en. He came to that
province, the only one which through good and ill report remained
entirely faithful to him, not as a conqueror but as an unsuccessful,
proscribed man. But there were warm hearts beating within those cold
lagunes, and no conqueror returning from a brilliant series of victories
could have been received with more affectionate respect than William in
that darkest hour of the country's history. He had but seventy horsemen
at his back, all which remained of the twenty thousand troops which he
had a second time levied in Germany, and he felt that it would be at that
period hopeless for him to attempt the formation of a third army. He had
now come thither to share the fate of Holland, at least, if he could not
accomplish her liberation. He went from city to city, advising with the
magistracies and with the inhabitants, and arranging many matters
pertaining both to peace and war. At Harlem the States of the Provinces,
according to his request, had been assembled. The assembly begged him to
lay before them, if it were possible, any schemes and means which he
might have devised for further resistance to the Duke of Alva. Thus
solicited, the Prince, in a very secret session, unfolded his plans, and
satisfied them as to the future prospects of the cause. His speech has
nowhere been preserved. His strict injunctions as to secrecy, doubtless,
prevented or effaced any record of the session. It is probable, however,
that he entered more fully into the state of his negotiations with
England, and into the possibility of a resumption by Count Louis of his
private intercourse with the French court, than it was safe, publicly, to
divulge.

While the Prince had been thus occupied in preparing the stout-hearted
province for the last death-struggle with its foe, that mortal combat was
already fast approaching; for the aspect of the contest in the
Netherlands was not that of ordinary warfare. It was an encounter between
two principles, in their nature so hostile to each other that the
absolute destruction of one was the only, possible issue. As the fight
went on, each individual combatant seemed inspired by direct personal
malignity, and men found a pleasure in deeds of cruelty, from which
generations not educated to slaughter recoil with horror. To murder
defenceless prisoners; to drink, not metaphorically but literally, the
heart's blood of an enemy; to exercise a devilish ingenuity in inventions
of mutual torture, became n