Benjamin Aubery du Maurier

[9] When that lady died in 1594 Aubery helped select a new wife, Countess Elisabeth of Nassau, the half-sister of the Dutch stadtholder Maurice, Prince of Orange.

[12][Note 1] At the same time the king also showed favor to Aubery, making him one of the twenty secretaries in his royal household on 30 August 1608.

This was an important post as the Republic played a big part in the European policy of Henri IV and later the regency of Queen Marie de' Medici.

When the Habsburg regime in the Spanish Netherlands made peace overtures to their northern counterparts when a stalemate in the Eighty Years' War developed in 1607, Henri sent Pierre Jeannin as a special envoy to The Hague to defend the French interests.

Jeannin was instrumental in helping Land's Advocate of Holland Oldenbarnevelt obtain the Twelve Years' Truce with Spain (after a peace proved elusive) over the objections of stadtholder Maurice.

The second treaty of 22 June 1609 promised two French regiments (4100 men in total) and two companies of light horse for service in the Dutch States Army, with an annual subsidy of 600,000 livres.

Discreet overtures to Oldenbarnevelt did not prove sufficient, as van Aarssens put up a spirited defense before the States General.

So Aubery had to openly disavow van Aarssens, which did the trick, but earned him and Oldenbarnevelt the undying enmity of the politician, who was influential with stadtholder Maurice.

This led to attempts of both sides to get the French regiments in Dutch service to return to France, which Aubery managed to thwart.

[20] Meanwhile, on 3 September 1615 Queen Marie had appointed Aubery conseiller d'État; this was confirmed by the new king Louis XIII of France on 31 September[21] Aubery of necessity played an important role in the religious and political crisis in the Dutch Republic that developed between 1614 and 1619 and that has become known in Dutch historiography as the Bestandstwisten (Truce Quarrels).

This started with a quarrel between two professors of theology at Leiden University, Franciscus Gomarus and Jacobus Arminius, about the interpretation of the dogma of the Predestination.

This was seen by the stadtholder as a dangerous potential threat, because the waardgelders might come into armed conflict with the federal States Army, which he commanded as Captain general.

This majority also forced through the convening of a National Synod of the Reformed Church, over the opposition of Oldenbarnevelt and his allies, with the object of deciding the doctrinal controversy.

[22] In this conflict Aubery did not stay neutral, but he chose the side of the Oldenbarnevelt regime on the orders of the French court (that, as Catholics, preferred the perceived "least calvinist" Arminians).

But in vain, the majority of four provinces voted in November 1617 to convene such a Synod in Dordrecht in 1618 and to invite foreign theologians (also from France[Note 3]).

Aubery then approached the States of Holland to advise them to try to solve the matter with a provincial synod, which was also the point of view of Oldenbarnevelt.

Aubery tried repeatedly to mediate between Maurice and Oldenbarnevelt, but in his dispatches to the French government he vented his suspicion that Maurice was bent on replacing the people who had brought about the Truce and to replace them with members of the Dutch war party[23] The States General decided to send a deputation to king Louis to invite him to send three or four French Protestant theologians to the planned National Synod, but the French government prevented this by sending Jean de Thumery, sieur de Boississe (a seasoned diplomat.

De Boissise arrived in early August 1618, just after the political events had reached crisis mode with the forced disbandment of the waardgelders of the city of Utrecht by a mission of the States General, led by stadtholder Maurice at the end of July.

He made things worse by complaining about a libelous pamphlet van Aarssen had published about the alleged sinister designs of king Louis in cahoots with Spain.

[26] The French ambassadors addressed the States General on 12 December and expressed the hope that the trial would be brief and the prisoners be judged by their own court (i.e. the Hof van Holland), according to the established laws.

[27] To the frustration of Aubery, his old enemy Aarssens was appointed by Maurice as a replacement of one of the purged members of the Holland ridderschap (College of Nobles[Note 4]) on 19 January 1619, which was taken as a new insult to France.

Aubery then pleaded with one of those judges, Cromhout (also president of the Hof van Holland) to transmit his plea to his colleagues[29]

This was kept secret, but word got out to Louise de Coligny, widow of William the Silent and stepmother of Maurice, a good friend of both Oldenbarnevelt and her countryman Aubery, in the night of 12 on 13 May 1619.

The delegates promised to inform the full States General of his requests, but he did not hear back from them before the execution had taken place the next morning.

[32] Aubery was no part of this, as he had fallen victim to the fall of Nicolas Brûlart de Sillery as foreign secretary, like many other ambassadors of France.

[Note 7] He himself wrote poetry in French and Latin and left for his children the manuscript of his Memoires that has been excerpted by Henri Ouvré and was edited by Claire Martin in 2010.

Grotius wrote the following distich on his picture: Docta tabella, refers hominem, qui rectius ipse/ Magnanimum reyem, cuius imago loquens.