bandoned their leaders in the decisive
moment of action. These terrible instruments of oppression now turned
their dangerous power against their employer, and wreaked their
vindictive rage on the provinces which remained faithful to him.
The unfortunate armament against England, on which, like a desperate
gamester, he had staked the whole strength of his kingdom, completed his
ruin; with the armada sank the wealth of the two Indies, and the flower
of Spanish chivalry.

But in the very same proportion that the Spanish power declined the
republic rose in fresh vigor. The ravages which the fanaticism of the
new religion, the tyranny of the Inquisition, the furious rapacity of
the soldiery, and the miseries of a long war unbroken by any interval of
peace, made in the provinces of Brabant, Flanders, and Hainault, at once
the arsenals and the magazines of this expensive contest, naturally
rendered it every year more difficult to support and recruit the royal
armies. The Catholic Netherlands had already lost a million of
citizens, and the trodden fields maintained their husbandmen no longer.
Spain itself had but few more men to spare. That country, surprised by
a sudden affluence which brought idleness with it, had lost much of its
population, and could not long support the continual drafts of men which
were required both for the New World and the Netherlands. Of these
conscripts few ever saw their country again; and these few having left
it as youths returned to it infirm and old. Gold, which had become more
common, made soldiers proportionately dearer; the growing charm of
effeminacy enhanced the price of the opposite virtues. Wholly different
was the posture of affairs with the rebels. The thousands whom the
cruelty of the viceroy expelled from the southern Netherlands, the
Huguenots whom the wars of persecution drove from France, as well as
every one whom constraint of conscience exiled from the other parts of
Europe, all alike flocked to unite themselves with the Belgian
insurgents. The whole Christian world was their recruiting ground.
The fanaticism both of the persecutor and the persecuted worked in their
behalf. The enthusiasm of a doctrine newly embraced, revenge, want, and
hopeless misery drew to their standard adventurers from every part of
Europe. All whom the new doctrine had won, all who had suffered, or had
still cause of fear from despotism, linked their own fortunes with those
of the new republic. Every injur