f
Nieuwpoort on his thigh, strode through them as easily as through the
whirligigs and mountebanks, the wades and fritters, encumbering the
streets of Utrecht on the night of his arrival.

Secretary Ledenberg and other leading members of the States had escaped
the night before. Grotius and his colleagues also took a precipitate
departure. As they drove out of town in the twilight, they met the
deputies of the six opposition cities of Holland just arriving in their
coach from the Hague. Had they tarried an hour longer, they would have
found themselves safely in prison.

Four days afterwards the Stadholder at the head of his body-guard
appeared at the town-house. His halberdmen tramped up the broad
staircase, heralding his arrival to the assembled magistracy. He
announced his intention of changing the whole board then and there. The
process was summary. The forty members were required to supply forty
other names, and the Prince added twenty more. From the hundred
candidates thus furnished the Prince appointed forty magistrates such as
suited himself. It is needless to say that but few of the old bench
remained, and that those few were devoted to the Synod, the
States-General, and the Stadholder. He furthermore announced that these
new magistrates were to hold office for life, whereas the board had
previously been changed every year. The cathedral church was at once
assigned for the use of the Contra-Remonstrants.

This process was soon to be repeated throughout the two insubordinate
provinces Utrecht and Holland.

The Prince was accused of aiming at the sovereignty of the whole country,
and one of his grief's against the Advocate was that he had begged the
Princess-Widow, Louise de Coligny, to warn her son-in-law of the dangers
of such ambition. But so long as an individual, sword in hand, could
exercise such unlimited sway over the whole municipal, and provincial
organization of the Commonwealth, it mattered but little whether he was
called King or Kaiser, Doge or Stadholder. Sovereign he was for the time
being at least, while courteously acknowledging the States-General as his
sovereign.

Less than three weeks afterwards the States-General issued a decree
formally disbanding the Waartgelders; an almost superfluous edict, as
they had almost ceased to exist, and there were none to resist the
measure. Grotius recommended complete acquiescence. Barneveld's soul
could no longer animate with courage a whole people.

T