doubtless committed a grave error, but who had often rendered honourable
service to the republic, and the States-General gave him a command as
important as that of which he had been relieved by the Zeeland States.
It was mainly on account of the tempest thus created within the
Netherlands, that an affair of such slight importance came to occupy so
large a space in contemporary history. The defenders of Solmstold wild
stories about the losses of the besieging army. The cardinal, who was
thought prodigal of blood, and who was often quoted as saying "his
soldiers' lives belonged to God and their bodies to the king," had
sacrificed, it, was ridiculously said, according to the statement of the
Spaniards themselves, five thousand soldiers before the walls of Hulst.
It was very logically deduced therefrom that the capture of a few more
towns of a thousand inhabitants each would cost him his whole army.
People told each other, too, that the conqueror had refused a triumph
which the burghers of Brussels wished to prepare for him on his entrance
into the capital, and that he had administered the very proper rebuke
that, if they had more money than they knew what to do with, they should
expend it in aid of the wounded and of the families of the fallen, rather
than in velvets and satins and triumphal arches. The humanity of the
suggestion hardly tallied with the blood-thirstiness of which he was at
the same time so unjustly accused--although it might well be doubted
whether the commander-in-chief, even if he could witness unflinchingly
the destruction of five thousand soldiers on the battle-field, would dare
to confront a new demonstration of schoolmaster Houwaerts and his
fellowpedants.

The fact was, however, that the list of casualties in the cardinal's camp
during the six weeks' siege amounted to six hundred, while the losses
within the city were at least as many. There was no attempt to relieve
the place; for the States, as before observed, had been too much cramped