The dying Ernest consented, and upon his death Fuentes was declared governor-general until the king’s further pleasure should be known.

Pedro de Guzman, Count of Fuentes, a Spaniard of the hard and antique type, was now in his sixty-fourth year.  The pupil and near relative of the Duke of Alva, he was already as odious to the Netherlanders as might have been inferred from such education and such kin.  A dark, grizzled, baldish man, with high steep forehead, long, haggard, leathern visage, sweeping beard, and large, stern, commanding, menacing eyes, with his Brussels ruff of point lace and his Milan coat of proof, he was in personal appearance not unlike the terrible duke whom men never named without a shudder, although a quarter of a century had passed since he had ceased to curse the Netherlands with his presence.  Elizabeth of England was accustomed to sneer at Fuentes because he had retreated before Essex in that daring commander’s famous foray into Portugal.  The queen called the Spanish general a timid old woman.  If her gibe were true, it was fortunate for her, for Henry of France, and for the republic, that there were not many more such old women to come from Spain to take the place of the veteran chieftains who were destined to disappear so rapidly during this year in Flanders.  He was a soldier of fortune, loved fighting, not only for the fighting’s sake, but for the prize-money which was to be accumulated by campaigning, and he was wont to say that he meant to enter Paradise sword in hand.

Meantime his appointment excited the wrath of the provincial magnates.  The Duke of Arschot was beside himself with frenzy, and swore that he would never serve under Fuentes nor sit at his council-board.  The duke’s brother, Marquis Havre, and his son-in-law, Count Arenberg, shared in the hatred, although they tried to mitigate the vehemence of its expression.  But Arschot swore that no man had the right to take precedence of him in the council of state, and that the appointment of this or any Spaniard was a violation of the charters of the provinces and of the promises of his Majesty.  As if it were for the nobles of the obedient provinces to prate of charters and of oaths!  Their brethren under the banner of the republic had been teaching Philip for a whole generation how they could deal with the privileges of freemen and with the perjury of tyrants.  It was late in the day for the obedient Netherlanders to remember their rights.  Havre and Arenberg, dissembling their own wrath, were abused and insulted by the duke when they tried to pacify him.  They proposed a compromise, according to which Arschot should be allowed to preside in the council of state while Fuentes should content himself with the absolute control of the army.  This would be putting a bit of fat in the duke’s mouth, they said.  Fuentes would hear of no such arrangement.  After much talk and daily attempts to pacify this great Netherlander, his relatives at last persuaded him to go home to