d
amount of ammunition, were also captured. The unexpected condition of
affairs made a pause natural and almost necessary, before the government
could be decorously transferred. Medina Coeli with Spanish
grandiloquence, avowed his willingness to serve as a soldier, under a
general whom he so much venerated, while Alva ordered that, in all
respects, the same outward marks of respect should be paid to his
appointed successor as to himself. Beneath all this external ceremony,
however, much mutual malice was concealed.

Meantime, the Duke, who was literally "without a single real," was forced
at last to smother his pride in the matter of the tenth penny. On the
24th June, he summoned the estates of Holland to assemble on the 15th of
the ensuing month. In the missive issued for this purpose, he formally
agreed to abolish the whole tax, on condition that the estates-general of
the Netherlands would furnish him with a yearly supply of two millions of
florins. Almost at the same moment the King had dismissed the deputies of
the estates from Madrid, with the public assurance that the tax was to be
suspended, and a private intimation that it was not abolished in terms,
only in order to save the dignity of the Duke.

These healing measures came entirely too late. The estates of Holland
met, indeed, on the appointed day of July; but they assembled not in
obedience to Alva, but in consequence of a summons from William of
Orange. They met, too, not at the Hague, but at Dort, to take formal
measures for renouncing the authority of the Duke. The first congress of
the Netherland commonwealth still professed loyalty to the Crown, but was
determined to accept the policy of Orange without a question.

The Prince had again assembled an army in Germany, consisting of fifteen
thousand foot and seven thousand horse, besides a number of
Netherlanders, mostly Walloons, amounting to nearly three thousand more.
Before taking the field, however, it was necessary that he should
guarantee at least three months' pay to his troops. This he could no
longer do, except by giving bonds endorsed by certain cities of Holland
as his securities. He had accordingly addressed letters in his own name
to all the principal cities, fervently adjuring them to remember, at
last, what was due to him, to the fatherland, and to their own character.
"Let not a sum of gold," said he in one of these letters, "be so dear to
you, that for its sake you will sacrifice your li