With the object, as it was thought, of curbing the power of the great nobles, it had been arranged that the three councils should be entirely distinct from each other, that the members of the state council should have no participation in the affairs of the two other bodies; but, on the other hand, that the finance and privy councillors, as well as the Knights of the Fleece, should have access to the deliberations of the state council.  In the course of events, however, it soon became evident that the real power of the government was exclusively in the hands of the consulta, a committee of three members of the state council, by whose deliberations the Regent was secretly instructed to be guided on all important occasions.  The three, Viglius, Berlaymont, and Arras, who composed the secret conclave or cabinet, were in reality but one.  The Bishop of Arras was in all three, and the three together constituted only the Bishop of Arras.

There was no especial governor or stadholder appointed for the province of Brabant, where the Regent was to reside and to exercise executive functions in person.  The stadholders for the other provinces were, for Flanders and Artois, the Count of Egmont; for Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht, the Prince of Orange; for Gueldres and Zutfen, the Count of Meghen; for Friesland, Groningen and Overyssel, Count Aremberg; for Hainault, Valenciennes and Cambray, the Marquis of Berghen; for Tournay and Tournaisis, Baron Montigny; for Namur, Baron Berlaymont; for Luxemburg, Count Mansfeld; for Ryssel, Douay and Orchies, the Baron Coureires.  All these stadholders were commanders-in-chief of the military forces in their respective provinces.  With the single exception of Count Egmont, in whose province of Flanders the stadholders were excluded from the administration of justice,—­all were likewise supreme judges in the civil and criminal tribunal.  The military force of the Netherlands in time of peace was small, for the provinces were jealous of the presence of soldiery.  The only standing army which then legally existed in the Netherlands were the Bandes d’Ordonnance, a body of mounted gendarmerie—­amounting in all to three thousand men—­which ranked among the most accomplished and best disciplined cavalry of Europe.  They were divided into fourteen squadrons, each under the command of a stadholder, or of a distinguished noble.  Besides these troops, however, there still remained in the provinces a foreign force amounting in the aggregate to four thousand men.  These soldiers were the remainder of those large bodies which year after year had been quartered upon the Netherlands during the constant warfare to which they had been exposed.  Living upon the substance of the country, paid out of its treasury, and as offensive by their licentious and ribald habits of life as were the enemies against whom they were enrolled, these troops had become an intolerable burthen to the people.  They were now disposed in different garrisons, nominally