It is difficult to say whether the resolution, if Providence had permitted its fulfilment, would have been, on the whole, better or worse for humanity and civilization.  The ships which would have borne the heroic Prince and his fortunes might have taken the direction of the newly-discovered Western hemisphere.  A religious colony, planted by a commercial and liberty-loving race, in a virgin soil, and directed by patrician but self-denying hands, might have preceded, by half a century, the colony which a kindred race, impelled by similar motives, and under somewhat similar circumstances and conditions, was destined to plant upon the stern shores of New England.  Had they directed their course to the warm and fragrant islands of the East, an independent Christian commonwealth might have arisen among those prolific regions, superior in importance to any subsequent colony of Holland, cramped from its birth by absolute subjection to a far distant metropolis.

The unexpected death of Requesens suddenly dispelled these schemes.  The siege of Zierickzee had occupied much of the Governor’s attention, but he had recently written to his sovereign, that its reduction was now certain.  He had added an urgent request for money, with a sufficient supply of which he assured Philip that he should be able to bring the war to an immediate conclusion.  While waiting for these supplies, he had, contrary to all law or reason, made an unsuccessful attempt to conquer the post of Embden, in Germany.  A mutiny had at about the same time, broken out among his troops in Harlem, and he had furnished the citizens with arms to defend themselves, giving free permission to use them against the insurgent troops.  By this means the mutiny had been quelled, but a dangerous precedent established.  Anxiety concerning this rebellion is supposed to have hastened the Grand Commander’s death.  A violent fever seized him on the 1st, and terminated his existence on the 5th of March, in the fifty-first year of his life.

It is not necessary to review elaborately his career, the chief incidents of which have been sufficiently described.  Requesens was a man of high position by birth and office, but a thoroughly commonplace personage.  His talents either for war or for civil employments were not above mediocrity.  His friends disputed whether he were greater in the field or in the council, but it is certain that he was great in neither.  His bigotry was equal to that of Alva, but it was impossible to rival the Duke in cruelty.  Moreover, the condition of the country, after seven years of torture under his predecessor, made it difficult for him, at the time of his arrival, to imitate the severity which had made the name of Alva infamous.  The Blood Council had been retained throughout his administration, but its occupation was gone, for want of food for its ferocity.  The obedient provinces had been purged of Protestants; while crippled, too, by confiscation, they offered no field for further extortion.