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Updated: June 25, 2025
"Who would not confide," replied Neyen, "in the word of so exalted, so respectable a Beggar as you, O most excellent prince?" With these facetious words began the negotiations through which an earnest attempt was at last to be made for terminating a seemingly immortal war. The conversation, thus begun, rolled amicably and informally along.
Seven days passed, and then Neyen informed the States that he had at last received a power which he hoped would prove satisfactory.
Several days of private discussion ensued between Neyen and the leading personages of the republic. The emissary was looked upon with great distrust. All schemes of substantial negotiation were regarded by the public as visions, while the monk on his part felt the need of all his tact and temper to wind his way out of the labyrinth into which he felt that he had perhaps too heedlessly entered.
A week afterwards Cruwel came back with a paper in which Neyen declared himself authorized by the archdukes to treat with the States on the basis of their liberty and independence, and to ask what they would give in return for so great a concession as this renunciation of all right to "the so-called United Provinces." This being a step in advance, it was decided to permit the visit of Neyen.
Seven days passed, and then Neyen informed the States that he had at last received a power which he hoped would prove satisfactory.
Krauwels, a relative of Aerssens, through whom Father Neyen had first obtained access to the Greffier, had stated, so it seemed, that the monk had, in addition to the bill, handed to him another draft of Spinola's for 100,000 ducats, to be given to a person of more consideration than Aerssens. Krauwels did not know who the person was, nor whether he took the money.
A few days passed, and Neyen was again summoned before the assembly. Barneveld now informed him that the Dutch fleet would be recalled from the coast of Spain so soon as the consent of his Catholic Majesty to the negotiations arrived, but that it would be necessary to confine the cessation of naval warfare within certain local limits.
John Neyen, father commissary of the Franciscans, who had thus invited himself to the momentous conference, was a very smooth Flemish friar, who seemed admirably adapted, for various reasons, to glide into the rebel country and into the hearts of the rebels.
What did all this mean, it was demanded, this producing one set of propositions after another? Why did the archdukes not declare their intentions openly and at once? Let the States depart each to the several provinces, and let John Neyen be instantly sent out of the country. Was it thought to bait a trap for the ingenuous Netherlanders, and catch them little by little, like so many wild animals?
Neyen was then asked if he had anything to say in public. He replied in the negative, adding only a few vague commonplaces about the effusion of blood and the desire of the archdukes for the good of mankind. He was then dismissed. A few days afterwards a committee of five from the States-General, of which Barneveld was chairman, conferred with Neyen.
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