“We proposed,” said the Archduke, instructing an envoy whom he was sending to Madrid with detailed accounts of these negotiations, “that the promise should be made to each other as usual in treaties.  But the Hollanders said the promise should be made to the Kings of France and England, at which the Emperor would have been deeply offended, as if in the affair he was of no account at all.  At any moment by this arrangement in concert with France and England the Hollanders might walk in and do what they liked.”

Certainly there could have been no succincter eulogy of the policy steadily recommended, as we shall have occasion to see, by Barneveld.  Had he on this critical occasion been backed by England and France combined, Spain would have been forced to beat a retreat, and Protestantism in the great general war just beginning would have had an enormous advantage in position.  But the English Solomon could not see the wisdom of this policy.  “The King of England says we are right,” continued the Archduke, “and has ordered his ambassador to insist on our view.  The French ambassador here says that his colleague at the Hague has similar instructions, but admits that he has not acted up to them.  There is not much chance of the Hollanders changing.  It would be well that the King should send a written ultimatum that the Hollanders should sign the convention which we propose.  If they don’t agree, the world at least will see that it is not we who are in fault.”

The world would see, and would never have forgiven a statesman in the position of Barneveld, had he accepted a bald agreement from a subordinate like the Archduke, a perfectly insignificant personage in the great drama then enacting, and given up guarantees both from the Archduke’s master and from the two great allies of the Republic.  He stood out manfully against Spain and England at every hazard, and under a pelting storm of obloquy, and this was the man whose designs the English secretary of state had dared to describe “as of no other nature than to cause the Provinces to relapse into the hands of Spain.”

It appeared too a little later that Barneveld’s influence with the French government, owing to his judicious support of it so long as it was a government, had been decidedly successful.  Drugged as France was by the Spanish marriage treaty, she was yet not so sluggish nor spell-bound as the King of Great Britain.

“France will not urge upon the Hollanders to execute the proposal as we made it,” wrote the Archduke to the King, “so negotiations are at a standstill.  The Hollanders say it is better that each party should remain with what each possesses.  So that if it does not come to blows, and if these insolences go on as they have done, the Hollanders will be gaining and occupying more territory every day.”

Thus once more the ancient enemies and masters of the Republic were making the eulogy of the Dutch statesman.  It was impossible at present for the States to regain Wesel, nor that other early stronghold of the Reformation, the old Imperial city of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle).  The price to be paid was too exorbitant.