While thus careful to offend no man’s religious convictions, to startle no man’s loyalty, he made skillful use of the general indignation felt at, the atrocities of the mutinous army.  This chord he struck boldly, powerfully, passionately, for he felt sure of the depth and strength of its vibrations.  In his address to the estates of Gelderland, he used vigorous language, inflaming and directing to a practical purpose the just wrath which was felt in that, as in every other province.  “I write to warn you,” he said, “to seize this present opportunity.  Shake from your necks the yoke of the godless Spanish tyranny, join yourselves at once to the lovers of the fatherland, to the defenders of freedom.  According to the example of your own ancestors and ours, redeem for the country its ancient laws, traditions, and privileges.  Permit no longer, to your shame and ours, a band of Spanish landloupers and other foreigners, together with three or four self-seeking enemies of their own land, to keep their feet upon our necks.  Let them no longer, in the very wantonness of tyranny, drive us about like a herd of cattle—­like a gang of well-tamed slaves.”

Thus, day after day, in almost countless addresses to public bodies and private individuals, he made use of the crisis to pile fresh fuel upon the flames.  At the same time, while thus fanning the general indignation, he had the adroitness to point out that the people had already committed themselves.  He represented to them that the edict, by which they had denounced his Majesty’s veterans as outlaws, and had devoted them to the indiscriminate destruction which such brigands deserved, was likely to prove an unpardonable crime in the eyes of majesty.  In short, they had entered the torrent.  If they would avoid being dashed over the precipice, they must struggle manfully with the mad waves of civil war into which they had plunged.  “I beg you, with all affection,” he said to the states of Brabant, “to consider the danger in which you have placed yourselves.  You have to deal with the proudest and most overbearing race in the world.  For these qualities they are hated by all other nations.  They are even hateful to themselves.  ’Tis a race which seeks to domineer wheresoever it comes.  It particularly declares its intention to crush and to tyrannize you, my masters, and all the land.  They have conquered you already, as they boast, for the crime of lese-majesty has placed you at their mercy.  I tell you that your last act, by which you have declared this army to be rebels, is decisive.  You have armed and excited the whole people against them, even to the peasants and the peasants’ children, and the insults and injuries thus received, however richly deserved and dearly avenged, are all set down to your account.  Therefore, ’tis necessary for you to decide now, whether to be utterly ruined, yourselves and your children, or to continue firmly the work which you have begun boldly, and rather to die a hundred thousand deaths than to make a treaty with them, which can only end in your ruin.  Be assured that the measure dealt to you will be ignominy as well as destruction.  Let not your leaders expect the honorable scaffolds of Counts Egmont and Horn.  The whipping-post and then the gibbet will be their certain fate.”