The Prince had that year been chosen unanimously by the four "members" of Flanders to be governor of that province, but had again declined the office. The inhabitants, notwithstanding the furious transactions at Ghent, professed attachment to his person, and respect for his authority. He was implored to go to the city. His presence, and that alone, would restore the burghers to their reason, but the task was not a grateful one. It was also not unattended with danger; although this was a consideration which never influenced him, from the commencement of his career to its close. Imbize and his crew were capable of resorting to any extremity or any ambush; to destroy the man whom they feared and hated. The presence of John Casimir was an additional complication; for Orange, while he despised the man, was unwilling to offend his friends. Moreover, Casimir had professed a willingness to assist the cause, and to, defer to the better judgment of the Prince: He had brought an army into the field, with which, however, he had accomplished nothing except a thorough pillaging of the peasantry, while, at the same time, he was loud in his demands upon the states to pay his soldiers' wages. The soldiers of the different armies who now overran the country, indeed, vied with each other in extravagant insolence. "Their outrages are most execrable," wrote Marquis Havre; "they demand the most exquisite food, and drink Champagne and Burgundy by the bucketfull." Nevertheless, on the 4th of December, the Prince came to Ghent. He held constant and anxious conferences with the magistrates. He was closeted daily with John Casimir, whose vanity and extravagance of temper he managed with his usual skill. He even dined with Imbue, and thus, by smoothing difficulties and reconciling angry passions, he succeeded at last in obtaining the consent of all to a religious peace, which was published on the 27th of December, 1578. It contained the same provisions as those of the project prepared and proposed during the previous summer throughout the Netherlands. Exercise of both religions was established; mutual insults and irritations—whether by word, book, picture, song, or gesture—were prohibited, under severe penalties, while all persons were sworn to protect the common tranquillity by blood, purse, and life. The Catholics, by virtue of this accord, re-entered into possession of their churches and cloisters, but nothing could be obtained in favor of the imprisoned gentlemen.
The Walloons and Malcontents were now summoned to lay down their arms; but, as might be supposed, they expressed dissatisfaction with the religious peace, proclaiming it hostile to the Ghent treaty and the Brussels union. In short, nothing would satisfy them but total suppression of the Reformed religion; as nothing would content Imbize and his faction but the absolute extermination of Romanism. A strong man might well seem powerless in the midst of such obstinate and worthless fanatics.
The arrival of the Prince in Ghent was, on the whole, a relief to John Casimir. As usual, this addle-brained individual had plunged headlong into difficulties, out of which he was unable to extricate himself. He knew not what to do, or which way to turn. He had tampered with Imbue and his crew, but he had found that they were not the men for a person of his quality to deal with. He had brought a large army into the field, and had not a stiver in his coffers. He felt bitterly the truth of the Landgrave's warning—"that 'twas better to have thirty thousand devils at one's back than thirty thousand German troopers, with no money to give them;" it being possible to pay the devils with the sign of the cross, while the soldiers could be discharged only with money or hard knocks. Queen Elizabeth, too, under whose patronage he had made this most inglorious campaign, was incessant in her reproofs, and importunate in her demands for reimbursement. She wrote to him personally, upbraiding him with his high pretensions and his shortcomings. His visit to Ghent, so entirely unjustified and mischievous; his failure to effect that junction of his army with the states' force under Bossu, by which the royal army was to have been surprised and annihilated; his having given reason to the common people to suspect her Majesty and the Prince of Orange of collusion with his designs, and of a disposition to seek their private advantage and not the general good of the whole Netherlands; the imminent danger, which he had aggravated, that the Walloon provinces, actuated by such suspicions, would fall away from the "generality" and seek a private accord with Parma; these and similar sins of omission and commission were sharply and shrewishly set forth in the Queen's epistle. 'Twas not for such marauding and intriguing work that she had appointed him her lieutenant, and furnished him with troops and subsidies. She begged him forthwith to amend his ways, for the sake of his name and fame, which were sufficiently soiled in the places where his soldiers had been plundering the country which they came to protect.
The Queen sent Daniel Rogers with instructions of similar import to the states-general, repeatedly and expressly disavowing Casimir's proceedings and censuring his character. She also warmly insisted on her bonds. In short, never was unlucky prince more soundly berated by his superiors, more thoroughly disgraced by his followers. In this contemptible situation had Casimir placed himself by his rash ambition to prove before the world that German princes could bite and scratch like griffins and tigers as well as carry them in their shields. From this position Orange partly rescued him. He made his peace with the states-general. He smoothed matters with the extravagant Reformers, and he even extorted from the authorities of Ghent the forty-five thousand pounds bond, on which Elizabeth had insisted with such obduracy. Casimir repaid these favors of the Prince in the coin with which narrow minds and jealous tempers are apt to discharge such obligations—ingratitude. The friendship which he openly manifested at first grew almost immediately cool. Soon afterwards he left Ghent and departed for Germany, leaving behind him a long and tedious remonstrance, addressed to the states-general, in which document he narrated the history of his exploits, and endeavored to vindicate the purity of his character. He concluded this very tedious and superfluous manifesto by observing that—for reasons which he thought proper to give at considerable length—he felt himself "neither too useful nor too agreeable to the provinces." As he had been informed, he said, that the states-general had requested the Queen of England to procure his departure, he had resolved, in order to spare her and them inconvenience, to return of his own accord, "leaving the issue of the war in the high and mighty hand of God."
