Anjou was overjoyed when he received this amicable communication.  Relieved for a time from his fears as to the result of his crime, he already assumed a higher ground.  He not only spoke to the states in a paternal tone, which was sufficiently ludicrous, but he had actually the coolness to assure them of his forgiveness.  “He felt hurt,” he said, “that they should deem a safe conduct necessary for the deputation which they proposed to send.  If they thought that he had reason on account of the past, to feel offended, he begged them to believe that he had forgotten it all, and that he had buried the past in its ashes, even as if it had never been.”  He furthermore begged them—­and this seemed the greatest insult of all—­“in future to trust to his word, and to believe that if any thing should be attempted to their disadvantage, he would be the very first to offer himself for their protection.”

It will be observed that in his first letters the Duke had not affected to deny his agency in the outrage—­an agency so flagrant that all subterfuge seemed superfluous.  He in fact avowed that the attempt had been made by his command, but sought to palliate the crime on the ground that it had been the result of the ill-treatment which he had experienced from the states.  “The affronts which I have received,” said he, both to the magistrates of Antwerp and to Orange, “have engendered the present calamity.”  So also, in a letter written at the same time to his brother, Henry the Third, he observed that “the indignities which were put upon him, and the manifest intention of the states to make a Matthias of him, had been the cause of the catastrophe.”

He now, however, ventured a step farther.  Presuming upon the indulgence which he had already experienced; and bravely assuming the tone of injured innocence, he ascribed the enterprise partly to accident, and partly to the insubordination of his troops.  This was the ground which he adopted in his interviews with the states’ commissioners.  So also, in a letter addressed to Van der Tympel, commandant of Brussels, in which he begged for supplies for his troops, he described the recent invasion of Antwerp as entirely unexpected by himself, and beyond his control.  He had been intending, he said, to leave the city and to join his army.  A tumult had accidentally arisen between his soldiers and the guard at the gate.  Other troops rushing in from without, had joined in the affray, so that to, his great sorrow, an extensive disorder had arisen.  He manifested the same Christian inclination to forgive, however, which he had before exhibited.  He observed that “good men would never grow cold in his regard, or find his affection diminished.”  He assured Van der Tympel, in particular, of his ancient goodwill, as he knew him to be a lover of the common weal.