le. The two brothers and Count Horn
implored him in their turn to abandon this blind reliance on
the tyrant; but in vain. His new and unlooked-for profession of
faith completely paralyzed their plans. He possessed too largely
the confidence of both the soldiery and the people to make it
possible to attempt any serious measure of resistance in which
he would not take a part. The meeting broke up without coming to
any decision. All those who bore a part in it were expected at
Brussels to attend the council of state; Egmont alone repaired
thither. The stadtholderess questioned him on the object of the
conference at Termonde: he only replied by an indignant glance,
at the same time presenting a copy of Alava's letter.

The stadtholderess now applied her whole efforts to destroy the
union among the patriot lords. She, in the meantime, ordered
levies of troops to the amount of some thousands, the command
of which was given to the nobles on whose attachment she could
reckon. The most vigorous measures were adopted. Noircarmes,
governor of Hainault, appeared before Valenciennes, which, being
in the power of the Calvinists, had assumed a most determined
attitude of resistance. He vainly summoned the place to submission,
and to admit a royalist garrison; and on receiving an obstinate
refusal, he commenced the siege in form. An undisciplined rabble
of between three thousand and four thousand Gueux, under the
direction of John de Soreas, gathered together in the neighborhood
of Lille and Tournay, with a show of attacking these places. But
the governor of the former town dispersed one party of them; and
Noircarmes surprised and almost destroyed the main body--their
leader falling in the action. These were the first encounters
of the civil war, which raged without cessation for upward of
forty years in these devoted countries, and which is universally
allowed to be the most remarkable that ever desolated any isolated
portion of Europe. The space which we have already given to the
causes which produced this memorable revolution, now actually
commenced, will not allow us to do more than rapidly sketch the
fierce events that succeeded each other with frightful rapidity.

While Valenciennes prepared for a vigorous resistance, a general
synod of the Protestants was held at Antwerp, and De Brederode
undertook an attempt to see the stadtholderess, and lay before
her the complaints of this body; but she refused to admit him into
the capi