It was evident that his brother was one of those flighty, vaguely ambitious, turbulent people, who are the worst possible instruments of an absolute ruler. For over three months no letter reached Don Juan from the king, whilst he chafed in Namur. “If,” he wrote to a friend, “God in His goodness does not protect me, I do not know what I shall do, or what will become of me. I wish to God I could, without offending my conscience or my king, dash my brains out against a wall, or cast myself over a precipice. They neglect me even to the extent of not answering my letters.” In the meanwhile Orange entered Brussels in triumph, and Catholics and Protestants made common cause for a time. But not for long. The extreme Catholic party, under the Duke of Arschot, invited secretly Philip’s young nephew and brother-in-law, the Archduke Mathias, to assume the sovereignty of Flanders. The young prince--he was only twenty, and a fool--escaped from Vienna and arrived at Brussels on October 26, 1577. This was a blow to Don Juan in Namur, to Orange in Brussels, and to Philip in Madrid. Philip met the danger at first by masterly inactivity--in fact the solution might have been made not altogether distasteful to him; Orange cleverly took the young archduke under his wing, patronised, adopted, and disarmed him; and Don Juan busied himself in his fortress settling with his friends outside the recruiting of a Catholic force, whilst he was still quarrelling with the States by letter. But by the end of October the Protestants in the south, encouraged by the turn of affairs and the presence of Orange in Brussels, turned upon their Catholic fellow-townsmen in Ghent, Bruges, and elsewhere, and sought to avenge the cruelties perpetrated upon them in the past by the Catholic Church. The Duke of Arschot and the representatives of the Catholic States were seized and imprisoned whilst in session at Ghent, and everywhere the Protestants and Orange seemed to be sweeping the board. This was too much for Philip. The Archduke Mathias as tributary sovereign under him of a Catholic Flanders, he might have accepted, but the Prince of Orange and the Lutherans paramount from Zeeland to the French frontier he could not stomach. So the veteran Spanish and Italian infantry who had scourged Flanders before, were recalled, under Alexander Farnese, the son of Margaret, who had been the ruler of Flanders when the dissensions began, to the help of Don Juan and to crush the Protestants. When Alexander and his troops approached Namur, Orange and Mathias, side by side, were entering Brussels in state. Elizabeth had insisted upon Orange being made lieutenant-general with the real power, as a condition of her continued aid to the States, for she was quite determined upon two points--first, that no matter what union was effected between the States, the Catholic party should never be paramount; and secondly, that the French should not gain a footing there except under her patronage. She had some fear