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Mierop, Receiver General of Holland, had occasion to visit him at
Rotterdam, and strange to relate, found the house almost deserted.
Penetrating, unattended, to the Prince's bed-chamber, he found him lying
quite alone. Inquiring what had become, of all his attendants, he was
answered by the Prince, in a very feeble voice, that he had sent them all
away. The Receiver-General seems, from this, to have rather hastily
arrived at the conclusion that the Prince's disorder was the pest, and
that his servants and friends had all deserted him from cowardice.

This was very far from being the case. His private secretary and his
maitre d'hotel watched, day and night, by his couch, and the best
physicians of the city were in constant attendance. By a singular
accident; all had been despatched on different errands, at the express
desire of their master, but there had never been a suspicion that his
disorder was the pest, or pestilential. Nerves of steel, and a frame of
adamant could alone have resisted the constant anxiety and the consuming
fatigue to which he had so long been exposed. His illness had been
aggravated by the rumor of Leyden's fall, a fiction which Cornelius
Mierop was now enabled flatly to contradict. The Prince began to mend
from that hour. By the end of the first week of September, he wrote along
letter to his brother, assuring him of his convalescence, and expressing,
as usual; a calm confidence in the divine decrees--"God will ordain for
me," said he, "all which is necessary for my good and my salvation. He
will load me with no more afflictions than the fragility of this nature
can sustain."

The preparations for the relief of Leyden, which, notwithstanding his
exertions, had grown slack during his sickness, were now vigorously
resumed. On the 1st of September, Admiral Boisot arrived out of Zealand
with a small number of vessels, and with eight hundred veteran sailors. A
wild and ferocious crew were those eight hundred Zealanders. Scarred,
hacked, and even maimed, in the unceasing conflicts in which their lives
had passed; wearing crescents in their caps, with the inscription,
"Rather Turkish than Popish;" renowned far and wide, as much for their
ferocity as for their nautical skill; the appearance of these wildest of
the "Sea-beggars" was both eccentric and terrific. They were known never
to give nor to take quarter, for they went to mortal combat only, and had
sworn to spare neither noble nor simple, neither