Such was the last crusader whom the annals of chivalry were to know; the man who had humbled the crescent as it had not been humbled since the days of the Tancreds, the Baldwins, the Plantagenets—­yet, after all, what was this brilliant adventurer when weighed against the tranquil Christian champion whom he was to meet face to face?  The contrast was striking between the real and the romantic hero.  Don John had pursued and achieved glory through victories with which the world was ringing; William was slowly compassing a country’s emancipation through a series of defeats.  He moulded a commonwealth and united hearts with as much contempt for danger as Don John had exhibited in scenes of slave driving and carnage.  Amid fields of blood, and through web’s of tortuous intrigue, the brave and subtle son of the Emperor pursued only his own objects.  Tawdry schemes of personal ambition, conquests for his own benefit, impossible crowns for his own wearing, were the motives which impelled, him, and the prizes which he sought.  His existence was feverish, fitful, and passionate.  “Tranquil amid the raging billows,” according to his favorite device, the father of his country waved aside the diadem which for him had neither charms nor meaning.  Their characters were as contrasted as their persons.  The curled-darling of chivalry seemed a youth at thirty-one.  Spare of figure, plain in apparel, benignant, but haggard of countenance, with temples bared by anxiety as much as by his helmet, earnest, almost devout in manner, in his own words, “Calvus et Calvinists,” William of Orange was an old man at forty-three.

Perhaps there was as much good faith on the part of Don John, when he arrived in Luxemburg, as could be expected of a man coming directly from the cabinet of Philip.  The King had secretly instructed him to conciliate the provinces, but to concede nothing, for the Governor was only a new incarnation of the insane paradox that benignity and the system of Charles the Fifth were one.  He was directed to restore the government, to its state during the imperial epoch.  Seventeen provinces, in two of which the population were all dissenters, in all of which the principle of mutual toleration had just been accepted by Catholics and Protestants, were now to be brought back to the condition according to which all Protestants were beheaded, burned, or buried alive.  So that the Inquisition, the absolute authority of the monarch, and the exclusive worship of the Roman Church were preserved intact, the King professed himself desirous of “extinguishing the fires of rebellion, and of saving the people from the last desperation.”  With these slight exceptions, Philip was willing to be very benignant.  “More than this,” said he, “cannot and ought not be conceded.”  To these brief but pregnant instructions was added a morsel of advice, personal in its nature, but very characteristic of the writer.  Don John was recommended to take great care of his soul, and also to be very cautious in the management of his amours.