intercessions addressed to Philip were but idle breath.
It had therefore become an insult to require pacific conduct from the
Prince on the ground of any past or future mediation. It was a still
grosser mockery to call upon him to discontinue hostilities because the
Netherlands were included in the Empire, and therefore protected by the
treaties of Passau and Augsburg. Well did the Prince reply to his
Imperial Majesty's summons in a temperate but cogent letter, in which he
addressed to him from his camp, that all intercessions had proved
fruitless, and that the only help for the Netherlands was the sword.

The Prince had been delayed for a month at Roermonde, because, as he
expressed it; "he had not a single sou," and because, in consequence, the
troops refused to advance into the Netherlands. Having at last been
furnished with the requisite guarantees from the Holland cities for three
months' pay, on the 27th of August, the day of the publication of his
letter to the Emperor, he crossed the Meuse and took his circuitous way
through Diest, Tirlemont, Sichem, Louvain, Mechlin, Termonde, Oudenarde,
Nivelles. Many cities and villages accepted his authority and admitted
his garrisons. Of these Mechlin was the most considerable, in which he
stationed a detachment of his troops. Its doom was sealed in that moment.
Alva could not forgive this act of patriotism on the part of a town which
had so recently excluded his own troops. "This is a direct permission of
God," he wrote, in the spirit of dire and revengeful prophecy, "for us to
punish her as she deserves, for the image-breaking and other misdeeds
done there in the time of Madame de Parma, which our Lord was not willing
to pass over without chastisement."

Meantime the Prince continued his advance. Louvain purchased its
neutrality for the time with sixteen thousand ducats; Brussels
obstinately refused to listen to him, and was too powerful to be forcibly
attacked at that juncture; other important cities, convinced by the
arguments and won by the eloquence of the various proclamations which he
scattered as he advanced, ranged themselves spontaneously and even
enthusiastically upon his side. How different world have been the result
of his campaign but for the unexpected earthquake which at that instant
was to appal Christendom, and to scatter all his well-matured plans and
legitimate hopes. His chief reliance, under Providence and his own strong
heart, had been upon French as