Benjamin Aubery du Maurier (La Fontaine-Saint-Martin, August 1566 – La Fontaine-Saint-Martin 1636) was a French huguenot statesman and ambassador of his country to the States General of the Dutch Republic during the "Truce Quarrels". He tried in vain to save the life of Dutch statesman Johan van Oldenbarnevelt after he was sentenced to death in the Trial of Oldenbarnevelt, Grotius and Hogerbeets.
Early life Aubery was born the son of Jehan Aubery du Maurier and his second wife Madeleine Froger.Ouvré, p. 5 His parents were both huguenots. He was therefore also raised in that faith. He studied in Le Mans, and after 1582 in Paris at several colleges, among which the Collège de Clermont. He studied philosophy under Theodore Beza for a year after 1583 in the Republic of Geneva. He was destined for a career in the noblesse de robe, because a great-uncle (Jacques Aubery) was an advocate before the parlement de Paris during the reign of Henry II of France. (He took part in the prosecution of the perpetrators of the Mérindol massacre.Ouvré, pp.6-7; Martin, chap. 1er). But the events of the French religious troubles intervened. In 1585 (a year after his father died) the huguenots were given six months to convert to Roman Catholicism or to go into exile. Aubery decided to join the army of the prince of Condé and took part in the Battle of Coutras under Navarre in 1587. From there his career took flight.Ouvré, pp. 7-8; Martin, chap. 1er
Personal life Aubrey married Marie Magdeleine in 1600 in Paris. They would have eleven children of whom Louis Aubery du Maurier (a historian) is the best known. Other sons were Maximilien (who later served in the States Army), and Daniel (also a military officer). When he lived in the Netherlands as ambassador he had them educated by Benjamin Prideaux as preceptor on an estate belonging to Oldenbarnevelt. Among his daughters were Louise, born in 1614 in The Hague (who had Louise de Coligny for a godmother); Eleonore, born in 1615 in The Hague (with Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange as a godfather); and Emilia (with Countess Emilia of Nassau as a godmother).Vander Aa, pp. 425-426 His first wife Marie died in 1620 in The Hague when Aubery was ambassador there. She was buried in the Grote Kerk with a sumptuous grave monument. He remarried in 1622 with Renée de Jaucourt de Villarnoult, a relative of his mentor Philippe du Plessis-Mornay.Ouvré, p. 318
Career Assistant of the Huguenot Great Nobles Aubery first went into the employ of du Plessis-Mornay as a secretary when that minister of the king of Navarre became governor of Saumur in 1589. He accompanied du Plessis-Mornay when he was sent on a mission to Queen Elizabeth I in 1591–92.Ouvré, pp. 9-10 On 22 October 1590 Henri IV made Aubery a secretary in his household of Navarre. After du Plessis-Mornay broke with Henri IV, Aubery also became intendant to the new favorite, Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, Duke of Bouillon on 1 June 1592, shortly after the duke had married Charlotte de La Marck.Ouvré, p.19 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.Ouvré, p. 39
Aubery remained in the service of the duke, but when Bouillon fell in disfavor after he was implicated in the conspiracy of Charles de Gontaut, duc de Biron in 1601, Aubery was placed in a difficult position between the king and the duke. But he managed to extricate himself, principally by being instrumental in negotiating a reconciliation between the king and the duke in April 1607.Ouvré, pp.80-84, 141-146
After the submission of the duke to the king Aubery quit the service of the duke and retired to his chateau du Maurier for some time. Things started to look up for Aubery when in 1607 he was approached by the envoy of France to the Dutch Republic, Paul Trude Choart, duke of Buzenval, who needed a correspondent in France to facilitate the transfer of the subsidies France paid to the Dutch Republic. But Buzenval soon after died. The successor of Buzenval had someone else in mind, but the secretary of state Nicolas de Neufville, seigneur de Villeroy overruled him. Then Villeroy's colleague Maximilien de Béthune, Duke of Sully, the Superintendent of Finances appointed Aubery controleur des restes des etats du Conseil in October 1607.Ouvré, pp. 147-149, 157-158Sully also became godfather to Aubery's son Maximilien on 5 November 1608 as another sign of his favor; Cf. Ouvré, p. 165 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. But this high point in Aubery's career ended soon after the assassination of the king on 14 May 1610. Sully was soon taken down by his jealous colleagues, and took Aubery with him in his fall. Another deception was that the office of president of the audit court of the province of Nérac, that Aubery had bought in 1610 with the consent of the king, was given to another claimant by the Conseil d'Etat; Aubery only received a pension. In 1612 he retired for a while to his chateau.Ouvré, pp. 165-168
