The crusader, who had sunk thirty thousand paynims at a blow, and who was dreaming of the Queen of Scotland and the throne of England, had not room in his mind to entertain the image of a patriot.
Royal favors, family prosperity, dignities, offices, orders, advantageous conditions, these were the baits with which the Governor angled for William of Orange.

He did not comprehend that attachment to a half-drowned land and to a despised religion, could possibly stand in the way of those advantageous conditions and that brilliant future.

He did not imagine that the rebel, once assured not only of pardon but of advancement, could hesitate to refuse the royal hand thus amicably offered.

Don John had not accurately measured his great antagonist.
The results of the successive missions which he despatched to the Prince were destined to enlighten him.

In the course of the first conversation between Leoninus and the Prince at Middelburg, the envoy urged that Don John had entered the Netherlands without troops, that he had placed himself in the power of the Duke of Aerschot, that he had since come to Louvain without any security but the promise of the citizens and of the students; and that all these things proved the sincerity of his intentions.