onsciences and the
commands of their newly translated Bible.

This placed the king in a very difficult position. He could not possibly
tolerate the heresies of his Dutch subjects, but he needed their money.
If he allowed them to be Protestants and took no measures to save
their souls he was deficient in his duty toward God. If he sent the
Inquisition to the Netherlands and burned his subjects at the stake, he
would lose the greater part of his income.

Being a man of uncertain will-power he hesitated a long time. He tried
kindness and sternness and promises and threats. The Hollanders remained
obstinate, and continued to sing psalms and listen to the sermons of
their Lutheran and Calvinist preachers. Philip in his despair sent his
"man of iron," the Duke of Alba, to bring these hardened sinners to
terms. Alba began by decapitating those leaders who had not wisely left
the country before his arrival. In the year 1572 (the same year that the
French Protestant leaders were all killed during the terrible night of
Saint Bartholomew), he attacked a number of Dutch cities and massacred
the inhabitants as an example for the others. The next year he laid
siege to the town of Leyden, the manufacturing center of Holland.

Meanwhile, the seven small provinces of the northern Netherlands had
formed a defensive union, the so-called union of Utrecht, and had
recognised William of Orange, a German prince who had been the private
secretary of the Emperor Charles V, as the leader of their army and as
commander of their freebooting sailors, who were known as the Beggars
of the Sea. William, to save Leyden, cut the dykes, created a shallow
inland sea, and delivered the town with the help of a strangely equipped
navy consisting of scows and flat-bottomed barges which were rowed and
pushed and pulled through the mud until they reached the city walls.

It was the first time that an army of the invincible Spanish king had
suffered such a humiliating defeat. It surprised the world just as the
Japanese victory of Mukden, in the Russian-Japanese war, surprised our
own generation. The Protestant powers took fresh courage and Philip
devised new means for the purpose of conquering his rebellious subjects.
He hired a poor half-witted fanatic to go and murder William of Orange.
But the sight of their dead leader did not bring the Seven Provinces to
their knees. On the contrary it made them furiously angry. In the year
1581, the Estates General (the