The King of Spain and the Emperor with their party have a vast design to give the law to all Christendom, to choose a Roman king according to their will, to reduce the Evangelical electors, princes, and estates of Germany to obedience, to subject all Italy, and, having accomplished this, to proceed to triumph over us and our allies, and by necessary consequence over France and England.

They say they have established the Emperor's authority by means of Aachen and Mulheim, will soon have driven us out of Julich, and have thus arranged matters entirely to their heart's content.
They can then, in name of the Emperor, the League, the Prince of Neuburg, or any one else, make themselves in eight days masters of the places which they are now imaginarily to leave as well as of those which we are actually to surrender, and by possession of which we could hold out a long time against all their power." Those very places held by the States--Julich, Emmerich, and others--had recently been fortified at much expense, under the superintendence of Prince Maurice, and by advice of the Advocate.

It would certainly be an act of madness to surrender them on the terms proposed.

These warnings and forebodings of Barneveld sound in our ears like recorded history, yet they were far earlier than the actual facts.

And now to please the English king, the States had listened to his suggestion that his name and that of the King of France should be signed as mediators to a new arrangement proposed in lieu of the Xanten treaty.