peace. One would have thought that
there had never been negotiations in Bourbourg, that the Spanish Armada
had never sailed from Coruna.

"You are wise and prudent in France," said the Advocate, "but we are used
to Spanish proceedings, and from much disaster sustained are filled with
distrust. The King of England seems now to wish that the Archduke should
draw up a document according to his good pleasure, and that the States
should make an explanatory deed, which the King should sign also and ask
the King of France to do the same. But this is very hazardous.

"We do not mean to receive laws from the King of Spain, nor the Archduke
. . . . The Spanish proceedings do not indicate peace but war. One must
not take it ill of us that we think these matters of grave importance to
our friends and ourselves. Affairs have changed very much in the last
four months. The murder of the first vizier of the Turkish emperor and
his designs against Persia leave the Spanish king and the Emperor free
from attack in that quarter, and their armaments are far greater than
last year . . . . I cannot understand why the treaty of Xanten, formerly
so highly applauded, should now be so much disapproved. . . . The King of
Spain and the Emperor with their party have a vast design to give the law
to all Christendom, to choose a Roman king according to their will, to
reduce the Evangelical electors, princes, and estates of Germany to
obedience, to subject all Italy, and, having accomplished this, to
proceed to triumph over us and our allies, and by necessary consequence
over France and England. They say they have established the Emperor's
authority by means of Aachen and Mulheim, will soon have driven us out of
Julich, and have thus arranged matters entirely to their heart's content.
They can then, in name of the Emperor, the League, the Prince of Neuburg,
or any one else, make themselves in eight days masters of the places
which they are now imaginarily to leave as well as of those which we are
actually to surrender, and by possession of which we could hold out a
long time against all their power."

Those very places held by the States--Julich, Emmerich, and others--had
recently been fortified at much expense, under the superintendence of
Prince Maurice, and by advice of the Advocate. It would certainly be an
act of madness to surrender them on the terms proposed. These warnings
and forebodings of Barneveld sound in our ears like recorded history,