Such language, in letters the most private, never meant to be seen by other eyes than those to which they were addressed, gives touching testimony to the sincere piety of his character.  No man was ever more devoted to a high purpose, no man had ever more right to imagine himself, or less inclination to pronounce himself, entrusted with a divine mission.  There was nothing of the charlatan in his character.  His nature was true and steadfast.  No narrow-minded usurper was ever more loyal to his own aggrandisement than this large-hearted man to the cause of oppressed humanity.  Yet it was inevitable that baser minds should fail to recognise his purity.  While he exhausted his life for the emancipation of a people, it was easy to ascribe all his struggles to the hope of founding a dynasty.  It was natural for grovelling natures to search in the gross soil of self-interest for the sustaining roots of the tree beneath whose branches a nation found its shelter.  What could they comprehend of living fountains and of heavenly dews?

In May, 1568, the Emperor Maximilian had formally issued a requisition to the Prince of Orange to lay down his arms, and to desist from all levies and machinations against the King of Spain and the peace of the realm.  This summons he was commanded to obey on pain of forfeiting all rights, fiefs, privileges and endowments bestowed by imperial hands on himself or his predecessors, and of incurring the heaviest disgrace, punishment, and penalties of the Empire.

To this document the Prince replied in August, having paid in the meantime but little heed to its precepts.  Now that the Emperor, who at first was benignant, had begun to frown on his undertaking, he did not slacken in his own endeavours to set his army on foot.  One by one, those among the princes of the empire who had been most stanch in his cause, and were still most friendly to his person, grew colder as tyranny became stronger; but the ardor of the Prince was not more chilled by their despair than by the overthrow at Jemmingen, which had been its cause.  In August, he answered the letter of the Emperor, respectfully but warmly.  He still denounced the tyranny of Alva and the arts of Granvelle with that vigorous eloquence which was always at his command, while, as usual, he maintained a show of almost exaggerated respect for their monarch.  It was not to be presumed, he said, that his Majesty, “a king debonair and bountiful,” had ever intended such cruelties as those which had been rapidly retraced in the letter, but it was certain that the Duke of Alva had committed them all of his own authority.  He trusted, moreover, that the Emperor, after he had read the “Justification” which the Prince had recently published, would appreciate the reason for his taking up arms.  He hoped that his Majesty would now consider the resistance just, Christian, and conformable to the public peace.  He expressed the belief that rather than interpose any hindrance, his Majesty would thenceforth rather render assistance “to the poor and desolate Christians,” even as it was his Majesty’s office and authority to be the last refuge of the injured.