He arrived at Antwerp on the 17th of September, and was received with extraordinary enthusiasm.  The Prince, who had gone forth alone, without even a bodyguard, had the whole population of the great city for his buckler.  Here he spent five days, observing, with many a sigh, the melancholy changes which had taken place in the long interval of his absence.  The recent traces of the horrible “Fury,” the blackened walls of the Hotel de Ville, the prostrate ruins of the marble streets, which he had known as the most imposing in Europe, could be hardly atoned for in his eyes even by the more grateful spectacle of the dismantled fortress.

On the 23rd of September he was attended by a vast concourse of citizens to the new canal which led to Brussels, where three barges were in waiting for himself and suite.  In one a banquet was spread; in the second, adorned with emblematic devices and draped with the banners of the seventeen provinces, he was to perform the brief journey; while the third had been filled by the inevitable rhetoric societies, with all the wonders of their dramatic and plastic ingenuity.  Rarely had such a complication of vices and virtues, of crushed dragons, victorious archangels, broken fetters, and resurgent nationalities, been seen before, within the limits of a single canal boat.  The affection was, however, sincere, and the spirit noble, even though the taste which presided at these remonstrations may have been somewhat pedantic.

The Prince was met several miles before the gates of Brussels by a procession of nearly half the inhabitants of the city, and thus escorted, he entered the capital in the afternoon of the 23rd of September.  It was the proudest day of his life.  The representatives of all the provinces, supported by the most undeniable fervor of the united Netherland people, greeted “Father William.”  Perplexed, discordant, hating, fearing, doubting, they could believe nothing, respect nothing, love nothing, save the “tranquil” Prince.  His presence at that moment in Brussels was the triumph of the people and of religious toleration.  He meant to make use of the crisis to extend and to secure popular rights, and to establish the supremacy of the states-general under the nominal sovereignty of some Prince, who was yet to be selected, while the executive body was to be a state-council, appointed by the states-general.  So far as appears, he had not decided as to the future protector, but he had resolved that it should be neither himself nor Philip of Spain.  The outlaw came to Brussels prepared at last to trample out a sovereignty which had worked its own forfeiture.  So far as he had made any election within his breast, his choice inclined to the miserable Duke of Anjou; a prince whom he never came to know as posterity has known him, but whom he at least learned to despise.  Thus far the worthless and paltry intriguer still wore the heroic mask, deceiving even such far seeing politicians as Saint Aldegonde and the Prince.