By midsummer, at least three thousand five hundred veterans, including a
thousand of excellent cavalry, the very best soldiers in the service, had
seized the city of Hoogstraaten. Here they established themselves
securely, and strengthened the fortifications; levying contributions in
corn, cattle, and every other necessary, besides wine, beer, and pocket-
money, from the whole country round with exemplary regularity. As usual,
disorder assumed the forms of absolute order. Anarchy became the best
organized of governments; and it would have been difficult to find in the
world--outside the Dutch commonwealth--a single community where justice
appeared to be so promptly administered as in this temporary republic,
founded upon rebellion and theft.

For; although a brotherhood of thieves, it rigorously punished such of
its citizens as robbed for their own, not for the public good. The
immense booty swept daily from the granges, castles; and villages of
Flanders was divided with the simplicity of early Christians, while the
success and steadiness of the operations paralyzed their sovereign, and
was of considerable advantage to the States.

Albert endeavoured in vain to negotiate with the rebels. Nuncius
Frangipani went to them in person, but was received with calm derision.
Pious exhortations might turn the keys of Paradise, but gold alone, he
was informed, would unlock the gates of Hoogstraaten. In an evil hour
the cardinal-archduke was tempted to try the effect of sacerdotal
thunder. The ex-archbishop of Toledo could not doubt that the terrors of
the Church would make those brown veterans tremble who could confront so
tranquilly the spring-tides of the North Sea, and the batteries of Vere
and Nassau. So he launched a manifesto, as highly spiced as a pamphlet
of Marnig, and as severe as a sentence of Torquemada. Entirely against