which should be hopeless. Yet at that
moment, so pregnant with a monstrous future, there was hardly a sound
Protestant policy anywhere but in Holland. How long would that policy
remain sound and united? How long would the Republic speak through the
imperial voice of Barneveld? Time was to show and to teach many lessons.
The united princes of Germany were walking, talking, quarrelling in their
sleep; England and France distracted and bedrugged, while Maximilian of
Bavaria and Ferdinand of Gratz, the cabinets of Madrid and the Vatican,
were moving forward to their aims slowly, steadily, relentlessly as Fate.
And Spain was more powerful than she had been since the Truce began. In
five years she had become much more capable of aggression. She had
strengthened her positions in the Mediterranean by the acquisition and
enlargement of considerable fortresses in Barbary and along a large sweep
of the African coast, so as to be almost supreme in Africa. It was
necessary for the States, the only power save Turkey that could face her
in those waters, to maintain a perpetual squadron of war ships there to
defend their commerce against attack from the Spaniard and from the
corsairs, both Mahometan and Christian, who infested every sea. Spain was
redoubtable everywhere, and the Turk, engaged in Persian campaigns, was
offering no diversion against Hungary and Vienna.

"Reasons of state worthy of his Majesty's consideration and wisdom," said
Barneveld, "forbid the King of Great Britain from permitting the Spaniard
to give the law in Italy. He is about to extort obedience and humiliation
from the Duke of Savoy, or else with 40,000 men to mortify and ruin him,
while entirely assuring himself of France by the double marriages. Then
comes the attack on these Provinces, on Protestant Germany, and all other
states and realms of the religion."

With the turn of the year, affairs were growing darker and darker. The
League was rolling up its forces in all directions; its chiefs proposed
absurd conditions of pacification, while war was already raging, and yet
scarcely any government but that of the Netherlands paid heed to the
rising storm. James, fatuous as ever, listened to Gondemar, and wrote
admonitory letters to the Archduke. It was still gravely proposed by the
Catholic party that there should be mutual disbanding in the duchies,
with a guarantee from Marquis Spinola that there should be no more
invasion of those territories. But powers and