Casimir having already answered Queen Elizabeth’s reproachful letter by throwing the blame of his apparent misconduct upon the states-general, and having promised soon to appear before her Majesty in person, tarried accordingly but a brief season in Germany, and then repaired to England.  Here he was feasted, flattered, caressed, and invested with the order of the Garter.  Pleased with royal blandishments, and highly enjoying the splendid hospitalities of England he quite forgot the “thirty thousand devils” whom he had left running loose in the Netherlands, while these wild soldiers, on their part, being absolutely in a starving condition—­for there was little left for booty in a land which had been so often plundered—­now had the effrontery to apply to the Prince of Parma for payment of their wages.  Alexander Farnese laughed heartily at the proposition, which he considered an excellent jest.  It seemed in truth, a jest, although but a sorry one.  Parma replied to the messenger of Maurice of Saxony who had made the proposition, that the Germans must be mad to ask him for money, instead of offering to pay him, a heavy sum for permission to leave the country.  Nevertheless, he was willing to be so far indulgent as to furnish them with passports, provided they departed from the Netherlands instantly.  Should they interpose the least delay, he would set upon them without further preface, and he gave them notice, with the arrogance becoming a Spanish general; that the courier was already waiting to report to Spain the number of them left alive after the encounter.  Thus deserted by their chief, and hectored by the enemy, the mercenaries, who had little stomach for fight without wages, accepted the passports proffered by Parma.  They revenged themselves for the harsh treatment which they had received from Casimir and from the states-general, by singing, everywhere as they retreated, a doggerel ballad—­half Flemish, half German—­in which their wrongs were expressed with uncouth vigor.

Casimir received the news of the departure of his ragged soldiery on the very day which witnessed his investment with the Garter by the fair hands of Elizabeth herself.  A few days afterwards he left England, accompanied by an escort of lords and gentlemen, especially appointed for that purpose by the Queen.  He landed in Flushing, where he was received with distinguished hospitality, by order of the Prince of Orange, and on the 14th of February, 1579, he passed through Utrecht.  Here he conversed freely at his lodgings in the “German House” on the subject of his vagabond troops, whose final adventures and departure seemed to afford him considerable amusement; and he, moreover, diverted his company by singing, after supper, a few verses of the ballad already mentioned.

   O, have you been in Brabant, fighting for the states? 
   O, have you brought back anything except your broken pates? 
   O, I have been in Brabant, myself and all my mates. 
   We’ll go no more to Brabant, unless our brains were addle,
   We’re coming home on foot, we went there in the saddle;
   For there’s neither gold nor glory got, in fighting for the states.