To this document the Prince replied in August, having paid in the meantime but little heed to its precepts.  Now that the Emperor, who at first was benignant, had begun to frown on his undertaking, he did not slacken in his own endeavours to set his army on foot.  One by one, those among the princes of the empire who had been most stanch in his cause, and were still most friendly to his person, grew colder as tyranny became stronger; but the ardor of the Prince was not more chilled by their despair than by the overthrow at Jemmingen, which had been its cause.  In August, he answered the letter of the Emperor, respectfully but warmly.  He still denounced the tyranny of Alva and the arts of Granvelle with that vigorous eloquence which was always at his command, while, as usual, he maintained a show of almost exaggerated respect for their monarch.  It was not to be presumed, he said, that his Majesty, “a king debonair and bountiful,” had ever intended such cruelties as those which had been rapidly retraced in the letter, but it was certain that the Duke of Alva had committed them all of his own authority.  He trusted, moreover, that the Emperor, after he had read the “Justification” which the Prince had recently published, would appreciate the reason for his taking up arms.  He hoped that his Majesty would now consider the resistance just, Christian, and conformable to the public peace.  He expressed the belief that rather than interpose any hindrance, his Majesty would thenceforth rather render assistance “to the poor and desolate Christians,” even as it was his Majesty’s office and authority to be the last refuge of the injured.

The “Justification against the false blame of his calumniators by the Prince of Orange,” to which the Prince thus referred, has been mentioned in a previous chapter.  This remarkable paper had been drawn up at the advice of his friends, Landgrave William and Elector Augustus, but it was not the only document which the Prince caused to be published at this important epoch.  He issued a formal declaration of war against the Duke of Alva; he addressed a solemn and eloquent warning or proclamation to all the inhabitants of the Netherlands.  These documents are all extremely important and interesting.  Their phraseology shows the intentions and the spirit by which the Prince was actuated on first engaging in the struggle.  Without the Prince and his efforts—­at this juncture, there would probably have never been a free Netherland commonwealth.  It is certain, likewise, that without an enthusiastic passion for civil and religious liberty throughout the masses of the Netherland people, there would have been no successful effort on the part of the Prince.  He knew his countrymen; while they, from highest to humblest, recognised in him their saviour.  There was, however, no pretence of a revolutionary movement.  The Prince came to maintain, not to overthrow.  The freedom which had been enjoyed in the provinces until the accession