Yet at that moment, so pregnant with a monstrous future, there was hardly a sound Protestant policy anywhere but in Holland.

How long would that policy remain sound and united?
How long would the Republic speak through the imperial voice of Barneveld?
Time was to show and to teach many lessons.
The united princes of Germany were walking, talking, quarrelling in their sleep; England and France distracted and bedrugged, while Maximilian of Bavaria and Ferdinand of Gratz, the cabinets of Madrid and the Vatican, were moving forward to their aims slowly, steadily, relentlessly as Fate.
And Spain was more powerful than she had been since the Truce began.

In five years she had become much more capable of aggression.

She had strengthened her positions in the Mediterranean by the acquisition and enlargement of considerable fortresses in Barbary and along a large sweep of the African coast, so as to be almost supreme in Africa.

It was necessary for the States, the only power save Turkey that could face her in those waters, to maintain a perpetual squadron of war ships there to defend their commerce against attack from the Spaniard and from the corsairs, both Mahometan and Christian, who infested every sea.