It is needless to follow Sir William Stirling Maxwell through his masterly historical sketch of the rising in the Netherlands. The story is one of inexhaustible interest, and few passages in the politics of modern Europe have been more closely investigated; for the cause of the Netherlands in the sixteenth century was the dawn of toleration and constitutional freedom. But we must confine ourselves strictly to the part in this great contest which fell to the lot of Don John of Austria. The viceroyalty of the Netherlands had been held for eight stormy and disas Don trous years (1559-1567) by Margaret, Duchess of Parma, who was also an illegitimate descendant of the great emperor. She was followed by the stern and sanguinary rule of Alba, who was again succeeded by Requesens, the representative of a more moderate policy. Requesens died on January 5, 1576, and Philip, roused for once into action by the urgency of th case, instantly appointed Don John to the office. The government of the Netherlands seemed likely to place Don John at the head of a force, and in a position, to enable him to realize the pope's splendid

dream of a conquest of England, deliver | and his Holiness have thought of me as the Mary, and set her and himself on the best instrument you could choose for the executhrone of Elizabeth, and restore the Brit- tion of your designs, offended as you both are ish kingdom to the bosom of the Church. by the evil proceedings of the Queen of En But, in spite of these visionary splendors, gland, and by the wrongs which she has done and the pressing commands of the king, ing, against her will, heresy in that kingdom. to the Queen of Scotland, especially in sustainDon John (who was then in Lombardy) Although neither for that nor for aught else do allowed twenty-four days to elapse before I believe myself to be fitted except in so far as he acknowledged the appointment. On it is your Majesty's pleasure; yet, as in the May 27 he wrote to Philip pointing out world's opinion that task is incumbent on me, the extreme difficulty of the task, and in- and as your Majesty, ever ready to show your dicating his own views of the policy which kindness to me, lends a willing ear to the ought to be adopted in the following re- project, and gives such evident marks of your markable terms:desire that it should succeed, I cannot but long to kiss your hands for this favor; for although I esteem it at its just value, my own sentiments considered, it is of still greater value in my eyes, because it is conformable with my fixed purpose to desire nothing from your crown, even should your Majesty offer it, beyond that which as your creature I can and ought to have, and beyond those things which by your grace and favor, when your arms are at liberty, may dispose me to manifest my zeal for your service and aggrandizement. That this zeal cannot be greater either in vassal, servant, or son, I hope your Majesty will believe; and I hope God will grant me His grace to make it good. (Vol. ii., pp. 118-120.)

All ordinances [he wrote] contrary to the laws and customs of the Provinces, which have been issued by late governors, and which give so much offence, ought to be annulled.

All possible means of bringing back to the royal service the vassals of your Majesty, who may repent of their faults, should be adopted. In appointing to places of trust, and in the general administration, the ancient customs of the country ought to be observed.

No person should be attached to my service who can give offence, and no foreign lawyers, who are so unpopular, should be employed.

As affairs are to be conducted without the employment of force, and solely by the authority of your Majesty and myself, I must have a household well appointed and respectable, and composed of persons of all nations.

To meet the unavoidable expense of even such an establishment as I have at present, I can assure your Majesty that neither the ordidary allowance nor the extraordinary subvention is sufficient, and that I am in debt to the amount of several thousand ducats. As I have no means of meeting these liabilities, I must entreat your Majesty, in this as in all things else, to supply my needs, with due regard to the part which your Majesty desires that I should sustain in the world.

In spite of the king's commands, he insisted on a personal interview, and landed at Barcelona on August 22. At the Escorial, Philip gave his brother a favorable reception.

Into the scheme for the invasion of England, and the marriage with Mary Stuart, Philip ap. pears to have entered with real or affected warmth. In the feasibility of invasion, at one time at least, he had so firmly believed as to be disappointed with the Duke of Alba for not accomplishing it. In the marriage he foresaw an object which would turn all the energies of One of the things which will most contribute Don John into a channel by which his own into the success of my mission is that I should terests in the Netherlands would be benefited. be held in high esteem at home, and that all He therefore gave his full sanction and appromen should know and believe that your Maj-bation to the gigantic plan of conquest and esty, being unable to go in person to the Low Countries, has invested me with all the powers I could desire. Your Majesty will see that I will use them for the re-establishment of your authority, now so fallen, in its due place. And if my conduct shall not satisfy your Majesty, you can resume these powers without fear of murmur on my part, or of opposition founded on my private interests.

aggrandizement which had been laid down at Rome, subject to such conditions and instructions as might be sent after Don John to the Netherlands..

