the Prince to
Duchess Margaret, "would have done better, methinks, to stay at home; for
I suppose he had no especial orders to perform this piece of work."

Thus, so long as this great statesman could remain in the metropolis, his
temperate firmness prevented the explosion which had so long been
expected. His own government of Holland and Zeland, too, especially
demanded his care. The field-preaching had spread in that region with
prodigious rapidity. Armed assemblages, utterly beyond the power of the
civil authorities, were taking place daily in the neighborhood of
Amsterdam. Yet the Duchess could not allow him to visit his government in
the north. If he could be spared from Antwerp for a day, it was necessary
that he should aid her in a fresh complication with the confederated
nobles in the very midst, therefore, of his Antwerp labors, he had been
obliged, by Margaret's orders, to meet a committee at Duffel. For in this
same eventful month of July a great meeting was held by the members of
the Compromise at St. Trond, in the bishopric of Liege. They came
together on the thirteenth of the month, and remained assembled till the
beginning of August. It was a wild, tumultuous convention, numbering some
fifteen hundred cavaliers, each with his esquires and armed attendants; a
larger and more important gathering than had yet been held. Brederode and
Count Louis were the chieftains of the assembly, which, as may be
supposed from its composition and numbers, was likely to be neither very
orderly in its demonstrations nor wholesome in its results. It was an
ill-timed movement. The convention was too large for deliberation, too
riotous to inspire confidence. The nobles quartered themselves every
where in the taverns and the farm-houses of the neighborhood, while large
numbers encamped upon the open fields. There was a constant din of
revelry and uproar, mingled with wordy warfare, and an occasional
crossing of swords. It seemed rather like a congress of ancient, savage
Batavians, assembled in Teutonic fashion to choose a king amid hoarse
shouting, deep drinking, and the clash of spear and shield, than a
meeting for a lofty and earnest purpose, by their civilized descendants.
A crowd of spectators, landlopers, mendicants, daily aggregated
themselves to the aristocratic assembly, joining, with natural unction,
in the incessant shout of "Vivent les gueux!" It was impossible that so
soon after their baptism the self-styled beggars