He then went to the Lord Treasurer’s apartment, where a long and stormy interview followed on the subject of the withdrawal of the English troops.  Caron warmly insisted that the measure had been full of danger, for the States; that they had been ordered out of Prince Maurice’s camp at a most critical moment; that; had it not, been for the Stallholder’s promptness and military skill; very great disasters to the common cause must have ensued; and that, after all, nothing had been done by the contingent in any other field, for they had been for six months idle and sick, without ever reaching Brittany at all.

“The Lord Treasurer, who, contrary to his custom,” said the envoy, “had been listening thus long to what I had to say, now observed that the States had treated her Majesty very ill, that they had kept her running after her own troops nearly half a year, and had offered no excuse for their proceedings.”

It would be superfluous to repeat the arguments by which Caron endeavoured to set forth that the English troops, sent to the Netherlands according to a special compact, for a special service, and for a special consideration and equivalent, could not honestly be employed, contrary to the wishes of the States-General, upon a totally different service and in another country.  The queen willed it, he was informed, and it was ill-treatment of her Majesty on the part of the Hollanders to oppose her will.  This argument was unanswerable.

Soon afterwards, Caron was admitted to the presence of Elizabeth.  He delivered, at first, a letter from the States-General, touching the withdrawal of the troops.  The queen, instantly broke the seal and read the letter to the end.  Coming to the concluding passage, in which the States observed that they had great and just cause highly to complain on that subject, she paused, reading the sentences over twice or thrice, and then remarked: 

“Truly these are comical people.  I have so often been complaining that they refused to send my troops, and now the States complain that they are obliged to let them go.  Yet my intention is only to borrow them for a little while, because I can give my brother of France no better succour than by sending him these soldiers, and this I consider better than if I should send him four thousand men.  I say again, I am only borrowing them, and surely the States ought never to make such complaints, when the occasion was such a favourable one, and they had received already sufficient aid from these troops, and had liberated their whole country.  I don’t comprehend these grievances.  They complain that I withdraw my people, and meantime they are still holding them and have brought them ashore again.  They send me frivolous excuses that the skippers don’t know the road to my islands, which is, after all, as easy to find as the way to Caen, for it is all one.  I have also sent my own pilots; and I complain bitterly that by making this difficulty they will cause the loss of all Brittany.  They run with their people far away from me, and meantime they allow the enemy to become master of all the coasts lying opposite me.  But if it goes badly with me they will rue it deeply themselves.”