deprived of their liberty by force or fraud. He was willing to play a
political game, in which he felt himself inferior to no man, trusting to
his own skill and coolness for success. If the tyrant were defeated, and
at the same time made to serve the cause of the free commonwealth, the
Advocate believed this to be fair play.

Knowing himself surrounded by gamblers and tricksters, he probably did
not consider himself to be cheating because he did not play his cards
upon the table.

So when Buzanval informed him early in October that the possession of
Sluys and other Flemish towns would not be sufficient for the king, but
that they must offer the sovereignty on even more favourable conditions
than had once been proposed to Henry III., the Advocate told him roundly
that my lords the States were not likely to give the provinces to any
man, but meant to maintain their freedom and their rights. The envoy
replied that his Majesty would be able to gain more favour perhaps with
the common people of the country.

When it is remembered that the States had offered the sovereignty of the
provinces to Henry III., abjectly and as it were without any conditions
at all, the effrontery of Henry IV. may be measured, who claimed the same
sovereignty, after twenty years of republican independence, upon even
more favourable terms than those which his predecessor had rejected.

Barneveld, in order to mitigate the effect of his plump refusal of the
royal overtures, explained to Buzanval, what Buzanval very well knew,
that the times had now changed; that in those days, immediately after the
death of William the Silent, despair and disorder had reigned in the
provinces, "while that dainty delicacy--liberty--had not so long been
sweetly tickling the appetites of the people; that the English had not
then acquired their present footing in the country, nor the house of
Nassau the age, the credit, and authority to which it had subsequently
attained."

He then intimated--and here began the deception, which certainly did not
deceive Buzanval--that if things were handled in the right way, there was
little doubt as to the king's reaching the end proposed, but that all
depended on good management. It was an error, he said, to suppose that in
one, two, or three months, eight provinces and their principal members,
to wit, forty good cities all enjoying liberty and equality, could be
induced to accept a foreign sovereign.

Such language was very like i