e
sovereignty of Brittany and Burgundy, besides a selection of cities to be
arranged for at a later day. Although he spoke of himself with modesty,
said Alexander, it was very plain that he meant to arrive at the crown
himself: Well had the Bearnese alluded to the judgment of Solomon. Were
not children, thus ready to dismember their mother, as foul and unnatural
as the mother who would divide her child?

And what was this dependence on a foreign tyrant really worth? As we look
back upon those dark days with the light of what was then the almost
immediate future turned full and glaring upon them, we find it difficult
to exaggerate the folly of the chief actors in those scenes of crime. Did
not the penniless adventurer, whose keen eyesight and wise recklessness
were passing for hallucination and foolhardiness in the eyes of his
contemporaries, understand the game he was playing better than did that
profound thinker, that mysterious but infallible politician, who sat in
the Escorial and made the world tremble at every hint of his lips, every
stroke of his pen?

The Netherlands--that most advanced portion of Philip's domain, without
the possession of which his conquest of England and his incorporation of
France were but childish visions, even if they were not monstrous
chimeras at best--were to be in a manner left to themselves, while their
consummate governor and general was to go forth and conquer France at the
head of a force with which he had been in vain attempting to hold those
provinces to their obedience. At that very moment the rising young
chieftain of the Netherlands was most successfully inaugurating his
career of military success. His armies well drilled, well disciplined,
well paid, full of heart and of hope, were threatening their ancient
enemy in every quarter, while the veteran legions of Spain and Italy,
heroes of a hundred Flemish and Frisian battle-fields, were disorganised,
starving, and mutinous. The famous ancient legion, the terzo viejo, had
been disbanded for its obstinate and confirmed unruliness. The legion of
Manrique, sixteen hundred strong, was in open mutiny at Courtray. Farnese
had sent the Prince of Ascoli to negotiate with them, but his attempts
were all in vain. Two years' arrearages--to be paid, not in cloth at four
times what the contractors had paid for it, but in solid gold--were their
not unreasonable demands after years of as hard fighting and severe
suffering as the world has often