Thus, smarting under a sense of gross injustice, the Admiral expressed himself in terms which Philip was not likely to forgive.  He had undertaken the pacification of Tournay, because it was Montigny’s government, and he had promised his services whenever they should be requisite.  Horn was a loyal and affectionate brother, and it is pathetic to find him congratulating Montigny on being, after all, better off in Spain than in the Netherlands.  Neither loyalty nor the sincere Catholicism for which Montigny at this period commended Horn in his private letters, could save the two brothers from the doom which was now fast approaching.

Thus Horn, blind as Egmont—­not being aware that a single step beyond implicit obedience had created an impassable gulf between Philip and himself—­resolved to meet his destiny in sullen retirement.  Not an entirely disinterested man, perhaps, but an honest one, as the world went, mediocre in mind, but brave, generous, and direct of purpose, goaded by the shafts of calumny, hunted down by the whole pack which fawned upon power as it grew more powerful, he now retreated to his “desert,” as he called his ruined home at Weert, where he stood at bay, growling defiance at the Regent, at Philip, at all the world.

Thus were the two prominent personages upon whose co-operation Orange had hitherto endeavored to rely, entirely separated from him.  The confederacy of nobles, too, was dissolved, having accomplished little, notwithstanding all its noisy demonstrations, and having lost all credit with the people by the formal cessation of the Compromise in consequence of the Accord of August.  As a body, they had justified the sarcasm of Hubert Languet, that “the confederated nobles had ruined their country by their folly and incapacity.”  They had profaned a holy cause by indecent orgies, compromised it by seditious demonstrations, abandoned it when most in need of assistance.  Bakkerzeel had distinguished himself by hanging sectaries in Flanders.  “Golden Fleece” de Hammes, after creating great scandal in and about Antwerp, since the Accord, had ended by accepting an artillery commission in the Emperor’s army, together with three hundred crowns for convoy from Duchess Margaret.  Culemburg was serving the cause of religious freedom by defacing the churches within his ancestral domains, pulling down statues, dining in chapels and giving the holy wafer to his parrot.  Nothing could be more stupid than these acts of irreverence, by which Catholics were offended and honest patriots disgusted.  Nothing could be more opposed to the sentiments of Orange, whose first principle was abstinence by all denominations of Christians from mutual insults.  At the same time, it is somewhat revolting to observe the indignation with which such offences were regarded by men of the most abandoned character.  Thus, Armenteros, whose name was synonymous with government swindling, who had been rolling up money year after year, by peculations, auctioneering of high posts in church and state, bribes, and all kinds of picking and stealing, could not contain his horror as he referred to wafers eaten by parrots, or “toasted on forks” by renegade priests; and poured out his emotions on the subject into the faithful bosom of Antonio Perez, the man with whose debaucheries, political villanies, and deliberate murders all Europe was to ring.