stained by Philip
Nassau campaigning with a meagre force on the French frontier, were not
very brilliant. The Netherland regiments quartered at Yssoire, La Ferte,
and in the neighbourhood accomplished very little, and their numbers were
sadly thinned by dysentery. A sudden and successful stroke, too, by which
that daring soldier Heraugiere, who had been the chief captor of Breda,
obtained possession of the town, and castle of Huy, produced no permanent
advantage. This place, belonging to the Bishop of Liege, with its stone
bridge over the Meuse, was an advantageous position from which to aid the
operations of Bouillon in Luxembourg. Heraugiere was, however, not
sufficiently reinforced, and Huy was a month later recaptured by La
Motte. The campaigning was languid during that winter in the United
Netherlands, but the merry-making was energetic. The nuptials of Hohenlo
with Mary, eldest daughter of William the Silent and own sister of the
captive Philip William; of the Duke of Bouillon with Elizabeth, one of
the daughters of the same illustrious prince by his third wife, Charlotte
of Bourbon; and of Count Everard Solms, the famous general of the Zeeland
troops, with Sabina, daughter of the unfortunate Lamoral Egmont, were
celebrated with much pomp during the months of February and March. The
States of Holland and of Zeeland made magnificent presents of diamonds to
the brides; the Countess Hohenlo receiving besides a yearly income of
three thousand florins for the lives of herself and her husband.

In the midst of these merry marriage bells at the Hague a funeral knell
was sounding in Brussels. On the 20th February, the governor-general of
the obedient Netherlands, Archduke Ernest, breathed his last. His career
had not been so illustrious as the promises of the Spanish king and the
allegories of schoolmaster Houwaerts had led him to expect. He had not
espoused the Infanta nor been crowned King of France. He had not blasted
the rebellious Netherlands with Cyclopean thunderbolts, nor unbound the
Belgic Andromeda from the rock of doom. His brief year of government had
really been as dismal as, according to the announcement of his
sycophants, it should have been amazing. He had accomplished nothing, and
all that was left him was to die at the age of forty-two, over head and
ears in debt, a disappointed, melancholy man. He was very indolent,
enormously fat, very chaste, very expensive, fond of fine liveries and
fine clothes, so s