of such embarrassments it is impossible not
to admire his heroism as a military chieftain, and his singular
adroitness as a diplomatist. He had painted for his sovereign a most
faithful and horrible portrait of the obedient Provinces. The soil was
untilled; the manufactories had all stopped; trade had ceased to exist.
It was a pity only to look upon the raggedness of his soldiers. No
language could describe the misery of the reconciled Provinces--Artois,
Hainault, Flanders. The condition of Bruges would melt the hardest heart;
other cities were no better; Antwerp was utterly ruined; its inhabitants
were all starving. The famine throughout the obedient Netherlands was
such as had not been known for a century. The whole country had been
picked bare by the troops, and the plough was not put into the ground.
Deputations were constantly with him from Bruges, Dendermonde,
Bois-le-Duc, Brussels, Antwerp, Nymegen, proving to him by the most
palpable evidence that the whole population of those cities had almost
literally nothing to eat. He had nothing, however, but exhortations to
patience to feed them withal. He was left without a groat even to save
his soldiers from starving, and he wildly and bitterly, day after day,
implored his sovereign for aid. These pictures are not the sketches of a
historian striving for effect, but literal transcripts from the most
secret revelations of the Prince himself to his sovereign. On the other
hand, although Leicester's complaints of the destitution of the English
troops in the republic were almost as bitter, yet the condition of the
United Provinces was comparatively healthy. Trade, external and internal,
was increasing daily. Distant commercial and military expeditions were
fitted out, manufactures were prosperous, and the war of independence was
gradually becoming--strange to say--a source of prosperity to the new
commonwealth.

Philip--being now less alarmed than his nephew concerning French affairs,
and not feeling so keenly the misery of the obedient Provinces, or the
wants of the Spanish army--sent to Alexander six hundred thousand ducats,
by way of Genoa. In the letter submitted by his secretary recording this
remittance, the King made, however, a characteristic marginal note:--"See
if it will not be as well to tell him something concerning the two
hundred thousand ducats to be deducted for Mucio, for fear of more
mischief, if the Prince should expect the whole six hundred thousand."