and to which a powerful and adventurous mercantile marine had already led the way.  “Of their ships,” said Cardinal Bentivoglio, “the Hollanders make houses, of their houses schools.  Here they are born, here educated, here they learn their profession.  Their sailors, flying from one pale to the other, practising their art wherever the sun displays itself to mortals, become so skilful that they can scarcely be equalled, certainly not surpassed; by any nation in the civilized world.”

The Prince, however, on his return from France, had never been in so forlorn a condition.  “Orange is plainly perishing,” said one of the friends of the cause.  Not only had he no funds to organize new levies, but he was daily exposed to the most clamorously-urged claims, growing out of the army which he had been recently obliged to disband.  It had been originally reported in the Netherlands that he had fallen in the battle of Moncontour.  “If he have really been taken off,” wrote Viglius, hardly daring to credit the great news, “we shall all of us have less cause to tremble.”  After his actual return, however, lean and beggared, with neither money nor credit, a mere threatening shadow without substance or power, he seemed to justify the sarcasm of Granvelle.  “Vana sine viribus ira,” quoted the Cardinal, and of a verity it seemed that not a man was likely to stir in Germany in his behalf, now that so deep a gloom had descended upon his cause.  The obscure and the oppressed throughout the provinces and Germany still freely contributed out of their weakness and their poverty, and taxed themselves beyond their means to assist enterprizes for the relief of the Netherlands.  The great ones of the earth, however, those on whom the Prince had relied; those to whom he had given his heart; dukes, princes, and electors, in this fatal change of his fortunes fell away like water.

Still his spirit was unbroken.  His letters showed a perfect appreciation of his situation, and of that to which his country was reduced; but they never exhibited a trace of weakness or despair.  A modest, but lofty courage; a pious, but unaffected resignation, breathed through—­every document, public or private, which fell from his pen during this epoch.  He wrote to his brother John that he was quite willing to go, to Frankfort, in order to give himself up as a hostage to his troops for the payment of their arrears.  At the same time he begged his brother to move heaven and earth to raise at least one hundred thousand thalers.  If he could only furnish them with a month’s pay, the soldiers would perhaps be for a time contented.  He gave directions also concerning the disposition of what remained of his plate and furniture, the greater part of it having been already sold and expended in the cause.  He thought it would, on the whole, be better to have the remainder sold, piece by piece, at the fair.  More money would be raised by that course than by a more wholesale arrangement.