of Truce to a
standstill. And in these charges he was as unjust and as reckless as he
was now in regard to Barneveld.

The course of James and his agents seemed cunningly devised to sow
discord in the Provinces, to inflame the growing animosity of the
Stadholder to the Advocate, and to paralyse the action of the Republic in
the duchies. If the King had received direct instructions from the
Spanish cabinet how to play the Spanish game, he could hardly have done
it with more docility. But was not Gondemar ever at his elbow, and the
Infanta always in the perspective?

And it is strange enough that, at the same moment, Spanish marriages were
in France as well as England the turning-point of policy.

Henry had been willing enough that the Dauphin should espouse a Spanish
infanta, and that one of the Spanish princes should be affianced to one
of his daughters. But the proposition from Spain had been coupled with a
condition that the friendship between France and the Netherlands should
be at once broken off, and the rebellious heretics left to their fate.
And this condition had been placed before him with such arrogance that he
had rejected the whole scheme. Henry was not the man to do anything
dishonourable at the dictation of another sovereign. He was also not the
man to be ignorant that the friendship of the Provinces was necessary to
him, that cordial friendship between France and Spain was impossible, and
that to allow Spain to reoccupy that splendid possession between his own
realms and Germany, from which she had been driven by the Hollanders in
close alliance with himself, would be unworthy of the veriest schoolboy
in politics. But Henry was dead, and a Medici reigned in his place, whose
whole thought was to make herself agreeable to Spain.

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
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