e him a citizen of this republic and a vassal of the Spanish
monarchy, he possessed also in France the independent princedom of
Orange. William was born in the year 1533, at Dillenburg, in the
country of Nassau, of a Countess Stolberg. His father, the Count of
Nassau, of the same name, had embraced the Protestant religion, and
caused his son also to be educated in it; but Charles V., who early
formed an attachment for the boy, took him when quite young to his
court, and had him brought up in the Romish church. This monarch, who
already in the child discovered the future greatness of the man, kept
him nine years about his person, thought him worthy of his personal
instruction in the affairs of government, and honored him with a
confidence beyond his years. He alone was permitted to remain in the
Emperor's presence when he gave audience to foreign ambassadors--a proof
that, even as a boy, he had already begun to merit the surname of the
Silent. The Emperor was not ashamed even to confess openly, on one
occasion, that this young man had often made suggestions which would
have escaped his own sagacity. What expectations might not be formed of
the intellect of a man who was disciplined in such a school.

William was twenty-three years old when Charles abdicated the
government, and had already received from the latter two public marks of
the highest esteem. The Emperor had entrusted to him, in preference to
all the nobles of his court, the honorable office of conveying to his
brother Ferdinand the imperial crown. When the Duke of Savoy, who
commanded the imperial army in the Netherlands, was called away to Italy
by the exigency of his domestic affairs, the Emperor appointed him
commander-in-chief against the united representations of his military
council, who declared it altogether hazardous to oppose so young a tyro
in arms to the experienced generals of France. Absent, and
unrecommended by any, he was preferred by the monarch to the
laurel-crowned band of his heroes, and the result gave him no cause
to repent of his choice.

The marked favor which the prince had enjoyed with the father was in
itself a sufficient ground for his exclusion from the confidence of the
son. Philip, it appears, had laid it down for himself as a rule to
avenge the wrongs of the Spanish nobility for the preference which
Charles V. had on all important occasions shown to his Flemish nobles.
Still stronger, however, were the secret motives which alie