[The Life of John of Barneveld<br> 1609-23 by John Lothrop Motley]@TWC D-Link book
The Life of John of Barneveld
1609-23

CHAPTER II
27/39

He was to propose that Conde and his wife should return with the Prince and Princess of Orange to Breda, the King pledging himself that for three or four months nothing should be undertaken against him.

Here was a sudden change of determination fit to surprise the States-General, but the King's resolution veered and whirled about hourly in the tempests of his wrath and love.
That excellent old couple, the Constable and the Duchess of Angouleme, did their best to assist their sovereign in his fierce attempts to get their daughter and niece into his power.
The Constable procured a piteous letter to be written to Archduke Albert, signed "Montmorency his mark," imploring him not to "suffer that his daughter, since the Prince refused to return to France, should leave Brussels to be a wanderer about the world following a young prince who had no fixed purpose in his mind." Archduke Albert, through his ambassador in Paris, Peter Pecquius, suggested the possibility of a reconciliation between Henry and his kinsman, and offered himself as intermediary.

He enquired whether the King would find it agreeable that he should ask for pardon in name of the Prince.

Henry replied that he was willing that the Archduke should accord to Conde secure residence for the time within his dominions on three inexorable conditions:--firstly, that the Prince should ask for pardon without any stipulations, the King refusing to listen to any treaty or to assign him towns or places of security as had been vaguely suggested, and holding it utterly unreasonable that a man sueing for pardon should, instead of deserved punishment, talk of terms and acquisitions; secondly, that, if Conde should reject the proposition, Albert should immediately turn him out of his country, showing himself justly irritated at finding his advice disregarded; thirdly, that, sending away the Prince, the Archduke should forthwith restore the Princess to her father the Constable and her aunt Angouleme, who had already made their petitions to Albert and Isabella for that end, to which the King now added his own most particular prayers.
If the Archduke should refuse consent to these three conditions, Henry begged that he would abstain from any farther attempt to effect a reconciliation and not suffer Conde to remain any longer within his territories.
Pecquius replied that he thought his master might agree to the two first propositions while demurring to the third, as it would probably not seem honourable to him to separate man and wife, and as it was doubtful whether the Princess would return of her own accord.
The King, in reporting the substance of this conversation to Aerssens, intimated his conviction that they were only wishing in Brussels to gain time; that they were waiting for letters from Spain, which they were expecting ever since the return of Conde's secretary from Milan, whither he had been sent to confer with the Governor, Count Fuentes.

He said farther that he doubted whether the Princess would go to Breda, which he should now like, but which Conde would not now permit.


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