And the States-General were equal to the immense responsibility.  Steadily, promptly, and sagaciously they confronted the wrath, the policy, and the power of the Empire, of Spain, and of the Pope.  Had the Republic not existed, nothing could have prevented that debateable and most important territory from becoming provinces of Spain, whose power thus dilated to gigantic proportions in the very face of England would have been more menacing than in the days of the Armada.  Had the Republic faltered, she would have soon ceased to exist.  But the Republic did not falter.

On the 13th July, Prince Maurice took command of the States’ forces, 13,000 foot and 3000 horse, with thirty pieces of cannon, assembled at Schenkenschans.  The July English and French regiments in the regular service of the United Provinces were included in these armies, but there were no additions to them:  “The States did seven times as much,” Barneveld justly averred, “as they had stipulated to do.”  Maurice, moving with the precision and promptness which always marked his military operations, marched straight upon Julich, and laid siege to that important fortress.  The Archdukes at Brussels, determined to keep out of the fray as long as possible, offered no opposition to the passage of his supplies up the Rhine, which might have been seriously impeded by them at Rheinberg.  The details of the siege, as of all the Prince’s sieges, possess no more interest to the general reader than the working out of a geometrical problem.  He was incapable of a flaw in his calculations, but it was impossible for him quite to complete the demonstration before the arrival of de la Chatre.  Maurice received with courtesy the Marshal, who arrived on the 18th August, at the head of his contingent of 8000 foot and a few squadrons of cavalry, and there was great show of harmony between them.  For any practical purposes, de la Chatre might as well have remained in France.  For political ends his absence would have been preferable to his presence.

Maurice would have rejoiced, had the Marshal blundered longer along the road to the debateable land than he had done.  He had almost brought Julich to reduction.  A fortnight later the place surrendered.  The terms granted by the conqueror were equitable.  No change was to be made in the liberty of Roman Catholic worship, nor in the city magistracy.  The citadel and its contents were to be handed over to the Princes of Brandenburg and Neuburg.  Archduke Leopold and his adherents departed to Prague, to carry out as he best could his farther designs upon the crown of Bohemia, this first portion of them having so lamentably failed, and Sergeant-Major Frederick Pithan, of the regiment of Count Ernest Casimir of Nassau, was appointed governor of Julich in the interest of the possessory princes.

Thus without the loss of a single life, the Republic, guided by her consummate statesman and unrivalled general, had gained an immense victory, had installed the Protestant princes in the full possession of those splendid and important provinces, and had dictated her decrees on German soil to the Emperor of Germany, and had towed, as it were, Great Britain and France along in her wake, instead of humbly following those powers, and had accomplished all that she had ever proposed to do, even in alliance with them both.