Foppe van Aitzema (c. 1580 – October 1637) was council to the Duke of Brunswick when he became resident to the state of the United Netherlands in Hamburg.
Even though Wallenstein had been for a long time partial to the idea of friendship with the States, he now declared that he couldn't dismiss the army he had raised.
The same year, Aitzema was sent to Denmark to persuade the King to abolish the new toll he raised in Glückstadt, which weighed especially on the Hamburgers; but this mission also was without success.
In 1636, he traveled without clear goal but at the behest of his masters to Vienna to persuade the Emperor to keep a strict neutrality, which the States wanted to pledge from their side as well.
This trip and the honours bestowed severely grieved France, even more so because the States had promised at the last treaty to break with Austria.
The States also used him to get a secret understanding with the Emperor, to reach a separate treaty with Spain; some of them even wanted to position him at the court permanently.
This was brought to his attention by some letters he received in Hamburg: he replied on 26 March 1637 in a letter to the States, writing that he had discovered that some bad rumours about him were being spread, that he had started travelling 19 March to make an oral report, that he had heard, when he was in Oldenburg, that he was said to deserve the death penalty on twenty or thirty accounts, that the least punishment he could expect was being quartered; for which reasons he asked for a right of passage and some delay.
In his youth, he was highly regarded by Hugo de Groot and Cornelis van der Myle, who wrote a letter of recommendation to Daniel Heinsius, who was in Paris in 1617.