ers enlisted.
The agents of each party often met in the same place, and hardly had the
collectors and recruiting officers of the regent quitted a town when it
had to endure a similar visit from the agents of the league.

From Valenciennes the regent directed her attention to Herzogenbusch,
where the Iconoclasts had lately committed fresh excesses, and the party
of the Protestants had gained a great accession of strength. In order
to prevail on the citizens peaceably to receive a garrison, she sent
thither, as ambassador, the Chancellor Scheiff, from Brabant, with
counsellor Merode of Petersheim, whom she appointed governor of the
town; they were instructed to secure the place by judicious means, and
to exact from the citizens a new oath of allegiance. At the same time
the Count of Megen, who was in the neighborhood with a body of troops,
was ordered to support the two envoys in effecting their commission,
and to afford the means of throwing in a garrison immediately. But
Brederode, who obtained information of these movements in Viane, had
already sent thither one of his creatures, a certain Anton von Bomber,--
a hot Calvinist, but also a brave soldier, in order to raise the courage
of his party, and to frustrate the designs of the regent. This Bomberg
succeeded in getting possession of the letters which the chancellor
brought with him from the duchess, and contrived to substitute in their
place counterfeit ones, which, by their harsh and imperious language,
were calculated to exasperate the minds of the citizens. At the same
time he attempted to throw suspicion on both the ambassadors of the
duchess as having evil designs upon the town. In this he succeeded so
well with the mob that in their mad fury they even laid hands on the
ambassadors and placed them in confinement. He himself, at the head of
eight thousand men, who had adopted him as their leader, advanced
against the Count of Megen, who was moving in order of battle, and gave
him so warm a reception, with some heavy artillery, that he was
compelled to retire without accomplishing his object. The regent now
sent an officer of justice to demand the release of her ambassadors, and
in case of refusal to threaten the place with siege; but Bomberg with
his party surrounded the town hall and forced the magistrate to deliver
to him the key of the town. The messenger of the regent was ridiculed
and dismissed, and an answer sent through him that the treatment of the
prison