The archduke was now thirty-nine years of age, the Infanta Isabella six years younger.  She was esteemed majestically beautiful by her courtiers, and Cardinal Bentivoglio, himself a man of splendid intellect, pronounced her a woman of genius, who had grown to be a prodigy of wisdom, under the tuition of her father, the most sagacious statesman of the age.  In attachment to the Roman faith and ritual, in superhuman loftiness of demeanour, and in hatred of heretics, she was at least a worthy child of that sainted sovereign.  In a moral point of view she was his superior.  The archdukes—­so Albert and Isabella were always designated—­were a singularly attached couple, and their household, if extravagant and imperial, was harmonious.  They loved each other—­so it was believed—­as sincerely as they abhorred heretics and rebels, but it does not appear that they had a very warm affection for their Flemish subjects.  Every characteristic of their court was Spanish.  Spanish costume, Spanish manners, the Spanish tongue, were almost exclusively predominant, and although the festivals, dances, banquets, and tourneys, were all very magnificent, the prevailing expression of the Brabantine capital resembled that of a Spanish convent, so severely correct, so stately, and so grim, was the demeanour of the court.

The earliest military operations of the stadholder in the first year of the new century were successful.  Partly by menace; but more effectually by judicious negotiation.  Maurice recovered Crevecoeur, and obtained the surrender of St. Andrew, the fort which the admiral had built the preceding year in honour of Albert’s uncle.  That ecclesiastic, with whom Mendoza had wrangled most bitterly during the whole interval of Albert’s absence, had already taken his departure for Rome, where he soon afterwards died.  The garrisons of the forts, being mostly Walloon soldiers, forsook the Spanish service for that of the States, and were banded together in a legion some twelve hundred strong, which became known as the “New Beggars,” and were placed under the nominal command of Frederick Henry of Nassau, youngest child of William the Silent.  The next military event of the year was a mad combat, undertaken by formal cartel, between Breaute, a young Norman noble in the service of the republic, and twenty comrades, with an equal number of Flemish warriors from the obedient provinces, under Grobbendonck.  About one half of the whole number were killed, including the leaders, but the encounter, although exciting much interest at the time, had of course no permanent importance.

There was much negotiation, informal and secret, between Brussels and London during this and a portion of the following year.  Elizabeth, naturally enough, was weary of the war, but she felt, after all, as did the Government of France, that a peace between the United Netherlands and Spain would have for its result the restoration of the authority of his most Catholic Majesty over all the provinces.  The statesmen