The Duke of Parma then went into winter quarters in Brabant, and, before the spring, that obedient Province had been eaten as bare as Flanders had already been by the friendly Spaniards.

An excellent understanding between England and Holland had been the result of their united and splendid exertions against the Invincible Armada.  Late in the year 1588 Sir John Norris had been sent by the Queen to offer her congratulations and earnest thanks to the States for their valuable assistance in preserving her throne, and to solicit their cooperation in some new designs against the common foe.  Unfortunately, however, the epoch of good feeling was but of brief duration.  Bitterness and dissension seemed the inevitable conditions of the English-Dutch alliance.  It will be, remembered, that, on the departure of Leicester, several cities had refused to acknowledge the authority of Count Maurice and the States; and that civil war in the scarcely-born commonwealth had been the result.  Medenblik, Naarden, and the other contumacious cities, had however been reduced to obedience after the reception of the Earl’s resignation, but the important city of Gertruydenberg had remained in a chronic state of mutiny.  This rebellion had been partially appeased during the year 1588 by the efforts of Willoughby, who had strengthened, the garrison by reinforcements of English troops under command of his brother-in-law, Sir John Wingfield.  Early in 1589 however, the whole garrison became rebellious, disarmed and maltreated the burghers, and demanded immediate payment of the heavy arrearages still due to the troops.  Willoughby, who—­much disgusted with his career in the Netherlands—­was about leaving for England, complaining that the States had not only left him without remuneration for his services, but had not repaid his own advances, nor even given him a complimentary dinner, tried in vain to pacify them.  A rumour became very current, moreover, that the garrison had opened negotiations with Alexander Farnese, and accordingly Maurice of Nassau—­of whose patrimonial property the city of Gertruydenberg made a considerable proportion, to the amount of eight thousand pounds sterling a years—­after summoning the garrison, in his own name and that of the States, to surrender, laid siege to the place in form.  It would have been cheaper, no doubt, to pay the demands of the garrison in full, and allow them to depart.  But Maurice considered his honour at stake.  His letters of summons, in which he spoke of the rebellious commandant and his garrison as self-seeking foreigners and mercenaries, were taken in very ill part.  Wingfield resented the statement in very insolent language, and offered to prove its falsehood with his sword against any man and in any place whatever.  Willoughby wrote to his brother-in-law, from Flushing, when about to embark, disapproving of his conduct and of his language; and to Maurice, deprecating hostile measures against a city under the protection of Queen Elizabeth.