he was unstained by his vices, and exercised a boundless influence over that reckless personage, who often protested that he would “die a poor soldier at his feet.”  The career of Louis was destined to be short, if reckoned by years, but if by events, it was to attain almost a patriarchal length.  At the age of nineteen he had taken part in the battle of St. Quentin, and when once the war of freedom opened, his sword was never to be sheathed.  His days were filled with life, and when he fell into his bloody but unknown grave, he was to leave a name as distinguished for heroic valor and untiring energy as for spotless integrity.  He was small of stature, but well formed; athletic in all knightly exercises, with agreeable features, a dark laughing eye, close-clipped brown hair, and a peaked beard.

“Golden Fleece,” as Nicholas de Hammes was universally denominated, was the illegitimate scion of a noble house.  He was one of the most active of the early adherents to the league, kept the lists of signers in his possession, and scoured the country daily to procure new confederates.  At the public preachings of the reformed religion, which soon after this epoch broke forth throughout the Netherlands as by a common impulse, he made himself conspicuous.  He was accused of wearing, on such occasions, the ensigns of the Fleece about his neck, in order to induce ignorant people to believe that they might themselves legally follow, when they perceived a member of that illustrious fraternity to be leading the way.  As De Hammer was only an official or servant of that Order, but not a companion, the seduction of the lieges by such false pretenses was reckoned among the most heinous of his offences.  He was fierce in his hostility to the government, and one of those fiery spirits whose premature zeal was prejudicial to the cause of liberty, and disheartening to the cautious patriotism of Orange.  He was for smiting at once the gigantic atrocity of the Spanish dominion, without waiting for the forging of the weapons by which the blows were to be dealt.  He forgot that men and money were as necessary as wrath, in a contest with the most tremendous despotism of the world.  “They wish,” he wrote to Count Louis, “that we should meet these hungry wolves with remonstrances, using gentle words, while they are burning and cutting off heads.—­Be it so then.  Let us take the pen let them take the sword.  For them deeds, for us words.  We shall weep, they will laugh.  The Lord be praised for all; but I can not write this without tears.”  This nervous language painted the situation and the character of the writer.

As for Charles Mansfeld, he soon fell away from the league which he had embraced originally with excessive ardor.