The French ambassadors were instructed to intercede to the last, but they were steadily repulsed—while the King of Great Britain, anxious to gain favour with Spain by aiding in the ruin of one whom he knew and Spain knew to be her determined foe, did all he could through his ambassador to frustrate their efforts and bring on a catastrophe. The States-General and Maurice were now on as confidential terms with Carleton as they were cold and repellent to Boississe and du Maurier.
"To recall to them the benefits of the King," said du Maurier, "is to beat the air. And then Aerssens bewitches them, and they imagine that after having played runaway horses his Majesty will be only too happy to receive them back, caress them, and, in order to have their friendship, approve everything they have been doing right or wrong."
Aerssens had it all his own way, and the States-General had just paid him 12,000 francs in cash on the ground that Langerac's salary was larger than his had been when at the head of the same embassy many years before.
His elevation into the body of nobles, which Maurice had just stocked with five other of his partisans, was accounted an additional affront to France, while on the other hand the Queen-Mother, having through Epernon's assistance made her escape from Blois, where she had been kept in durance since the death of Concini, now enumerated among other grievances for which she was willing to take up arms against her son that the King's government had favoured Barneveld.
It was strange that all the devotees of Spain—Mary de' Medici, and Epernon, as well as James I. and his courtiers—should be thus embittered against the man who had sold the Netherlands to Spain.
At last the Prince told the French ambassadors that the "people of the Provinces considered their persistent intercessions an invasion of their sovereignty." Few would have anything to say to them. "No one listens to us, no one replies to us," said du Maurier, "everyone visiting us is observed, and it is conceived a reproach here to speak to the ambassadors of France."
Certainly the days were changed since Henry IV. leaned on the arm of Barneveld, and consulted with him, and with him only, among all the statesmen of Europe on his great schemes for regenerating Christendom and averting that general war which, now that the great king had been murdered and the Advocate imprisoned, had already begun to ravage Europe.
Van der Myle had gone to Paris to make such exertions as he could among the leading members of the council in favour of his father-in-law. Langerac, the States' ambassador there, who but yesterday had been turning at every moment to the Advocate for light and warmth as to the sun, now hastened to disavow all respect or regard for him. He scoffed at the slender sympathy van der Myle was finding in the bleak political atmosphere. He had done his best to find out what he had been negotiating with the members of the council and was glad to say that it was so inconsiderable as to be not worth reporting. He had not spoken with or seen the King. Jeannin, his own and his father-in-law's principal and most confidential friend, had only spoken with him half an hour and then departed for Burgundy, although promising to confer with him sympathetically on his return. "I am very displeased at his coming here," said Langerac, ". . . . but he has found little friendship or confidence, and is full of woe and apprehension."
The Ambassador's labours were now confined to personally soliciting the King's permission for deputations from the Reformed churches of France to go to the Synod, now opened (13th November) at Dordtrecht, and to clearing his own skirts with the Prince and States-General of any suspicion of sympathy with Barneveld.
In the first object he was unsuccessful, the King telling him at last "with clear and significant words that this was impossible, on account of his conscience, his respect for the Catholic religion, and many other reasons."