Netherland privateersmen ordered out of English ports—­ De la Marck’s fleet before Brill—­The town summoned to surrender—­ Commissioners sent out to the fleet—­Flight of the magistrates and townspeople—­Capture of the place—­Indignation of Alva—­Popular exultation in Brussels—­Puns and Caricatures—­Bossu ordered to recover the town of Brill—­His defeat—­His perfidious entrance into Rotterdam—­Massacre in that city—­Flushing revolutionized—­ Unsuccessful attempt of Governor de Bourgogne to recal the citizens to their obedience—­Expedition under Treslong from Brill to assist the town of Flushing—­Murder of Paccheco by the Patriots—­Zeraerts appointed Governor of Walcheren by Orange.

While such had been the domestic events of the Netherlands during the years 1569 and 1570, the Prince of Orange, although again a wanderer, had never allowed himself to despair.  During this whole period, the darkest hour for himself and for his country, he was ever watchful.  After disbanding his troops at Strasburg, and after making the best arrangements possible under the circumstances for the eventual payment of their wages, he had joined the army which the Duke of Deux Ponts had been raising in Germany to assist the cause of the Huguenots in France.  The Prince having been forced to acknowledge that, for the moment, all open efforts in the Netherlands were likely to be fruitless, instinctively turned his eyes towards the more favorable aspect of the Reformation in France.  It was inevitable that, while he was thus thrown for the time out of his legitimate employment, he should be led to the battles of freedom in a neighbouring land.  The Duke of Deux Ponts, who felt his own military skill hardly adequate to the task which he had assumed, was glad, as it were, to put himself and his army under the orders of Orange.

Meantime the battle of Jamac had been fought; the Prince of Condo, covered with wounds, and exclaiming that it was sweet to die for Christ and country, had fallen from his saddle; the whole Huguenot army had been routed by the royal forces under the nominal command of Anjou, and the body of Conde, tied to the back of a she ass, had been paraded through the streets of Jarnap in derision.

Affairs had already grown almost as black for the cause of freedom in France as in the provinces.  Shortly afterwards William of Orange, with a band of twelve hundred horsemen, joined the banners of Coligny.  His two brothers accompanied him.  Henry, the stripling, had left the university to follow the fortunes of the Prince.  The indomitable Louis, after seven thousand of his army had been slain, had swum naked across the Ems, exclaiming “that his courage, thank God, was as fresh and lively as ever,” and had lost not a moment in renewing his hostile schemes against the Spanish government.  In the meantime he had joined the Huguenots in France.  The battle of Moncontour had succeeded, Count Peter Mansfeld, with five thousand troops sent by Alva, fighting on