y common agreement,
the whole destiny of the anti-Catholic party. "People had learned at
last," says another Walloon, "that the King had long arms, and that he
had not been enlisting soldiers to string beads. So they drew in their
horns and their evil tempers, meaning to put them forth again, should the
government not succeed at the siege of Valenciennes." The government had
succeeded, however, and the consternation was extreme, the general
submission immediate and even abject. "The capture of Valenciennes,"
wrote Noircarmes to Granvelle, "has worked a miracle. The other cities
all come forth to meet me, putting the rope around their own necks." No
opposition was offered any where. Tournay had been crushed; Valenciennes,
Bois le Duc, and all other important places, accepted their garrisons
without a murmur. Even Antwerp had made its last struggle, and as soon as
the back of Orange was turned, knelt down in the dust to receive its
bridle. The Prince had been able, by his courage and wisdom, to avert a
sanguinary conflict within its walls, but his personal presence alone
could guarantee any thing like religious liberty for the inhabitants, now
that the rest of the country was subdued. On the 26th April, sixteen
companies of infantry, under Count Mansfeld, entered the gates. On the
28th the Duchess made a visit to the city, where she was received with
respect, but where her eyes were shocked by that which she termed the
"abominable, sad, and hideous spectacle of the desolated churches."

To the eyes of all who loved their fatherland and their race, the sight
of a desolate country, with its ancient charters superseded by brute
force, its industrious population swarming from the land in droves, as if
the pestilence were raging, with gibbets and scaffolds erected in every
village, and with a Sickening and universal apprehension of still darker
disasters to follow, was a spectacle still more sad, hideous, and
abominable.

For it was now decided that the Duke of Alva, at the head of a Spanish
army, should forthwith take his departure for the Netherlands. A land
already subjugated was to be crushed, and every vestige of its ancient
liberties destroyed. The conquered provinces, once the abode of municipal
liberty, of science, art, and literature, and blessed with an unexampled
mercantile and manufacturing prosperity, were to be placed in absolute
subjection to the cabinet council at Madrid. A dull and malignant bigot,
assisted b