Meantime the operations of the States were not commendable.  The ineradicable jealousy between the Leicestrians and the Barneveldians had done its work.  There was no hearty effort for the relief of Sluys.  There were suspicions that, if saved, the town would only be taken possession of by the Earl of Leicester, as an additional vantage-point for coercing the country into subjection to his arbitrary authority.  Perhaps it would be transferred to Philip by Elizabeth as part of the price for peace.  There was a growing feeling in Holland and Zeeland that as those Provinces bore all the expense of the war, it was an imperative necessity that they should limit their operations to the defence of their own soil.  The suspicions as to the policy of the English government were sapping the very foundations of the alliance, and there was small disposition on the part of the Hollanders, therefore, to protect what remained of Flanders, and thus to strengthen the hands of her whom they were beginning to look upon as an enemy.

Maurice and Hohenlo made, however, a foray into Brabant, by way of diversion to the siege of Sluys, and thus compelled Farnese to detach a considerable force under Haultepenne into that country, and thereby to weaken himself.  The expedition of Maurice was not unsuccessful.  There was some sharp skirmishing between Hohenlo and Haultepenne, in which the latter, one of the most valuable and distinguished generals on the royal side, was defeated and slain; the fort of Engel, near Bois-le-Duc, was taken, and that important city itself endangered; but, on the other hand, the contingent on which Leicester relied from the States to assist in relieving Sluys was not forthcoming.

For, meantime, the governor-general had at last been sent back by his sovereign to the post which he had so long abandoned.  Leaving Leicester House on the 4th July (N.  S.), he had come on board the fleet two days afterwards at Margate.  He was bringing with him to the Netherlands three thousand fresh infantry, and thirty thousand pounds, of which sum fifteen thousand pounds had been at last wrung from Elizabeth as an extra loan, in place of the sixty thousand pounds which the States had requested.  As he sailed past Ostend and towards Flushing, the Earl was witness to the constant cannonading between the besieged city and the camp of Farnese, and saw that the work could hardly be more serious; for in one short day more shots were fired than had ever been known before in a single day in all Parma’s experience.

Arriving at Flushing, the governor-general was well received by the inhabitants; but the mischief, which had been set a-foot six months before, had done its work.  The political intrigues, disputes, and the conflicting party-organizations, have already been set in great detail before the reader, in order that their effect might now be thoroughly understood without—­explanation.  The governor-general came to Flushing at a most critical moment.  The fate of all the Spanish Netherlands, of Sluys, and with it the whole of Philip and Parma’s great project, were, in Farnese’s own language, hanging by a thread.