t
the cost of his own popularity, succeeded in getting the duke
acknowledged in July as Lord of Friesland and Duke of Gelderland, and in
August Anjou was solemnly installed at Bruges, as Count of Flanders.
Meanwhile he was planning, with the help of the large French force which
Anjou had undertaken to bring into the Netherlands, to take the
offensive against Parma. The truth is that he and Anjou were really
playing at cross-purposes. Orange wished Anjou to be the
_roi-faineant_ of a United Netherland state of which he himself should
be the real ruler, but Anjou had no intention of being treated as a
second Matthias. He secretly determined to make himself master of
Antwerp by a sudden attack and, this achieved, to proceed to seize by
force of arms some of the other principal cities and to make himself
sovereign in reality as well as in name. He resented his dependence upon
Orange and was resolved to rid himself of it. With shameless treachery
in the early morning of January 17, 1583, he paid a visit to the prince
in Antwerp, and, with the object of gaining possession of his person,
tried to persuade him to attend a review of the French regiments who
were encamped outside the town. The suspicions of William had however
been aroused, and he pleaded some excuse for declining the invitation.
At midday some thousands of Anjou's troops rushed into the city at the
dinner-hour with loud cries of "Ville gagnee! Tue! Tue!" But the
citizens flew to arms; barricades were erected; and finally the French
were driven out with heavy loss, leaving some 1500 prisoners in the
hands of the town-guard. Many French nobles perished, and the "French
Fury," as it was called, was an ignominious and ghastly failure.
Indignation was wide and deep throughout the provinces; and William's
efforts to calm the excitement and patch up some fresh agreement with
the false Valois, though for the moment partially successful, only added
to his own growing unpopularity.

The prince in fact was so wedded to the idea that the only hope for the
provinces lay in securing French aid that he seemed unable to convince
himself that Anjou after this act of base treachery was impossible. His
continued support of the duke only served to alienate the people of
Brabant and Flanders. The Protestants hated the thought of having as
their sovereign a prince who was a Catholic and whose mother and
brothers were looked upon by them as the authors of the massacre of St
Bartholom