Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Rise of the Dutch Republic, the — Volume 32: 1582-84 by John Lothrop Motley
page 19 of 70 (27%)
Antwerp. His language was marked by wonderful effrontery. He found
himself and soldiers suffering for want of food; he remembered that he
had left much plate and valuable furniture in Antwerp; and he was
therefore desirous that the citizens, whom he had so basely outraged,
should at once send him supplies and restore his property. He also
reclaimed the prisoners who still remained in the city, and to obtain all
this he applied to the man whom he had bitterly deceived, and whose life
would have been sacrificed by the Duke, had the enterprise succeeded.

It had been his intention to sack the city, to re-establish exclusively
the Roman Catholic worship, to trample upon the constitution which he had
so recently sworn to maintain, to deprive Orange, by force, of the
Renversal by which the Duke recognized the Prince as sovereign of
Holland; Zealand; and Utrecht, yet notwithstanding that his treason had-
been enacted in broad daylight, and in a most deliberate manner, he had
the audacity to ascribe the recent tragic occurrences to chance. He had
the farther originality to speak of himself as an aggrieved person, who
had rendered great services to the Netherlands, and who had only met with
ingratitude in return. His envoys, Messieurs Landmater and Escolieres,
despatched on the very day of the French Fury to the burgomasters and
senate of Antwerp, were instructed to remind those magistrates that the
Duke had repeatedly exposed his life in the cause of the Netherlands.
The affronts, they were to add, which he had received, and the
approaching ruin of the country, which he foresaw, had so altered his
excellent nature, as to engender the present calamity, which he
infinitely regretted. Nevertheless, the senate was to be assured that
his affection for the commonwealth was still so strong, as to induce a
desire on his part to be informed what course was now to be pursued with,
regard to him. Information upon that important point was therefore to be
requested, while at the same time the liberation of the prisoners at
DigitalOcean Referral Badge