The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland, 1613-15 | Page 2

were on the point of making war upon the Queen-Regent. He
made a boast to the Secretary of State Villeroy that he had unravelled
all his secret plots against the Netherlands. He declared it to be
understood in France, since the King's death, by the dominant and
Jesuitical party that the crown depended temporally as well as
spiritually on the good pleasure of the Pope.
No doubt he was perfectly right in many of his opinions. No ruler or
statesman in France worthy of the name would hesitate, in the
impending religious conflict throughout Europe and especially in
Germany, to maintain for the kingdom that all controlling position
which was its splendid privilege. But to preach this to Mary de' Medici
was waste of breath. She was governed by the Concini's, and the
Concini's were governed by Spain. The woman who was believed to
have known beforehand of the plot to murder her great husband, who
had driven the one powerful statesman on whom the King relied,
Maximilian de Bethune, into retirement, and whose foreign affairs were
now completely in the hands of the ancient Leaguer Villeroy--who had
served every government in the kingdom for forty years--was not likely
to be accessible to high views of public policy.
Two years had now elapsed since the first private complaints against
the Ambassador, and the French government were becoming impatient
at his presence. Aerssens had been supported by Prince Maurice, to
whom he had long paid his court. He was likewise loyally protected by
Barneveld, whom he publicly flattered and secretly maligned. But it
was now necessary that he should be gone if peaceful relations with
France were to be preserved.
After all, the Ambassador had not made a bad business of his embassy
from his own point of view. A stranger in the Republic, for his father
the Greffier was a refugee from Brabant, he had achieved through his
own industry and remarkable talents, sustained by the favour of
Barneveld-- to whom he owed all his diplomatic appointments--an
eminent position in Europe. Secretary to the legation to France in 1594,
he had been successively advanced to the post of resident agent, and
when the Republic had been acknowledged by the great powers, to that
of ambassador. The highest possible functions that representatives of
emperors and kings could enjoy had been formally recognized in the
person of the minister of a new-born republic. And this was at a

moment when, with exception of the brave but insignificant cantons of
Switzerland, the Republic had long been an obsolete idea.
In a pecuniary point of view, too, he had not fared badly during his
twenty years of diplomatic office. He had made much money in various
ways. The King not long before his death sent him one day 20,000
florins as a present, with a promise soon to do much more for him.
Having been placed in so eminent a post, he considered it as due to
himself to derive all possible advantage from it. "Those who serve at
the altar," he said a little while after his return, "must learn to live by it.
I served their High Mightinesses at the court of a great king, and his
Majesty's liberal and gracious favours were showered upon me. My
upright conscience and steady obsequiousness greatly aided me. I did
not look upon opportunity with folded arms, but seized it and made my
profit by it. Had I not met with such fortunate accidents, my office
would not have given me dry bread."
Nothing could exceed the frankness and indeed the cynicism with
which the Ambassador avowed his practice of converting his high and
sacred office into merchandise. And these statements of his should be
scanned closely, because at this very moment a cry was distantly rising,
which at a later day was to swell into a roar, that the great Advocate
had been bribed and pensioned. Nothing had occurred to justify such
charges, save that at the period of the truce he had accepted from the
King of France a fee of 20,000 florins for extra official and legal
services rendered him a dozen years before, and had permitted his
younger son to hold the office of gentleman-in-waiting at the French
court with the usual salary attached to it. The post, certainly not
dishonourable in itself, had been intended by the King as a kindly
compliment to the leading statesman of his great and good ally the
Republic. It would be difficult to say why such a favour conferred on
the young man should be held more discreditable to the receiver than
the Order of the Garter recently bestowed upon the great soldier of the
Republic by another friendly sovereign. It is instructive however to
note the language in which Francis Aerssens spoke of favours