Requesens performed all that depended on him, to gain the confidence of the people.  He caused Alva’s statue to be removed; and hoped to efface the memory of the tyrant by dissolving the Council of Blood and abandoning the obnoxious taxes which their inventor had suspended rather than abolished.  A general amnesty was also promulgated against the revolted provinces; they received it with contempt and defiance.  Nothing then was left to Requesens but to renew the war; and this he found to be a matter of no easy execution.  The finances were in a state of the greatest confusion; and the Spanish troops were in many places seditious, in some openly mutinous, Alva having left large arrears of pay due to almost all, notwithstanding the immense amount of his pillage and extortion.  Middleburg, which had long sustained a siege against all the efforts of the patriots, was now nearly reduced by famine, notwithstanding the gallant efforts of its governor, Mondragon.  Requesens turned his immediate attention to the relief of this important place; and he soon assembled, at Antwerp and Berg-op-Zoom, a fleet of sixty vessels for that purpose.  But Louis Boisot, admiral of Zealand, promptly repaired to attack this force; and after a severe action he totally defeated it, and killed De Glimes, one of its admirals, under the eyes of Requesens himself, who, accompanied by his suite, stood during the whole affair on the dike of Schakerloo.  This action took place the 29th of January, 1574; and, on the 19th of February following, Middleburg surrendered, after a resistance of two years.  The Prince of Orange granted such conditions as were due to the bravery of the governor; and thus set an example of generosity and honor which greatly changed the complexion of the war.  All Zealand was now free; and the intrepid Admiral Boisot gained another victory on the 30th of May—­destroying several of the Spanish vessels, and taking some others, with their Admiral Von Haemstede.  Frequent naval enterprises were also undertaken against the frontiers of Flanders; and while the naval forces thus harassed the enemy on every vulnerable point, the unfortunate provinces of the interior were ravaged by the mutinous and revolted Spaniards, and by the native brigands, who pillaged both royalists and patriots with atrocious impartiality.

To these manifold evils was now added one more terrible, in the appearance of the plague, which broke out at Ghent in the month of October, and devastated a great part of the Netherlands; not, however, with that violence with which it rages in more southern climates.

Requesens, overwhelmed by difficulties, yet exerted himself to the utmost to put the best face on the affairs of government.  His chief care was to appease the mutinous soldiery:  he even caused his plate to be melted, and freely gave the produce toward the payment of their arrears.  The patriots, well informed of this state of things, labored to turn it to their best advantage.  They opened