quiet till they have made use of this interregnum to do us some immense grievance.”  Certainly the Prince of Orange did not sleep upon this nor any other great occasion of his life.  In his own vigorous language, used to stimulate his friends in various parts of the country, he seized the swift occasion by the forelock.  He opened a fresh correspondence with many leading gentlemen in Brussels and other places in the Netherlands; persons of influence, who now, for the first time, showed a disposition to side with their country against its tyrants.  Hitherto the land had been divided into two very unequal portions.  Holland and Zealand were devoted to the Prince; their whole population, with hardly an individual exception, converted to the Reformed religion.  The other fifteen provinces were, on the whole, loyal to the King; while the old religion had, of late years, taken root so rapidly again, that perhaps a moiety of their population might be considered as Catholic.  At the same time, the reign of terror under Alva, the paler, but not less distinct tyranny of Requesens, and the intolerable excesses of the foreign soldiery, by which the government of foreigners was supported, had at last maddened all the inhabitants of the seventeen provinces.  Notwithstanding, therefore, the fatal difference of religious opinion, they were all drawn into closer relations with each other; to regain their ancient privileges, and to expel the detested foreigners from the soil, being objects common to all.  The provinces were united in one great hatred and one great hope.

The Hollanders and Zealanders, under their heroic leader, had well nigh accomplished both tasks, so far as those little provinces were concerned.  Never had a contest, however, seemed more hopeless at its commencement.  Cast a glance at the map.  Look at Holland—­not the Republic, with its sister provinces beyond the Zuyder Zee—­but Holland only, with the Zealand archipelago.  Look at that narrow tongue of half-submerged earth.  Who could suppose that upon that slender sand-bank, one hundred and twenty miles in length, and varying in breadth from four miles to forty, one man, backed by the population of a handful of cities, could do battle nine years long with the master of two worlds, the “Dominator Of Asia, Africa, and America”—­the despot of the fairest realms of Europe—­and conquer him at last.  Nor was William even entirely master of that narrow shoal where clung the survivors of a great national shipwreck.  North and South Holland were cut in two by the loss of Harlem, while the enemy was in possession of the natural capital of the little country, Amsterdam.  The Prince affirmed that the cause had suffered more from the disloyalty of Amsterdam than from all the efforts of the enemy.