ourage the bold
spirits of every generation and will always inspire emulation in
patriotic hearts of every age and clime, while, as the first of a series
of audacious enterprises by which Dutch victories were to take the place
of a long procession of Spanish triumphs on the blood-stained soil of the
provinces, it merits, from its chronological position, a more than
ordinary attention.

In the course of the summer Prince Maurice, carrying out into practice
the lessons which he had so steadily been pondering, reduced the towns
and strong places of Heyl, Flemert, Elshout, Crevecoeur, Hayden,
Steenberg, Rosendaal, and Osterhout. But his time, during the remainder
of the year 1590, was occupied with preparations for a campaign on an
extended scale and with certain foreign negotiations to which it will
soon be necessary to direct the reader's attention.

CHAPTER XXII.

Struggle of the United Provinces against Philip of Spain--Progress
of the Republic--Influence of Geographical position on the fate of
the Netherlands--Contrast offered by America--Miserable state of the
so--called "obedient" provinces--Prosperity of the Commonwealth--Its
internal government--Tendency to provincialism--Quibbles of the
English Members of the Council, Wilkes and Bodley--Exclusion of
Olden-Barneveld from the State Council--Proposals of Philip for
mediation with the United Provinces--The Provinces resolutely
decline all proffers of intervention.

The United Provinces had now been engaged in unbroken civil war for a
quarter of a century. It is, however, inaccurate to designate this great
struggle with tyranny as a civil war. It was a war for independence,
maintained by almost the whole population of the United Provinces against
a foreigner, a despot, alien to their blood, ignorant of their language,
a hater of their race, a scorner of their religion, a trampler upon their
liberties, their laws, and institutions--a man who had publicly declared
that he would rather the whole nation were exterminated than permitted to
escape from subjection to the Church of Rome. Liberty of speech, liberty
of the press, liberty of thought on political, religious, and social
questions existed within those Dutch pastures and Frisian swamps to a far
greater degree than in any other part of the world at that day; than in
very many regions of Christendom in our own time. Personal slavery was
unknown. In a large portion of their territory