Hainault, Flanders. The condition of Bruges would melt the hardest
heart; other cities were no better; Antwerp was utterly ruined; its
inhabitants were all starving. The famine throughout the obedient
Netherlands was such as had not been known for a century. The whole
country had been picked bare by the troops, and the plough was not put
into the ground. Deputations were constantly with him from Bruges,
Dendermonde, Bois-le-Duc, Brussels, Antwerp, Nymegen, proving to him
by the most palpable evidence that the whole population of those cities
had almost literally nothing to eat. He had nothing, however, but
exhortations to patience to feed them withal. He was left without a
groat even to save his soldiers from starving, and he wildly and
bitterly, day after day, implored his sovereign for aid. These pictures
are not the sketches of a historian striving for effect, but literal
transcripts from the most secret revelations of the Prince himself to his
sovereign. On the other hand, although Leicester's complaints of the
destitution of the English troops in the republic were almost as bitter,
yet the condition of the United Provinces was comparatively healthy.
Trade, external and internal, was increasing daily. Distant commercial
and military expeditions were fitted out, manufactures were prosperous,
and the war of independence was gradually becoming--strange to say--a
source of prosperity to the new commonwealth.

Philip--being now less alarmed than his nephew concerning French affairs,
and not feeling so keenly the misery of the obedient Provinces, or the
wants of the Spanish army--sent to Alexander six hundred thousand ducats,
by way of Genoa. In the letter submitted by his secretary recording this
remittance, the King made, however, a characteristic marginal note:--
"See if it will not be as well to tell him something concerning the two
hundred thousand ducats to be deducted for Mucio, for fear of more
mischief, if the Prince should expect the whole six hundred thousand."