The authority of one author has been produced to prove that, during the lifetime of his brother Louis, offers were made to him by France of the sovereignty of the northern provinces, on condition of the southern being joined to the French crown.  That he ever accepted those offers is without proof; that he never acted on them is certain.  But he might have been justified in purchasing freedom for those states which had so well earned it, at the price even of a qualified independence under another power, to the exclusion of those which had never heartily struggled against Spain.  The best evidence, however, of William’s real views is to be found in the Capitulation, as it is called; that is to say, the act which was on the point of being executed between him and the states, when a base fanatic, instigated by a bloody tyrant, put a period to his splendid career.  This capitulation exists at full length, but was never formally executed.  Its conditions are founded on the same principles, and conceived in nearly the same terms, as those accepted by the duke of Anjou; and the whole compact is one of the most thoroughly liberal that history has on record.  The prince repaired to Delft for the ceremony of his inauguration, the price of his long labors; but there, instead of anticipated dignity, he met the sudden stroke of death.

On the 10th of July, as he left his dining-room, and while he placed his foot on the first step of the great stair leading to the upper apartments of his house, a man named Balthazar Gerard (who, like the former assassin, waited for him at the moment of convivial relaxation), discharged a pistol at his body.  Three balls entered it.  He fell into the arms of an attendant, and cried out faintly, in the French language, “God pity me!  I am sadly wounded—­God have mercy on my soul, and on this unfortunate nation!” His sister, the countess of Swartzenberg, who now hastened to his side, asked him in German if he did not recommend his soul to God?  He answered, “Yes,” in the same language, but with a feeble voice.  He was carried into the dining-room, where he immediately expired.  His sister closed his eyes; his wife, too, was on the spot—­Louisa, daughter of the illustrious Coligny, and widow of the gallant count of Teligny, both of whom were also murdered almost in her sight, in the frightful massacre of St. Bartholomew.  We may not enter on a description of the afflicting scene which followed; but the mind is pleased in picturing the bold solemnity with which Prince Maurice, then eighteen years of age, swore—­not vengeance or hatred against his father’s murderers—­but that he would faithfully and religiously follow the glorious example he had given him.