The Spaniards were already on the sea, it was said.  Had it not been for his Excellency’s watchfulness and promptitude, they would already under guidance of Barneveld and his crew have mastered the city of Brielle.  Flushing too through Barneveld’s advice and connivance was open at a particular point, in order that the Spaniards, who had their eye upon it, might conveniently enter and take possession of the place.  The air was full of wild rumours to this effect, and already the humbler classes who sided with the Stadholder saw in him the saviour of the country from the treason of the Advocate and the renewed tyranny of Spain.

The Prince made no such pretence, but simply took possession of the fortress in order to be beforehand with the Waartgelders.  The Contra-Remonstrants in Brielle had desired that “men should see who had the hardest fists,” and it would certainly have been difficult to find harder ones than those of the hero of Nieuwpoort.

Besides the Jesuits coming in so skilfully to triumph over the warring sects of Calvinists, there were other engineers on whom the Spanish government relied to effect the reconquest of the Netherlands.  Especially it was an object to wreak vengeance on Holland, that head and front of the revolt, both for its persistence in rebellion and for the immense prosperity and progress by which that rebellion had been rewarded.  Holland had grown fat and strong, while the obedient Netherlands were withered to the marrow of their bones.  But there was a practical person then resident in Spain to whom the Netherlands were well known, to whom indeed everything was well known, who had laid before the King a magnificent scheme for destroying the commerce and with it the very existence of Holland to the great advantage of the Spanish finances and of the Spanish Netherlands.  Philip of course laid it before the Archduke as usual, that he might ponder it well and afterwards, if approved, direct its execution.

The practical person set forth in an elaborate memoir that the Hollanders were making rapid progress in commerce, arts, and manufactures, while the obedient provinces were sinking as swiftly into decay.  The Spanish Netherlands were almost entirely shut off from the sea, the rivers Scheldt and Meuse being hardly navigable for them on account of the control of those waters by Holland.  The Dutch were attracting to their dominions all artisans, navigators, and traders.  Despising all other nations and giving them the law, they had ruined the obedient provinces.  Ostend, Nieuwpoort, Dunkerk were wasting away, and ought to be restored.

“I have profoundly studied forty years long the subjects of commerce and navigation,” said the practical person, “and I have succeeded in penetrating the secrets and acquiring, as it were, universal knowledge—­let me not be suspected of boasting—­of the whole discovered world and of the ocean.  I have been assisted by study of the best works of geography and history, by my own labours, and by those of my late father, a man of illustrious genius and heroical conceptions and very zealous in the Catholic faith.”