Philip was the most ungenerous and ungrateful of employers, and for reasons which presently will be stated it is doubtful whether Julian's devotion was rewarded as Alba recommended that it should be, notwithstanding a letter in the Record Office[22] from one of the many false Englishmen then in Spanish Flanders, written to a Captain Windebanke in Elizabeth's service. The writer was trying to get Windebanke to play the traitor, and deplores that so good a captain should be so scurvily rewarded by the Queen, whose penuriousness he compares with Philip's (entirely imaginary) liberality. "Captain Julian Romero," he says, "whom I knew a poor captain in Ireland, is now worth £2,000, and has a pension of a thousand ducats." The writer was probably false in his facts as he was in his patriotism, for I can find no record of Julian's ever having been in Ireland, and only a few months after the date of the letter we have his own word that he was almost in indigence. The new Viceroy, Requesens, was to try to do by conciliation what Alba had failed to effect by severity. It was time to adopt a new policy, for Southern Flanders was now nearly as disaffected as Holland, and Zeeland was entirely in the hands of the Gueux. Its capital, Middleburg, was held by Mondragon and his Spaniards, but {108} he was closely beleaguered by the rebels and in the direst straits. Mondragon was one of the best and bravest of the commanders on the Spanish side, whose heroic relief of Tergoes still remains one of the brightest feats of war ever performed, he had informed Requesens that, unless he were relieved with food and stores, he should be forced to lay down his sword and give up Middleburg to the despised "beggars of the sea"; so the new Viceroy's first duty was to send aid to Middleburg and Ramua. Two fleets were fitted out for the purpose in January, 1574, one consisting of large ships under the famous Sancho de Avila was to go by the main Scheldt and the Hundt, rather for the purpose of diverting the rebel force than for any other action, whilst nine standards of soldiers under Romero, and a great quantity of stores, were to go in a fleet of seventy-two canal boats, barges, galliots, and crookstems, through the narrow channels by way of Bergen-op-Zoom to the besieged town. The naval commander was to have been De Beauvoir, with Glimes as second in command. The former fell ill, and the Viceroy gave the chief control to Romero, who protested that he was a soldier and not a sailor, but at last consented to take the command.