formly actuated by jealousy of the Prince of Orange, who had been
baffled in their intrigue with Matthias, whose half-blown designs upon
Anjou had already been nipped in the bud, were now peculiarly in a
position to listen to the wily tongue of Alexander Farnese. The
Montignys, the La Mottes, the Meluns, the Egmonts, the Aerschots, the
Havres, foiled and doubly foiled in all their small intrigues and their
base ambition, were ready to sacrifice their country to the man they
hated, and to the ancient religion which they thought that they loved.
The Malcontents ravaging the land of Hainault and threatening Ghent, the
"Paternoster Jacks" who were only waiting for a favorable opportunity and
a good bargain to make their peace with Spain, were the very instruments
which Parma most desired to use at this opening stage of his career. The
position of affairs was far more favorable for him than it had been for
Don John when he first succeeded to power. On the whole, there seemed a
bright prospect of success. It seemed quite possible that it would be in
Parma's power to reduce, at last, this chronic rebellion, and to
reestablish the absolute supremacy of Church and King. The pledges of the
Ghent treaty had been broken, while in the unions of Brussels which had
succeeded, the fatal religious cause had turned the instrument of peace
into a sword. The "religion-peace" which had been proclaimed at Antwerp
had hardly found favor anywhere. As the provinces, for an instant, had
seemingly got the better of their foe, they turned madly upon each other,
and the fires of religious discord, which had been extinguished by the
common exertions of a whole race trembling for the destruction of their
fatherland, were now re-lighted with a thousand brands plucked from the
sacred domestic hearth. Fathers and children, brothers and sisters,
husbands and wives, were beginning to wrangle, and were prepared to
persecute. Catholic and Protestant, during the momentary relief from
pressure, forgot their voluntary and most blessed Pacification, to renew
their internecine feuds. The banished Reformers, who had swarmed back in
droves at the tidings of peace and good-will to all men, found themselves
bitterly disappointed. They were exposed in the Walloon provinces to the
persecutions of the Malcontents, in the Frisian regions to the still
powerful coercion of the royal stadholders.

Persecution begat counter-persecution. The city of Ghent became the
centre of