Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 4, 2025
The early operations of the Duke of Savoy were at first intended to deceive the enemy. The army, after advancing as far into Picardy as the town of Vervins, which they burned and pillaged, made a demonstration with their whole force upon the city of Guise.
To the treaty of Vervins between France and Spain in 1598 had been added a secret restrictive article whereby it was agreed that the peace should not hold good south of the Tropic of Cancer and west of the meridian of the Azores. The ministers of Henry IV. communicated this restriction verbally to the merchants of the ports, and soon private men-of-war from Dieppe, Havre and St.
Certainly no more profitable peace than this could have been made by the French king under such circumstances, and Philip at the last moment had consented to pay a heavy price for bringing discord between the three friends. The treaty was signed at Vervins on the 2nd May, and contained thirty-five articles. Its basis was that of the treaty of Cateau Cambresis of 1559.
France and Spain had made peace with each other at Vervins five years before, and had been at war ever since. Nothing could be plainer nor more cynical than the language exchanged between the French monarch and the representative of Spain.
As for Barneveld, he avowed long years afterwards that he had accepted the twenty thousand florins, and that the king had expressly exacted secrecy in regard to the transaction. He declared however that the money was a reward for public services rendered by him to the French Government ten years before, in the course of his mission to France at the time of the peace of Vervins.
In this war, Henry was the victor; and the Peace of Vervins restored the Spanish conquests, and the conquests made by Savoy, to France . The idea of Henry's foreign policy, which was that of weakening the power of Spain and of the house of Hapsburg, was afterwards taken up by a powerful statesman, Richelieu, and fully realized.
In consequence of the complaint Vervins made, the Abbe escaped abroad, whence he never returned, and soon after, his crime being proved, was condemned to be broken alive on the wheel. Vervins had long been menaced with an attack by the Abbe. Vervins was an agreeable, well-made man, but very idle. He had entered the army; but quitted it soon, and retired to his estates in Picardy.
But as Spain refused to treat with the Dutch as a free state, and Elizabeth would not negotiate without her ally, Henry found himself obliged to conclude at Vervins a separate peace, by which he recovered possession of all the places seized by Spain during the course of the civil wars, and procured to himself leisure to pursue the domestic settlement of his kingdom.
The commissioners added, that this boon had not been conceded to France nor England, by the treaties of Vervins and London, and that the States therefore could not find it strange that it should be refused to them.
Its conclusion was the treaty of Vervins with the same power, by which the tables were completely turned, and which was as utterly disgraceful to Spain as that of Cateau Cambresis had been to France.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking