Ferdinand received him graciously, conferred on him the baton of a field-marshal, and lent a ready ear to his plans. Montrose was commissioned to levy regiments for his King in Flanders, and furnished with letters of recommendation to the Emperor's brother Leopold, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands. His reception by the Archduke, whom he found at Tournay, was no less gracious; but the crushing defeat inflicted by Condé on the Imperial forces at Lens made any active aid from this quarter impossible, and Montrose went on to join his friends at Brussels.
The Prince of Wales had now broken from the irksome bondage of his mother and Jermyn, and was settled at the Hague with Sir Edward Hyde for his Chancellor. There, too, were his brother the Duke of York, and his aunt Elizabeth of Bohemia, the gifted and unfortunate Queen of Hearts, with her son Prince Rupert. With the latter Montrose at once opened a correspondence. Rupert answered cordially, but his new duties as Admiral of the Fleet left him, he said, no present leisure for an interview. At the Hague, as at Paris, Montrose had his enemies. One friend, indeed, supported him with all the ardour of a brave and generous woman. Between the nature of Elizabeth of Bohemia and the nature of Montrose there was much in common, and the warm sympathy that sprang up between these two noble spirits forms the one pleasant incident of this dark and miserable time.[22] But the rest, though more gracious than their countrymen in Paris, still held aloof. The complete and ignominious failure of Hamilton's Engagement had poured a fresh body of exiles into Holland, who persisted in assuring the Prince that only through Presbyterian Scotland could salvation come, and in warning him against the employment of a man so universally detested as Montrose. Charles was, on one side at least, the true son of his father. He was determined to keep friends with both parties, and to commit himself to neither. But for the present it was clearly not his interest to offend the Presbyterians, who had the advantage of numbers and were moreover on the spot. Hyde was therefore commissioned to hold a secret interview with Montrose, and was on the point of leaving the Hague for that purpose, when a fresh and terrible turn was given to affairs by the news of the King's execution.