popularity might protect the odious designs of the government.  The edicts, the inquisition, the persecution, the new bishoprics, had been the causes of the tumults.  He concluded with a burst of indignation against Philip’s conduct toward himself.  The monarch had forgotten his services and those of his valiant ancestors.  He had robbed him of honor, he had robbed him of his son—­both dearer to him than life.  By thus doing he had degraded himself more than he had injured him, for he had broken all his royal oaths and obligations.

The paper was published early in the summer of 1568.  At about the same time, the Count of Hoogstraaten published a similar reply to the act of condemnation with which he had been visited.  He defended himself mainly upon the ground, that all the crimes of which he stood arraigned had been committed in obedience to the literal instructions of the Duchess of Parma, after her accord with the confederates.

The Prince now made the greatest possible exertions to raise funds and troops.  He had many meetings with influential individuals in Germany.  The Protestant princes, particularly the Landgrave of Hesse and the Elector of Saxony, promised him assistance.  He brought all his powers of eloquence and of diplomacy to make friends for the cause which he had now boldly espoused.  The high-born Demosthenes electrified large assemblies by his indignant invectives against the Spanish Philip.  He excelled even his royal antagonist in the industrious subtlety with which he began to form a thousand combinations.  Swift, secret, incapable of fatigue, this powerful and patient intellect sped to and fro, disentangling the perplexed skein where all had seemed so hopelessly confused, and gradually unfolding broad schemes of a symmetrical and regenerated polity.  He had high correspondents and higher hopes in England.  He was already secretly or openly in league with half the sovereigns of Germany.  The Huguenots of France looked upon him as their friend, and on Louis of Nassau as their inevitable chieftain, were Coligny destined to fall.  He was in league with all the exiled and outlawed nobles of the Netherlands.  By his orders recruits were daily enlisted, without sound of drum.  He granted a commission to his brother Louis, one of the most skilful and audacious soldiers of the age, than whom the revolt could not have found a more determined partisan, nor the Prince a more faithful lieutenant.

This commission, which was dated Dillenburg, 6th April, 1568, was a somewhat startling document.  It authorized the Count to levy troops and wage war against Philip, strictly for Philip’s good.  The fiction of loyalty certainly never went further.  The Prince of Orange made known to all “to whom those presents should come,” that through the affection which he bore the gracious King, he purposed to expel his Majesty’s forces from the Netherlands.  “To show our love for the monarch and his hereditary provinces,” so ran the commission, “to prevent the desolation hanging over the country by the ferocity of the Spaniards, to maintain the privileges sworn to by his Majesty and his predecessors, to prevent the extirpation of all religion by the edicts, and to save the sons and daughters of the land from abject slavery, we have requested our dearly beloved brother Louis Nassau to enrol as many troops as he shall think necessary.”