"Wilhelmus van Nassouwen
Ben ick van Duytaem bloed."

The fight was over. Some forty of the garrison had been killed, but not
a man of the attacking party. The burgomaster sent a trumpet to the
prince asking permission to come to the castle to arrange a capitulation;
and before sunrise, the city and fortress of Breda had surrendered to the
authority of the States-General and of his Excellency.

The terms were moderate. The plundering was commuted for the payment of
two months' wages to every soldier engaged in the affair. Burghers who
might prefer to leave the city were allowed to do so with protection to
life, and property. Those who were willing to remain loyal citizens were
not to be molested, in their consciences or their households, in regard
to religion. The public exercise of Catholic rites was however suspended
until the States-General should make some universal provision on this
subject.

Subsequently, it must be allowed, the bargain of commutation proved a bad
one for the burghers. Seventy men had in reality done the whole work,
but so many soldiers, belonging to the detachments who marched in after
the fortress had been taken, came forward to claim their months' wages
as to bring the whole amount required above one hundred thousand florins.
The Spaniards accordingly reproached Prince Maurice with having fined his
own patrimonial city more heavily than Alexander Farnese had mulcted
Antwerp, which had been made to pay but four hundred thousand florins,
a far less sum in proportion to the wealth and importance of the place.

Already the Prince of Parma, in the taking of Breda, saw verified his
predictions of the disasters about to fall on the Spanish interests in