Thus there remained but two provinces out of seven that were still
"waartgeldered" and refused to be "synodized."

It was rebellion against rebellion. Maurice and his adherents accused the
States' right party of mutiny against himself and the States-General. The
States' right party accused the Contra-Remonstrants in the cities of
mutiny against the lawful sovereignty of each province.

The oath of the soldiery, since the foundation of the Republic, had been
to maintain obedience and fidelity to the States-General, the Stadholder,
and the province in which they were garrisoned, and at whose expense they
were paid. It was impossible to harmonize such conflicting duties and
doctrines. Theory had done its best and its worst. The time was fast
approaching, as it always must approach, when fact with its violent besom
would brush away the fine-spun cobwebs which had been so long
undisturbed.

"I will grind the Advocate and all his party into fine meal," said the
Prince on one occasion.

A clever caricature of the time represented a pair of scales hung up in a
great hall. In the one was a heap of parchments, gold chains, and
magisterial robes; the whole bundle being marked the "holy right of each
city." In the other lay a big square, solid, ironclasped volume, marked
"Institutes of Calvin." Each scale was respectively watched by Gomarus
and by Arminius. The judges, gowned, furred, and ruffed, were looking
decorously on, when suddenly the Stadholder, in full military attire, was
seen rushing into the apartment and flinging his sword into the scale
with the Institutes.

The civic and legal trumpery was of course made to kick the beam.

Maurice had organized his campaign this year against the Advocate and his
party as deliberately as he had ever arranged the details of a series of
battles and sieges against the Spaniard. And he was proving himself as
consummate master in political strife as in the great science of war.

He no longer made any secret of his conviction that Barneveld was a
traitor to his country, bought with Spanish gold. There was not the
slightest proof for these suspicions, but he asserted them roundly. "The
Advocate is travelling straight to Spain," he said to Count Cuylenborg.
"But we will see who has got the longest purse."

And as if it had been a part of the campaign, a prearranged diversion to
the more direct and general assault on the entrenchments of the States'
right party, a horrible personal o