Such was the opinion of La None, a man whose love for the reformed religion and for civil liberty can be as little doubted as his competency to form an opinion upon great military subjects.  As little could he be suspected just coming as he did from an infamous prison, whence he had been at one time invited by Philip ii. to emerge, on condition of allowing his eyes to be put out—­of any partiality for that monarch or his representative.

Moreover, although the States of Holland and the English government were earnestly desirous of relieving the city, and were encouraging the patriots with well-founded promises, the Zeeland authorities were lukewarm.  The officers of the Zeeland navy, from which so much was expected, were at last discouraged.  They drew up, signed, and delivered to Admiral Justinus de Nassau, a formal opinion to the effect that the Scheldt had now so many dry and dangerous places, and that the tranquil summer-nights—­so different from those long, stormy ones of winter—­were so short as to allow of no attempt by water likely to be successful to relieve the city.

Here certainly was much to discourage, and Sainte Aldegonde was at length discouraged.  He felt that the last hope of saving Antwerp was gone, and with it all possibility of maintaining the existence of a United Netherland commonwealth.  The Walloon Provinces were lost already; Ghent, Brussels, Mechlin, had also capitulated, and, with the fall of Antwerp, Flanders and Brabant must fall.  There would be no barrier left even to save Holland itself.  Despair entered the heart of the burgomaster, and he listened too soon to its treacherous voice.  Yet while he thought a free national state no longer a possibility, he imagined it practicable to secure religious liberty by negotiation with Philip ii.  He abandoned with a sigh one of the two great objects for which he had struggled side by side with Orange for twenty years, but he thought it possible to secure the other.  His purpose was now to obtain a favourable capitulation for Antwerp, and at the same time to bring about the submission of Holland, Zeeland, and the other United Provinces, to the King of Spain.  Here certainly was a great change of face on the part of one so conspicuous, and hitherto so consistent, in the ranks of Netherland patriots, and it is therefore necessary, in order thoroughly to estimate both the man and the crisis, to follow carefully his steps through the secret path of negotiation into which he now entered, and in which the Antwerp drama was to find its conclusion.  In these transactions, the chief actors are, on the one side, the Prince of Parma, as representative of absolutism and the Papacy; on the other, Sainte Aldegonde, who had passed his life as the champion of the Reformation.