On the 31st October, accordingly, the States-General agreed to go into
the league with England and France; "in order to resist the enterprises
and ambitious designs of the King of Spain against all the princes and
potentates of Christendom." As the queen had engaged--according to the
public treaty or decoy--to furnish four thousand infantry to the league,
the States now agreed to raise and pay for another four thousand to be
maintained in the king's service at a cost of four hundred and fifty
thousand florins annually, to be paid by the month. The king promised,
in case the Netherlands should be invaded by the enemy with the greater
part of his force, that these four thousand soldiers should return to the
Netherlands. The king further bound himself to carry on a sharp
offensive war in Artois and Hainault.

The States-General would have liked a condition inserted in the treaty
that no peace should be made with Spain by England or France without the
consent of the provinces; but this was peremptorily refused.

Perhaps the republic had no special reason to be grateful for the
grudging and almost contemptuous manner in which it had thus been
virtually admitted into the community of sovereigns; but the men who
directed its affairs were far too enlightened not to see how great a step
was taken when their political position, now conceded to them, had been
secured. In good faith they intended to carry out the provisions of the
new treaty, and they immediately turned their attention to the vital
matters of making new levies and of imposing new taxes, by means of which
they might render themselves useful to their new allies.

Meantime Ancel was deputed by Henry to visit the various courts of
Germany and the north in order to obtain, if possible, new members for
the league? But Germany was difficult to rouse. The dissensions among