Thus there was temporary, if hollow, truce between the religious parties, and a sham reconciliation between the Emperor and his brethren.

The forlorn Rudolph moped away the few months of life left to him in the Hradschin, and died 1612 soon after the new year.

The House of Austria had not been divided, Matthias succeeded his brother, Leopold's visions melted into air, and it was for the future to reveal whether the Majesty-Letter and the Compromise had been written on very durable material.
And while such was the condition of affairs in Germany immediately following the Cleve and Julich campaign, the relations of the Republic both to England and France were become rapidly more dangerous than they ever had been.

It was a severe task for Barneveld, and enough to overtax the energies of any statesman, to maintain his hold on two such slippery governments as both had become since the death of their great monarchs.
It had been an easier task for William the Silent to steer his course, notwithstanding all the perversities, short-comings, brow-beatings, and inconsistencies that he had been obliged to endure from Elizabeth and Henry.

Genius, however capricious and erratic at times, has at least vision, and it needed no elaborate arguments to prove to both those sovereigns that the severance of their policy from that of the Netherlands was impossible without ruin to the Republic and incalculable danger themselves.
But now France and England were both tending towards Spain through a stupidity on the part of their rulers such as the gods are said to contend against in vain.