-General of Holland. His policy for the time was destined to
be triumphant, his influence more extensive than ever. But the end of
these calumnies and anonymous charges was not yet.

Meantime the opposition to the truce was confined to the States of
Zeeland and two cities of Holland. Those cities were very important ones,
Amsterdam and Delft, but they were already wavering in their opposition.
Zeeland stoutly maintained that the treaty of Utrecht forbade a decision
of the question of peace and war except by a unanimous vote of the whole
confederacy. The other five provinces and the friends of the truce began
with great vehemence to declare that the question at issue was now
changed. It was no longer to be decided whether there should be truce or
war with Spain, but whether a single member of the confederacy could
dictate its law to the other six States. Zeeland, on her part, talked
loudly of seceding from the union, and setting up for an independent,
sovereign commonwealth. She would hardly have been a very powerful one,
with her half-dozen cities, one prelate, one nobleman, her hundred
thousand burghers at most, bustling and warlike as they were, and her few
thousand mariners, although the most terrible fighting men that had ever
sailed on blue water. She was destined ere long to abandon her doughty
resolution of leaving her sister provinces to their fate.

Maurice had not slackened in his opposition to the truce, despite the
renewed vigour with which Barneveld pressed the measure since his return
to the public councils. The prince was firmly convinced that the kings of
France and England would assist the republic in the war with Spain so
soon as it should be renewed. His policy had been therefore to force the
hand of those sovereigns, especially that of Henry, and to induce him to
send more stringent instructions to Jeannin than those with which he
believed him to be furnished. He had accordingly despatched a secret
emissary to the French king, supplied with confidential and explicit
instructions. This agent was a Captain Lambert. Whether it was "Pretty
Lambert," "Dandy Lambert"--the vice-admiral who had so much distinguished
himself at the great victory of Gibraltar--does not distinctly appear. If
it were so, that hard-hitting mariner would seem to have gone into action
with the French Government as energetically as he had done eighteen
months before, when, as master of the Tiger, he laid himself aboard the
Spanish a