his request, had been assembled. The assembly begged him to
lay before them, if it were possible, any schemes and means which he
might have devised for further resistance to the Duke of Alva. Thus
solicited, the Prince, in a very secret session, unfolded his plans, and
satisfied them as to the future prospects of the cause. His speech has
nowhere been preserved. His strict injunctions as to secrecy, doubtless,
prevented or effaced any record of the session. It is probable, however,
that he entered more fully into the state of his negotiations with
England, and into the possibility of a resumption by Count Louis of his
private intercourse with the French court, than it was safe, publicly, to
divulge.

While the Prince had been thus occupied in preparing the stout-hearted
province for the last death-struggle with its foe, that mortal combat was
already fast approaching; for the aspect of the contest in the
Netherlands was not that of ordinary warfare. It was an encounter between
two principles, in their nature so hostile to each other that the
absolute destruction of one was the only, possible issue. As the fight
went on, each individual combatant seemed inspired by direct personal
malignity, and men found a pleasure in deeds of cruelty, from which
generations not educated to slaughter recoil with horror. To murder
defenceless prisoners; to drink, not metaphorically but literally, the
heart's blood of an enemy; to exercise a devilish ingenuity in inventions
of mutual torture, became not only a duty but a rapture. The Liberty of
the Netherlands had now been hunted to its lair. It had taken its last
refuge among the sands and thickets where its savage infancy had been
nurtured, and had now prepared itself to crush its tormentor in a last
embrace, or to die in the struggle.

After the conclusion of the sack and massacre of Naarden, Don Frederic
had hastened to Amsterdam, where the Duke was then quartered, that he
might receive the paternal benediction for his well-accomplished work.
The royal approbation was soon afterwards added to the applause of his
parent, and the Duke was warmly congratulated in a letter written by
Philip as soon as the murderous deed was known, that Don Frederic had so
plainly shown himself to be his father's son. There was now more work for
father and son. Amsterdam was the only point in Holland which held for
Alva, and from that point it was determined to recover the whole
province. The Prince of Or