Certainly an envoy’s position could hardly be more utterly compromised.  Most unquestionably Aerssens had reason to be indignant, believing as he did that his conscientious efforts in the service of his government had been made use of by his chief to undermine his credit and blast his character.  There was an intrigue between the newly appointed French minister, de Russy, at the Hague and the enemies of Aerssens to represent him to his own government as mischievous, passionate, unreasonably vehement in supporting the claims and dignity of his own country at the court to which he was accredited.  Not often in diplomatic history has an ambassador of a free state been censured or removed for believing and maintaining in controversy that his own government is in the right.  It was natural that the French government should be disturbed by the vivid light which he had flashed upon their pernicious intrigues with Spain to the detriment of the Republic, and at the pertinacity with which he resisted their preposterous claim to be reimbursed for one-third of the money which the late king had advanced as a free subsidy towards the war of the Netherlands for independence.  But no injustice could be more outrageous than for the Envoy’s own government to unite with the foreign State in damaging the character of its own agent for the crime of fidelity to itself.

Of such cruel perfidy Aerssens had been the victim, and he most wrongfully suspected his chief as its real perpetrator.

The claim for what was called the “Third” had been invented after the death of Henry.  As already explained, the “Third” was not a gift from England to the Netherlands.  It was a loan from England to France, or more properly a consent to abstain from pressing for payment for this proportion of an old debt.  James, who was always needy, had often desired, but never obtained, the payment of this sum from Henry.  Now that the King was dead, he applied to the Regent’s government, and the Regent’s government called upon the Netherlands, to pay the money.

Aerssens, as the agent of the Republic, protested firmly against such claim.  The money had been advanced by the King as a free gift, as his contribution to a war in which he was deeply interested, although he was nominally at peace with Spain.  As to the private arrangements between France and England, the Republic, said the Dutch envoy, was in no sense bound by them.  He was no party to the Treaty of Hampton Court, and knew nothing of its stipulations.

Courtiers and politicians in plenty at the French court, now that Henry was dead, were quite sure that they had heard him say over and over again that the Netherlands had bound themselves to pay the Third.  They persuaded Mary de’ Medici that she likewise had often heard him say so, and induced her to take high ground on the subject in her interviews with Aerssens.  The luckless queen, who was always in want of money to satisfy the insatiable greed of her favourites, and to buy off the enmity of the great princes, was very vehement—­although she knew as much of those transactions as of the finances of Prester John or the Lama of Thibet—­in maintaining this claim of her government upon the States.