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Updated: June 2, 2025
It is passing strange, however, that the character of the Nassaus and of the Dutch nation should after the last fifty years have been still so misunderstood. It seemed in France possible that Maurice would thus defile his honour and the Netherlanders barter their liberty, by accepting a new tyrant in place of the one so long ago deposed.
The ancestors of William, as Dukes of Gueldres, had begun to exercise sovereignty in the provinces four centuries before the advent of the house of Burgundy. That overshadowing family afterwards numbered the Netherland Nassaus among its most stanch and powerful adherents.
It was strange that the new commonwealth, in the very moment of extorting her freedom from the ancient tyranny, should be so unconscious of her strength as to think free papers from neutral powers a boon. As if the sign-manual of James and Henry were a better guarantee than the trophies of the Nassaus, of Heemskerk, of Matelieff, and of Olden-Barneveld!
Sooner would the face of nature be changed than the cardinal maxim of Catholic statesmanship be abandoned. But the influence of the Nassaus, of the province of Zeeland, of the clergy, and of the war-party in general, had been overbalanced by Barneveld and the city corporations, aided by the strenuous exertions of the French ambassadors.
The propitious moment never seemed to arrive, however, and, meantime, the citizens of Flushing, of their own accord, declared that they would themselves equip and conduct a fleet into the harbour of Sluys. But the Nassaus are said to have expressed great disgust that low-born burghers should presume to meddle with so important an enterprise, which of right belonged to their family.
Two hundred of the garrison remained, severely wounded, in the town; three hundred and fifty had been killed, among others the young cousin of the Nassaus, Count Lewis van den Berg. The remainder of the royalists marched out, and were treated with courtesy by Maurice, who gave them an escort, permitting the soldiers to retain their side-arms, and furnishing horses to the governor.
"See you not," said he in a private letter to a friend, "that this whole work is brewed by the Nassaus for the sake of their own greatness, and that they are everywhere provided with the very best crumbs. They are to be stadholders of the principal provinces; we are to content ourselves with Overyssel and Drente.
An illicit connexion with a certain John Rubens, an exiled magistrate of Antwerp, and father of the celebrated painter, completed the list of her delinquencies, and justified the marriage of the Prince with Charlotte de Bourbon. It was therefore determined by the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave William to remove her from the custody of the Nassaus.
"See you not," said he in a private letter to a friend, "that this whole work is brewed by the Nassaus for the sake of their own greatness, and that they are everywhere provided with the very best crumbs. They are to be stadholders of the principal provinces; we are to content ourselves with Overyssel and Drente.
An efficient colonel, he was not a general to be relied upon in great affairs either in council or the field. He hated the Nassaus, and the Nassaus certainly did not admire him, while his inordinate self-esteem, both personal and national, and his want of true sympathy for the cause in which, he fought, were the frequent source of trouble and danger to the republic.
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