"'Tis a shame to show my wants," he said, "but too great a fault of duty
that the Queen's reputation be frustrate. What is my slender experience!
What an honourable person do I succeed! What an encumbered popular state
is left! What withered sinews, which it passes my cunning to restore!
What an enemy in head greater than heretofore! And wherewithal should I
sustain this burthen? For the wars I am fitter to obey than to command.
For the state, I am a man prejudicated in their opinion, and not the
better liked of them that have earnestly followed the general, and, being
one that wants both opinion and experience with them I have to deal, and
means to win more or to maintain that which is left, what good may be
looked for?"

The supreme authority--by the retirement of Leicester--was once more the
subject of dispute. As on his first departure, so also on this his
second and final one, he had left a commission to the state-council to
act as an executive body during his absence. But, although he--nominally
still retained his office, in reality no man believed in his return; and
the States-General were ill inclined to brook a species of guardianship
over them, with which they believed themselves mature enough to dispense.
Moreover the state-council, composed mainly of Leicestrians, would
expire, by limitation of its commission, early in February of that year.
The dispute for power would necessarily terminate, therefore, in favour
of the States-General.

Meantime--while this internal revolution was taking place in the polity
of the commonwealth-the gravest disturbances were its natural
consequence. There were mutinies in the garrisons of Heusden, of
Gertruydenberg, of Medenblik, as alarming, and threatening to become as
chronic in their character, as those extensive military rebellions which