deserved the title of the first captain of all Christendom.

A period of languor and exhaustion succeeded. The armies of the States
had dwindled to an effective force of scarcely four or five thousand men,
while the new levies came in but slowly. The taxation, on the other
hand, was very severe. The quotas for the provinces had risen to the
amount of five million eight hundred thousand florins for the year 1599,
against an income of four millions six hundred thousand, and this deficit
went on increasing, notwithstanding a new tax of one-half per cent. on
the capital of all estates above three thousand florins in value, and
another of two and a half per cent. on all sales of real property. The
finances of the obedient provinces were in a still worse condition, and
during the absence of the cardinal-archduke an almost universal mutiny,
occasioned by the inability of the exchequer to provide payment for the
troops, established itself throughout Flanders and Brabant. There was
much recrimination on the subject of the invasion of the Rhenish duchies,
and a war of pamphlets and manifestos between the archduke's Government
and the States-General succeeded to those active military operations by
which so much misery had been inflicted on the unfortunate inhabitants of
that border land. There was a slight attempt on the part of the Princes
of Brunswick, Hesse, and Brandenburg to counteract and to punish the
hostilities of the Spanish troops committed upon German soil. An army
--very slowly organized, against the wishes of the emperor, the bishops,
and the Catholic party--took the field, and made a feeble demonstration
upon Rheinberg and upon Rees entirely without result and then disbanded
itself ingloriously.

Meantime the admiral had withdrawn from German territory, and was amusing
himself with a variety of blows aimed at vital points of the republic.
An excursion into the Isle of Bommel was not crowned with much success.