that distinguished chieftain, slaying fifteen hundred of his soldiers at the expense of only fifty or sixty of his own.  By this triumph he had preserved the important city of Groningen for Philip, during an additional quarter of a century, and had been received in that city with rapture.  Several startling years of victory and rapine he had thus run through as a royalist partisan.  He became the terror and the scourge of his native Gelderland, and he was covered with wounds received in the King’s service.  He had been twice captured and held for ransom.  Twice he had effected his escape.  He had recently gained the city of Nymegen.  He was the most formidable, the most unscrupulous, the most audacious Netherlander that wore Philip’s colours; but he had received small public reward for his services, and the wealth which he earned on the high-road did not suffice for his ambition.  He had been deeply disgusted, when, at the death of Count Renneberg, Verdugo, a former stable-boy of Mansfeld, a Spaniard who had risen from the humblest rank to be a colonel and general, had been made governor of Friesland.  He had smothered his resentment for a time however, but had sworn within himself to desert at the most favourable opportunity.  At last, after he had brilliantly saved the city of Breda from falling into the hands of the patriots, he was more enraged than he had ever been before, when Haultepenne, of the house of Berlapmont, was made governor of that place in his stead.

On the 25th of May, 1585, at an hour after midnight, he had a secret interview with Count Meurs, stadholder for the States of Gelderland, and agreed to transfer his mercenary allegiance to the republic.  He made good terms.  He was to be lieutenant-governor of Gelderland, and he was to have rank as marshal of the camp in the States’ army, with a salary of twelve hundred and fifty guilders a month.  He agreed to resign his famous castle of Blyenbeek, but was to be reimbursed with estates in Holland and Zeeland, of the annual value of four thousand florins.

After this treaty, Martin and his free lances served the States faithfully, and became sworn foes to Parma and the King.  He gave and took no quarter, and his men, if captured, “paid their ransom with their heads.”  He ceased to be the scourge of Gelderland, but he became the terror of the electorate.  Early in 1586, accompanied by Herman Kloet, the young and daring Dutch commandant of Neusz, he had swept down into the Westphalian country, at the head of five hundred foot and five hundred horse.  On the 18th of March he captured the city of Werll by a neat stratagem.  The citizens, hemmed in on all sides by marauders, were in want of many necessaries of life, among other things, of salt.  Martin had, from time to time, sent some of his soldiers into the place, disguised as boors from the neighbourhood, and carrying bags of that article.  A pacific trading intercourse had thus been established between the burghers within and the banditti without the gates.