This petition was perhaps intentionally impossible of fulfilment in a way agreeable to Philip, for he had no legitimate brother or son.

But a prince of the House of Hapsburg offered himself in the person of the Archduke Matthew, a son of the Emperor Maximilian, recently deceased.

[Sidenote: October 12, 1576] Though he had neither ability of his own nor support from his brother, the Emperor Rudolph II, and though but nineteen years old, he offered his services to the Netherlands and immediately went thither.
With high statecraft William {269} drew Matthew into his policy, for he saw that the dangers to be feared were anarchy and disunion.

In some cities, notably Ghent, where another Committee of Eighteen was appointed on the Brussels model, the lowest classes assumed a dictatorship analagous to that of the Bolsheviki in Russia.

At the same time the Patriots' demand that Orange should be made Governor of Brabant was distasteful to the large loyalist element in the population.