s Don John should attain
the ascendency which he had been sent to secure, the gentleness which now
smiled upon the surface would give place to the deadlier purposes which
lurked below. He went so far as distinctly to recommend the seizure of
Don John's person. By so doing, much bloodshed might be saved; for such
was the King's respect for the Emperor's son that their demands would be
granted rather than that his liberty should be permanently endangered. In
a very striking and elaborate letter which he addressed from Middelburg
to the estates-general, he insisted on the expediency of seizing the
present opportunity in order to secure and to expand their liberties, and
urged them to assert broadly the principle that the true historical
polity of the Netherlands was a representative, constitutional
government, Don John, on arriving at Luxemburg, had demanded hostages for
his own security, a measure which could not but strike the calmest
spectator as an infraction of all provincial rights. "He asks you to
disarm," continued William of Orange; "he invites you to furnish
hostages, but the time has been when the lord of the land came unarmed
and uncovered, before the estates-general, and swore to support the
constitutions before his own sovereignty could be recognized."

He reiterated his suspicions as to the honest intentions of the
government, and sought, as forcibly as possible, to infuse an equal
distrust into the minds of those he addressed. "Antwerp," said he, "once
the powerful and blooming, now the most forlorn and desolate city of
Christendom, suffered because she dared to exclude the King's troops. You
may be sure that you are all to have a place at the same banquet. We may
forget the past, but princes never forget, when the means of vengeance
are placed within their hands. Nature teaches them to arrive at their end
by fraud, when violence will not avail them. Like little children, they
whistle to the birds they would catch. Promises and pretences they will
furnish in plenty."

He urged them on no account to begin any negotiation with the Governor,
except on the basis of the immediate departure of the soldiery. "Make no
agreement with him; unless the Spanish and other foreign troops have been
sent away beforehand; beware, meantime, of disbanding your own, for that
were to put the knife into his hands to cut your own throats withal." He
then proceeded to sketch the out lines of a negotiation, such as he could
recomme