He was capable of broad and boundless hopes.

He was sometimes prone to deep despair.

His nature was exquisitely tempered; too fine and polished a blade to be wielded among those hydra-heads by which he was, now surrounded; and for which the stunning sledgehammer of arbitrary force was sometimes necessary.
He was perhaps deficient in that gift, which no training and no culture can bestow, and which comes from above alone by birth-right divine--that which men willingly call master, authority; the effluence which came so naturally from the tranquil eyes of William the Silent.
Nevertheless, Sainte Aldegonde was prepared to do his best, and all his best was to be tasked to the utmost.

His position was rendered still more difficult by the unruly nature of some of his coordinates.
"From the first day to the last," said one who lived in Antwerp during the siege, "the mistakes committed in the city were incredible." It had long been obvious that a siege was contemplated by Parma.

A liberal sum of money had been voted by the States-General, of which Holland and Zeeland contributed a very large proportion (two hundred thousand florins); the city itself voted another large subsidy, and an order was issued to purchase at once and import into the city at least a year's supply of every kind of provisions of life and munitions of war.
William de Blois, Lord of Treslong, Admiral of Holland and Zeeland, was requested to carry out this order, and superintend the victualling of Antwerp.