The “Justification against the false blame of his calumniators by the Prince of Orange,” to which the Prince thus referred, has been mentioned in a previous chapter.  This remarkable paper had been drawn up at the advice of his friends, Landgrave William and Elector Augustus, but it was not the only document which the Prince caused to be published at this important epoch.  He issued a formal declaration of war against the Duke of Alva; he addressed a solemn and eloquent warning or proclamation to all the inhabitants of the Netherlands.  These documents are all extremely important and interesting.  Their phraseology shows the intentions and the spirit by which the Prince was actuated on first engaging in the struggle.  Without the Prince and his efforts—­at this juncture, there would probably have never been a free Netherland commonwealth.  It is certain, likewise, that without an enthusiastic passion for civil and religious liberty throughout the masses of the Netherland people, there would have been no successful effort on the part of the Prince.  He knew his countrymen; while they, from highest to humblest, recognised in him their saviour.  There was, however, no pretence of a revolutionary movement.  The Prince came to maintain, not to overthrow.  The freedom which had been enjoyed in the provinces until the accession of the Burgundian dynasty, it was his purpose to restore.  The attitude which he now assumed was a peculiar one in history.  This defender of a people’s cause set up no revolutionary standard.  In all his documents he paid apparent reverence to the authority of the King.  By a fiction, which was not unphilosophical, he assumed that the monarch was incapable of the crimes which he charged upon the Viceroy.  Thus he did not assume the character of a rebel in arms against his prince, but in his own capacity of sovereign he levied troops and waged war against a satrap whom he chose to consider false to his master’s orders.  In the interest of Philip, assumed to be identical with the welfare of his people, he took up arms against the tyrant who was sacrificing both.  This mask of loyalty would never save his head from the block, as he well knew, but some spirits lofty as his own, might perhaps be influenced by a noble sophistry, which sought to strengthen the cause of the people by attributing virtue to the King.

And thus did the sovereign of an insignificant little principality stand boldly forth to do battle with the most powerful monarch in the world.  At his own expense, and by almost superhuman exertions, he had assembled nearly thirty thousand men.  He now boldly proclaimed to the world, and especially to the inhabitants of the provinces, his motives, his purposes, and his hopes.