As to the second point, he admitted that Anjou had gained little honor by his recent course; and that it would be a mistake on their part to stumble a second time over the same stone. He foresaw, nevertheless, that the Duke—irritated as he was by the loss of so many of his nobles, and by the downfall of all his hopes in the Netherlands—would be likely to inflict great injuries upon their cause. Two powerful nations like France and Spain would be too much to have on their hands at once. How much danger, too, would be incurred by braving at once the open wrath of the French King, and, the secret displeasure of the English Queen. She had warmly recommended the Duke of Anjou. She had said—that honors to him were rendered to herself; and she was now entirely opposed to their keeping the present quarrel alive. If France became their enemy, the road was at once opened through that kingdom for Spain. The estates were to ponder well whether they possessed the means to carry on such a double war without assistance. They were likewise to remember how many cities still remained in the hands of Anjou, and their possible fate if the Duke were pushed to extremity.
The third point was then handled with vigor. He reminded the states of the perpetual difficulty of raising armies, of collecting money to pay for troops, of inducing cities to accept proper garrisons, of establishing a council which could make itself respected. He alluded briefly and bitterly to the perpetual quarrels of the states among themselves; to their mutual jealousy; to their obstinate parsimony; to their jealousy of the general government; to their apathy and inertness before impending ruin. He would not calumniate those, he said, who counselled trust in God. That was his sentiment also: To attempt great affairs, however, and, through avarice, to-withhold sufficient means, was not trusting, but tempting God.—On the contrary, it was trusting God to use the means which He offered to their hands.
With regard, then, to the three points, he rejected the first. Reconciliation with the King of Spain was impossible. For his own part, he would much prefer the third course. He had always been in favor of their maintaining independence by their own means and the assistance of the Almighty. He was obliged, however, in sadness; to confess that the narrow feeling of individual state rights, the general tendency to disunion, and the constant wrangling, had made this course a hopeless one. There remained, therefore, only the second, and they must effect an honorable reconciliation with Anjou. Whatever might be their decision, however, it was meet that it should be a speedy one. Not an hour was to be lost. Many fair churches of God, in Anjou's power, were trembling on the issue, and religious and political liberty was more at stake than ever. In conclusion, the Prince again expressed his determination, whatever might be their decision, to devote the rest of his days to the services of his country.
The result of these representations by the Prince—of frequent letters from Queen Elizabeth, urging a reconciliation—and of the professions made by the Duke and the French envoys, was a provisional arrangement, signed on the 26th and 28th of March. According to the terms of this accord, the Duke was to receive thirty thousand florins for his troops, and to surrender the cities still in his power. The French prisoners were to be liberated, the Duke's property at Antwerp was to be restored, and the Duke himself was to await at Dunkirk the arrival of plenipotentiaries to treat with him as to a new and perpetual arrangement.
The negotiations, however, were languid. The quarrel was healed on the surface, but confidence so recently and violently uprooted was slow to revive. On the 28th of June, the Duke of Anjou left Dunkirk for Paris, never to return to the Netherlands, but he exchanged on his departure affectionate letters with the Prince and the estates. M. des Pruneaux remained as his representative, and it was understood that the arrangements for re-installing him as soon as possible in the sovereignty which he had so basely forfeited, were to be pushed forward with earnestness.
In the spring of the same year, Gerard Truchses, Archbishop of Cologne, who had lost his see for the love of Agnes Mansfeld, whom he had espoused in defiance of the Pope; took refuge with the Prince of Orange at Delft. A civil war in Germany broke forth, the Protestant princes undertaking to support the Archbishop, in opposition to Ernest of Bavaria, who had been appointed in his place. The Palatine, John Casimir, thought it necessary to mount and ride as usual. Making his appearance at the head of a hastily collected force, and prepared for another plunge into chaos, he suddenly heard, however, of his elder brother's death at Heidelberg. Leaving his men, as was his habit, to shift for themselves, and Baron Truchses, the Archbishop's brother, to fall into the hands of the enemy, he disappeared from the scene with great rapidity, in order that his own interests in the palatinate and in the guardianship of the young palatines might not suffer by his absence.
At this time, too, on the 12th of April, the Prince of Orange was married, for the fourth time, to Louisa, widow of the Seigneur de Teligny, and daughter of the illustrious Coligny.
In the course of the summer, the states of Holland and Zealand, always bitterly opposed to the connection with Anjou, and more than ever dissatisfied with the resumption of negotiations since the Antwerp catastrophe, sent a committee to the Prince in order to persuade him to set his face against the whole proceedings. They delivered at the same time a formal remonstrance, in writing (25th of August, 1583), in which they explained how odious the arrangement with the Duke had ever been to them. They expressed the opinion that even the wisest might be sometimes mistaken, and that the Prince had been bitterly deceived by Anjou and by the French court. They besought him to rely upon the assistance of the Almighty, and upon the exertions of the nation, and they again hinted at the propriety of his accepting that supreme sovereignty over all the united provinces which would be so gladly conferred, while, for their own parts, they voluntarily offered largely to increase the sums annually contributed to the common defence.
Very soon afterwards, in August, 1583, the states of the united provinces assembled at Middelburg formally offered the general government—which under the circumstances was the general sovereignty—to the Prince, warmly urging his acceptance of the dignity. He manifested, however, the same reluctance which he had always expressed, demanding that the project should beforehand be laid before the councils of all the large cities, and before the estates of certain provinces which had not been represented at the Middelburg diet. He also made use of the occasion to urge the necessity of providing more generously for the army expenses and other general disbursements. As to ambitious views, he was a stranger to them, and his language at this moment was as patriotic and self-denying as at any previous period. He expressed his thanks to the estates for this renewed proof of their confidence in his character, and this additional approbation of his course,—a sentiment which he was always ready "as a good patriot to justify by his most faithful service." He reminded them, however, that he was no great monarch, having in his own hands the means to help and the power to liberate them; and that even were he in possession of all which God had once given him, he should be far from strong enough to resist, single-handed, their powerful enemy. All that was left to him, he said, was an "honest and moderate experience in affairs." With this he was ever ready to serve them to the utmost; but they knew very well that the means to make that experience available were to be drawn from the country itself. With modest simplicity, he observed that he had been at work fifteen or sixteen years, doing his best, with the grace of God, to secure the freedom of the fatherland and to resist tyranny of conscience; that he alone—assisted by his brothers and some friends and relatives—had borne the whole burthen in the beginning, and that he had afterwards been helped by the states of Holland and Zealand, so that he could not but render thanks to God for His great mercy in thus granting His blessing to so humble an instrument, and thus restoring so many beautiful provinces to their ancient freedom and to the true religion. The Prince protested that this result was already a sufficient reward for his labors—a great consolation in his sufferings. He had hoped, he said, that the estates, "taking into consideration his long-continued labors, would have been willing to excuse him from a new load of cares, and would have granted him some little rest in his already advanced age;" that they would have selected "some other person more fitted for the labor, whom he would himself faithfully promise to assist to the best of his abilities, rendering him willing obedience proportionate to the authority conferred upon him."
Like all other attempts to induce the acceptance, by the Prince, of supreme authority, this effort proved ineffectual, from the obstinate unwillingness of his hand to receive the proffered sceptre.