Big ambitions had grown Mendoza’s army to beyond the territory’s financial means. As a result, units hadn’t been paid in a long time. Exacerbated by Albert’s policy to promote bloodline over merit and to break up new regiments to reinforce older, mutiny had become commonplace. Several mutineer ‘republics’ had sprung up along the Dutch border, Diest the biggest. One new regiment even mutinied the moment it arrived from southern Europe and was told it would be broken up, it then camped around Hamont.