It would be impossible, without insight into these private and most important transactions, to penetrate the heart of the mystery which enwrapped at this period the relations of the great powers with each other.  Enough has been seen to silence for ever the plea, often entered in behalf of religious tyranny, that the tyrant acts in obedience to a sincere conviction of duty; that, in performing his deeds of darkness, he believes himself to be accomplishing the will of Heaven.  Here we have seen Philip, offering to restore the Prince of Orange, and to establish freedom of religion in the Netherlands, if by such promises he can lay hold of the Imperial diadem.  Here also we have Charles ix. and his mother—­their hands reeking with the heretic-blood of St. Bartholomew—­making formal engagements with heretics to protect heresy everywhere, if by such pledges the crown of the Jagellons and the hand of Elizabeth can be secured.

While Louis was thus busily engaged in Germany, Orange was usually established at Delft.  He felt the want of his brother daily, for the solitude of the Prince, in the midst of such fiery trials, amounted almost to desolation.  Not often have circumstances invested an individual with so much responsibility and so little power.  He was regarded as the protector and father of the country, but from his own brains and his own resources he was to furnish himself with the means of fulfilling those high functions.  He was anxious thoroughly to discharge the duties of a dictatorship without grasping any more of its power than was indispensable to his purpose.  But he was alone on that little isthmus, in single combat with the great Spanish monarchy.  It was to him that all eyes turned, during the infinite horrors of the Harlem sieges and in the more prosperous leaguer of Alkmaar.  What he could do he did.  He devised every possible means to succor Harlem, and was only restrained from going personally to its rescue by the tears of the whole population of Holland.  By his decision and the spirit which he diffused through the country, the people were lifted to a pitch of heroism by which Alkmaar was saved.  Yet, during all this harassing period, he had no one to lean upon but himself.  “Our affairs are in pretty good; condition in Holland and Zealand,” he wrote, “if I only had some aid.  ’Tis impossible for me to support alone so many labors, and the weight of such great affairs as come upon me hourly—­financial, military, political.  I have no one to help me, not a single man, wherefore I leave you to suppose in what trouble I find myself.”

For it was not alone the battles and sieges which furnished him with occupation and filled him with anxiety.  Alone, he directed in secret the politics of the country, and, powerless and outlawed though he seemed, was in daily correspondence not only with the estates of Holland and Zealand, whose deliberations he guided, but with the principal governments of Europe.  The estates of the Netherlands, moreover, had been