by email.
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
+you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook
+under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
+receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims
+all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from. If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
+and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
+with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
+legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
+following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this eBook,
+[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook,
+or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     eBook or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the eBook (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
+public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
+in machine readable form.
+
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
+Money should be paid to the:
+"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only
+when distributed free of all fees.  Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by
+Michael S. Hart.  Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be
+used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be
+they hardware or software or any other related product without
+express permission.]
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END*
+
diff --git a/old/jm99v10.zip b/old/jm99v10.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..da75b5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/jm99v10.zip