threatened contraction of their liberties, and to enforce with all his
energy the necessity of a firm union. He assured the estates that Don
John had been sent, in this simple manner, to the country, because the
King and cabinet had begun to despair of carrying their point by force.
At the same time he warned them that force would doubtless be replaced
by fraud. He expressed his conviction that so soon as Don John should
attain the ascendency which he had been sent to secure, the gentleness
which now smiled upon the surface would give place to the deadlier
purposes which lurked below. He went so far as distinctly to recommend
the seizure of Don John's person. By so doing, much bloodshed might be
saved; for such was the King's respect for the Emperor's son that their
demands would be granted rather than that his liberty should be
permanently endangered. In a very striking and elaborate letter which
he addressed from Middelburg to the estates-general, he insisted on the
expediency of seizing the present opportunity in order to secure and to
expand their liberties, and urged them to assert broadly the principle
that the true historical polity of the Netherlands was a representative,
constitutional government, Don John, on arriving at Luxemburg, had
demanded hostages for his own security, a measure which could not but
strike the calmest spectator as an infraction of all provincial rights.
"He asks you to disarm," continued William of Orange; "he invites you to
furnish hostages, but the time has been when the lord of the land came
unarmed and uncovered, before the estates-general, and swore to support
the constitutions before his own sovereignty could be recognized."

He reiterated his suspicions as to the honest intentions of the
government, and sought, as forcibly as possible, to infuse an equal
distrust into the minds of those he addressed. "Antwerp," said he,
"once the powerful and blooming, now the most forlorn and desolate city
of Christendom, suffered because she dared to exclude the King's troops.