the moment
when he espoused the sister of Maximilian of Bavaria and of the Elector
of Cologne. That this close connection with the very heads of the
Catholic League could bode no good to the cause of which the
States-General were the great promoters was self-evident. Very soon
afterwards the Palatine, a man of mature age and of considerable talents,
openly announced his conversion to the ancient church. Obviously the
sympathies of the States could not thenceforth fail to be on the side of
Brandenburg. The Elector's brother died and was succeeded in the
governorship of the Condeminium by the Elector's brother, a youth of
eighteen. He took up his abode in Cleve, leaving Dusseldorf to be the
sole residence of his co-stadholder.

Rivalry growing warmer, on account of this difference of religion,
between the respective partisans of Neuburg and Brandenburg, an attempt
was made in Dusseldorf by a sudden entirely unsuspected rising of the
Brandenburgers to drive their antagonist colleagues and their portion of
the garrison out of the city. It failed, but excited great anger. A more
successful effort was soon afterwards made in Julich; the Neuburgers were
driven out, and the Brandenburgers remained in sole possession of the
town and citadel, far the most important stronghold in the whole
territory. This was partly avenged by the Neuburgers, who gained absolute
control of Dusseldorf. Here were however no important fortifications, the
place being merely an agreeable palatial residence and a thriving mart.
The States-General, not concealing their predilection for Brandenburg,
but under pretext of guarding the peace which they had done so much to
establish, placed a garrison of 1400 infantry and a troop or two of horse
in the citadel of Julich.

Dire was the anger not unjustly excited in Spain when the news of this
violation of neutrality reached that government. Julich, placed midway
between Liege and Cologne, and commanding those fertile plains which make
up the opulent duchy, seemed virtually converted into a province of the
detested heretical republic. The German gate of the Spanish Netherlands
was literally in the hands of its most formidable foe.

The Spaniards about the court of the Archduke did not dissemble their
rage. The seizure of Julich was a stain upon his reputation, they cried.
Was it not enough, they asked, for the United Provinces to have made a
truce to the manifest detriment and discredit of Spain, and to have