mmanded by Prince Maurice and the marshal de la Chatre, was
marched into the county of Cleves. After taking possession of the
town of Juliers, the allies retired, leaving the two princes above
mentioned in a partnership possession of the disputed states. But
this joint sovereignty did not satisfy the ambition of either,
and serious divisions arose between them, each endeavoring to
strengthen himself by foreign alliances. The archdukes Albert
and Isabella were drawn into the quarrel; and they despatched
Spinola at the head of twenty thousand men to support the duke
of Neuburg, whose pretensions they countenanced. Prince Maurice,
with a Dutch army, advanced on the other hand to uphold the claims
of the elector of Brandenburg. Both generals took possession of
several towns; and this double expedition offered the singular
spectacle of two opposing armies, acting in different interests,
making conquests, and dividing an important inheritance, without
the occurrence of one act of hostility to each other. But the
interference of the court of Madrid had nearly been the cause
of a new rupture. The greatest alarm was excited in the Belgic
provinces; and nothing but the prudence of the archdukes and
the forbearance of the states-general could have succeeded in
averting the threatened evil.

With the exception of this bloodless mimicry of war, the United
Provinces presented for the space of twelve years a long-continued
picture of peace, as the term is generally received; but a peace
so disfigured by intestine troubles, and so stained by actions
of despotic cruelty, that the period which should have been that
of its greatest happiness becomes but an example of its worst
disgrace.

The assassination of Henry IV., in the year 1609, was a new instance
of the bigoted atrocity which reigned paramount in Europe at the
time; and while robbing France of one of its best monarchs, it
deprived the United Provinces of their truest and most powerful
friend. Henry has, from his own days to the present, found a
ready eulogy in all who value kings in proportion as they are
distinguished by heroism, without ceasing to evince the feelings
of humanity. Henry seems to have gone as far as man can go, to
combine wisdom, dignity and courage with all those endearing
qualities of private life which alone give men a prominent hold
upon the sympathies of their kind. We acknowledge his errors,
his faults, his follies, only to love him the better. We admir