ted. It had been
necessary for the Republic to accept a twelve years' truce with Spain in
default of a peace, while the death of John of Cleve, and subsequently of
Henry IV., had made the acquisition of a permanent pacification between
Catholicism and Protestantism, between the League and the Union, more
difficult than ever. The so-called Thirty Years' War--rather to be called
the concluding portion of the Eighty Years' War--had opened in the
debateable duchies exactly at the moment when its forerunner, the forty
years' war of the Netherlands, had been temporarily and nominally
suspended. Barneveld was perpetually baffled in his efforts to obtain a
favourable peace for Protestant Europe, less by the open diplomacy and
military force of the avowed enemies of Protestantism than by the secret
intrigues and faintheartedness of its nominal friends. He was unwearied
in his efforts simultaneously to arouse the courts of England and France
to the danger to Europe from the overshadowing power of the House of
Austria and the League, and he had less difficulty in dealing with the
Catholic Lewis and his mother than with Protestant James. At the present
moment his great designs were not yet openly traversed by a strong
Protestant party within the very republic which he administered.

"Look to it with earnestness and grave deliberation," he said to
Langerac, "that they do not pursue us there with vain importunity to
accept something so notoriously inadmissible and detrimental to the
common weal. We know that from the enemy's side every kind of unseemly
trick is employed, with the single object of bringing about
misunderstanding between us and the King of France. A prompt and vigorous
resolution on the part of his Majesty, to see the treaty which we made
duly executed, would be to help the cause. Otherwise, not. We cannot here
believe that his Majesty, in this first year of his majority, will submit
to such a notorious and flagrant affront, or that he will tolerate the
oppression of the Duke of Savoy. Such an affair in the beginning of his
Majesty's reign cannot but have very great and prejudicial consequences,
nor can it be left to linger on in uncertainty and delay. Let him be
prompt in this. Let him also take a most Christian--kingly, vigorous
resolution against the great affront put upon him in the failure to carry
out the treaty. Such a resolve on the part of the two kings would restore
all things to tranquillity and bring the Spa