look back upon those dark days with the light of what was then the almost
immediate future turned full and glaring upon them, we find it difficult
to exaggerate the folly of the chief actors in those scenes of crime.
Did not the penniless adventurer, whose keen eyesight and wise
recklessness were passing for hallucination and foolhardiness in the eyes
of his contemporaries, understand the game he was playing better than did
that profound thinker, that mysterious but infallible politician, who sat
in the Escorial and made the world tremble at every hint of his lips,
every stroke of his pen?

The Netherlands--that most advanced portion of Philip's domain, without
the possession of which his conquest of England and his incorporation of
France were but childish visions, even if they were not monstrous
chimeras at best--were to be in a manner left to themselves, while their
consummate governor and general was to go forth and conquer France at the
head of a force with which he had been in vain attempting to hold those
provinces to their obedience. At that very moment the rising young
chieftain of the Netherlands was most successfully inaugurating his
career of military success. His armies well drilled, well disciplined,
well paid, full of heart and of hope, were threatening their ancient
enemy in every quarter, while the veteran legions of Spain and Italy,
heroes of a hundred Flemish and Frisian battle-fields, were disorganised,
starving, and mutinous. The famous ancient legion, the terzo viejo, had
been disbanded for its obstinate and confirmed unruliness. The legion of
Manrique, sixteen hundred strong, was in open mutiny at Courtray.
Farnese had sent the Prince of Ascoli to negotiate with them, but his
attempts were all in vain. Two years' arrearages--to be paid, not in
cloth at four times what the contractors had paid for it, but in solid
gold--were their not unreasonable demands after years of as hard fighting
and severe suffering as the world has often seen. But Philip, instead of