between the respective partisans of Neuburg and Brandenburg, an attempt
was made in Dusseldorf by a sudden entirely unsuspected rising of the
Brandenburgers to drive their antagonist colleagues and their portion of
the garrison out of the city. It failed, but excited great anger. A more
successful effort was soon afterwards made in Julich; the Neuburgers were
driven out, and the Brandenburgers remained in sole possession of the
town and citadel, far the most important stronghold in the whole
territory. This was partly avenged by the Neuburgers, who gained absolute
control of Dusseldorf. Here were however no important fortifications, the
place being merely an agreeable palatial residence and a thriving mart.
The States-General, not concealing their predilection for Brandenburg,
but under pretext of guarding the peace which they had done so much to
establish, placed a garrison of 1400 infantry and a troop or two of horse
in the citadel of Julich.

Dire was the anger not unjustly excited in Spain when the news of this
violation of neutrality reached that government. Julich, placed midway
between Liege and Cologne, and commanding those fertile plains which make
up the opulent duchy, seemed virtually converted into a province of the
detested heretical republic. The German gate of the Spanish Netherlands
was literally in the hands of its most formidable foe.

The Spaniards about the court of the Archduke did not dissemble their
rage. The seizure of Julich was a stain upon his reputation, they cried.
Was it not enough, they asked, for the United Provinces to have made a
truce to the manifest detriment and discredit of Spain, and to have
treated her during all the negotiation with such insolence? Were they now
to be permitted to invade neutral territory, to violate public faith, to
act under no responsibility save to their own will? What was left for
them to do except to set up a tribunal in Holland for giving laws to the
whole of Northern Europe? Arrogating to themselves absolute power over
the controverted states of Cleve, Julich, and the dependencies, they now
pretended to dispose of them at their pleasure in order at the end
insolently to take possession of them for themselves.

These were the egregious fruits of the truce, they said tauntingly to the
discomfited Archduke. It had caused a loss of reputation, the very soul
of empires, to the crown of Spain. And now, to conclude her abasement,
the troops in Flanders had bee