History of Protestantism in the Netherlands - James Aitken Wylie

three balls, one of which passed through the
prince's body, and struck the wall opposite. On
receiving the shot, William exclaimed: "O my God,
have mercy on my soul! O my God, have mercy on
this poor people!"[4] He was carried into the
dining-room, laid upon a couch, and in a few
minutes he breathed his last. He had lived fifty-one
years and sixteen days. On the 3rd of August he
was laid in his tomb at Delft, mourned, not by
Holland and Zealand only, but by all the
Netherlands -- the Walloons excepted -- as a father
is mourned.[5]
So closed the great career of William the Silent.
It needs not that we paint his character: it has
portrayed itself in the actions of his life which we
have narrated. Historians have done ample justice
to his talents, so various, so harmonious, and each
so colossal, that the combination presents a
character of surpassing intellectual and moral
grandeur such as has rarely been equalled, and yet
more rarely excelled. But as the ancient tree of
Netherland liberty never could have borne the
goodly fruit that clothed its boughs in the sixteenth
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