The conference with the English commissioners had been opened again after supper and continued till long past midnight.
M. Van Beuningen had talked on the folly of the Anglo-French Alliance, adorning his speech with scriptural quotations, illustrations drawn from his vast learning, and a copiousness of logic, until Arlington had grown restive and Buckingham blasphemous.
But his arguments were not without effect. The Duke, who had drunk heavily, swore at last he was in the right, and had almost offered to sign a treaty with the States when my lord Arlington, who was a moderate man at table, restrained him.
M. Beverningh, who had taken at least enough wine for volubility, declaimed loudly against the injustice of the demands made by Charles and Louis. Buckingham became noisy, offending the Prince with his swearing and profanity, and refused to abate his terms, repeating that France should not have everything and England nothing.
Arlington, grave, good-natured, but weak and unscrupulous, was more reasonable. He promised, though not very confidently, to endeavour to moderate Louis’ preposterous demands; he insisted, however, on the cautionary towns, as he termed them, for Charles.
On this point the Dutch deputies were firm: they would not place an inch of their territory in the hands of France or England, beyond the border towns, such as Maestricht, with which William had already asked the Allies to content themselves.
Buckingham, speaking violently, argued that it was absurd to offer a king a few towns in exchange for three provinces he had already conquered, and three more that he was prepared to conquer; and hinted that the Dutch were in no condition to argue about terms at all, but must take thankfully what was given them—and this in face of it that a while before he had been offering to sign an alliance with them.
So, veering and unstable, he embarrassed the discussion with constant changes of opinion and capricious arguments based upon neither justice nor reason.
For his part, the Prince appealed to England’s ancient friendship, to the principles of the Triple Alliance, to his uncle’s protestations, to the unwisdom of allowing the French to upset the balance of power in Europe, and to the one religion common to England and the United Provinces, threatened by the encroachments of Louis.