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The country generally favored Philip; the arms of Vendome were triumphant; and Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia had to submit to Castilian laws as the penalty of their adhesion to the Austrian cause. In 1706 Marlborough vanquished Villeroi at Ramillies, a village in the Netherlands, in a great battle in which the French army was routed, and their banners and war material captured.
The great war had established the republic; and apparently doomed the obedient Netherlands to perpetual servitude.
Alexander of Parma, who had fought with distinction at Lepanto, was already recognised as possessing that signal military genius which was soon to stamp him as the first soldier of his age, while Mansfeld, Mondragon, Mendoza, and other distinguished officers, who had already won so much fame in the Netherlands, had now returned to the scene of their former achievements.
In 1863 the United States joined in fact, in the absence of a naval force it strained a point by chartering a vessel for the purpose with a concert of powers to force the opening of the Shimonoseki Straits; subsequently acting with Great Britain, France, and the Netherlands, the United States secured an indemnity to pay the cost of the expedition; and in 1866 it united with the same powers to secure a convention by which Japan bound herself to establish certain tariff regulations.
His designs had been long gradually maturing, when James's incredible imprudence hastened his movements. Twenty-four ships of war were assembled at Helvoetsluys; 7,000 sailors were put on board; all the veterans of the Netherlands were encamped at Nimeguen, where 6,000 recruits were added to their numbers.
Whither has fled the noble spirit of our brave forefathers, that never brooked the tyranny of foreign nations, nor suffered a stranger even to hold office within our borders? If the little province of Holland can thus hold at bay the power of Spain, what could not all the Netherlands Brabant, Flanders, Friesland, and the rest united accomplish?"
Rushing from his chamber, so soon as he had read them, to that of his dearly-beloved daughter, Clara Isabella, he knocked loudly at the door, and screaming through the keyhole the three words, "Antwerp is ours," returned precipitately again to his own apartment. It was the general opinion in Spain, that the capture of this city had terminated the resistance of the Netherlands.
This was the statesman and the scholar, of whom it is difficult to speak but in terms of affectionate but not exaggerated eulogy, and for whom the Republic of the Netherlands could now find no better use than to shut him up in the grim fortress of Loevestein for the remainder of his days.
All persons, however, who were included in any of these classes of exceptions might report themselves within six months, when, upon confession of their crime, they might hope for a favorable consideration of their case. Such, in brief, and stripped of its verbiage, was this amnesty for which the Netherlands had so long been hoping.
Charles must already have looked upon himself as absolute in the Netherlands since he did not think it necessary to extend to these countries the religious liberty which he had accorded to Germany.
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