trade had ceased to exist.  It was a pity only to look upon the raggedness of his soldiers.  No language could describe the misery of the reconciled Provinces—­Artois, Hainault, Flanders.  The condition of Bruges would melt the hardest heart; other cities were no better; Antwerp was utterly ruined; its inhabitants were all starving.  The famine throughout the obedient Netherlands was such as had not been known for a century.  The whole country had been picked bare by the troops, and the plough was not put into the ground.  Deputations were constantly with him from Bruges, Dendermonde, Bois-le-Duc, Brussels, Antwerp, Nymegen, proving to him by the most palpable evidence that the whole population of those cities had almost literally nothing to eat.  He had nothing, however, but exhortations to patience to feed them withal.  He was left without a groat even to save his soldiers from starving, and he wildly and bitterly, day after day, implored his sovereign for aid.  These pictures are not the sketches of a historian striving for effect, but literal transcripts from the most secret revelations of the Prince himself to his sovereign.  On the other hand, although Leicester’s complaints of the destitution of the English troops in the republic were almost as bitter, yet the condition of the United Provinces was comparatively healthy.  Trade, external and internal, was increasing daily.  Distant commercial and military expeditions were fitted out, manufactures were prosperous, and the war of independence was gradually becoming—­strange to say—­a source of prosperity to the new commonwealth.

Philip—­being now less alarmed than his nephew concerning French affairs, and not feeling so keenly the misery of the obedient Provinces, or the wants of the Spanish army—­sent to Alexander six hundred thousand ducats, by way of Genoa.  In the letter submitted by his secretary recording this remittance, the King made, however, a characteristic marginal note:—­“See if it will not be as well to tell him something concerning the two hundred thousand ducats to be deducted for Mucio, for fear of more mischief, if the Prince should expect the whole six hundred thousand.”

Accordingly Mucio got the two hundred thousand.  One-third of the meagre supply destined for the relief of the King’s starving and valiant little army in the Netherlands was cut off to go into the pockets of the intriguing Duke of Guise.  “We must keep the French,” said Philip, “in a state of confusion at home, and feed their civil war.  We must not allow them to come to a general peace, which would be destruction for the Catholics.  I know you will put a good face on the matter; and, after all, ’tis in the interest of the Netherlands.  Moreover, the money shall be immediately refunded.”