And now in reality began the awful revolution of the Netherlands against their tyrant.  In a few years this so lately flourishing and happy nation presented a frightful picture; and in the midst of European peace, prosperity, and civilization, the wickedness of one prince drew down on the country he misgoverned more evils than it had suffered for centuries from the worst effects of its foreign foes.

William of Nassau has been accused of having at length urged on the stadtholderess to promulgate the final edicts and the resolutions of the Council of Trent, and then retiring from the council of state.  This line of conduct may be safely admitted and fairly defended by his admirers.  He had seen the uselessness of remonstrance against the intentions of the king.  Every possible means had been tried, without effect, to soften his pitiless heart to the sufferings of the country.  At length the moment came when the people had reached that pitch of despair which is the great force of the oppressed, and William felt that their strength was now equal to the contest he had long foreseen.  It is therefore absurd to accuse him of artifice in the exercise of that wisdom which rarely failed him on any important crisis.  A change of circumstances gives a new name to actions and motives; and it would be hard to blame William of Nassau for the only point in which he bore the least resemblance to Philip of Spain—­that depth of penetration, which the latter turned to every base and the former to every noble purpose.

Up to the present moment the Prince of Orange and the Counts Egmont and Horn, with their partisans and friends, had sincerely desired the public peace, and acted in the common interest of the king and the people.  But all the nobles had not acted with the same constitutional moderation.  Many of those, disappointed on personal accounts, others professing the new doctrines, and the rest variously affected by manifold motives, formed a body of violent and sometimes of imprudent malcontents.  The marriage of Alexander, prince of Parma, son of the stadtholderess, which was at this time celebrated at Brussels, brought together an immense number of these dissatisfied nobles, who became thus drawn into closer connection, and whose national candor was more than usually brought out in the confidential intercourse of society.  Politics and patriotism were the common subjects of conversation in the various convivial meetings that took place.  Two German nobles, Counts Holle and Schwarzemberg, at that period in the Netherlands, loudly proclaimed the favorable disposition of the princes of the empire toward the Belgians.  It was supposed even thus early that negotiations had been opened with several of those sovereigns.  In short, nothing seemed wanting but a leader, to give consistency and weight to the confederacy which was as yet but in embryo.  This was doubly furnished in the persons of Louis of Nassau and Henry de Brederode.  The former, brother of the Prince of Orange, was possessed