that had
hitherto occurred in the Spanish armies.

By midsummer, at least three thousand five hundred veterans, including a
thousand of excellent cavalry, the very best soldiers in the service, had
seized the city of Hoogstraaten. Here they established themselves
securely, and strengthened the fortifications; levying contributions in
corn, cattle, and every other necessary, besides wine, beer, and
pocket-money, from the whole country round with exemplary regularity. As
usual, disorder assumed the forms of absolute order. Anarchy became the
best organized of governments; and it would have been difficult to find
in the world--outside the Dutch commonwealth--a single community where
justice appeared to be so promptly administered as in this temporary
republic, founded upon rebellion and theft.

For; although a brotherhood of thieves, it rigorously punished such of
its citizens as robbed for their own, not for the public good. The
immense booty swept daily from the granges, castles; and villages of
Flanders was divided with the simplicity of early Christians, while the
success and steadiness of the operations paralyzed their sovereign, and
was of considerable advantage to the States.

Albert endeavoured in vain to negotiate with the rebels. Nuncius
Frangipani went to them in person, but was received with calm derision.
Pious exhortations might turn the keys of Paradise, but gold alone, he
was informed, would unlock the gates of Hoogstraaten. In an evil hour the
cardinal-archduke was tempted to try the effect of sacerdotal thunder.
The ex-archbishop of Toledo could not doubt that the terrors of the
Church would make those brown veterans tremble who could confront so
tranquilly the spring-tides of the North Sea, and the batteries of Vere
and Nassau. So he launched a manifesto, as highly spiced as a pamphlet of
Marnig, and as severe as a sentence of Torquemada. Entirely against the
advice of the States-General of the obedient provinces, he denounced the
mutineers as outlaws and accursed. He called on persons of every degree
to kill any of them in any way, at any time, or in any place, promising
that the slayer of a private soldier should receive a reward of "ten
crowns for each head" brought in, while for a subaltern officer's head
one hundred crowns were offered; for that of a superior officer two
hundred, and for that of the Eletto or chief magistrate, five hundred
crowns. Should the slayer be himself a member of the muti