“As long as he lived, he was the guiding-star of a whole brave nation, and when he died the little children cried in the street.”

—  John Lothrop Motley , The Rise of the Dutch Republic

The Rise of the Dutch Republic (1856; New York: Harper, 1861) vol. 3, part 6, ch. 7, p. 627.
Of William the Silent. In a footnote Motley cites the original of his last phrase in an official report made by the Greffier Corneille Aertsens: "dont par toute la ville l'on est en si grand duil tellement que les petits enfans en pleurent par les rues."

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American historian and diplomat 1814–1877

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