Thus were the two prominent personages upon whose co-operation Orange had hitherto endeavored to rely, entirely separated from him.  The confederacy of nobles, too, was dissolved, having accomplished little, notwithstanding all its noisy demonstrations, and having lost all credit with the people by the formal cessation of the Compromise in consequence of the Accord of August.  As a body, they had justified the sarcasm of Hubert Languet, that “the confederated nobles had ruined their country by their folly and incapacity.”  They had profaned a holy cause by indecent orgies, compromised it by seditious demonstrations, abandoned it when most in need of assistance.  Bakkerzeel had distinguished himself by hanging sectaries in Flanders.  “Golden Fleece” de Hammes, after creating great scandal in and about Antwerp, since the Accord, had ended by accepting an artillery commission in the Emperor’s army, together with three hundred crowns for convoy from Duchess Margaret.  Culemburg was serving the cause of religious freedom by defacing the churches within his ancestral domains, pulling down statues, dining in chapels and giving the holy wafer to his parrot.  Nothing could be more stupid than these acts of irreverence, by which Catholics were offended and honest patriots disgusted.  Nothing could be more opposed to the sentiments of Orange, whose first principle was abstinence by all denominations of Christians from mutual insults.  At the same time, it is somewhat revolting to observe the indignation with which such offences were regarded by men of the most abandoned character.  Thus, Armenteros, whose name was synonymous with government swindling, who had been rolling up money year after year, by peculations, auctioneering of high posts in church and state, bribes, and all kinds of picking and stealing, could not contain his horror as he referred to wafers eaten by parrots, or “toasted on forks” by renegade priests; and poured out his emotions on the subject into the faithful bosom of Antonio Perez, the man with whose debaucheries, political villanies, and deliberate murders all Europe was to ring.

No doubt there were many individuals in the confederacy for whom it was reserved to render honorable service in the national cause.  The names of Louis Nassau, Mamix of St. Aldegonde, Bernard de Merode, were to be written in golden letters in their country’s rolls; but at this moment they were impatient, inconsiderate, out of the control of Orange.  Louis was anxious for the King to come from Spain with his army, and for “the bear dance to begin.”  Brederode, noisy, bawling, and absurd as ever, was bringing ridicule upon the national cause by his buffoonery, and endangering the whole people by his inadequate yet rebellious exertions.