nable fastness his position at least was a
good one. Many months before, the Prince of Orange had expressed his
anxious desire that this most important town and citadel should be
secured-for the estates. "You know," he had written to Bossu in December,
"the evil and the dismay which the loss of the city and fortress of Namur
would occasion to us. Let me beseech you that all possible care be taken
to preserve them." Nevertheless, their preservation had been entrusted to
a feeble-minded old constable, at the head of a handful of cripples.

We know how intense had been the solicitude of the Prince, not only to
secure but to destroy these citadels, "nests of tyranny," which had been
built by despots to crush, not protect, the towns at their feet. These
precautions had been neglected, and the consequences were displaying
themselves, for the castle of Namur was not the only one of which Don
John felt himself secure. Although the Duke of Aerschot seemed so very
much his humble servant, the Governor did not trust him, and wished to
see the citadel of Antwerp in more unquestionable keeping. He had
therefore withdrawn, not only the Duke, but his son, the Prince of
Chimay, commander of the castle in his father's absence, from that
important post, and insisted upon their accompanying him to Namur. So
gallant a courtier as Aerschot could hardly refuse to pay his homage to
so illustrious a princess as Margaret of Valois, while during the absence
of the Duke and Prince the keys of Antwerp-citadel had been, at the
command of Don John, placed in the keeping of the Seigneur de Treslong,
an unscrupulous and devoted royalist. The celebrated Colonel Van Ende,
whose participation, at the head of his German cavalry, in the terrible
sack of that city, which he had been ordered to defend, has been
narrated, was commanded to return to Antwerp. He was to present himself
openly to the city authorities, but he was secretly directed by the
Governor-General to act in co-operation with the Colonels Fugger,
Frondsberger, and Polwiller, who commanded the forces already stationed
in the city. These distinguished officers had been all summer in secret
correspondence with Don John, for they were the instruments with which he
meant by a bold stroke to recover his almost lost authority. While he had
seemed to be seconding the efforts of the states-general to pay off and
disband these mercenaries, nothing had in reality been farther from his
thoughts; and the