posed.

Is this picture exaggerated? Is it drawn by pencils hostile to the
English nation or the English Queen? It is her own generals and
confidential counsellors who have told a story in all its painful
details, which has hardly found a place in other chronicles. The
parsimony of the great Queen must ever remain a blemish on her character,
and it was never more painfully exhibited than towards her brave soldiers
in Flanders in the year 1587. Thomas Wilkes, a man of truth, and a man of
accounts, had informed Elizabeth that the expenses of one year's war,
since Leicester had been governor-general, had amounted to exactly five
hundred and seventy-nine thousand three hundred and sixty pounds and
nineteen shillings, of which sum one hundred and forty-six thousand three
hundred and eighty-six pounds and eleven shillings had been spent by her
Majesty, and the balance had been paid, or was partly owing by the
States. These were not agreeable figures, but the figures of honest
accountants rarely flatter, and Wilkes was not one of those financiers
who have the wish or the gift to make things pleasant. He had transmitted
the accounts just as they had been delivered, certified by the treasurers
of the States and by the English paymasters, and the Queen was appalled
at the sum-totals. She could never proceed with such a war as that, she
said, and she declined a loan of sixty thousand pounds which the States
requested, besides stoutly refusing to advance her darling Robin a penny
to pay off the mortgages upon two-thirds of his estates, on which the
equity of redemption was fast expiring, or to give him the slightest help
in furnishing him forth anew for the wars.

Yet not one of her statesmen doubted that these Netherland battles were
English battles, almost as much as if the fighting-ground had been the
Isle of Wight or the coast of Kent, the charts of which the statesmen and
generals of Spain were daily conning.

Wilkes, too, while defending Leicester stoutly behind his back, doing his
best, to explain his short-comings, lauding his courage and generosity,
and advocating his beloved theory of popular sovereignty with much
ingenuity and eloquence, had told him the truth to his face. Although
assuring him that if he came back soon, he might rule the States "as a
schoolmaster doth his boys," he did not fail to set before him the
disastrous effects of his sudden departure and of his protracted absence;
he had painted in darkest col