anish and Italian veterans, and excited
the astonishment of all by the coolness with which he entered into the
cage of these dangerous serpents--as they called themselves--handling
them, caressing them, and being fondled by them in return. But the
veterans knew a soldier when they saw one, and their hearts warmed to the
prince--heretic though he were--more than they had ever done to the
unfrocked bishop who, after starving them for years, had doomed them to
destruction in this world and the next.

The stadholder was feasted and honoured by the mutineers during his brief
visit to Hoogatraaten, and concluded with them a convention, according to
which that town was to be restored to him, while they were to take
temporary possession of the city of Grave. They were likewise to assist,
with all their strength, in his military operations until they should
make peace on their own terms with the archduke. For two weeks after such
treaty they were not to fight against the States, and meantime, though
fighting on the republican side, they were to act as an independent corps
and in no wise to be merged in the stadholder's forces. So much and no
more had resulted from the archduke's excommunication of the best part of
his army. He had made a present of those troops to the enemy. He had also
been employing a considerable portion of his remaining forces in
campaigning against their own comrades. While at Grave, the mutineers, or
the "squadron" as they were now called, were to be permitted to practise
their own religious rites, without offering however, any interference
with the regular Protestant worship of the place. When they should give
up Grave, Hoogstraaten was to be restored to them if still in possession
of the States and they were to enter into no negotiations with the
archduke except with full knowledge of the stadholder.

There were no further military, operations of moment during the rest of
the year.

Much, more important, however, than siege, battle, or mutiny, to human
civilization, were the steady movements of the Dutch skippers and
merchants at this period. The ears of Europe were stunned with the
clatter of destruction going on all over Christendom, and seeming the
only reasonable occupation of Christians; but the little republic; while
fighting so heroically against the concentrated powers of despotism in
the West, was most industriously building up a great empire in the East.
In the new era just dawning, productio