Like all other attempts to induce the acceptance, by the Prince, of supreme authority, this effort proved ineffectual, from the obstinate unwillingness of his hand to receive the proffered sceptre.

In connection with this movement, and at about the same epoch, Jacob Swerius, member of the Brabant Council, with other deputies, waited upon Orange, and formally tendered him the sovereign dukedom of Brabant, forfeited and vacant by the late crime of Anjou.  The Prince, however, resolutely refused to accept the dignity, assuring the committee that he had not the means to afford the country as much protection as they had a right to expect from their sovereign.  He added that “he would never give the King of Spain the right-to say that the Prince of Orange had been actuated by no other motives in his career than the hope of self-aggrandizement, and the desire to deprive his Majesty of the provinces in order to appropriate them to himself.”

Accordingly, firmly refusing to heed the overtures of the United States, and of Holland in particular, he continued to further the re-establishment of Anjou—­a measure in which, as he deliberately believed, lay the only chance of union and in dependence.

The Prince of Parma, meantime, had not been idle.  He had been unable to induce the provinces to listen to his wiles, and to rush to the embrace of the monarch whose arms he described as ever open to the repentant.  He had, however, been busily occupied in the course of the summer in taking up many of the towns which the treason of Anjou had laid open to his attacks.

Eindhoven, Diest, Dunkirk, Newport, and other places, were successively surrendered to royalist generals.  On the 22nd of September, 1583, the city of Zutfen, too, was surprised by Colonel Tassis, on the fall of which most important place, the treason of Orange’s brother-in-law, Count Van den Berg, governor of Gueldres, was revealed.  His fidelity had been long suspected, particularly by Count John of Nassau, but always earnestly vouched for by his wife and by his sons.  On the capture of Zutfen, however, a document was found and made public, by which Van den Berg bound himself to deliver the principal cities of Gueldres and Zutfen, beginning with Zutfen itself, into the hands of Parma, on condition of receiving the pardon and friendship of the King.

Not much better could have been expected of Van den Berg.  His pusillanimous retreat from his post in Alva’s time will be recollected; and it is certain that the Prince had never placed implicit confidence in his character.  Nevertheless, it was the fate of this great man to be often deceived by the friends whom he trusted, although never to be outwitted by his enemies.  Van den Berg was arrested, on the 15th of November, carried to the Hague, examined and imprisoned for a time in Delftshaven.  After a time he was, however, liberated, when he instantly, with all his sons, took service under the King.