Such was the celebrated ban against the Prince of Orange.  It was answered before the end of the year by the memorable “Apology of the Prince of Orange” one of the moat startling documents in history.  No defiance was ever thundered forth in the face of a despot in more terrible tones.  It had become sufficiently manifest to the royal party that the Prince was not to be purchased by “millions of money,” or by unlimited family advancement—­not to be cajoled by flattery or offers of illustrious friendship.  It had been decided, therefore, to terrify him into retreat, or to remove him by murder.  The Government had been thoroughly convinced that the only way to finish the revolt, was to “finish Orange,” according to the ancient advice of Antonio Perez.  The mask was thrown off.  It had been decided to forbid the Prince bread, water, fire, and shelter; to give his wealth to the fisc, his heart to the assassin, his soul, as it was hoped, to the Father of Evil.  The rupture being thus complete, it was right that the “wretched hypocrite” should answer ban with ban, royal denunciation with sublime scorn.  He had ill-deserved, however, the title of hypocrite, he said.  When the friend of government, he had warned them that by their complicated and perpetual persecutions they were twisting the rope of their own ruin.  Was that hypocrisy?  Since becoming their enemy, there had likewise been little hypocrisy found in him—­unless it were hypocrisy to make open war upon government, to take their cities, to expel their armies from the country.

The proscribed rebel, towering to a moral and even social superiority over the man who affected to be his master by right divine, swept down upon his antagonist with crushing effect.  He repudiated the idea of a king in the Netherlands.  The word might be legitimate in Castillo, or Naples, or the Indies, but the provinces knew no such title.  Philip had inherited in those countries only the power of Duke or Count—­a power closely limited by constitutions more ancient than his birthright.  Orange was no rebel then—­Philip no legitimate monarch.  Even were the Prince rebellious, it was no more than Philip’s ancestor, Albert of Austria, had been towards his anointed sovereign, Emperor Adolphus of Nassau, ancestor of William.  The ties of allegiance and conventional authority being, severed, it had become idle for the King to affect superiority of lineage to the man whose family had occupied illustrious stations when the Habsburgs were obscure squires in Switzerland, and had ruled as sovereign in the Netherlands before that overshadowing house had ever been named.