country, the people were lifted to a pitch of heroism by which Alkmaar
was saved. Yet, during all this harassing period, he had no one to lean
upon but himself. "Our affairs are in pretty good; condition in Holland
and Zealand," he wrote, "if I only had some aid. 'Tis impossible for me
to support alone so many labors, and the weight of such great affairs as
come upon me hourly--financial, military, political. I have no one to
help me, not a single man, wherefore I leave you to suppose in what
trouble I find myself."

For it was not alone the battles and sieges which furnished him with
occupation and filled him with anxiety. Alone, he directed in secret the
politics of the country, and, powerless and outlawed though he seemed,
was in daily correspondence not only with the estates of Holland and
Zealand, whose deliberations he guided, but with the principal
governments of Europe. The estates of the Netherlands, moreover, had
been formally assembled by Alva in September, at Brussels, to devise ways
and means for continuing the struggle. It seemed to the Prince a good
opportunity to make an appeal to the patriotism of the whole country.
He furnished the province of Holland, accordingly, with the outlines of
an address which was forthwith despatched in their own and his name, to
the general assembly of the Netherlands. The document was a nervous and
rapid review of the course of late events in the provinces, with a cogent
statement of the reasons which should influence them all to unite in the
common cause against the common enemy. It referred to the old affection
and true-heartedness with which they had formerly regarded each other,
and to the certainty that the inquisition would be for ever established
in the land, upon the ruins of all their ancient institutions, unless
they now united to overthrow it for ever. It demanded of the people,
thus assembled through their representatives, how they could endure the
tyranny, murders, and extortions of the Duke of Alva. The princes of