History of the United Netherlands, 1608b | Page 6

But nothing ever

appeared in public or in private, which threw a reasonable suspicion
upon his lofty patriotism. Peace he had always believed to 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 Netherlanders against each other. As a matter of course, each
party impeached the motives as well as the actions of its antagonist.
The adherents of the Advocate accused the stadholder of desiring the
continuance of the war for personal aims. They averred that six
thousand men for guarding the rivers would be necessary, in addition to
the forty-five thousand men, now kept constantly on foot. They placed
the requisite monthly expenses, if hostilities were resumed, at 800,000
florins, while they pointed to the 27,000,000 of debt over and above the
8,000,000 due to the British crown, as a burthen under which the
republic could scarcely stagger much longer. Such figures seem modest
enough, as the price of a war of independence.
Familiar with the gigantic budgets of our own day, we listen with
something like wonder, now that two centuries and a half have passed,
to the fierce denunciations by the war party of these figures as wilful
fictions. Science has made in that interval such gigantic strides. The
awful intellect of man may at last make war impossible for his physical
strength. He can forge but cannot wield the hammer of Thor; nor has
Science yet discovered the philosopher's stone. Without it, what
exchequer can accept chronic warfare and escape bankruptcy? After
what has been witnessed in these latest days, the sieges and battles of
that distant epoch seem like the fights of pigmies and cranes. Already
an eighty years' war, such as once was waged, has become
inconceivable. Let two more centuries pass away, and perhaps a three
weeks' campaign may exhaust an empire.
Meantime the war of words continued. A proclamation with penalties
was issued by the States against the epidemic plague of pamphlets or
"blue- books," as those publications were called in Holland, but with
little result. It was not deemed consistent with liberty by those
republicans to put chains on the press because its utterances might
occasionally be distasteful to magistrates. The writers, printers, and
sellers of the "blue-books" remained unpunished and snapped their
fingers at the placard.
We have seen the strenuous exertions of the Nassaus and their