Unceasing efforts were now made to remedy the want of arms and men.  A quantity of pikes were rudely made and distributed to the volunteers who crowded in; and numerous fishing-boats were despatched in different directions to inform the British cruisers of the passing events.  An individual named Pronck, an inhabitant of Schaevening, a village of the coast, rendered great services in this way, from his influence among the sailors and fishermen in the neighborhood.

The confederates spared no exertion to increase the confidence of the people under many contradictory and disheartening contingencies.  An officer who had been despatched for advice and information to Baron Bentinck, at Zwolle, who was in communication with the allies, returned with the discouraging news that General Bulow had orders not to pass the Yssel, the allies having decided not to advance into Holland beyond the line of that river.  A meeting of the ancient regents of The Hague was convoked by the proclamation of the confederates, and took place at the house of Mr. Van Hogendorp, the ancient residence of the De Witts.  The wary magistrates absolutely refused all co-operation in the daring measures of the confederates, who had now the whole responsibility on their heads, with little to cheer them on in their perilous career but their own resolute hearts and the recollection of those days when their ancestors, with odds as fearfully against them, rose up and shivered to atoms the yoke of their oppressors.

Some days of intense anxiety now elapsed; and various incidents occurred to keep up the general excitement.  Reinforcements came gradually in; no hostile measure was resorted to by the French troops; yet the want of success, as rapid as was proportioned to the first movements of the revolution, threw a gloom over all.  Amsterdam and Rotterdam still held back; but the nomination of Messrs. Van Hogendorp and Vander Duyn van Maasdam to be heads of the government, until the arrival of the Prince of Orange, and a formal abjuration of the emperor Napoleon, inspired new vigor into the public mind.  Two nominal armies were formed, and two generals appointed to the command; and it is impossible to resist a smile of mingled amusement and admiration on reading the exact statement of the forces, so pompously and so effectively announced as forming the armies of Utrecht and Gorcum.

The first of these, commanded by Major-General D’Jonge, consisted of three hundred infantry, thirty-two volunteer cavalry, with two eight-pounders.  The latter, under the orders of Major-General Sweertz van Landas, was composed of two hundred and fifty of The Hague Orange Guard, thirty Prussian deserters from the French garrison, three hundred volunteers, forty cavalry, with two eight-pounders.