sand-bank. Within five years, twenty-five
millions of florins had been sent from Spain for war expenses in the
Netherlands.--Yet, this amount, with the addition of large sums annually
derived from confiscations, of five millions, at which the proceeds of
the hundredth penny was estimated, and the two millions yearly, for which
the tenth and twentieth pence had been compounded, was insufficient to
save the treasury from beggary and the unpaid troops from mutiny.

Nevertheless, for the moment the joy created was intense. Philip was
lying dangerously ill at the wood of Segovia, when the happy tidings of
the reduction of Harlem, with its accompanying butchery, arrived. The
account of all this misery, minutely detailed to him by Alva, acted like
magic. The blood of twenty-three hundred of his fellow-creatures--coldly
murdered, by his orders, in a single city--proved for the sanguinary
monarch the elixir of life: he drank and was refreshed. "The principal
medicine which has cured his Majesty," wrote Secretary Cayas from Madrid
to Alva, "is the joy caused to him by the good news which you have
communicated of the surrender of Harlem." In the height of his
exultation, the King forgot how much dissatisfaction he had recently felt
with the progress of events in the Netherlands; how much treasure had
been annually expended with an insufficient result. "Knowing your
necessity," continued Cayas, "his Majesty instantly sent for Doctor
Velasco, and ordered him to provide you with funds, if he had to descend
into the earth to dig for it." While such was the exultation of the
Spaniards, the Prince of Orange was neither dismayed nor despondent. As
usual, he trusted to a higher power than man. "I had hoped to send you
better news," he wrote, to Count Louis, "nevertheless, since it has
otherwise pleased the good God, we must conform ourselves to His divine
will. I take the same God to witness that I have done everything
according to my means, which was possible, to succor the city." A few
days later, writing in the same spirit, he informed his brother that the
Zealanders had succeeded in capturing the castle of Rammekens, on the
isle of Walcheren. "I hope," he said, "that this will reduce the pride of
our enemies, who, after the surrender of Harlem, have thought that they
were about to swallow us alive. I assure myself, however, that they will
find a very different piece of work from the one which they expect."

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