On the 7th of August he addressed another long letter to the estates.  This document was accompanied, as usual, by certain demands, drawn up categorically in twenty-three articles.  The estates considered his terms hard and strange, for in their opinion it was themselves, not the Governor, who were masters of the situation.  Nevertheless, he seemed inclined to treat as if he had gained, not missed, the citadel of Antwerp; as if the troops with whom he had tampered were mustered in the field, not shut up in distant towns, and already at the mercy of the states party.  The Governor demanded that all the forces of the country should be placed under his own immediate control; that Count Bossu, or some other person nominated by himself, should be appointed to the government of Friesland; that the people of Brabant and Flanders should set themselves instantly to hunting, catching, and chastising all vagrant heretics and preachers.  He required, in particular, that Saint Aldegonde and Theron, those most mischievous rebels, should be prohibited from setting their foot in any city of the Netherlands.  He insisted that the community of Brussels should lay down their arms, and resume their ordinary handicrafts.  He demanded that the Prince of Orange should be made to execute the Ghent treaty; to suppress the exercise of the Reformed religion in Harlem, Schoonhoven, and other places; to withdraw his armed vessels from their threatening stations, and to restore Nieuport, unjustly detained by him.  Should the Prince persist in his obstinacy, Don John summoned them to take arms against him, and to support their lawful Governor.  He, moreover, required the immediate restitution of Antwerp citadel, and the release of Treslong from prison.

Although, regarded from the Spanish point of view, such demands might seem reasonable, it was also natural that their audacity should astonish the estates.  That the man who had violated so openly the Ghent treaty should rebuke the Prince for his default—­that the man who had tampered with the German mercenaries until they were on the point of making another Antwerp Fury, should now claim the command over them and all other troops—­that the man who had attempted to gain Antwerp citadel by a base stratagem should now coolly demand its restoration, seemed to them the perfection of insolence.  The baffled conspirator boldly claimed the prize which was to have rewarded a successful perfidy.  At the very moment when the Escovedo letters and the correspondence with the German colonels had been laid before their eyes, it was a little too much that the double-dealing bastard of the double-dealing Emperor should read them a lecture upon sincerity.  It was certain that the perplexed, and outwitted warrior had placed himself at last in a very false position.  The Prince of Orange, with his usual adroitness, made the most of his adversary’s false moves.  Don John had only succeeded in digging a pitfall for himself.  His stratagems against