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.

Aerssens, who, with the keen instinct of self-advancement was already attaching himself to Maurice as to the wheels of the chariot going steadily up the hill, was not indisposed to loosen his hold upon the man through whose friendship he had first risen, and whose power was now perhaps on the decline.  Moreover, events had now caused him to hate the French government with much fervour.  With Henry iv. he had been all-powerful.  His position had been altogether exceptional, and he had wielded an influence at Paris more than that exerted by any foreign ambassador.  The change naturally did not please him, although he well knew the reasons.  It was impossible for the Dutch ambassador to be popular at a court where Spain ruled supreme.  Had he been willing to eat humiliation as with a spoon, it would not have sufficed.  They knew him, they feared him, and they could not doubt that his sympathies would ever be with the malcontent princes.  At the same time he did not like to lose his hold upon the place, nor to have it known, as yet, to the world that his power was diminished.

“The Queen commands me to tell you,” said the French ambassador de Russy to the States-General, “that the language of the Sieur Aerssens has not only astonished her, but scandalized her to that degree that she could not refrain from demanding if it came from My Lords the States or from himself.  He having, however, affirmed to her Majesty that he had express charge to justify it by reasons so remote from the hope and the belief that she had conceived of your gratitude to the Most Christian King and herself, she is constrained to complain of it, and with great frankness.”