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.