During the truce France kept two regiments of foot amounting to 4200 soldiers and two companies of cavalry in Holland at the service of the States, for which she was bound to pay yearly 600,000 livres.

And the Queen-Regent had continued all the treaties by which these arrangements were secured, and professed sincere and continuous friendship for the States.

While the French-Spanish marriages gave cause for suspicion, uneasiness, and constant watchfulness in the States, still the neutrality of France was possible in the coming storm.
So long as that existed, particularly when the relations of England with Holland through the unfortunate character of King James were perpetually strained to a point of imminent rupture, it was necessary to hold as long as it was possible to the slippery embrace of France.
But Aerssens was almost aggressive in his attitude.

He rebuked the vacillations, the shortcomings, the imbecility, of the Queen's government in offensive terms.

He consorted openly with the princes who were on the point of making war upon the Queen-Regent.