Brussels. Governor Moulbais in the citadel, who was nominally under his
authority, refused obedience to his orders, was evidently receiving
secret instructions from the Regent, and was determined to cannonade the
city into submission at a very early day. Horn required him to pledge
himself that no fresh troops should enter the castle. Moulbais swore he
would make no such promise to a living soul. The Admiral stormed with his
usual violence, expressed his regret that his brother Montigny had so bad
a lieutenant in the citadel, but could make no impression upon the
determined veteran, who knew, better than Horn, the game which was
preparing. Small reinforcements were daily arriving at the castle; the
soldiers of the garrison had been heard to boast "that they would soon
carve and eat the townsmen's flesh on their dressers," and all the good
effect from the Admiral's proclamation on arriving, had completely
vanished.

Horn complained bitterly of the situation in which he was placed. He knew
himself the mark of incessant and calumnious misrepresentation both at
Brussels and Madrid. He had been doing his best, at a momentous crisis,
to serve the government without violating its engagements, but he
declared himself to be neither theologian nor jurist, and incapable,
while suspected and unassisted, of performing a task which the most
learned doctors of the council would find impracticable. He would rather,
he bitterly exclaimed, endure a siege in any fortress by the Turks, than
be placed in such a position. He was doing all that he was capable of
doing, yet whatever he did was wrong. There was a great difference, he
said, between being in a place and talking about it at a distance.

In the middle of October he was recalled by the Duchess, whose letters
had been uniformly so ambiguous that he confessed he was quite unable to
divine their meaning. Before he left the city, he committed his most