Casimir received the news of the departure of his ragged soldiery on the very day which witnessed his investment with the Garter by the fair hands of Elizabeth herself.  A few days afterwards he left England, accompanied by an escort of lords and gentlemen, especially appointed for that purpose by the Queen.  He landed in Flushing, where he was received with distinguished hospitality, by order of the Prince of Orange, and on the 14th of February, 1579, he passed through Utrecht.  Here he conversed freely at his lodgings in the “German House” on the subject of his vagabond troops, whose final adventures and departure seemed to afford him considerable amusement; and he, moreover, diverted his company by singing, after supper, a few verses of the ballad already mentioned.

     O, have you been in Brabant, fighting for the states? 
     O, have you brought back anything except your broken pates? 
     O, I have been in Brabant, myself and all my mates. 
     We’ll go no more to Brabant, unless our brains were addle,
     We’re coming home on foot, we went there in the saddle;
     For there’s neither gold nor glory got, in fighting for the states.

The Duke of Anjou, meantime, after disbanding his troops, had lingered for a while near the frontier.  Upon taking his final departure, he sent his resident minister, Des Pruneaux, with a long communication to the states-general, complaining that they had not published their contract with himself, nor fulfilled its conditions.  He excused, as well as he could, the awkward fact that his disbanded troops had taken refuge with the Walloons, and he affected to place his own departure upon the ground of urgent political business in France, to arrange which his royal brother had required his immediate attendance.  He furthermore most hypocritically expressed a desire for a speedy reconciliation of the provinces with their sovereign, and a resolution that—­although for their sake he had made himself a foe to his Catholic Majesty—­he would still interpose no obstacle to so desirable a result.

To such shallow discourse the states answered with infinite urbanity, for it was the determination of Orange not to make enemies, at that juncture, of France and England in the same breath.  They had foes enough already, and it seemed obvious at that moment, to all persons most observant of the course of affairs, that a matrimonial alliance was soon to unite the two crowns.  The probability of Anjou’s marriage with Elizabeth was, in truth, a leading motive with Orange for his close alliance with the Duke.  The political structure, according to which he had selected the French Prince as protector of the Netherlands, was sagaciously planned; but unfortunately its foundation was the shifting sandbank of female and royal coquetry.  Those who judge only by the result, will be quick to censure a policy which might have had very different issue.  They who place themselves in the period