The Spaniards celebrated a victory, while in Utrecht they made an effigy of the Prince of Orange, which they carried about in procession, broke upon the wheel, and burned.  It was, however, obvious, that if the reduction of Harlem were a triumph, it was one which the conquerors might well exchange for a defeat.  At any rate, it was certain that the Spanish empire was not strong enough to sustain many more such victories.  If it had required thirty thousand choice troops, among which were three regiments called by Alva respectively, the “Invincibles,” the “Immortals,” and the “None-such,” to conquer the weakest city of Holland in seven months, and with the loss of twelve thousand men; how many men, how long a time, and how many deaths would it require to reduce the rest of that little province?  For, as the sack of Naarden had produced the contrary effect from the one intended, inflaming rather than subduing the spirit of Dutch resistance, so the long and glorious defence of Harlem, notwithstanding its tragical termination, had only served to strain to the highest pitch the hatred and patriotism of the other cities in the province.  Even the treasures of the New World were inadequate to pay for the conquest of that little sand-bank.  Within five years, twenty-five millions of florins had been sent from Spain for war expenses in the Netherlands.—­Yet, this amount, with the addition of large sums annually derived from confiscations, of five millions, at which the proceeds of the hundredth penny was estimated, and the two millions yearly, for which the tenth and twentieth pence had been compounded, was insufficient to save the treasury from beggary and the unpaid troops from mutiny.

Nevertheless, for the moment the joy created was intense.  Philip was lying dangerously ill at the wood of Segovia, when the happy tidings of the reduction of Harlem, with its accompanying butchery, arrived.  The account of all this misery, minutely detailed to him by Alva, acted like magic.  The blood of twenty-three hundred of his fellow-creatures—­coldly murdered, by his orders, in a single city—­proved for the sanguinary monarch the elixir of life:  he drank and was refreshed.  “The principal medicine which has cured his Majesty,” wrote Secretary Cayas from Madrid to Alva, “is the joy caused to him by the good news which you have communicated of the surrender of Harlem.”  In the height of his exultation, the King forgot how much dissatisfaction he had recently felt with the progress of events in the Netherlands; how much treasure had been annually expended with an insufficient result.  “Knowing your necessity,” continued Cayas, “his Majesty instantly sent for Doctor Velasco, and ordered him to provide you with funds, if he had to descend into the earth to dig for it.”  While such was the exultation of the Spaniards, the Prince of Orange was neither dismayed nor despondent.  As usual, he trusted to a higher power than man.  “I had hoped to send you better news,”