The estates answered this remonstrance with words of unlimited courtesy; expressing themselves "obliged to all eternity" for his services, and holding out vague hopes that the monies which he demanded on behalf of his troops should ere long be forthcoming.
Casimir having already answered Queen Elizabeth's reproachful letter by throwing the blame of his apparent misconduct upon the states-general, and having promised soon to appear before her Majesty in person, tarried accordingly but a brief season in Germany, and then repaired to England. Here he was feasted, flattered, caressed, and invested with the order of the Garter. Pleased with royal blandishments, and highly enjoying the splendid hospitalities of England he quite forgot the "thirty thousand devils" whom he had left running loose in the Netherlands, while these wild soldiers, on their part, being absolutely in a starving condition—for there was little left for booty in a land which had been so often plundered—now had the effrontery to apply to the Prince of Parma for payment of their wages. Alexander Farnese laughed heartily at the proposition, which he considered an excellent jest. It seemed in truth, a jest, although but a sorry one. Parma replied to the messenger of Maurice of Saxony who had made the proposition, that the Germans must be mad to ask him for money, instead of offering to pay him, a heavy sum for permission to leave the country. Nevertheless, he was willing to be so far indulgent as to furnish them with passports, provided they departed from the Netherlands instantly. Should they interpose the least delay, he would set upon them without further preface, and he gave them notice, with the arrogance becoming a Spanish general; that the courier was already waiting to report to Spain the number of them left alive after the encounter. Thus deserted by their chief, and hectored by the enemy, the mercenaries, who had little stomach for fight without wages, accepted the passports proffered by Parma. They revenged themselves for the harsh treatment which they had received from Casimir and from the states-general, by singing, everywhere as they retreated, a doggerel ballad—half Flemish, half German—in which their wrongs were expressed with uncouth vigor.
Casimir received the news of the departure of his ragged soldiery on the very day which witnessed his investment with the Garter by the fair hands of Elizabeth herself. A few days afterwards he left England, accompanied by an escort of lords and gentlemen, especially appointed for that purpose by the Queen. He landed in Flushing, where he was received with distinguished hospitality, by order of the Prince of Orange, and on the 14th of February, 1579, he passed through Utrecht. Here he conversed freely at his lodgings in the "German House" on the subject of his vagabond troops, whose final adventures and departure seemed to afford him considerable amusement; and he, moreover, diverted his company by singing, after supper, a few verses of the ballad already mentioned.
O, have you been in Brabant, fighting for the states?
O, have you brought back anything except your broken pates?
O, I have been in Brabant, myself and all my mates.
We'll go no more to Brabant, unless our brains were addle,
We're coming home on foot, we went there in the saddle;
For there's neither gold nor glory got, in fighting for the states.
The Duke of Anjou, meantime, after disbanding his troops, had lingered for a while near the frontier. Upon taking his final departure, he sent his resident minister, Des Pruneaux, with a long communication to the states-general, complaining that they had not published their contract with himself, nor fulfilled its conditions. He excused, as well as he could, the awkward fact that his disbanded troops had taken refuge with the Walloons, and he affected to place his own departure upon the ground of urgent political business in France, to arrange which his royal brother had required his immediate attendance. He furthermore most hypocritically expressed a desire for a speedy reconciliation of the provinces with their sovereign, and a resolution that—although for their sake he had made himself a foe to his Catholic Majesty—he would still interpose no obstacle to so desirable a result.
To such shallow discourse the states answered with infinite urbanity, for it was the determination of Orange not to make enemies, at that juncture, of France and England in the same breath. They had foes enough already, and it seemed obvious at that moment, to all persons most observant of the course of affairs, that a matrimonial alliance was soon to unite the two crowns. The probability of Anjou's marriage with Elizabeth was, in truth, a leading motive with Orange for his close alliance with the Duke. The political structure, according to which he had selected the French Prince as protector of the Netherlands, was sagaciously planned; but unfortunately its foundation was the shifting sandbank of female and royal coquetry. Those who judge only by the result, will be quick to censure a policy which might have had very different issue. They who place themselves in the period anterior to Anjou's visit to England, will admit that it was hardly human not to be deceived by the apolitical aspects of that moment. The Queen, moreover, took pains to upbraid the states-general, by letter, with their disrespect and ingratitude towards the Duke of Anjou—behaviour with which he had been "justly scandalized." For her own part, she assured them of her extreme displeasure at learning that such a course of conduct had been held with a view to her especial contentment—"as if the person of Monsieur, son of France, brother of the King, were disagreeable to her, or as if she wished him ill;" whereas, on the contrary, they would best satisfy her wishes by showing him all the courtesy to which his high degree and his eminent services entitled him.