become necessary for the archduke,
notwithstanding the steady drain of the siege of Ostend, to detach a
considerable army against this republic and to besiege them in their
capital of Hoogstraaten. With seven thousand foot and three thousand
cavalry Frederic Van den Berg took the field against them in the latter
part of July. Maurice, with nine thousand five hundred infantry and three
thousand horse, lay near Gertruydenberg. When united with the rebel
"squadron," two thousand five hundred strong, he would dispose of a force
of fifteen thousand veterans, and he moved at once to relieve the
besieged mutineers. His cousin Frederic, however, had no desire to
measure himself with the stadholder at such odds, and stole away from him
in the dark without beat of drum. Maurice entered Hoogstraaten, was
received with rapture by the Spanish and Italian veterans, and excited
the astonishment of all by the coolness with which he entered into the
cage of these dangerous serpents--as they called themselves--handling
them, caressing them, and being fondled by them in return. But the
veterans knew a soldier when they saw one, and their hearts warmed to the
prince--heretic though he were--more than they had ever done to the
unfrocked bishop who, after starving them for years, had doomed them to
destruction in this world and the next.

The stadholder was feasted and honoured by the mutineers during his brief
visit to Hoogatraaten, and concluded with them a convention, according to
which that town was to be restored to him, while they were to take
temporary possession of the city of Grave. They were likewise to assist,
with all their strength, in his military operations until they should
make peace on their own terms with the archduke. For two weeks after such
treaty they were not to fight against the States, and meantime, though
fighting on the republican side, they were to act as an independent corps
and in no wise to be merged in the stadholder's forces. So much and no
more had resulted from the archduke's excommunication of the best part of
his army. He had made a present of those troops to the enemy. He had also
been employing a considerable portion of his remaining forces in
campaigning against their own comrades. While at Grave, the mutineers, or
the "squadron" as they were now called, were to be permitted to practise
their own religious rites, without offering however, any interference
with the regular Protestant worship of the plac