of Fuentes or Bucquoy had ever battled with the columns of Bax and
Meetkerke. The types of Blaauw and Plantin were as effective during the
brief armistice, as pike and arquebus in the field, but unfortunately
they were used by Netherlanders against each other. As a matter of
course, each party impeached the motives as well as the actions of its
antagonist. The adherents of the Advocate accused the stadholder of
desiring the continuance of the war for personal aims. They averred that
six thousand men for guarding the rivers would be necessary, in addition
to the forty-five thousand men, now kept constantly on foot. They placed
the requisite monthly expenses, if hostilities were resumed, at 800,000
florins, while they pointed to the 27,000,000 of debt over and above the
8,000,000 due to the British crown, as a burthen under which the republic
could scarcely stagger much longer. Such figures seem modest enough, as
the price of a war of independence.

Familiar with the gigantic budgets of our own day, we listen with
something like wonder, now that two centuries and a half have passed,
to the fierce denunciations by the war party of these figures as wilful
fictions. Science has made in that interval such gigantic strides. The
awful intellect of man may at last make war impossible for his physical
strength. He can forge but cannot wield the hammer of Thor; nor has
Science yet discovered the philosopher's stone. Without it, what
exchequer can accept chronic warfare and escape bankruptcy? After what
has been witnessed in these latest days, the sieges and battles of that
distant epoch seem like the fights of pigmies and cranes. Already an
eighty years' war, such as once was waged, has become inconceivable. Let
two more centuries pass away, and perhaps a three weeks' campaign may
exhaust an empire.

Meantime the war of words continued. A proclamation with penalties was