g the affairs of the country
entirely to my mind. Yet, seeing things in so good a state, you are
willing to give all the credit to another, and leave me only the fatigue
and danger.[923] But I am resolved, instead of wasting the remainder of
my days, as I have already done my health, in this way, to retire and
dedicate myself to a tranquil life in the service of God." In another
letter, dated four weeks later, on the third of May, after complaining
that the king withdraws his confidence more and more from her, she asks
leave to withdraw, as the country is restored to order, and the royal
authority more assured than in the time of Charles the Fifth.[924]

In this assurance respecting the public tranquillity, Margaret was no
doubt sincere; as are also the historians who have continued to take the
same view of the matter, down to the present time, and who consider the
troubles of the country to have been so far composed by the regent,
that, but for the coming of Alva, there would have been no revolution in
the Netherlands. Indeed, there might have seemed to be good ground for
such a conclusion. The revolt had been crushed. Resistance had
everywhere ceased. The authority of the regent was recognized throughout
the land. The league, which had raised so bold a front against the
government, had crumbled away. Its members had fallen in battle, or lay
waiting their sentence in dungeons, or were wandering as miserable
exiles in distant lands. The name of _Gueux_, and the insignia of the
bowl and the beggar's scrip, which they had assumed in derision, were
now theirs by right. It was too true for a jest.

The party of reform had disappeared, as if by magic. Its worship was
everywhere proscribed. On its ruins the Catholic religion had risen in
greater splendor than ever. Its temples were restored, its services
celebrated with more than customary pomp. The more austere and
uncompromising of the Reformers had fled the country. Those who remained
purchased impunity by a compulsory attendance on mass; or the wealthier
sort, by the aid of good cheer or more substantial largesses, bribed the
priest to silence.[925] At no time since the beginning of the
Reformation had the clergy been treated with greater deference, or
enjoyed a greater share of authority in the land. The dark hour of
revolution seemed, indeed, to have passed away.

Yet a Fleming of that day might well doubt whether the prince of Orange
were a man likely to resign his f