History of the United Netherlands, 1590-99 — Complete

by John Lothrop Motley

Surely these remarks of the Advocate should have seemed entirely unanswerable. Surely there was no politician in Europe so ignorant as not to know that any treaty of peace between Philip and the States meant their unconditional subjugation and the complete abolition of the Protestant religion. Least of all did the Queen of England require information on this great matter of state. It was cruel trifling therefore, it was inhuman insolence on her part, to suggest anything like a return of the States to the dominion of Spain.

But her desire for peace and her determination to get back her money overpowered at that time all other considerations.

The States wished to govern themselves, she said; why then could they not make arrangements against all dangers, and why could they not lay down conditions under which the king would not really be their master; especially if France and England should guarantee them against any infraction of their rights. By the living God! by the living God! by the living God! she swore over and over again as her anger rose, she would never more have anything to do with such people; and she deeply regretted having thrown away her money and the lives of her subjects in so stupid a manner.

Again the grave and experienced envoy of the republic strove with calm and earnest words to stay the torrent of her wrath; representing that her money and her pains had by no means been wasted, that the enemy had been brought to shame and his finances to confusion; and urging her, without paying any heed to the course pursued by the King of France, to allow the republic to make levies of troops, at its own expense, within her kingdom.

But her Majesty was obdurate. "How am I to defend myself?" she cried; "how are the affairs of Ireland to be provided for? how am I ever to get back my money? who is to pay the garrisons of Brill and Flushing?" And with this she left the apartment, saying that her counsellors would confer with the envoys.'

From the beginning to the end of the interview the queen was in a very evil temper, and took no pains to conceal her dissatisfaction with all the world.

Now there is no doubt whatever that the subsidies furnished by England to the common cause were very considerable, amounting in fourteen years, according to the queen's calculation, to nearly fourteen hundred thousand pounds sterling. But in her interviews with the republican statesmen she was too prone to forget that it was a common cause, to forget that the man who had over and over again attempted her assassination, who had repeatedly attempted the invasion of her realms with the whole strength of the most powerful military organization in the world, whose dearest wish on earth was still to accomplish her dethronement and murder, to extirpate from England the religion professed by the majority of living Englishmen, and to place upon her vacant throne a Spanish, German, or Italian prince, was as much her enemy as he was the foe of his ancient subjects in the Netherlands. At that very epoch Philip was occupied in reminding the pope that the two had always agreed as to the justice of the claims of the Infanta Isabella to the English crown, and calling on his Holiness to sustain those pretensions, now that she had been obliged, in consequence of the treaty with the Prince of Bearne, to renounce her right to reign over France.

Certainly it was fair enough for the queen and her, counsellors to stand out for an equitable arrangement of the debt; but there was much to dispute in the figures. When was ever an account of fifteen years' standing adjusted, whether between nations or individuals, without much wrangling? Meantime her Majesty held excellent security in two thriving and most important Netherland cities. But had the States consented to re-establish the Spanish authority over the whole of their little Protestant republic, was there an English child so ignorant of arithmetic or of history as not to see how vast would be the peril, and how incalculable the expense, thus caused to England?

Yet besides the Cecils and the lord high admiral, other less influential counsellors of the crown—even the upright and accomplished Buckhurst, who had so often proved his friendship for the States—were in favour of negotiation. There were many conferences with meagre results. The Englishmen urged that the time had come for the States to repay the queen's advances, to relieve her from future subsidies, to assume the payment of the garrisons in the cautionary towns, and to furnish a force in defence of England when attacked. Such was the condition of the kingdom, they said—being, as it was, entirely without fortified cities—that a single battle would imperil the whole realm, so that it was necessary to keep the enemy out of it altogether.

These arguments were not unreasonable, but the inference was surely illogical. The special envoys from the republic had not been instructed to treat about the debt. This had been the subject of perpetual negotiation. It was discussed almost every day by the queen's commissioners at the Hague and by the States' resident minister at London. Olden-Barneveld and the admiral had been sent forth by the Staten in what in those days was considered great haste to prevent a conclusion of a treaty between their two allies and the common enemy. They had been too late in France, and now, on arriving in England, they found that government steadily drifting towards what seemed the hopeless shipwreck of a general peace.