strongholds, the admiral discontinued his
labours and went into winter-quarters.

The States-General for political reasons were urgent that Prince Maurice
should undertake some important enterprise, but the stadholder, sustained
by the opinion of his cousin Lewis William, resisted the pressure. The
armies of the Commonwealth were still too slender in numbers and too
widely scattered for active service on a large scale, and the season for
active campaigning was wisely suffered to pass without making any attempt
of magnitude during the year.

The trade of the provinces, moreover, was very much hampered, and their
revenues sadly diminished by the severe prohibitions which had succeeded
to the remarkable indulgence hitherto accorded to foreign commerce.
Edicts in the name of the King of Spain and of the Archdukes Albert and
Isabella, forbidding all intercourse between the rebellious provinces and
the obedient Netherlands or any of the Spanish possessions, were met by
countervailing decrees of the States-General. Free trade with its enemies
and with all the world, by means of which the commonwealth had prospered
in spite of perpetual war, was now for a season destroyed, and the
immediate results were at once visible in its diminished resources. To
employ a portion of the maritime energies of the Hollanders and
Zeelanders, thus temporarily deprived of a sufficient field, a naval
expedition of seventy-five war vessels under Admiral van der Does was
fitted out, but met with very trifling success. They attacked and
plundered the settlements and forts of the Canary Islands, inflicted much
damage on the inhabitants, sailed thence to the Isle of St. Thomas, near
the equator, where the towns and villages were sacked and burned, and
where a contagious sickness broke out in the fleet, sweeping off in a
very brief period a large proportion of the crew. The admiral himself
fell a victim to the disease and was buried on the island. The fleet put
to sea again under Admiral Storm van Wena, but the sickness pursued the
adventurers on their voyage towards Brazil, one thousand of them dying at
sea in fifteen days. At Brazil they accomplished nothing, and, on their
homeward voyage, not only the new commander succumbed to the same
contagion, but the mortality continued to so extraordinary an extent
that, on the arrival of the expedition late in the winter in Holland,
there were but two captains left alive, and, in many of the vessels, not
mor