I consider you most fortunate that you are passing the remainder of your days for God and yourself; that you are not forced to put yourself perpetually in the scales of the world’s events, nor to venture yourself daily on its hazardous games.”  He proceeded to inform his friend of his own painful situation, surrounded by innumerable enemies, without means of holding out more than three months, and cut off from all assistance by a government which could not see that if the present chance were lost all was lost.  He declared it impossible for him to fight in the position to which he was reduced, pressed as he was within half a mile of the point which he had always considered as his last refuge.  He stated also that the French were strengthening themselves in Hainault, under Alencon, and that the King of France was in readiness to break in through Burgundy, should his brother obtain a firm foothold in the provinces.  “I have besought his Majesty over and over again,” he continued, “to send to me his orders; if they come they shall be executed, unless they arrive too late.  They have cut of our hands and we have now nothing for it but to stretch forth our heads also to the axe.  I grieve to trouble you with my sorrows, but I trust to your sympathy as a man and a friend.  I hope that you will remember me in your prayers, for you can put your trust where, in former days, I never could place my own.”

The dying crusader wrote another letter, in the same mournful strain, to another intimate friend, Don Pedro Mendoza, Spanish envoy in Genoa.  It was dated upon the same day from his camp near Namur, and repeated the statement that the King of France was ready to invade the Netherlands, so soon as Alencon should prepare an opening.  “His Majesty,” continued Don John, “is resolved upon nothing; at least, I am kept in ignorance of his intentions.  Our life is doled out to us here by moments.  I cry aloud, but it profits me little.  Matters will soon be disposed, through our negligence, exactly as the Devil would best wish them.  It is plain that we are left here to pine away till our last breath.  God direct us all as He may see fit; in His hands are all things.”

Four days later he wrote to the King, stating that he was confined to his chamber with a fever, by which he was already as much reduced as if he had been ill for a month.  “I assure your Majesty,” said he “that the work here is enough to destroy any constitution and any life.”  He reminded Philip how often he had been warned by him as to the insidious practices of the French.  Those prophecies had now become facts.  The French had entered the country, while some of the inhabitants were frightened, others disaffected.  Don John declared himself in a dilemma.  With his small force, hardly enough to make head against the enemy immediately in front, and to protect the places which required guarding, ’twas impossible for him to leave his position to attack the enemy in Burgundy.  If he remained