Even De Genlis, the high-spirited and gallant French commander, could not advise William to try another engagement in the Netherlands, though they were within a few leagues of Brussels and of Louraine.
And William was as helpless as if his hands and feet were tied. He could neither pay his men, nor feed them; every day some deserted. Alva's masterly tactics had succeeded; the Prince's army was dispersing without having accomplished anything but the ruin of their commander, for William was personally pledged for the payment of the troops, and he had neither property nor credit with which to redeem his word.
He had staked heavily and lost heavily, and now stood stripped and beggared before the world.
In his camp at Waveren he faced his position which he saw clearly for all his cheerfulness; he admitted that Alva had out-generaled him, but not in that was his bitterest disappointment, but in the silence of the Netherlands.
He had believed that the people would rise to welcome him; he had hoped that some cities would open their gates to him, he had been confident that the nobles and merchants would assist him with money.
He had not sufficiently reckoned on the strength of terror which Alva had inspired, nor on the awful condition of the unfortunate Netherlanders.
He who had always been used to princely dealings, to use generosity and lavishness to all, was now bitterly humiliated and galled by his inability to redeem his solemn promise; and that to him was the bitterest part of his universal failure. Alva's triumph, the disappointment of his friends, his own lost prestige, and disgrace, his own personal beggary—these things did not move him as did the thought of the weary mutinous soldiers whom he could not pay, nor, as far as he could see, would be ever able to pay.
Winter was approaching, the land was as barren, the weather as chill, as the prospects of William of Orange.
As he sat in his tent this late October evening he felt the cold wind creep under the canvas and penetrate his mantle so that he shivered. His camp furniture was in some disorder, and half the large tent was curtained off by a handsome purple hanging.
Behind this lay Count Hoogstraaten. William had ordered him to be removed into his own tent, because neither he nor any man would long have the company of Hoogstraaten now.