note: October 12,
1576] Though he had neither ability of his own nor support from his
brother, the Emperor Rudolph II, and though but nineteen years old, he
offered his services to the Netherlands and immediately went thither.
With high statecraft William {269} drew Matthew into his policy, for he
saw that the dangers to be feared were anarchy and disunion. In some
cities, notably Ghent, where another Committee of Eighteen was
appointed on the Brussels model, the lowest classes assumed a
dictatorship analagous to that of the Bolsheviki in Russia. At the
same time the Patriots' demand that Orange should be made Governor of
Brabant was distasteful to the large loyalist element in the
population. William at once saw the use that might be made of Matthew
as a figure-head to rally those who still reverenced the house of
Hapsburg and who saw in monarchy the only guarantee of order at home
and consideration abroad. Promptly arresting the Duke of Aerschot, a
powerful noble who tried to use Matthew's name to create a separate
faction, Orange induced the States General first to decree Don John an
enemy of the country [Sidenote: December 7, 1577] and then to offer the
governorship of the Netherlands to the archduke, at the same time
begging him, on account of his youth, to leave the administration in
the hands of William. After Matthew's entry into Brussels [Sidenote:
January 18, 1578] the States General swore allegiance to this puppet in
the hands of their greatest statesman.

Almost immediately the war broke out again. Both sides had been busy
raising troops. At Gembloux Don John with 20,000 men defeated about
the same number of Patriot troops. [Sidenote: January 31] But this
failed to clarify a situation that tended to become ever more
complicated. Help from England and France came in tiny dribblets just
sufficient to keep Philip's energies occupied in the cruel civil war.
But the vacancy, so to speak, on the ducal throne of the Burgundian
state, seemed to invite the candidacy of neighboring princes and a
chance of seriously interesting France came when the ambition of
Francis, Duke of Anjou, was stirred to become ruler of the Low
Countries. William attempted also to make {270} use of him. In return
for the promise to raise 12,000 troops, Anjou received from the States
General the title of "Defender of the Freedom of the Netherlands
against the tyranny of the Spaniards and their allies." The result was
that the C