What to them were all these forty voyages by sea and land, these journeyings back and forth from Friesland to Tunis, from Madrid to Vienna.

What was it to them that the imperial shuttle was thus industriously flying to and fro?
The fabric wrought was but the daily growing grandeur and splendor of his imperial house; the looms were kept moving at the expense of their hardly-earned treasure, and the woof was often dyed red in the blood of his bravest subjects.

The interests of the Netherlands had never been even a secondary consideration with their master.

He had fulfilled no duty towards them, he had committed the gravest crimes against them.

He had regarded them merely as a treasury upon which to draw; while the sums which he extorted were spent upon ceaseless and senseless wars, which were of no more interest to them than if they had been waged in another planet.