r his
conversion, but did not intend him to be anything but a man of straw in
the territories which he claimed by sovereign right. They were to form a
permanent bulwark to the Empire, to Spain, and to Catholicism.

Barneveld of course could never see the secret letters passing between
Brussels and Madrid, but his insight into the purposes of the enemy was
almost as acute as if the correspondence of Philip and Albert had been in
the pigeonholes of his writing-desk in the Kneuterdyk.

The whole object of Spain and the Emperor, acting through the Archduke,
was to force the States to abandon their positions in the duchies
simultaneously with the withdrawal of the Spanish troops, and to be
satisfied with a bare convention between themselves and Archduke Albert
that there should be no renewed occupation by either party. Barneveld,
finding it impossible to get Spain upon the treaty, was resolved that at
least the two mediating powers, their great allies, the sovereigns of
Great Britain and France, should guarantee the convention, and that the
promises of the Archduke should be made to them. This was steadily
refused by Spain; for the Archduke never moved an inch in the matter
except according to the orders of Spain, and besides battling and
buffeting with the Archduke, Barneveld was constantly deafened with the
clamour of the English king, who always declared Spain to be in the right
whatever she did, and forced to endure with what patience he might the
goading of that King's envoy. France, on the other hand, supported the
States as firmly as could have been reasonably expected.

"We proposed," said the Archduke, instructing an envoy whom he was
sending to Madrid with detailed accounts of these negotiations, "that the
promise should be made to each other as usual in treaties. But the
Hollanders said the promise should be made to the Kings of France and
England, at which the Emperor would have been deeply offended, as if in
the affair he was of no account at all. At any moment by this arrangement
in concert with France and England the Hollanders might walk in and do
what they liked."

Certainly there could have been no succincter eulogy of the policy
steadily recommended, as we shall have occasion to see, by Barneveld. Had
he on this critical occasion been backed by England and France combined,
Spain would have been forced to beat a retreat, and Protestantism in the
great general war just beginning would have had an enormous