his contingent of 8000 foot
and a few squadrons of cavalry, and there was great show of harmony
between them. For any practical purposes, de la Chatre might as well have
remained in France. For political ends his absence would have been
preferable to his presence.

Maurice would have rejoiced, had the Marshal blundered longer along the
road to the debateable land than he had done. He had almost brought
Julich to reduction. A fortnight later the place surrendered. The terms
granted by the conqueror were equitable. No change was to be made in the
liberty of Roman Catholic worship, nor in the city magistracy. The
citadel and its contents were to be handed over to the Princes of
Brandenburg and Neuburg. Archduke Leopold and his adherents departed to
Prague, to carry out as he best could his farther designs upon the crown
of Bohemia, this first portion of them having so lamentably failed, and
Sergeant-Major Frederick Pithan, of the regiment of Count Ernest Casimir
of Nassau, was appointed governor of Julich in the interest of the
possessory princes.

Thus without the loss of a single life, the Republic, guided by her
consummate statesman and unrivalled general, had gained an immense
victory, had installed the Protestant princes in the full possession of
those splendid and important provinces, and had dictated her decrees on
German soil to the Emperor of Germany, and had towed, as it were, Great
Britain and France along in her wake, instead of humbly following those
powers, and had accomplished all that she had ever proposed to do, even
in alliance with them both.

The King of England considered that quite enough had been done, and was
in great haste to patch up a reconciliation. He thought his ambassador
would soon "have as good occasion to employ his tongue and his pen as
General Cecil and his soldiers have done their swords and their
mattocks."

He had no sympathy with the cause of Protestantism, and steadily refused
to comprehend the meaning of the great movements in the duchies. "I only
wish that I may handsomely wind myself out of this quarrel, where the
principal parties do so little for themselves," he said.

De la Chatre returned with his troops to France within a fortnight after
his arrival on the scene. A mild proposition made by the French
government through the Marshal, that the provinces should be held in
seguestration by France until a decision as to the true sovereignty could
be reached, was promptly dec