General to England. Before detailing those negotiations, however, it is
proper to direct attention to the external public events which had been
unrolling themselves in the Provinces, contemporaneously with the secret
history which has been detailed in the preceding chapters.

By presenting in their natural groupings various distinct occurrences,
rather than by detailing them in strict chronological order, a clearer
view of the whole picture will be furnished than could be done by
intermingling personages, transactions, and scenery, according to the
arbitrary command of Time alone.

The Netherlands, by the death of Orange, had been left without a head.
On the other hand, the Spanish party had never been so fortunate in their
chief at any period since the destiny of the two nations had been blended
with each other. Alexander Farnese, Prince of Parma, was a general and a
politician, whose character had been steadily ripening since he came into
the command of the country. He was now thirty-seven years of age--with
the experience of a sexagenarian. No longer the impetuous, arbitrary,
hot-headed youth, whose intelligence and courage hardly atoned for his
insolent manner and stormy career, he had become pensive, modest, almost
gentle. His genius was rapid in conception, patient in combination,
fertile in expedients, adamantine in the endurance or suffering; for
never did a heroic general and a noble army of veterans manifest more
military virtue in the support of an infamous cause than did Parma and
his handful of Italians and Spaniards. That which they considered to be
their duty they performed. The work before them they did with all their
might.

Alexander had vanquished the rebellion in the Celtic provinces, by the
masterly diplomacy and liberal bribery which have been related in a