ed that the city would refuse the terms demanded, were
excessively disappointed at being obliged to forego the sack and pillage
upon which they had reckoned. Eight or nine hundred rascally peasants,
too, who had followed in the skirts of the regiments, each provided with
a great empty bag, which they expected to fill with booty which they
might purchase of the soldiers, or steal in the midst of the expected
carnage and rapine, shared the discontent of the soldiery, by whom they
were now driven ignominiously out of the town.

The citizens were immediately disarmed. All the fine weapons which they
had been obliged to purchase at their own expense, when they had been
arranged by the magistrates under eight banners, for defence of the city
against tumult and invasion, were taken from them; the most beautiful
cutlasses, carbines, poniards, and pistols, being divided by Noircarmes
among his officers. Thus Tournay was tranquillized.

During the whole of these proceedings in Flanders, and at Antwerp,
Tournay, and Mechlin, the conduct of the Duchess had been marked with
more than her usual treachery. She had been disavowing acts which the men
upon whom she relied in her utmost need had been doing by her authority;
she had been affecting to praise their conduct, while she was secretly
misrepresenting their actions and maligning their motives, and she had
been straining every nerve to make foreign levies, while attempting to
amuse the confederates and sectaries with an affectation of clemency.

When Orange complained that she had been censuring his proceedings at
Antwerp, and holding language unfavorable to his character, she protested
that she thoroughly approved his arrangements--excepting only the two
points of the intramural preachings and the permission to heretics of
other exercises than sermons--and that if she were displeased with him he
might be sure that she would rather tell him so than speak ill of him
behind his back. The Prince, who had been compelled by necessity, and
fully authorized by the terms of the "Accord", to grant those two points
which were the vital matter in his arrangements, answered very calmly,
that he was not so frivolous as to believe in her having used language to
his discredit had he not been quite certain of the fact, as he would soon
prove by evidence. Orange was not the man to be deceived as to the
position in which he stood, nor as to the character of those with whom he
dealt. Margaret wrote,