and the Union, more difficult than ever. The so-called Thirty Years'
War--rather to be called the concluding portion of the Eighty Years' War
--had opened in the debateable duchies exactly at the moment when its
forerunner, the forty years' war of the Netherlands, had been temporarily
and nominally suspended. Barneveld was perpetually baffled in his
efforts to obtain a favourable peace for Protestant Europe, less by the
open diplomacy and military force of the avowed enemies of Protestantism
than by the secret intrigues and faintheartedness of its nominal friends.
He was unwearied in his efforts simultaneously to arouse the courts of
England and France to the danger to Europe from the overshadowing power
of the House of Austria and the League, and he had less difficulty in
dealing with the Catholic Lewis and his mother than with Protestant
James. At the present moment his great designs were not yet openly
traversed by a strong Protestant party within the very republic which he
administered.

"Look to it with earnestness and grave deliberation," he said to
Langerac, "that they do not pursue us there with vain importunity to
accept something so notoriously inadmissible and detrimental to the
common weal. We know that from the enemy's side every kind of
unseemly trick is employed, with the single object of bringing about
misunderstanding between us and the King of France. A prompt and
vigorous resolution on the part of his Majesty, to see the treaty which
we made duly executed, would be to help the cause. Otherwise, not. We
cannot here believe that his Majesty, in this first year of his majority,
will submit to such a notorious and flagrant affront, or that he will
tolerate the oppression of the Duke of Savoy. Such an affair in the
beginning of his Majesty's reign cannot but have very great and
prejudicial consequences, nor can it be left to linger on in uncertainty
and delay. Let him be prompt in this. Let him also take a most