Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Famine was a more formidable foe than Frenchmen, Hollanders, and Englishmen combined; so that Richardot avowed that the "negotiation would be indeed holy," if it would restore Holland and Zeeland to the King without fighting. The prospect seemed on the whole rather dismal to loyal Netherlanders like the old leaguing, intriguing, Hispamolized president of the privy council.
Richardot, somewhat alarmed, insisted that the States should send their plenipotentiaries to Antwerp as soon as possible. He would answer for it that they would not go away again without settling upon the treaty.
Nevertheless the citizens were warned not to misconstrue Parma's gentleness, because he was determined to die, with his whole army, rather than not take Antwerp. "As for the King," said Richardot, "he will lay down all his crowns sooner than abandon this enterprise." Van Werne was represented as free from blame, and sincerely desirous of peace.
After this superfluous rhetoric had been poured forth, he calmly dismissed the topic which Dr. Dale had come all the way from. Ostend to discuss, by carelessly observing that President Richardot would confer with him on the subject of the commission. "But," said the envoy, "tis no matter of conference or dispute. I desire simply to see the commission."
Then the English answered with equal impatience, and reproached the King's representatives with duplicity and want of faith, and censured them for their unseemly language, and begged to inform Champagny and Richardot that they had not then to deal with such persons as they might formerly have been in the habit of treating withal, but with a "great prince who did justify the honour of her actions," and they confuted the positions now assumed by their opponents with official documents and former statements from those very opponents' lips.
After a pause, both the representatives of Parma began to wrangle with the envoy in very insolent fashion. "Richardot is always their mouth-piece," said Dale, "only Champagny choppeth in at every word, and would do so likewise in ours if we would suffer it." "We shall never have done with these impertinent demands," said the President.
If the United Provinces, he said, happened not to have the best muskets and cannons on their side when it should once more come to blows, small help would they derive from verbal bulwarks and advantages in the text of treaties. Richardot consoled himself with his quibbles; for quibbles were his daily bread.
Moreover, the terms of the secret note would authorize the appointment of another foreigner even a Spaniard while the crafty president Richardot might creep into the commission, on the ground that, being a Burgundian, he might fairly call himself a Netherlander. And all this happened.
Of the two Netherlanders, brother John was still in Spain, and Verreyken found it convenient that day to have a lame leg. President Richardot, standing majestically before the States-General, with his robes wrapped around his tall, spare form, made a solemn farewell speech of mingled sorrow, pity, and the resentment of injured innocence.
Meantime there was an active but very secret correspondence between Lord Cobham, Lord Burghley, Sir James Croft, and various subordinate personages in England, on the one side, and Champagny, President Richardot, La Motte, governor of Gravelines, Andrea de Loo, Grafigni, and other men in the obedient Provinces, more or less in Alexander's confidence, on the other side.
Word Of The Day