mutineers on
previous occasions. At first they flatly refused to negotiate at all, but
at last, with the permission of Maurice, who conducted himself throughout
with scrupulous delicacy, and made no attempts to induce them to violate
their allegiance to the king, they received Count Belgioso, the envoy of
the archduke. They held out for payment of all their arrears up to the
last farthing, and insisted on a hostage of rank until the debt should be
discharged. Full forgiveness of their rebellious proceedings was added as
a matter of course. Their terms were accepted, and Francisco Padiglia was
assigned as a hostage. They then established themselves, according to
agreement, at Tirlemont, which they were allowed to fortify at the
expense of the province and to hold until the money for their back wages
could be scraped together. Meantime they received daily wages and rations
from the Government at Brussels, including thirty stivers a day for each
horseman, thirteen crowns a day for the Eletto, and ten crowns a day for
each counsellor, making in all five hundred crowns a day. And here they
remained, living exceedingly at their ease and enjoying a life of leisure
for eighteen months, and until long after the death of the archduke, for
it was not until the administration of Cardinal Albert that the funds,
amounting to three hundred and sixty thousand crowns, could be collected.

These were the chief military exploits of the podagric Perseus in behalf
of the Flemish Andromeda.

A very daring adventure was however proposed to the archduke. Philip
calmly suggested that an expedition should be rapidly fitted out in
Dunkirk, which should cross the channel, ascend the Thames as far as
Rochester, and burn the English fleet. "I am informed by persons well
acquainted with the English coast," said the king, "that it would be an
easy matter for a few quick-sailing vessels to accomplish this. Two or
three thousand soldiers might be landed at Rochester who might burn or
sink all the unarmed vessels they could find there, and the expedition
could return and sail off again before the people of the country could
collect in sufficient numbers to do them any damage." The archduke was
instructed to consult with Fuentes and Ybarra as to whether this little
matter, thus parenthetically indicated, could be accomplished without too
much risk and trouble.

Certainly it would seem as if the king believed in the audacity,
virility, velocity, alacrit