inst the States--Seizure of Dutch
cruisers--International discord--Destruction of Sarmiento's fleet by
Admiral Haultain--Projected enterprise against Antwerp--Descent of
Spinola on the Netherland frontier--Oldenzaal and Lingen taken--
Movements of Prince Maurice--Encounter of the two armies--Panic of
the Netherlanders--Consequent loss and disgrace--Wachtendonk and
Cracow taken by Spinola--Spinola's reception in Spain--Effect of his
victories--Results of the struggle between Freedom and Absolutism--
Affairs in the East--Amboyna taken by Van der Hagen--Contest for
possession of the Clove Islands--Commercial treaty between the
States and the King of Ternate--Hostilities between the Kings of
Ternate and Tydor--Expulsion of the Portuguese from the Moluccas--
Du Terrail's attempted assault on Bergen-op-Zoom--Attack on the
Dunkirk pirate fleet--Practice of executing prisoners captured at
sea.

I have invited the reader's attention to the details of this famous siege
because it was not an episode, but almost the sum total, of the great war
during the period occupied by its events. The equation between the
contending forces indicated the necessity of peace. That equation seemed
for the time to have established itself over all Europe. France had long
since withdrawn from the actual strife, and kept its idle thunders in a
concealed although ever threatening hand. In the East the Pacha of Buda
had become Pacha of Pest. Even Gran was soon to fall before the Turk,
whose advancing horse-tails might thus almost be descried from the walls
of Vienna. Stephen Botschkay meantime had made himself master of
Transylvania, concluded peace with Ahmet, and laughed at the Emperor
Rudolph for denouncing him as a rebel.

Between Spain and England a far different result had been reached than
the one foreshadowed in the portentous colloquies between King James and
Maximilian de Bethune. Those conferences have been purposely described
with some minuteness, in order that the difference often existing between
vast projects and diametrically opposed and very insignificant
conclusions might once more be exhibited.

In the summer of 1603 it had been firmly but mysteriously arranged
between the monarchs of France and Great Britain that the House of
Austria should be crushed, its territories parcelled out at the
discretion of those two potentates, the imperial crown taken from the
Habsburgs, the Spaniards driven o