almost royal state. Two hundred
officers lived daily at his table. Great nobles and scions of sovereign
houses were his pupils or satellites. The splendour of military despotism
and the awe inspired by his unquestioned supremacy in what was deemed the
greatest of all sciences invested the person of Maurice of Nassau with a
grandeur which many a crowned potentate might envy. His ample
appointments united with the spoils of war provided him with almost royal
revenues, even before the death of his elder brother Philip William had
placed in his hands the principality and wealthy possessions of Orange.
Hating contradiction, arbitrary by instinct and by military habit,
impatient of criticism, and having long acknowledged no master in the
chief business of state, he found himself at the conclusion of the truce
with his great occupation gone, and, although generously provided for by
the treasury of the Republic, yet with an income proportionately limited.

Politics and theology were fields in which he had hardly served an
apprenticeship, and it was possible that when he should step forward as a
master in those complicated and difficult pursuits, soon to absorb the
attention of the Commonwealth and the world, it might appear that war was
not the only science that required serious preliminary studies.

Meantime he found himself not a king, not the master of a nominal
republic, but the servant of the States-General, and the limited
stadholder of five out of seven separate provinces.

And the States-General were virtually John of Barneveld. Could antagonism
be more sharply defined? Jealousy, that potent principle which controls
the regular movements and accounts for the aberrations of humanity in
widest spheres as well as narrowest circles far more generally and
conclusively than philosophers or historians have been willing to admit,
began forthwith to manifest its subtle and irresistible influence.

And there were not to be wanting acute and dangerous schemers who saw
their profit in augmenting its intensity.

The Seven Provinces, when the truce of twelve years had been signed, were
neither exhausted nor impoverished. Yet they had just emerged from a
forty years' conflict such as no people in human history had ever waged
against a foreign tyranny. They had need to repose and recruit, but they
stood among the foremost great powers of the day. It is not easy in
imagination to thrust back the present leading empires of the earth