That other distinguished leader of the newly-formed league, Count Louis, was a true knight of the olden time, the very mirror of chivalry.  Gentle, generous, pious; making use, in his tent before the battle, of the prayers which his mother sent him from the home of his childhood,—­yet fiery in the field as an ancient crusader—­doing the work of general and soldier with desperate valor and against any numbers—­cheerful and steadfast under all reverses, witty and jocund in social intercourse, animating with his unceasing spirits the graver and more foreboding soul of his brother; he was the man to whom the eyes of the most ardent among the Netherland Reformers were turned at this early epoch, the trusty staff upon which the great Prince of Orange was to lean till it was broken.  As gay as Brederode, 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.