once more emptied the vials of her wrath upon the United Netherlands.
The criminations and recriminations seemed endless, and it was most
fortunate that Spain had been weakened, that Alexander, a prey to
melancholy and to lingering disease, had gone to the baths of Spa to
recruit his shattered health, and that his attention and the schemes of
Philip for the year 1589 and the following period were to be directed
towards France. Otherwise the commonwealth could hardly have escaped
still more severe disasters than those already experienced in this
unfortunate condition of its affairs, and this almost hopeless
misunderstanding with its most important and vigorous friend.

While these events had been occurring in the heart of the republic,
Martin Schenk, that restless freebooter, had been pursuing a bustling and
most lucrative career on its outskirts. All the episcopate of Cologne--
that debatable land of the two rival paupers, Bavarian Ernest and Gebhard
Truchsess--trembled before him. Mothers scared their children into
quiet with the terrible name of Schenk, and farmers and land-younkers
throughout the electorate and the land of Berg, Cleves, and Juliers, paid
their black-mail, as if it were a constitutional impost, to escape the
levying process of the redoubtable partisan.

But Martin was no longer seconded, as he should have been, by the States,
to whom he had been ever faithful since he forsook the banner of Spain
for their own; and he had even gone to England and complained to the
Queen of the short-comings of those who owed him so much. His ingenious
and daring exploit--the capture of Bonn--has already been narrated, but
the States had neglected the proper precautions to secure that important
city. It had consequently, after a six months' siege, been surrendered
to the Spaniards under Prince Chimay, on the 19th of September; while, in
December following, the city of Wachtendonk, between the Rhine and Meuse,