ly made manifest. He had no
qualities whatever but birth and audacity to recommend him as a leader
for a political party. It was to be seen that other attributes were
necessary to make a man useful in such a position, and the Count's
deficiencies soon became lamentably conspicuous. He was the lineal
descendant and representative of the old Sovereign Counts of Holland.
Five hundred years before his birth; his ancestor Sikko, younger brother
of Dirk the Third, had died, leaving two sons, one of whom was the first
Baron of Brederode. A descent of five centuries in unbroken male
succession from the original sovereigns of Holland, gave him a better
genealogical claim to the provinces than any which Philip of Spain could
assert through the usurping house of Burgundy. In the approaching tumults
he hoped for an opportunity of again asserting the ancient honors of his
name. He was a sworn foe to Spaniards and to "water of the fountain." But
a short time previously to this epoch he had written to Louis of Nassau,
then lying ill of a fever, in order gravely to remonstrate with him on
the necessity of substituting wine for water on all occasions, and it
will be seen in the sequel that the wine-cup was the great instrument on
which he relied for effecting the deliverance of the country. Although
"neither bachelor nor chancellor," as he expressed it, he was supposed to
be endowed with ready eloquence and mother wit. Even these gifts,
however, if he possessed them, were often found wanting on important
emergencies. Of his courage there was no question, but he was not
destined to the death either of a warrior or a martyr. Headlong, noisy,
debauched, but brave, kind-hearted and generous, he was a fitting
representative of his ancestors, the hard-fighting, hard-drinking,
crusading, free-booting sovereigns of Holland and Friesland, and would
himself have been more at home and more useful in the eleventh century
than in the sixteenth.

It was about six o'clock in the evening, on the third day of April
(1566), that the long-expected cavalcade at last entered Brussels. An
immense concourse of citizens of all ranks thronged around the noble
confederates as soon as they made their appearance. They were about two
hundred in number, all on horseback, with pistols in their holsters, and
Brederode, tall, athletic, and martial in his bearing, with handsome
features and fair curling locks upon his shoulders, seemed an appropriate
chieftain for that