Report on the Manuscripts of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Downshire, Formerly Preserved at Easthampstead Park, Berkshire, Vol. 5

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Excerpt from Report on the Manuscripts of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Downshire, Formerly Preserved at Easthampstead Park, Berkshire, Vol. 5: Papers of William Trumbull the Elder, September 1614-August 1616The situation seemed ominous enough for the United Provinces and their few Protestant allies, butonce again the Dutch showed their customary coolness and their capacity to curb the aggressiveness of their adversaries. In a surprise offensive in the summer of £615, their forces seized Alte-na and other places in Mark and captured the castle of Wilhelmss tein near aix-la-chapelle, thereby neutralizing the Spanish occupation ofthat town. Their cavalry swept through the territories of the elector of Cologne, pillaging them with impunity. Later that year the States General openly snubbed the emperor and his prohibition of external assistance to the people of Brunswick who had revolted against their duke, by affording them aid and taking a prominent part in the final. Reconciliation between the duke and his subjects.Even so the Truce of] 609 stood the strain ofthese belligerentdemonstrations, and there is little doubt that a number offactors were constantly in the minds. Of both Dutch and Spaniards when assessing the risks ofa full-scale war. One condition that seemed indispensable to the latter, ifwar were to be successfully waged against the Dutch, was that the way should be free for the transfer of experienced Spanish troops from Italy to the Low Countries. This meant keeping the passages through the Alps Open at all times, which depended on maintaining good relations with the Swiss cantons and the Grisons, and avoiding all con¿ict which could detain these troops in Italy. At the time the prospects of achieving these conditions were slight. On the one hand the war in Friuli between Ferdinand, archduke of Graz, and the Venetian republic, and on the other the hostilities between Savoy and Spain, renewed after the interim Treaty of Asti, involved the very forces with which Spinola hoped to reinforce his army, and obliged him to rely on second-rate and inadequately equipped and disciplined recruits from Spain. It was a situation. Which favoured the Dutch, as Sir Dudley Carleton, the English ambassador at the Hague, summed up when commenting on Spanish designs to encroach on more terri tory so as to sever the Dutch republic from its German friends. 'to this effect we hear-e of many preparations for the field on the Archdukes side, but rest secure that as long and no longer then the troubles last in Italy, the quiet here will be preserved that the warre of those parts is the peace ofthese. Later the States General assisted Savoy with money and Venice with volunteers, while an earlier treaty with the Protestant cantons enabled them to make their in¿uence felt in any anti-spanish move within the Confederation.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.