be difficult of
attainment. It had now been proved impossible. A truce he honestly
considered a pitfall of destruction, and he denounced it, as we have
seen, in the language of energetic conviction. He never alluded to his
pecuniary losses in case peace should be made. His disinterested
patriotism was the frequent subject of comment in the most secret letters
of the French ambassadors to the king. He had repeatedly refused enormous
offers if he would forsake the cause of the republic. The King of France
was ever ready to tempt him with bribes, such as had proved most
efficacious with men as highly born and as highly placed as a cadet of
the house of Orange-Nassau. But there is no record that Jeannin assailed
him at this crisis with such temptations, although it has not been
pretended that the prince was obdurate to the influence of Mammon when
that deity could be openly approached.

That Maurice loved power, pelf, and war, can hardly be denied. That he
had a mounting ambition; that he thought a monarchy founded upon the
historical institutions and charters of the provinces might be better
than the burgher-aristocracy which, under the lead of Barneveld, was
establishing itself in the country; that he knew no candidate so eligible
for such a throne as his father's son, all this is highly probable and
scarcely surprising. But that such sentiments or aspirations caused him
to swerve the ninth part of a hair from what he considered the direct
path of duty; that he determined to fight out the great fight with Spain
and Rome until the States were free in form, in name, and in fact; only
that he might then usurp a sovereignty which would otherwise revert to
Philip of Spain or be snatched by Henry of Navarre--of all this there is
no proof whatever.

The language of Lewis William to the provinces under his government was
quite as vigorous as the appeals of Maurice.

During the brief interval remaining before the commissioners should
comply with the demands of the States or take their departure, the press
throughout the Netherlands was most active. Pamphlets fell thick as hail.
The peace party and the war party contended with each other, over all the
territory of the provinces, as vigorously as the troops of Fuentes or
Bucquoy had ever battled with the columns of Bax and Meetkerke. The types
of Blaauw and Plantin were as effective during the brief armistice, as
pike and arquebus in the field, but unfortunately they were used by