The counter-league, which was to do battle so strenuously with the Holy Confederacy, was essentially a maritime league.

"All the maritime heretics of the world, since heresy is best suited to navigators, will be banded together," said Champagny, "and then woe to the Spanish Indies, which England and Holland are already threatening." The Netherlanders had been noted from earliest times for a free-spoken and independent personal demeanour.

At this epoch they were taking the lead of the whole world in marine adventure.

At least three thousand vessels of between one hundred and four hundred tons, besides innumerable doggers, busses, cromstevens, and similar craft used on the rivers and in fisheries, were to be found in the United Provinces, and one thousand, it was estimated, were annually built.
They traded to the Baltic regions for honey, wax, tallow, lumber, iron, turpentine, hemp.

They brought from farthest Indies and from America all the fabrics of ancient civilisation, all the newly discovered products of a virgin soil, and dispensed them among the less industrious nations of the earth.