In his original communications he had been both cringing and threatening but, at least, he had not denied truths which were plain as daylight.  His new position considerably damaged his cause.  This forgiving spirit on the part of the malefactor was a little more than the states could bear, disposed as they felt, from policy, to be indulgent, and to smooth over the crime as gently as possible.  The negotiations were interrupted, and the authorities of Antwerp published a brief and spirited defence of their own conduct.  They denied that any affront or want of respect on their part could have provoked the outrage of which the Duke had been guilty.  They severely handled his self-contradiction, in ascribing originally the recent attempt to his just vengeance for past injuries, and in afterwards imputing it to accident or sudden mutiny, while they cited the simultaneous attempts at Bruges, Denremonde, Alost, Digmuyde, Newport, Ostend, Vilvoorde, and Dunkirk, as a series of damning proofs of a deliberate design.

The publication of such plain facts did not advance the negotiations when resumed.  High and harsh words were interchanged between his Highness and the commissioners, Anjou complaining, as usual, of affronts and indignities, but when pushed home for particulars, taking refuge in equivocation.  “He did not wish,” he said, “to re-open wounds which had been partially healed.”  He also affected benignity, and wishing to forgive and to forget, he offered some articles as the basis of a fresh agreement.  Of these it is sufficient to state that they were entirely different from the terms of the Bordeaux treaty, and that they were rejected as quite inadmissible.

He wrote again to the Prince of Orange, invoking his influence to bring about an arrangement.  The Prince, justly indignant at the recent treachery and the present insolence of the man whom he had so profoundly trusted, but feeling certain that the welfare of the country depended at present upon avoiding, if possible, a political catastrophe, answered the Duke in plain, firm, mournful, and appropriate language.  He had ever manifested to his Highness, he said, the most uniform and sincere friendship.  He had, therefore, the right to tell him that affairs were now so changed that his greatness and glory had departed.  Those men in the Netherlands, who, but yesterday, had been willing to die at the feet of his Highness, were now so exasperated that they avowedly preferred an open enemy to a treacherous protector.  He had hoped, he said, that after what had happened in so many cities at the same moment, his Highness would have been pleased to give the deputies a different and a more becoming answer.  He had hoped for some response which might lead to an arrangement.  He, however, stated frankly, that the articles transmitted by his Highness were so unreasonable that no man in the land would dare open his mouth to recommend them.  His Highness, by this proceeding, had much deepened the distrust.  He warned the Duke accordingly, that he was not taking the right course to reinstate himself in a position of honor and glory, and he begged him, therefore, to adopt more appropriate means.  Such a step was now demanded of him, not only by the country, but by all Christendom.