Meanwhile the Hollanders and English could quarrel comfortably among
themselves, and the little republic, for want of a legal head, could come
as near as possible to its dissolution.

Young Maurice--deep thinker for his years and peremptory in action--was
not the man to see his great father's life-work annihilated before his
eyes, so long as he had an arm and brain of his own. He accepted his
position at the head of the government of Holland and Zeeland, and as
chief of the war-party. The council of state, mainly composed of
Leicester's creatures, whose commissions would soon expire by their own
limitation, could offer but a feeble resistance to such determined
individuals as Maurice, Buys, and Barneveld. The party made rapid
progress. On the other hand, the English Leicestrians did their best
to foment discord in the Provinces. Sonoy was sustained in his rebellion
in North Holland, not only by the Earl's partizans, but by Elizabeth
herself. Her rebukes to Maurice, when Maurice was pursuing the only
course which seemed to him consistent with honour and sound policy,
were sharper than a sword. Well might Duplessis Mornay observe, that
the commonwealth had been rather strangled than embraced by the English
Queen. Sonoy, in the name of Leicester, took arms against Maurice and
the States; Maurice marched against him; and Lord Willoughby, commander-
in-chief of the English forces, was anxious to march against Maurice.
It was a spectacle to make angels weep, that of Englishmen and Hollanders
preparing to cut each other's throats, at the moment when Philip and
Parma were bending all their energies to crush England and Holland at
once.

Indeed, the interregnum between the departure of Leicester and his
abdication was diligently employed by his more reckless partizans to
defeat and destroy the authority of the States. By prolonging the