Meantime, the period assigned for the departure of the Spanish commissioners, unless they brought a satisfactory communication from the king, was rapidly approaching.

On the 24th September Verreyken returned from Brussels, but it was soon known that he came empty handed.  He informed the French and English ambassadors that the archdukes, on their own responsibility, now suggested the conclusion of a truce of seven years for Europe only.  This was to be negotiated with the States-General as with free people, over whom no pretensions of authority were made, and the hope was expressed that the king would give his consent to this arrangement.

The ambassadors naturally refused to carry the message to the States.  To make themselves the mouthpieces of such childish suggestions was to bring themselves and their masters into contempt.  There had been trifling enough, and even Jeannin saw that the storm of indignation about to burst forth would be irresistible.  There was no need of any attempt on the part of the commissioners to prolong their stay if this was the result of the fifteen days’ grace which had so reluctantly been conceded to them.  To express a hope that the king might perhaps give his future approval to a proceeding for which his signed and sealed consent had been exacted as an indispensable preliminary, was carrying effrontery further than had yet been attempted in these amazing negotiations.

Prince Maurice once more addressed the cities of Holland, giving vent to his wrath in language with which there was now more sympathy than there had been before.  “Verreyken has come back,” he said, “not with a signature, but with a hope.  The longer the enemy remains in the country the more he goes back from what he had originally promised.  He is seeking for nothing more than, in this cheating way and in this pretence of waiting for the king’s consent—­which we have been expecting now for more than eighteen months—­to continue the ruinous armistice.  Thus he keeps the country in a perpetual uncertainty, the only possible consequence of which is our complete destruction.  We adjure you therefore to send a resolution in conformity with our late address, in order that through these tricks and snares the fatherland may not fall into the clutch of the enemy, and thus into eternal and intolerable slavery.  God save us all from such a fate!”

Neither Barneveld nor Jeannin attempted to struggle against the almost general indignation.  The deputies of Zeeland withdrew from the assembly of the States-General, protesting that they would never appear there again so long as the Spanish commissioners remained in the country.  The door was opened wide, and it was plain that those functionaries must take their departure.  Pride would not allow them to ask permission of the States to remain, although they intimated to the ambassadors their intense desire to linger for ten or twelve days longer.  This was obviously inadmissible, and on the 30th September they appeared before the Assembly to take leave.