But besides mutiny and assassination there were also some feeble attempts
at negotiation to characterize the Ernestian epoch at Brussels. The
subject hardly needs more than a passing allusion.

Two Flemish juris-consults, Otto Hertius and Jerome Comans, offered their
services to the archduke in the peacemaking department. Ernest accepted
the proposition,--although it was strongly opposed by Fuentes, who relied
upon the more practical agency of Dr. Lopez, Andrada, Renichon, and the
rest--and the peace-makers accordingly made their appearance at the
Hague, under safe conduct, and provided with very conciliatory letters
from his Highness to the States-General. In all ages and under all
circumstances it is safe to enlarge, with whatever eloquence may be at
command, upon the blessings of peace and upon the horrors of war; for
the appeal is not difficult to make, and a response is certain in almost
every human breast. But it is another matter to descend from the general
to the particular, and to demonstrate how the desirable may be attained
and the horrible averted. The letters of Ernest were full of benignity
and affection, breathing a most ardent desire that the miserable war, now
a quarter of a century old, should be then and there terminated. But not
one atom of concession was offered, no whisper breathed that the
republic, if it should choose to lay down its victorious arms, and
renounce its dearly gained independence, should share any different fate
from that under which it saw the obedient provinces gasping before its
eyes. To renounce religious and political liberty and self-government,
and to submit unconditionally to the authority of Philip II. as
administered by Ernest and Fuentes, was hardly to be expected as the
result of the three years' campaigns of Maurice of Nassau.

The two doctors of law laid the affectionate common-places of the