The famine throughout the obedient Netherlands was such as had not been known for a century.

The whole country had been picked bare by the troops, and the plough was not put into the ground.
Deputations were constantly with him from Bruges, Dendermonde, Bois-le-Duc, Brussels, Antwerp, Nymegen, proving to him by the most palpable evidence that the whole population of those cities had almost literally nothing to eat.

He had nothing, however, but exhortations to patience to feed them withal.

He was left without a groat even to save his soldiers from starving, and he wildly and bitterly, day after day, implored his sovereign for aid.

These pictures are not the sketches of a historian striving for effect, but literal transcripts from the most secret revelations of the Prince himself to his sovereign.