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On the contrary, the Queen accompanied the Duke, with a numerous and stately retinue, as far as Canterbury, and sent a most brilliant train of her greatest nobles and gentlemen to escort him to the Netherlands, communicating at the same time, by special letter, her wishes to the estates-general, that he should be treated with as much honor "as if he were her second self."
While these matters were in progress, an important movement was made by the estates-general. The Prince of Orange was formally and urgently invited to come to Brussels to aid them with his counsel and presence. The condemned traitor had not set foot in the capital for eleven years.
"He asks you to disarm," continued William of Orange; "he invites you to furnish hostages, but the time has been when the lord of the land came unarmed and uncovered, before the estates-general, and swore to support the constitutions before his own sovereignty could be recognized."
To these appeals, neither the Prince nor the authorities of Antwerp answered immediately in their own names. A general consultation was, however, immediately held with the estates-general, and an answer forthwith despatched to the Duke by the hands of his envoys.
In the missive issued for this purpose, he formally agreed to abolish the whole tax, on condition that the estates-general of the Netherlands would furnish him with a yearly supply of two millions of florins.
Subsequently there were held other conferences, between the Prince and Doctor Leoninus, with a similar result, all attempts proving fruitless to induce him to abandon his position upon the subject of religion, or to accept a pardon on any terms save the departure of the foreign troops, the assembling of the estates-general, and entire freedom of religion.
To these appeals, neither the Prince nor the authorities of Antwerp answered immediately in their own names. A general consultation was, however, immediately held with the estates-general, and an answer forthwith despatched to the Duke by the hands of his envoys.
To enunciate these demands categorically, a deputation of the estates-general came to Luxemburg. These gentlemen were received with courtesy by Don John, but their own demeanour was not conciliatory. A dislike to the Spanish government; a disloyalty to the monarch with whose brother and representative they were dealing, pierced through all their language.
Released many times only to fall into new excesses, Mirabeau found at last in the French Revolution an opportunity for expressing his sincere belief in constitutional government and an outlet for his almost superhuman energy. From the convocation of the Estates-General to his death in 1791, he was one of the most prominent men in France.
His eloquence and ability as spokesman for the clergy in the fatuous Estates-General of 1614 attracted the notice of Marie de' Medici, who invited him to court, gave him a seat in the royal council, and secured his nomination as a cardinal of the Roman Church. From 1624 until his death in 1642, Richelieu was the most important man in France.
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