his brother obtain a firm foothold in the provinces.  “I have besought his Majesty over and over again,” he continued, “to send to me his orders; if they come they shall be executed, unless they arrive too late.  They have cut of our hands and we have now nothing for it but to stretch forth our heads also to the axe.  I grieve to trouble you with my sorrows, but I trust to your sympathy as a man and a friend.  I hope that you will remember me in your prayers, for you can put your trust where, in former days, I never could place my own.”

The dying crusader wrote another letter, in the same mournful strain, to another intimate friend, Don Pedro Mendoza, Spanish envoy in Genoa.  It was dated upon the same day from his camp near Namur, and repeated the statement that the King of France was ready to invade the Netherlands, so soon as Alencon should prepare an opening.  “His Majesty,” continued Don John, “is resolved upon nothing; at least, I am kept in ignorance of his intentions.  Our life is doled out to us here by moments.  I cry aloud, but it profits me little.  Matters will soon be disposed, through our negligence, exactly as the Devil would best wish them.  It is plain that we are left here to pine away till our last breath.  God direct us all as He may see fit; in His hands are all things.”

Four days later he wrote to the King, stating that he was confined to his chamber with a fever, by which he was already as much reduced as if he had been ill for a month.  “I assure your Majesty,” said he “that the work here is enough to destroy any constitution and any life.”  He reminded Philip how often he had been warned by him as to the insidious practices of the French.  Those prophecies had now become facts.  The French had entered the country, while some of the inhabitants were frightened, others disaffected.  Don John declared himself in a dilemma.  With his small force, hardly enough to make head against the enemy immediately in front, and to protect the places which required guarding, ’twas impossible for him to leave his position to attack the enemy in Burgundy.  If he remained stationary, the communications were cut off through which his money and supplies reached him.  “Thus I remain,” said he, “perplexed and confused, desiring, more than life, some decision on your Majesty’s part, for which I have implored so many times.”  He urged the King most vehemently to send him instructions as to the course to be pursued, adding that it wounded him to the soul to find them so long delayed.  He begged to be informed whether he was to attack the enemy in Burgundy, whether he should await where he then was the succor of his Majesty, or whether he was to fight, and if so with which of his enemies:  in fine, what he was to do; because, losing or winning, he meant to conform to his Majesty’s will.  He felt deeply pained, he said, at being disgraced and abandoned by the King, having served him, both as a brother, and a man, with love and faith and heartiness.