Despair entered the heart of the burgomaster, and he listened too soon to its treacherous voice.

Yet while he thought a free national state no longer a possibility, he imagined it practicable to secure religious liberty by negotiation with Philip II.

He abandoned with a sigh one of the two great objects for which he had struggled side by side with Orange for twenty years, but he thought it possible to secure the other.

His purpose was now to obtain a favourable capitulation for Antwerp, and at the same time to bring about the submission of Holland, Zeeland, and the other United Provinces, to the King of Spain.

Here certainly was a great change of face on the part of one so conspicuous, and hitherto so consistent, in the ranks of Netherland patriots, and it is therefore necessary, in order thoroughly to estimate both the man and the crisis, to follow carefully his steps through the secret path of negotiation into which he now entered, and in which the Antwerp drama was to find its conclusion.