These men were indignant at the imbecility of the course pursued in the obedient provinces.  They knew that the incapacity of the Government to relieve the sieges of Gertruydenberg and Groningen had excited the contempt of Europe, and was producing a most damaging effect an Spanish authority throughout Christendom.  They were especially irritated by the presence of the arch-intrigues, Mayenne, in Brussels, even after all his double dealings had been so completely exposed that a blind man could have read them.  Yet there was Mayenne, consorting with the archduke, and running up a great bill of sixteen thousand florins at the hotel, which the royal paymaster declined to settle for want of funds, notwithstanding Ernest’s order to that effect, and there was no possibility of inducing the viceroy to arrest him, much as he had injured and defrauded the king.

How severely Ybarra and Feria denounced Mayenne has been seen; but remonstrances about this and other grave mistakes of administration were lost upon Ernest, or made almost impossible by his peculiar temper.  “If I speak of these things to his Highness,” said Ybarra, “he will begin to cry, as he always does.”

Ybarra, however, thought it his duty secretly to give the king frequent information as to the blasted and forlorn condition of the provinces.  “This sick man will die in our arms,” he said, “without our wishing to kill him.”  He also left no doubt in the royal mind as to the utter incompetency of the archduke for his office.  Although he had much Christianity, amiability, and good intentions, he was so unused to business, so slow and so lazy, so easily persuaded by those around him, as to be always falling into errors.  He was the servant of his own servants, particularly of those least disposed to the king’s service and most attentive to their own interests.  He had endeavoured to make himself beloved by the natives of the country, while the very reverse of this had been the result.

“As to his agility and the strength of his body,” said the Spaniard, as if he were thinking of certain allegories which were to mark the archduke’s triumphal entry, “they are so deficient as to leave him unfit for arms.  I consider him incapable of accompanying an army to the field, and we find him so new to all such affairs as constitute government and the conduct of warlike business, that he could not steer his way without some one to enlighten and direct him.”

It was sometimes complained of in those days—­and the thought has even prolonged itself until later times—­that those republicans of the United Netherlands had done and could do great things; but that, after all, there was no grandeur about them.  Certainly they had done great things.  It was something to fight the Ocean for ages, and patiently and firmly to shut him out from his own domain.  It was something to extinguish the Spanish Inquisition—­a still more cruel and devouring enemy than the sea.  It was something that the fugitive spirit of civil and religious liberty had found at last its most substantial and steadfast home upon those storm-washed shoals and shifting sandbanks.