rebel Netherlands.

Since the fall of Antwerp, the desolation of Brabant, Flanders, and of
the Walloon territories had become complete. The King had recovered the
great commercial capital, but its commerce was gone. The Scheldt, which,
till recently, had been the chief mercantile river in the world, had
become as barren as if its fountains had suddenly dried up. It was as if
it no longer flowed to the ocean, for its mouth was controlled by
Flushing. Thus Antwerp was imprisoned and paralyzed. Its docks and
basins, where 2500 ships had once been counted, were empty, grass was
growing in its streets, its industrious population had vanished, and the
Jesuits had returned in swarms. And the same spectacle was presented by
Ghent, Bruges, Valenciennes, Tournay, and those other fair cities, which
had once been types of vigorous industry and tumultuous life. The
sea-coast was in the hands of two rising commercial powers, the great and
free commonwealths of the future. Those powers were acting in concert,
and commanding the traffic of the world, while the obedient Provinces
were excluded from all foreign intercourse and all markets, as the result
of their obedience. Commerce, manufactures, agriculture; were dying
lingering deaths. The thrifty farms, orchards, and gardens, which had
been a proverb and wonder of industry were becoming wildernesses. The
demand for their produce by the opulent and thriving cities, which had
been the workshops of the world, was gone. Foraging bands of Spanish and
Italian mercenaries had succeeded to the famous tramp of the artizans and
mechanics, which had often been likened to an army, but these new
customers were less profitable to the gardeners and farmers. The
clothiers, the fullers, the tapestry-workers, the weavers, the cutlers,
had all wandered away, and the cities of Holland, Friesland, and of
England, were growing skilful and rich by the lessons and the industry of
the exiles to whom they afforded a home. There were villages and small
towns in the Spanish Netherlands that had been literally depopulated.
Large districts of country had gone to waste, and cane-brakes and squalid
morasses usurped the place of yellow harvest-fields. The fog, the wild
boar, and the wolf, infested the abandoned homes of the peasantry;
children could not walk in safety in the neighbourhood even of the larger
cities; wolves littered their young in the deserted farm-houses; two
hundred persons, in the winter of 1586-7,