is left! What withered sinews, which it passes my cunning to restore!
What an enemy in head greater than heretofore! And wherewithal should I
sustain this burthen? For the wars I am fitter to obey than to command.
For the state, I am a man prejudicated in their opinion, and not the
better liked of them that have earnestly followed the general, and, being
one that wants both opinion and experience with them I have to deal, and
means to win more or to maintain that which is left, what good may be
looked for?"

The supreme authority--by the retirement of Leicester--was once more the
subject of dispute. As on his first departure, so also on this his second
and final one, he had left a commission to the state-council to act as an
executive body during his absence. But, although he--nominally still
retained his office, in reality no man believed in his return; and the
States-General were ill inclined to brook a species of guardianship over
them, with which they believed themselves mature enough to dispense.
Moreover the state-council, composed mainly of Leicestrians, would
expire, by limitation of its commission, early in February of that year.
The dispute for power would necessarily terminate, therefore, in favour
of the States-General.

Meantime--while this internal revolution was taking place in the polity
of the commonwealth-the gravest disturbances were its natural
consequence. There were mutinies in the garrisons of Heusden, of
Gertruydenberg, of Medenblik, as alarming, and threatening to become as
chronic in their character, as those extensive military rebellions which
often rendered the Spanish troops powerless at the most critical epochs.
The cause of these mutinies was uniformly, want of pay, the pretext, the
oath to the Earl of Leicester, which was declared incompatible with the
allegiance claimed by Maurice in the name of the States-General. The
mutiny of Gertruydenberg was destined to be protracted; that of
Medenblik, dividing, as it did, the little territory of Holland in its
very heart, it was most important at once to suppress. Sonoy,
however--who was so stanch a Leicestrian, that his Spanish contemporaries
uniformly believed him to be an Englishman--held out for a long time, as
will be seen, against the threats and even the armed demonstrations of
Maurice and the States.

Meantime the English sovereign, persisting in her delusion, and despite
the solemn warnings of her own wisest counsellors; and the passi