een, was practically but illegally accomplished. The silent
revolution by which at this epoch all the main attributes of government
passed into the hands of the States-General-acting as a league of
sovereignties--has already been indicated. The period during which the
council exercised functions conferred on it by the States-General
themselves was brief and evanescent. The jealousy of the separate
provinces soon prevented the state-council--a supreme executive body
entrusted with the general defence of the commonwealth--from causing
troops to pass into or out of one province or another without a patent
from his Excellency the Prince, not as chief of the whole army, but as
governor and captain-general of Holland, or Gelderland, or Utrecht, as
the case might be.

The highest military office in the Netherlands was that of
captain-general or supreme commander. This quality was from earliest
times united to that of stadholder, who stood, as his title implied, in
the place of the reigning sovereign, whether count, duke, king, or
emperor. After the foundation of the Republic this dynastic form, like
many others, remained, and thus Prince Maurice was at first only
captain-general of Holland and Zeeland, and subsequently of Gelderland,
Utrecht, and Overyssel, after he had been appointed stadholder of those
three provinces in 1590 on the death of Count Nieuwenaar. However much in
reality he was general-in-chief of the army, he never in all his life
held the appointment of captain-general of the Union.

To obtain a captain's commission in the army, it was necessary to have
served four years, while three years' service was the necessary
preliminary to the post of lieutenant or ensign. Three candidates were
presented by the province for each office, from whom the stadholder
appointed one.--The commissions, except those of the highest commanders,
were made out in the name of the States-General, by advice and consent of
the council of state. The oath of allegiance, exacted from soldiers as
well as officers; mentioned the name of the particular province to which
they belonged, as well as that of the States-Generals. It thus appears
that, especially after Maurice's first and successful campaigns; the
supreme authority over the army really belonged to the States-General,
and that the powers of the state-council in this regard fell, in the
course of four years, more and more into the back-ground, and at last
disappeared almost entirely.