with him.  These statements angered Maurice, and angered him the more because they happened to be true.  It was also charged that he was pursuing his Leicestrian designs and meant to make himself, by such steps, sovereign of the country.  The name of Leicester being a byword of reproach ever since that baffled noble had a generation before left the Provinces in disgrace, it was a matter of course that such comparisons were excessively exasperating.  It was fresh enough too in men’s memory that the Earl in his Netherland career had affected sympathy with the strictest denomination of religious reformers, and that the profligate worldling and arrogant self-seeker had used the mask of religion to cover flagitious ends.  As it had indeed been the object of the party at the head of which the Advocate had all his life acted to raise the youthful Maurice to the stadholderate expressly to foil the plots of Leicester, it could hardly fail to be unpalatable to Maurice to be now accused of acting the part of Leicester.

He inveighed bitterly on the subject before the state council:  The state council, in a body, followed him to a meeting of the States-General.  Here the Stadholder made a vehement speech and demanded that the States of Holland should rescind the “Sharp Resolution,” and should desist from the new oaths required from the soldiery.  Barneveld, firm as a rock, met these bitter denunciations.  Speaking in the name of Holland, he repelled the idea that the sovereign States of that province were responsible to the state council or to the States-General either.  He regretted, as all regretted, the calumnies uttered against the Prince, but in times of such intense excitement every conspicuous man was the mark of calumny.

The Stadholder warmly repudiated Leicestrian designs, and declared that he had been always influenced by a desire to serve his country and maintain the Reformed religion.  If he had made mistakes, he desired to be permitted to improve in the future.

Thus having spoken, the soldier retired from the Assembly with the state council at his heels.

The Advocate lost no time in directing the military occupation of the principal towns of Holland, such as Leyden, Gouda, Rotterdam, Schoonhoven, Hoorn, and other cities.

At Leyden especially, where a strong Orange party was with difficulty kept in obedience by the Remonstrant magistracy, it was found necessary to erect a stockade about the town-hall and to plant caltrops and other obstructions in the squares and streets.

The broad space in front; of the beautiful medieval seat of the municipal government, once so sacred for the sublime and pathetic scenes enacted there during the famous siege and in the magistracy of Peter van der Werff, was accordingly enclosed by a solid palisade of oaken planks, strengthened by rows of iron bars with barbed prongs:  The entrenchment was called by the populace the Arminian Fort, and the iron spear heads were baptized Barneveld’s teeth.  Cannon were planted at intervals along the works, and a company or two of the Waartgelders, armed from head to foot, with snaphances on their shoulders, stood ever ready to issue forth to quell any disturbances.  Occasionally a life or two was lost of citizen or soldier, and many doughty blows were interchanged.