Meantime the opposition to the truce was confined to the States of Zeeland and two cities of Holland.  Those cities were very important ones, Amsterdam and Delft, but they were already wavering in their opposition.  Zeeland stoutly maintained that the treaty of Utrecht forbade a decision of the question of peace and war except by a unanimous vote of the whole confederacy.  The other five provinces and the friends of the truce began with great vehemence to declare that the question at issue was now changed.  It was no longer to be decided whether there should be truce or war with Spain, but whether a single member of the confederacy could dictate its law to the other six States.  Zeeland, on her part, talked loudly of seceding from the union, and setting up for an independent, sovereign commonwealth.  She would hardly have been a very powerful one, with her half-dozen cities, one prelate, one nobleman, her hundred thousand burghers at most, bustling and warlike as they were, and her few thousand mariners, although the most terrible fighting men that had ever sailed on blue water.  She was destined ere long to abandon her doughty resolution of leaving her sister provinces to their fate.

Maurice had not slackened in his opposition to the truce, despite the renewed vigour with which Barneveld pressed the measure since his return to the public councils.  The prince was firmly convinced that the kings of France and England would assist the republic in the war with Spain so soon as it should be renewed.  His policy had been therefore to force the hand of those sovereigns, especially that of Henry, and to induce him to send more stringent instructions to Jeannin than those with which he believed him to be furnished.  He had accordingly despatched a secret emissary to the French king, supplied with confidential and explicit instructions.  This agent was a Captain Lambert.  Whether it was “Pretty Lambert,” “Dandy Lambert”—­the vice-admiral who had so much distinguished himself at the great victory of Gibraltar—­does not distinctly appear.  If it were so, that hard-hitting mariner would seem to have gone into action with the French Government as energetically as he had done eighteen months before, when, as master of the Tiger, he laid himself aboard the Spanish admiral and helped send the St. Augustine to the bottom.  He seemed indisposed to mince matters in diplomacy.  He intimated to the king and his ministers that Jeannin and his colleagues were pushing the truce at the Hague much further and faster than his Majesty could possibly approve, and that they were obviously exceeding their instructions.  Jeannin, who was formerly so much honoured and cherished throughout the republic, was now looked upon askance because of his intimacy with Barneveld and his partisans.  He assured the king that nearly all the cities of Holland, and the whole of Zeeland, were entirely agreed with Maurice, who would rather die than consent to the proposed truce.