gitation and the boldness of the rebellious enthusiasts for
independence and liberty surpassed all bounds.

The King therefore sent the Duke of Alba to the Netherlands to restore
order, and, with the twenty thousand men he commanded, make the
insurgents feel the resistless power of offended majesty and the angered
Church.

Barbara and her friends greeted the stern duke as a noble champion of
the faith, who was resolved to do his utmost. The new bishoprics, which
by Granvelle's advice had been established, the foreign soldiers, and
the Spanish Inquisition, which pursued the heretics with inexorable
harshness, had roused the populace to unprecedented turmoil, and induced
them to resist the leading nobles, who were indebted to the King
for great favours, to the intense wrath of these aristocrats and the
partisans of Spain.

Barbara, with all her party, had welcomed the new bishoprics as an
arrangement which promised many blessings, and the foreign troops seemed
to her necessary to maintain order in the rebellious Netherlands. The
cruelty of the Inquisition was only intended to enforce respect for the
edicts which the Emperor Charles, in his infallible wisdom, had
issued, and the hatred which the nobles, especially, displayed against
Granvelle, Barbara's kind patron, the greatest statesman of his time and
the most loyal servant of his King, seemed to her worthy of the utmost
condemnation.

The scorn with which the rebels, after the compromise signed by the
highest nobles, had called themselves Geusen, or Beggars, and endangered
repose, would have been worthy of the severest punishment. What induced
these people to risk money and life for privileges which a wise policy
of the government--this was the firm conviction of those who shared
Barbara's views--could not possibly grant, was incomprehensible to her,
and she watched the course of the rebels with increasing aversion. Did
they suppose their well-fed magistrates and solemn States-General, who
never looked beyond their own city and country, would govern them better
than the far-sighted wisdom of a Granvelle or the vast intellect of a
Viglius, which comprised all the knowledge of the world?

What they called their liberties were privileges which a sovereign
bestowed. Ought they to wonder if another monarch, whom they had deeply
angered, did not regard them as inviolable gifts of God? The quiet
comfort of former days had been clouded, nay, destroyed, by these
patriots.