confessions of guilt, that he had been tried and sentenced against all
principles and forms of law, and that he had been deprived of what the
humblest criminal could claim, the right of defence and the examination
of testimony. In regard to the penalty against him, he said, there was
no such thing as perpetual imprisonment except in hell. Alluding to the
leading cause of all these troubles, he observed that it was with the
Stadholder and the Advocate as Cato had said of Caesar and Pompey. The
great misery had come not from their being enemies, but from their having
once been friends.

On the night of 5th June the prisoners were taken from their prison in
the Hague and conveyed to the castle of Loevestein.

This fortress, destined thenceforth to be famous in history and--from
its frequent use in after-times as a state-prison for men of similar
constitutional views to those of Grotius and the Advocate--to give its
name to a political party, was a place of extraordinary strength. Nature
and art had made it, according to military ideas of that age, almost
impregnable. As a prison it seemed the very castle of despair.
"Abandon all hope ye who enter" seemed engraven over its portal.

Situate in the very narrow, acute angle where the broad, deep, and turbid
Waal--the chief of the three branches into which the Rhine divides itself
on entering the Netherlands--mingles its current with the silver Meuse
whose name it adopts as the united rivers roll to the sea, it was guarded
on many sides by these deep and dangerous streams. On the land-side it
was surrounded by high walls and a double foss, which protected it
against any hostile invasion from Brabant. As the Twelve Years' Truce
was running to its close, it was certain that pains would be taken to
strengthen the walls and deepen the ditches, that the place might be