ed Michael Renichon, disguised as a
soldier, was the new instrument meant to strike another blow
at the greatness of the House of Nassau, in the person of its
gallant representative, Prince Maurice; as also in that of his
brother, Frederic Henry, then ten years of age. On the confession
of the intended assassin, he was employed by Count Berlaimont to
murder the two princes. Renichon happily mismanaged the affair,
and betrayed his intention. He was arrested at Breda, conducted
to The Hague, and there tried and executed on the 3d of June,
1594. This miserable wretch accused the archduke Ernest of having
countenanced his attempt; but nothing whatever tends to criminate,
while every probability acquits, that prince of such a participation.

In this same year a soldier named Peter Dufour embarked in a
like atrocious plot. He, too, was seized and executed before
he could carry it into effect; and to his dying hour persisted
in accusing the archduke of being his instigator. But neither
the judges who tried, nor the best historians who record, his
intended crime, gave any belief to this accusation. The mild and
honorable disposition of the prince held a sufficient guarantee
against its likelihood; and it is not less pleasing to be able
fully to join in the prevalent opinion, than to mark a spirit
of candor and impartiality break forth through the mass of bad
and violent passions which crowd the records of that age.

But all the esteem inspired by the personal character of Ernest
could not overcome the repugnance of the United Provinces to
trust to the apparent sincerity of the tyrant in whose name he
made his overtures for peace. They were all respectfully and
firmly rejected; and Prince Maurice, in the meantime, with his
usual activity, passed the Meuse and the Rhine, and invested
and quickly took the town of Groningen, by which he consummated
the establishment of the republic, and secured its rank among
the principal powers of Europe.

The archduke Ernest, finding all his efforts for peace frustrated,
and all hopes of gaining his object by hostility to be vain, became
a prey to disappointment and regret, and died, from the effects
of a slow fever, on the 21st of February, 1595; leaving to the
count of Fuentes the honors and anxieties of the government,
subject to the ratification of the king. This nobleman began
the exercise of his temporary functions by an irruption into
France, at the head of a small army; war having b