a
refugee congregation on the outskirts of Holland, and brought it, at the
peril of his life, into the Prince's camp. It came from people, he said,
whose will was better than the gift. They never wished to be repaid, he
said, except by kindness, when the cause of reform should be triumphant
in the Netherlands. The Prince signed a receipt for the money, expressing
himself touched by this sympathy from these poor outcasts. In the course
of time, other contributions from similar sources, principally collected
by dissenting preachers, starving and persecuted church communities, were
received. The poverty-stricken exiles contributed far more, in
proportion, for the establishment of civil and religious liberty, than
the wealthy merchants or the haughty nobles.

Late in September, the Prince mustered his army in the province of
Treves, near the monastery of Romersdorf. His force amounted to nearly
thirty thousand men, of whom nine thousand were cavalry. Lumey, Count de
la Marek, now joined him at the head of a picked band of troopers; a
bold, ferocious partisan, descended from the celebrated Wild Boar of
Ardennes. Like Civilis, the ancient Batavian hero, he had sworn to leave
hair and beard unshorn till the liberation of the country was achieved,
or at least till the death of Egmont, whose blood relation he was, had
been avenged. It is probable that the fierce conduct of this chieftain,
and particularly the cruelties exercised upon monks and papists by his
troops, dishonored the cause more than their valor could advance it. But
in those stormy times such rude but incisive instruments were scarcely to
be neglected, and the name of Lumey was to be forever associated with
important triumphs of the liberal cause.

It was fated, however, that but few laurels should be won by the patriots
in this campaign. The Prince crossed the Rhine at Saint Feit, a village
belonging to himself. He descended along the banks as far as the
neighbourhood of Cologne. Then, after hovering in apparent uncertainty
about the territories of Juliers and Limburg, he suddenly, on a bright
moonlight night, crossed the Meuse with his whole army, in the
neighbourhood of Stochem. The operation was brilliantly effected. A
compact body of cavalry, according to the plan which had been more than
once adopted by Julius Caesar, was placed in the midst of the current,
under which shelter the whole army successfully forded the river. The
Meuse was more shallow than usua