That Maurice loved power, pelf, and war, can hardly be denied.  That he had a mounting ambition; that he thought a monarchy founded upon the historical institutions and charters of the provinces might be better than the burgher-aristocracy which, under the lead of Barneveld, was establishing itself in the country; that he knew no candidate so eligible for such a throne as his father’s son, all this is highly probable and scarcely surprising.  But that such sentiments or aspirations caused him to swerve the ninth part of a hair from what he considered the direct path of duty; that he determined to fight out the great fight with Spain and Rome until the States were free in form, in name, and in fact; only that he might then usurp a sovereignty which would otherwise revert to Philip of Spain or be snatched by Henry of Navarre—­of all this there is no proof whatever.

The language of Lewis William to the provinces under his government was quite as vigorous as the appeals of Maurice.

During the brief interval remaining before the commissioners should comply with the demands of the States or take their departure, the press throughout the Netherlands was most active.  Pamphlets fell thick as hail.  The peace party and the war party contended with each other, over all the territory of the provinces, as vigorously as the troops of Fuentes or Bucquoy had ever battled with the columns of Bax and Meetkerke.  The types of Blaauw and Plantin were as effective during the brief armistice, as pike and arquebus in the field, but unfortunately they were used by Netherlanders against each other.  As a matter of course, each party impeached the motives as well as the actions of its antagonist.  The adherents of the Advocate accused the stadholder of desiring the continuance of the war for personal aims.  They averred that six thousand men for guarding the rivers would be necessary, in addition to the forty-five thousand men, now kept constantly on foot.  They placed the requisite monthly expenses, if hostilities were resumed, at 800,000 florins, while they pointed to the 27,000,000 of debt over and above the 8,000,000 due to the British crown, as a burthen under which the republic could scarcely stagger much longer.  Such figures seem modest enough, as the price of a war of independence.

Familiar with the gigantic budgets of our own day, we listen with something like wonder, now that two centuries and a half have passed, to the fierce denunciations by the war party of these figures as wilful fictions.  Science has made in that interval such gigantic strides.  The awful intellect of man may at last make war impossible for his physical strength.  He can forge but cannot wield the hammer of Thor; nor has Science yet discovered the philosopher’s stone.  Without it, what exchequer can accept chronic warfare and escape bankruptcy?  After what has been witnessed in these latest days, the sieges and battles of that distant epoch seem like the fights of pigmies and cranes.  Already an eighty years’ war, such as once was waged, has become inconceivable.  Let two more centuries pass away, and perhaps a three weeks’ campaign may exhaust an empire.