irty-nine years of age, the Infanta Isabella six
years younger. She was esteemed majestically beautiful by her courtiers,
and Cardinal Bentivoglio, himself a man of splendid intellect, pronounced
her a woman of genius, who had grown to be a prodigy of wisdom, under the
tuition of her father, the most sagacious statesman of the age. In
attachment to the Roman faith and ritual, in superhuman loftiness of
demeanour, and in hatred of heretics, she was at least a worthy child of
that sainted sovereign. In a moral point of view she was his superior.
The archdukes--so Albert and Isabella were always designated--were a
singularly attached couple, and their household, if extravagant and
imperial, was harmonious. They loved each other--so it was believed--as
sincerely as they abhorred heretics and rebels, but it does not appear
that they had a very warm affection for their Flemish subjects. Every
characteristic of their court was Spanish. Spanish costume, Spanish
manners, the Spanish tongue, were almost exclusively predominant, and
although the festivals, dances, banquets, and tourneys, were all very
magnificent, the prevailing expression of the Brabantine capital
resembled that of a Spanish convent, so severely correct, so stately, and
so grim, was the demeanour of the court.

The earliest military operations of the stadholder in the first year of
the new century were successful. Partly by menace; but more effectually
by judicious negotiation. Maurice recovered Crevecoeur, and obtained the
surrender of St. Andrew, the fort which the admiral had built the
preceding year in honour of Albert's uncle. That ecclesiastic, with whom
Mendoza had wrangled most bitterly during the whole interval of Albert's
absence, had already taken his departure for Rome, where he soon
afterwards died. The garrisons of the forts, being mostly Walloon
soldiers, forsook the Spanish service for that of the States, and were
banded together in a legion some twelve hundred strong, which became
known as the "New Beggars," and were placed under the nominal command of
Frederick Henry of Nassau, youngest child of William the Silent. The next
military event of the year was a mad combat, undertaken by formal cartel,
between Breaute, a young Norman noble in the service of the republic, and
twenty comrades, with an equal number of Flemish warriors from the
obedient provinces, under Grobbendonck. About one half of the whole
number were killed, including the leaders, bu