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     A penal offence in the republic to talk of peace or of truce
     Accepting a new tyrant in place of the one so long ago deposed
     As if they were free will not make them free
     As neat a deception by telling the truth
     Cargo of imaginary gold dust was exported from the James River
     Delay often fights better than an army against a foreign invader
     Diplomacy of Spain and Rome—­meant simply dissimulation
     Draw a profit out of the necessities of this state
     England hated the Netherlands
     Friendly advice still more intolerable
     Haereticis non servanda fides
     He who confessed well was absolved well
     Insensible to contumely, and incapable of accepting a rebuff
     Languor of fatigue, rather than any sincere desire for peace
     Much as the blind or the deaf towards colour or music
     Subtle and dangerous enemy who wore the mask of a friend
     Word peace in Spanish mouths simply meant the Holy Inquisition

HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS

From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year’s Truce—­1609

By John Lothrop Motley

History United Netherlands, Volume 79, 1607

CHAPTER XLVII.

A Dutch fleet under Heemskerk sent to the coast of Spain and Portugal—­Encounter with the Spanish war fleet under D’Avila—­Death of both commanders-in-chief—­Victory of the Netherlanders—­Massacre of the Spaniards.

The States-General had not been inclined to be tranquil under the check which Admiral Haultain had received upon the coast of Spain in the autumn of 1606.  The deed of terrible self-devotion by which Klaaszoon and his comrades had in that crisis saved the reputation of the republic, had proved that her fleets needed only skilful handling and determined leaders to conquer their enemy in the Western seas as certainly as they had done in the archipelagos of the East.  And there was one pre-eminent naval commander, still in the very prime of life, but seasoned by an experience at the poles and in the tropics such as few mariners in that early but expanding maritime epoch could boast.  Jacob van Heemskerk, unlike many of the navigators and ocean warriors who had made and were destined to make the Orange flag of the United Provinces illustrious over the world, was not of humble parentage.  Sprung of an ancient, knightly race, which had frequently distinguished itself in his native province of Holland, he had followed the seas almost from his cradle.  By turns a commercial voyager, an explorer, a privateer’s-man, or an admiral of war-fleets, in days when sharp distinctions between the merchant service and the public service, corsairs’ work and cruisers’ work, did not exist, he had ever proved himself equal to any