The time was fast approaching, as it always must approach, when fact with its violent besom would brush away the fine-spun cobwebs which had been so long undisturbed.
"I will grind the Advocate and all his party into fine meal," said the Prince on one occasion.
A clever caricature of the time represented a pair of scales hung up in a great hall.

In the one was a heap of parchments, gold chains, and magisterial robes; the whole bundle being marked the "holy right of each city." In the other lay a big square, solid, ironclasped volume, marked "Institutes of Calvin." Each scale was respectively watched by Gomarus and by Arminius.

The judges, gowned, furred, and ruffed, were looking decorously on, when suddenly the Stadholder, in full military attire, was seen rushing into the apartment and flinging his sword into the scale with the Institutes.
The civic and legal trumpery was of course made to kick the beam.
Maurice had organized his campaign this year against the Advocate and his party as deliberately as he had ever arranged the details of a series of battles and sieges against the Spaniard.

And he was proving himself as consummate master in political strife as in the great science of war.
He no longer made any secret of his conviction that Barneveld was a traitor to his country, bought with Spanish gold.

There was not the slightest proof for these suspicions, but he asserted them roundly.