The mutiny of the veterans continued; the “Italian republic” giving the archduke almost as much trouble, despite his ban and edicts and outlawry, as the Dutch commonwealth itself.  For more than a twelvemonth the best troops of the Spanish army had been thus established as a separate empire, levying black-mail on the obedient provinces, hanging such of their old officers as dared to remonstrate, and obeying their elected chief magistrates with exemplary docility.

They had become a force of five thousand strong, cavalry and infantry together, all steady, experienced veterans—­the best and bravest soldiers of Europe.  The least of them demanded two thousand florins as owed to him by the King of Spain and the archduke.  The burghers of Bois-le-Duc and other neighbouring towns in the obedient provinces kept watch and ward, not knowing how soon the Spaniards might be upon them to reward them for their obedience.  Not a peasant with provisions was permitted by the mutineers to enter Bois-le-Duc, while the priests were summoned to pay one year’s income of all their property on pain of being burned alive.  “Very much amazed are the poor priests at these proceedings,” said Ernest Nassau, “and there is a terrible quantity of the vile race within and around the city.  I hope one day to have the plucking of some of their feathers myself.”

The mutiny governed itself as a strict military democracy, and had caused an official seal to be engraved, representing seven snakes entwined in one, each thrusting forth a dangerous tongue, with the motto—­

             “tutto in ore
      E sua Eccelenza in nostro favore.”

“His Excellency” meant Maurice of Nassau, with whom formal articles of compact had been arranged.  It had become necessary for the archduke, notwithstanding the steady drain of the siege of Ostend, to detach a considerable army against this republic and to besiege them in their capital of Hoogstraaten.  With seven thousand foot and three thousand cavalry Frederic Van den Berg took the field against them in the latter part of July.  Maurice, with nine thousand five hundred infantry and three thousand horse, lay near Gertruydenberg.  When united with the rebel “squadron,” two thousand five hundred strong, he would dispose of a force of fifteen thousand veterans, and he moved at once to relieve the besieged mutineers.  His cousin Frederic, however, had no desire to measure himself with the stadholder at such odds, and stole away from him in the dark without beat of drum.  Maurice entered Hoogstraaten, was received with rapture by the Spanish and Italian veterans, and excited the astonishment of all by the coolness with which he entered into the cage of these dangerous serpents—­as they called themselves—­handling them, caressing them, and being fondled by them in return.  But the veterans knew a soldier when they saw one, and their hearts warmed to the prince—­heretic though he were—­more than they had ever done to the unfrocked bishop who, after starving them for years, had doomed them to destruction in this world and the next.