Embassy to the Dutch Republic But then Villeroy asked him for the post of ambassador to the Dutch Republic, as successor of Eustache de Refuge. 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. The Republic had become an important ally in the early 1590s when Henri was fighting both the Catholic League's armies and the Spanish Army of Flanders. After he triumphed in France Henri needed the Republic as a counterweight against Spain in Europe. He definitely wanted the Republic in the French sphere of influence. 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.Ouvré, pp. 171-181 The alliance between the two countries was founded on two treaties. The first one, concluded on 13 January 1608 and renewed on 17 June 1609, valid for the duration of the Truce, promised that France would send 10,000 soldiers to help the States General in case of war; the Republic 5000 to help France. The two countries promised not to make treaties that would harm the interests of the other. 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. The Queen confirmed this arrangement in 1611. These French troops would later play an important part.Ouvré, p.190
Villeroy had selected Aubery in preference to several other candidates, because he was a moderate Protestant with undoubted loyalty to the crown. The new ambassador needed to be a Protestant, because a catholic would be distrusted in the Protestant Republic, but he should not be a partisan of the huguenot fanatics in France.Ouvré, p. 198 The salary for the ambassador to the States General of the Dutch Republic was 12,000 livres, supplemented with 24,000 livres for the post of intendant of the French finances in Holland.Ouvré, p. 200 Aubery took up the post on 20 May 1613.Ouvré, p. 202
The first, somewhat disagreeable, task for Aubery was to engineer the recall of the Dutch ambassador in France, Francis van Aarssens (son of the secretary of the States General Cornelis van Aarsens), who was seen as "too pushy" by the French court. 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.Ouvré, pp. 202-212
Next Aubery had to defend the interests of France when the Republic intervened in the War of the Jülich Succession, when despite the Truce it almost came to blows with Spain, which Aubery and de Refuge (who had become French envoy in Brussels) helped avoid through mediation. Meanwhile, events in France herself took a turn for the worse with the repeated revolts of the princes of the blood against the regency of Queen Marie. This led to attempts of both sides to get the French regiments in Dutch service to return to France, which Aubery managed to thwart. This did not endear him to the princes.Ouvré, pp. 214-250 Meanwhile, on 3 September 1615 Queen Marie had appointed Aubery conseiller d'État; this was confirmed by the new king Louis XIII on 31 SeptemberOuvré, p. 245, 250
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. Soon other ministers of the public church, the Dutch Reformed Church took sides, and with them their flocks in the local congregations of that church. As the Dutch authorities felt a duty to keep the peace in the church, so as to avoid a schism, the States of Holland and West Friesland got involved when the followers of Arminius in 1610 presented a remonstrance (petition) to them, that was soon followed by a counter-remonstrance from the other side. The States were reluctant to take sides in the doctrinal quarrel, but when the quarrel flowed over into the public sphere, and ministers of either side refused to recognize the qualifications of the others to administer the Lord's Supper and congregations split into warring parties, they felt constraint to issue the so-called "For the Peace of the Church" Resolution in January 1614 (drafted by the Rotterdam pensionary Hugo Grotius), which prohibited preaching about the quarrel from the pulpit on pain of losing their livings for the preachers.Though the Resolution did not prescribe one or the other standpoint in the doctrinal debate and did not prohibit discussions within the confines of the university, or in learned treatises written in Latin Unfortunately, this only proved to pour fuel on the fire. Violence of especially Counter-Remonstrant mobs directed against Remonstrant regenten and city magistrates, while the local schutterijen refused to offer protection and the federal troops also refused to intervene, caused the States of Holland to issue a further so-called Sharp Resolution in 1617. This authorized city governments to recruit their own mercenary forces, called waardgelders, to keep the peace. 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. Maurice then chose the side of the Counter-Remonstrants and started a slow-moving coup d'état that took the form of his undermining the regime of Oldenbarnevelt by "turning around" by intimidation the city governments that supported the latter in the States, and so engineering a majority of the States General opposing Holland. 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.Ouvré, pp. 251-305