The instructions began, it is true, with the injunction that England was not to be invaded until the Low Countries were pacified, and until it was certain that no opposition would be offered by France. "You are to consider," The true remedy for the evil condition of the said the king solemnly, "what a mistake it Netherlands, in the judgment of all men, is would be to leave our own dominions in danthat England should be in the power of a per- ger, while we are trying to take possession of son devoted and well-affectioned to your Maj- those of other people.' The help that was to esty's service; and it is the general opinion be had from the English Catholics was to be that the ruin of these countries, and the im-rigidly examined and weighed, "for no kingpossibility of preserving them to your Majesty's crown, will result from the contrary position of English affairs. At Rome and elsewhere the rumor prevails that in this belief your Majesty |

dom is so weak that it can be conquered without aid from within." Don John was to enter into the most amicable relations with Queen Elizabeth, to ascertain the exact amount and

stand she desires, and which indeed will be due to the man who shall deliver her from so great misery, and set her free and in possession of her realms, even to one whose quality and valør might not, as yours do, of themselves deserve it. In case of success there will be some things to fix and determine; but upon these it is not expedient to enter till the time shall come. Meanwhile, it is sufficient to advise you that your settlement in the aforesaid kingdom will have to be in such form and on such conditions as shall appear to me expedient for my service and for the good of our affairs and States" These instructions,' although committed to writing, were, it seems, only read to Escovedo. But he was furnished with a short note, in which Don John was told that the bearer was charged with a verbal

which he did not choose to enter upon on paper because of the insecurity of the roads; and "you will hear and believe him," added the king, "as you would hear and believe my. self, seeing that he is a person in whom all confidence may be placed. (Vol. ii., pp. 123128.)

state of her naval and military resources, and to take every means of corrupting her ministers and favorites. "And as you are aware,' pursued the royal writer, "of the nature of that queen, and how she usually gets into correspondence and relations with the persons whom she thinks she might perhaps marry, it may be that, by some roundabout way, she may entertain the same notions about you, and draw you into correspondence. If this should happen, you must not be by any means backward, but let her run on as she pleases, as it will afford a good occasion of furthering the design aforesaid." It had been agreed that the Spanish troops were to be withdrawn from the Netherlands; it must therefore be given out that they were going to Barbary, and with them the invasion of England must be effected. Victuals, munitions, and artillery must be pro-message from the king on a certain business vided in reasonable quantities, and also arms for the English Catholics. All these things must be done in profound secrecy. The objects of the enterprise were the restoration of England to the Church and of the Queen of Scots to her rights; but nothing was to be said about them at first, lest Mary should be put to death. When her liberty had been achieved she was to be placed at the head of the enterprise. It was to be considered what English seaport was to be chosen for disembarkation Plymouth, Falmouth, Southampton, or Liverpool; and the one nearest to the prison of the Queen of Scots was to be preferred. Don John was not to lead the expedition until a landing had been effected and some success obtained. Julian Romero, Sancho de Avila, and Alonzo de Vargas, were all eligible for the command; but the king inclined to Romero, as being better acquainted with England and English affairs. It would be best to conduct the affair wholly in the name of Don John, as if it had been a sudden thought of his own, on which he had been led to act by the tempting opportunity afforded by the dismissal of the Spanish troops, and by his sympathy with the wrongs and sufferings of the Queen of Scots, the English Catholics, and the Church. The Pope's name was not to be put forward; but, if success were obtained, his Holiness might be asked to supply the necessary benediction, briefs, and a Nuncio, The few days which preceded and followed and to interpose if any of the Catholic powers the arrival of Don John at Luxemburg were sought to support Queen Elizabeth. The en- the most eventful days of a year full of great terprise must be carried on in a spirit of "lib-events for the Netherlands. The latest inforerality, kindness, and forgiveness," and nothing must be said about rebellion or heresy to the Catholics or others who might join the Spanish standard. The instructions concluded in these characteristic words: "The great brotherly love with which I regard and always have regarded you makes me desire the suc-lessly sacked by the Spanish soldiery, who had cess of this affair, because I consider it, next to the service of God, the means it may afford me of showing how much I love you; in token whereof I now assure you that, if all goes well with this enterprise of England, it will please me to see you settled there and married to the Queen of Scots - — a marriage which I under

It was the last time the brothers met. Four weeks later Don John mounted his horse, and crossed the Guadarramas to Abrojo, where he took leave of his beloved foster-mother. Here he assumed the disguise of a Moorish slave, and set out with one companion and three serNot till vants to ride across France. October 30 did he reach Paris, and as he left it on the following day, we have small belief in the story that he attended a ball at the Louvre in disguise on that same night, and lost his heart to the gay young queen of Navarre. He reached Luxembourg on November 3; almost at the same moment the fury of the Spaniards had broken out with unparalleled violence, and accomplished the hideous and abominable tragedy of massacre and pillage known as the sack of Antwerp.

mation furnished to him in Spain, or even the still fresher news which he may have learned from Zuniga at Paris, could hardly have prepared him for the intelligence now brought by each succeeding courier. The day before he reached Luxemburg Antwerp had been law

been for some months in open mutiny, and against whom even the Spanish authorities had thought it right to arm the inhabitants of the defenceless towns. Of the first commercial capital in the north a great part was a smoking ruin; and several other towns had shared a similar fate. Negotiations had long

This settlement led to a reaction in favor of the prince who had yielded so much, and though he remained at Louvain, he enjoyed a brief gleam of popular favor. But no settlement could suit the plans of William of Orange.

