Despotism and Protestantism which succeeded.  It was soon evident that the conflict could terminate in but one way.  The Prince had considerable military abilities, and enthusiastic courage; he lost none of his well-deserved reputation by the unfortunate issue of his campaign; he measured himself in arms with the great commander of the age, and defied him, day after day, in vain, to mortal combat; but it was equally certain that the Duke’s quiet game was, played in the most masterly manner.  His positions and his encampments were taken with faultless judgment, his skirmishes wisely and coldly kept within the prescribed control, while the inevitable dissolution of the opposing force took place exactly as he had foreseen, and within the limits which he had predicted.  Nor in the disastrous commencement of the year 1572 did the Duke less signally manifest his military genius.  Assailed as he was at every point, with the soil suddenly upheaving all around him, as by an earthquake, he did not lose his firmness nor his perspicacity.  Certainly, if he had not been so soon assisted by that other earthquake, which on Saint Bartholomew’s Day caused all Christendom to tremble, and shattered the recent structure of Protestant Freedom in the Netherlands, it might have been worse for his reputation.  With Mons safe, the Flemish frontier guarded; France faithful, and thirty thousand men under the Prince of Orange in Brabant, the heroic brothers might well believe that the Duke was “at their mercy.”  The treason of Charles ix. “smote them as with a club,” as the Prince exclaimed in the bitterness of his spirit.  Under the circumstances, his second campaign was a predestined failure, and Alva easily vanquished him by a renewed application of those dilatory arts which he so well understood.

The Duke’s military fame was unquestionable when he came to the provinces, and both in stricken fields and in long campaigns, he showed how thoroughly it had been deserved; yet he left the Netherlands a baffled man.  The Prince might be many times defeated, but he was not to be conquered.  As Alva penetrated into the heart of the ancient Batavian land he found himself overmatched as he had never been before, even by the most potent generals of his day.  More audacious, more inventive, more desperate than all the commanders of that or any other age, the spirit of national freedom, now taught the oppressor that it was invincible; except by annihilation.  The same lesson had been read in the same thickets by the Nervii to Julius Caesar, by the Batavians to the legions of Vespasian; and now a loftier and a purer flame than that which inspired the national struggles against Rome glowed within the breasts of the descendants of the same people, and inspired them with the strength which comes, from religious enthusiasm.  More experienced, more subtle, more politic than Hermann; more devoted, more patient, more magnanimous than Civilis, and equal to either in valor and determination,