the durable success of the enterprise;
to guard against any invasions that might be made in the future to eject
those princes. Otherwise all their present efforts would be useless; and
his Majesty therefore consented on this occasion to enter into the new
league proposed by the States with all the princes and states mentioned
in the memoir of the ambassadors for mutual assistance against all unjust
occupations, attempts, and baneful intrigues.

Having no special information as to the infractions by the Archdukes of
the recent treaty of truce, the King declined to discuss that subject for
the moment, although holding himself bound to all required of him as one
of the guarantees of that treaty.

In regard to the remonstrance made by the ambassadors concerning the
trade of the East Indies, his Majesty disclaimed any intention of doing
injury to the States in permitting his subjects to establish a company in
his kingdom for that commerce. He had deferred hitherto taking action in
the matter only out of respect to the States, but he could no longer
refuse the just claims of his subjects if they should persist in them as
urgently as they had thus far been doing. The right and liberty which
they demanded was common to all, said the King, and he was certainly
bound to have as great care for the interests of his subjects as for
those of his friends and allies.

Here, certainly, was an immense difference in tone and in terms towards
the Republic adopted respectively by their great and good friends and
allies the Kings of France and Great Britain. It was natural enough that
Henry, having secretly expressed his most earnest hope that the States
would move at his side in his broad and general assault upon the House of
Austria, should impress upon them his conviction, which was a just one,
that no power in the world was more interested in keeping a Spanish and
Catholic prince out of the duchies than they were themselves. But while
thus taking a bond of them as it were for the entire fulfilment of the
primary enterprise, he accepted with cordiality, and almost with
gratitude, their proposition of a close alliance of the Republic with
himself and with the Protestant powers which James had so superciliously
rejected.

It would have been difficult to inflict a more petty and, more studied
insult upon the Republic than did the King of Great Britain at that
supreme moment by his preposterous claim of sovereign rights over the
Netherlan