United States or Ethiopia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"You will find a passion among the advisers of the Queen," said Villeroy to Aerssens and van der Myle, "to move in diametrical opposition to the plans of the late king." And well might the ancient Leaguer and present pensionary of Spain reveal this foremost fact in a policy of which he was in secret the soul.
Consummate master of affairs, of which he had a long experience, he was the soul of the league with Prince Eugene and the Duke of Marlborough; but the pensionary was not accused either of being so much in love with the importance given him by continuance of the war as to desire its prolongation or of any personally interested view.
Pensionary Hoogerbeets was made prisoner in precisely the same manner. Thus the three statesmen culprits as they were considered by their enemies were secured without noise or disturbance, each without knowing the fate that had befallen the other. Nothing could have been more neatly done.
He furthermore had accompanied the pensionary to the cathedral, in order to persuade Herman Modet that it would be better for him likewise to defer his intended ministrations.
The source whence the Dutch mainly drew their officers does not certainly appear; for while the English naval historian in 1666 says that most of the captains of their fleet were sons of rich burgomasters, placed there for political reasons by the Grand Pensionary, and without experience, Duquesne, the ablest French admiral of the day, comments in 1676 on the precision and skill of the Dutch captains in terms very disparaging to his own.
Some pretended that the whole was paid down beforehand, being advanced by a society of merchants at Amsterdam, the friends or relatives of the grand pensionary; others, that it is to be paid by annual instalments of two millions of livres for a certain number of years.
He was tumultuously proclaimed stadtholder. De Witt and his brother Cornelis, the conscientious but too obstinate opponents of this measure of salvation, fell victims to the popular frenzy. The latter, condemned to banishment on an atrocious charge of intended assassination against the Prince of Orange, was visited in his prison at The Hague by the grand pensionary.
The Lord Raby, now Earl of Stafford, was directed to tell the Pensionary, that Her Majesty being resolved, in making peace as in making war, to act in perfect concert with the States, would not lose a moment in transmitting to him a paper of this importance: that the Queen earnestly desired, that the secret might be kept among as few as possible; and that she hoped the Pensionary would advise upon this occasion with no person whatsoever, except such, as by the constitution of that government, are unavoidably necessary: that the terms of the several propositions were indeed too general; but, however, they contained an offer to treat: and that, although there appeared an air of complaisance to England through the whole paper, and the contrary to Holland, yet this could have no ill consequences, as long as the Queen and the States took care to understand each other, and to act with as little reserve as became two powers, so nearly allied in interest; which rule, on the part of Britain, should be inviolably observed.
There is time enough for everything, in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once; but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time. The Pensionary de Witt, who was torn to pieces in the year 1672, did the whole business of the Republic, and yet had time left to go to assemblies in the evening, and sup in company.
This paper had received the approbation of the Pensionary Van Berkel, and of the city of Amsterdam, but not of the States General. Mr. Henry Laurens, late president of congress, was deputed to the States General with this plan of a treaty, for the double purpose of endeavouring to complete it, and of negotiating a loan for the use of his government.
Word Of The Day