hose fatal duchies, and it was
the determination of the agents of Spain to acquire the mastery of that
most eligible military position, that excellent 'sedes belli,' whenever
Protestantism was to be assailed in England, the Netherlands, or Germany.

Meantime the Hispaniolated counsellors of Duke John had strangled--as it
was strongly suspected--his duchess, who having gone to bed in perfect
health one evening was found dead in her bed next morning, with an ugly
mark on her throat; and it was now the purpose of these statesmen to find
a new bride for their insane sovereign in the ever ready and ever
orthodox house of Lorrain. And the Protestant brothers-in-law and nephews
and nieces were making every possible combination in order to check such
dark designs, and to save these important territories from the ubiquitous
power of Spain.

The stadholder had also family troubles at this period. His sister Emilia
had conceived a desperate passion for Don Emmanuel, the pauper son of the
forlorn pretender to Portugal, Don Antonio, who had at last departed this
life. Maurice was indignant that a Catholic, an outcast, and, as it was
supposed, a bastard, should dare to mate with the daughter of William of
Orange-Nassau; and there were many scenes of tenderness, reproaches,
recriminations, and 'hysterica passio,' in which not only the lovers, the
stadholder and his family, but also the high and mighty States-General,
were obliged to enact their parts. The chronicles are filled with the
incidents, which, however, never turned to tragedy, nor even to romance,
but ended, without a catastrophe, in a rather insipid marriage. The
Princess Emilia remained true both to her religion and her husband during
a somewhat obscure wedded life, and after her death Don Emmanuel found
means to reconcile himself with the King of Spain and to espouse, in
second nuptials, a Spanish lady. On the 4th of August, Maurice arrived at
Arnhem with a force of seven thousand foot and twelve hundred horse.
Hohenlo was with him, and William Lewis, and there was yet another of the
illustrious house of Nassau in the camp, Frederick Henry, a boy in his
thirteenth year, the youngest born of William the Silent, the grandson of
Admiral de Coligny, now about; in this his first campaign, to take the
first step in a long and noble career.

Having reduced the town and castle of Alphen, the stadholder came before
Rheinberg, which he very expeditiously invested. During a prelimi