Don John evidently did not understand either the character or the motives or the ends of William the Silent. If he had understood them he would himself have been an abler and a less honest man than he was. His experience of public affairs and the men who conducted them Granvelle, Perez, and the king was not likely to have given him a very exalted idea of human nature. Selfishness, it was plain, was man's ruling principle, a principle sometimes too strong to be checked even by loyalty to Church and king, in which Don John had been religiously fostered and in which he steadfastly believed. Loyalty to the right of a community of obscure mariners and graziers, seriously pleaded by a great lord of almost royal blood as a reason for taking up arms against his sovereign, was a feeling which Don John's education and habits of thought and life must have rendered incomprehensible to a man of his intellectual calibre. When he came, therefore, to study the character and ends of Orange, he naturally and inevitably concluded that William's own interests, and those of his house, were the objects which really lay near his heart and guided his course; and that the true policy of Philip's representative was to make it plain to his great antagonist that these interests could be better served by submission than by continued opposition, by selling than by defending the people of Holland and Zeland. He was confirmed in this conclusion by the tactics of Orange in the matter of the Edict, which were as shifty and tortuous as any that could have been devised by Perez or practised by Granvelle. In Don John's opinion, Leonnius had not been instructed to use sufficient plainness of speech, William was too cautious to be more explicit; when the principals themselves came face to face, a bargain would nevertheless be struck, and meanwhile nothing remained but to warn the king that the aspect of affairs compelled liberality, and that the man who had thwarted him for twenty years was not going to sell himself cheap.

Orange, on his side, regarded Don John with the distrust with which he could not fail to regard any one sent to the Netherlands by Philip II. for the obvious purpose of trying fraud alone in the game where fraud and force had hitherto failed. He studied his character and policy in the letters which he occasionally contrived to intercept, and it would have been singular indeed if, on the governor's confidential communications with Spanish military officers in the Netherlands, or with statesmen in

Spain, he did not find matter for increasing his suspicions. At first his distrust was mingled with a feeling of contempt, which was probably engendered by the want of self-command and

of fixed purpose which Don John had displayed at Luxemburg and Huy. "The only difference," he wrote, "between this new governor and Alba or Requesens is that he is younger his venom and more impatient to dip his hands and more foolish, less capable of concealing in blood." This feeling of contempt does not appear to have been lasting. Orange was too wise to despise an antagonist whose power, shown as it was, was so considerable as that of the King of Spain's viceroy, and his constant advice to those who consulted him to beware of Don John, seemed to show an apprehension that that power was likely to be used with no inconsiderable skill. Nor did he ever relinquish his schemes for obtaining possession of Don John's person, although they were doomed to prove abortive. (Vol. ii., p. 215.)

To the king Don John wrote fearlessly: "In the Netherlands the name of your Majesty is as much abhorred and despised as that of the Prince of Orange is loved and feared;" and again: "I see no rem. edy to preserve the State from destruc tion except by gaining over this man, who has so much influence with the nation." That attempt was vanity itself. But the viceroy had so far gained ground that in May, 1577, he was allowed to make his public entry into Brussels. His stay there was exceedingly short, for he was apprised of plots to seize his person, and he retired shortly to Malines, and afterwards to Namur.

It is interesting to learn that about this time he received the visit of Sir Philip Sidney, then on his return from his mission to the emperor Rudolph at Prague. Once then the model and the mirror of English and of Spanish high breeding and chivalry met, and met on kindly terms; both destined to that early death which the gods grant to those who have fulfilled a course of glory. A month later came a visitor of a different race. Queen Margaret arrived at Namur on her way to Spa. She was received by the prince with great magnificence, and the "fair mischief," as Sir William terms her, passed on her way in a web of adventure and intrigue, destined to lead eventually to the French intervention in Flanders.

But whilst Don John was laboring to win the confidence of the people and disarm their leaders, against fearful odds, he had also to contend against the indifference, the suspicions, even the hostility of the court of Spain. Antonio Perez, then chief secretary of Philip, had awakened the jealousy of the sovereign; attempts were made to entrap Don John in his correspondence; when Escovedo, his confidential secretary, was sent to Madrid to