He yielded coldly, and the first act of the revolution was complete.
There is an emotion that bears the name of no one feeling because it is composed of all—it is the passion that shakes a crowd when it is witness of any great event; this seized the people of Dordt.
They shouted, laughed, wrung each other’s hands, rushed in a mass to float the Orange flag from the belfry of their great church, drank the Prince’s health and confusion to the French, and swarmed and pushed round the door of the Peacock Inn, where the councillors were still imprisoned.
The resolution, signed by the seventeen councillors present, the seals of the town affixed, was snatched up by the pastor Dibbets and displayed to the townsmen. Loud cries rang out—
“Long live the Stadtholder!”
“Long live His Highness!”
William looked at the magistrates—so they had been forced to return him the power they had taken from his father William II.
Many of them, indeed, were one and the same with the men who had defied him.
“Dordt is fortunate for Calvinists, Mynheeren,” he said, smiling. “They were successful in 1618; they win a victory to-day in me.”
It was his sole revenge on them for twenty years lost from his birthright; they received it in silence.