- gium. In his further struggles against Philip, Orange
felt scarcely strong enough to hold his United Provinces without assistance from another country. He turned to France, offering to make the Duc d'Anjou, brother of the French King, sovereign of the United Provinces. His offer was accepted. The Duke proved to be a weak and treacherous man; he was a complete failure, and, making himself odious and impossible to his subjects, his rule was brought to an end.
The awful Granvelle had meanwhile whispered to Philip that they might assassinate Orange (1580), and they finally drew up together a ban putting a price upon the Prince's head. They declared him a traitor and as such banished him "perpetually from our realms."
Orange, living quietly with his wife at Delft, took it very calmly. He showed no fear; the Lord, he said, would dispose as He thought fit. But he wrote and published his famous Apology, a very lengthy document which is interesting as a history of his life. In it he answers the accusations brought against him in the ban—that he is a foreigner, a heretic, an enemy, a rebel, and so on.
The ban soon began to bear fruit, and several attempts were made on the Prince's life; one, a year later, was very nearly successful. A youth offered him a petition, and as Orange took it he discharged a pistol at the Prince's head. The bullet went through his
