Prince would shrink before danger, or die of fear. Had Orange ever been
inclined to bombast, he might have answered the churchman's calumny, as
Caesar the soothsayer's warning:--

"-----------------Danger knows full well
That Caesar is more dangerous than he--"

and in truth, Philip had long trembled on his throne before the genius of
the man who had foiled Spain's boldest generals and wiliest statesmen.
The King, accepting the priest's advice, resolved to fulminate a ban
against the Prince, and to set a price upon his head. "It will be well,"
wrote Philip to Parma, "to offer thirty thousand crowns or so to any one
who will deliver him dead or alive. Thus the country may be rid of a man
so pernicious; or at any rate he will be held in perpetual fear, and
therefore prevented from executing leisurely his designs."

In accordance with these suggestions and these hopes, the famous ban was
accordingly drawn up, and dated on the 15th of March, 1580. It was,
however, not formally published in the Netherlands until the month of
June of the same year.

This edict will remain the most lasting monument to the memory of
Cardinal Granvelle. It will be read when all his other state-papers
and epistles--able as they incontestably are--shall have passed into
oblivion. No panegyric of friend, no palliating magnanimity of foe,
can roll away this rock of infamy from his tomb. It was by Cardinal
Granvelle and by Philip that a price was set upon the head of the
foremost man of his age, as if he had been a savage beast, and that
admission into the ranks of Spain's haughty nobility was made the
additional bribe to tempt the assassin.