ile acting only in the name of a slender confederacy, was in
truth, so long as he held his place, the prime minister of European
Protestantism. There was none other to rival him, few to comprehend him,
fewer still to sustain him. As Prince Maurice was at that moment the
great soldier of Protestantism without clearly scanning the grandeur of
the field in which he was a chief actor, or foreseeing the vastness of
its future, so the Advocate was its statesman and its prophet. Could the
two have worked together as harmoniously as they had done at an earlier
day, it would have been a blessing for the common weal of Europe. But,
alas! the evil genius of jealousy, which so often forbids cordial
relations between soldier and statesman, already stood shrouded in the
distance, darkly menacing the strenuous patriot, who was wearing his life
out in exertions for what he deemed the true cause of progress and
humanity.

Nor can the fate of the man himself, his genuine character, and the
extraordinary personal events towards which he was slowly advancing, be
accurately unfolded without an attempt by means of his letters to lay
bare his inmost thoughts. Especially it will be seen at a later moment
how much value was attached to this secret correspondence with the
ambassadors in London and Paris.

The Advocate trusted to the support of France, Papal and Medicean as the
court of the young king was, because the Protestant party throughout the
kingdom was too powerful, warlike, and numerous to be trifled with, and
because geographical considerations alone rendered a cordial alliance
between Spain and France very difficult. Notwithstanding the Spanish
marriages, which he opposed so long as opposition was possible, he knew
that so long as a statesman remained in the kingdom, or a bone for one
existed, the international policy of Henry, of Sully, and of Jeannin
could not be wholly abandoned.

He relied much on Villeroy, a political hack certainly, an ancient
Leaguer, and a Papist, but a man too cool, experienced, and wily to be
ignorant of the very hornbook of diplomacy, or open to the shallow
stratagems by which Spain found it so easy to purchase or to deceive. So
long as he had a voice in the council, it was certain that the Netherland
alliance would not be abandoned, nor the Duke of Savoy crushed. The old
secretary of state was not especially in favour at that moment, but
Barneveld could not doubt his permanent place in French affairs unt