a warning
to his Excellency. He had repeatedly remonstrated with him, he said,
against his reckless exposure of himself to unnecessary danger, but he
was so energetic and so full of courage that it was impossible to
restrain him from being everywhere every day.

Three days later, the letter Y did its work. At ten o'clock 15 July, of
the night of the 15th July, Prince Maurice ordered the mines to be
sprung, when the north ravelin was blown into the air, and some forty of
the garrison with it. Two of them came flying into the besiegers' camp,
and, strange to say, one was alive and sound. The catastrophe finished
the sixty-five days' siege, the breach was no longer defensible, the
obstinacy of the burghers was exhausted, and capitulation followed. In
truth, there had been a subterranean intrigue going on for many weeks,
which was almost as effective as the mine. A certain Jan to Boer had been
going back and forth between camp and city, under various pretexts and
safe-conducts, and it had at last appeared that the Jesuits and the five
hundred of Verdugo's veterans were all that prevented Groningen from
returning to the Union. There had been severe fighting within the city
itself, for the Jesuits had procured the transfer of the veterans from
the faubourg to the town itself, and the result of all these operations,
political, military, and jesuitical, was that on 22nd July articles of
surrender were finally agreed upon between Maurice and a deputation from
the magistrates, the guilds, and commander Lanckema.

The city was to take its place thenceforth as a member of the Union.
William Lewis, already stadholder of Friesland for the united States, was
to be recognised as chief magistrate of the whole province, which was
thus to retain all its ancient privileges, laws, and rights of
self-government, while it exchanged its dependence on a distant, foreign,
and decaying despotism for incorporation with a young and vigorous
commonwealth.

It was arranged that no religion but the reformed religion, as then
practised in the united republic, should be publicly exercised in the
province, but that no man should be questioned as to his faith, or
troubled in his conscience: Cloisters and ecclesiastical property were to
remain 'in statu quo,' until the States-General should come to a definite
conclusion on these subjects.

Universal amnesty was proclaimed for all offences and quarrels. Every
citizen or resident foreigner was free to r