suffering for want of food; he remembered that he
had left much plate and valuable furniture in Antwerp; and he was
therefore desirous that the citizens, whom he had so basely outraged,
should at once send him supplies and restore his property. He also
reclaimed the prisoners who still remained in the city, and to obtain all
this he applied to the man whom he had bitterly deceived, and whose life
would have been sacrificed by the Duke, had the enterprise succeeded.

It had been his intention to sack the city, to re-establish exclusively
the Roman Catholic worship, to trample upon the constitution which he had
so recently sworn to maintain, to deprive Orange, by force, of the
Renversal by which the Duke recognized the Prince as sovereign of
Holland; Zealand; and Utrecht, yet notwithstanding that his treason
had-been enacted in broad daylight, and in a most deliberate manner, he
had the audacity to ascribe the recent tragic occurrences to chance. He
had the farther originality to speak of himself as an aggrieved person,
who had rendered great services to the Netherlands, and who had only met
with ingratitude in return. His envoys, Messieurs Landmater and
Escolieres, despatched on the very day of the French Fury to the
burgomasters and senate of Antwerp, were instructed to remind those
magistrates that the Duke had repeatedly exposed his life in the cause of
the Netherlands. The affronts, they were to add, which he had received,
and the approaching ruin of the country, which he foresaw, had so altered
his excellent nature, as to engender the present calamity, which he
infinitely regretted. Nevertheless, the senate was to be assured that his
affection for the commonwealth was still so strong, as to induce a desire
on his part to be informed what course was now to be pursued with, regard
to him. Information upon that important point was therefore to be
requested, while at the same time the liberation of the prisoners at
Antwerp, and the restaration of the Duke's furniture and papers, were to
be urgently demanded.

Letters of similar, import were also despatched by the Duke to the states
of the Union, while to the Prince of Orange; his application was brief
but brazen. "You know well,--my cousin," said he "the just and frequent
causes of offence which this people has given me. The insults which I,
this morning experienced cut me so deeply to the heart that they are the
only reasons of the misfortune which has happened today.