Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/363

 1582.] EXPULSION OF MENDOZA. 34<T before Ghent, in which, after the States troops had fled, Norris and his English sustained and repulsed an attack of the whole Spanish army, a single defeat did not affect the advance of the Spanish conquest, and by the end of the summer the States frontier had been pushed back, till all that they held of Flan- ders was the coast from Dunkirk to Ostend, and the great towns of Bruges, Ghent, Alost, and Brussels, which formed a line covering Antwerp. Alencon laid the blame on the States, and the States upon Alencon. The towns, fearing that Alencon was betraying them, began privately to treat with Parma, while Alen9on, suspecting treachery on their side, was meditating a grand surprise as an employment for his hitherto idle army. He was plotting to seize simultaneously upon Ghent, Bruges, and Antwerp ; and thus holding Flan- ders in his hand and master of the situation, either to hand it over to his brother to be incorporated with France, or to fall back upon his mother's second policy buy Philip's pardon by the restoration of his Flemish provinces, and offer his precious hand to the Infanta. Either he kept in his hands the money which he re- ceived from Elizabeth, or it was insufficient for the main- tenance of his forces. At any rate, he exasperated them against the States by leaving them without their wages and pretending that they were robbed. He sent for rein- forcements from France, and when Orange remonstrated with him for increasing his army when he could not maintain what he had already, he pretended that he was acting for the Queen of England ; that he had her sane-