of his sovereign, there had been ample room for Prince Maurice to mature his projects, and to make a satisfactory beginning in the field.  Although Alexander had returned to the Netherlands before the end of the year 1590, and did not set forth on his second French campaign until late in the following year, yet the condition of his health, the exhaustion of his funds, and the dwindling of his army, made it impossible for him to render any effectual opposition to the projects of the youthful general.

For the first time Maurice was ready to put his theories and studies into practice on an extensive scale.  Compared with modern armaments, the warlike machinery to be used for liberating the republic from its foreign oppressors would seem almost diminutive.  But the science and skill of a commander are to be judged by the results he can work out with the materials within reach.  His progress is to be measured by a comparison with the progress of his contemporaries—­coheirs with him of what Time had thus far bequeathed.

The regular army of the republic, as reconstructed, was but ten thousand foot and two thousand horse, but it was capable of being largely expanded by the trainbands of the cities, well disciplined and enured to hardship, and by the levies of German reiters and other, foreign auxiliaries in such numbers as could be paid for by the hard-pressed exchequer of the provinces.

To the state-council, according to its original constitution, belonged the levying and disbanding of troops, the conferring of military offices, and the supervision of military operations by sea and land.  It was its duty to see that all officers made oath of allegiance to the United Provinces.

The course of Leicester’s administration, and especially the fatal treason of Stanley and of York, made it seem important for the true lovers of their country to wrest from the state-council, where the English had two seats, all political and military power.  And this, as has been seen, was practically but illegally accomplished.  The silent revolution by which at this epoch all the main attributes of government passed into the hands of the States-General-acting as a league of sovereignties—­has already been indicated.  The period during which the council exercised functions conferred on it by the States-General themselves was brief and evanescent.  The jealousy of the separate provinces soon prevented the state-council—­a supreme executive body entrusted with the general defence of the commonwealth—­from causing troops to pass into or out of one province or another without a patent from his Excellency the Prince, not as chief of the whole army, but as governor and captain-general of Holland, or Gelderland, or Utrecht, as the case might be.