A deputation was sent from the states-general to Philip explaining the impossibility of persevering in the attempted taxes, which were incompatible with every principle of commercial liberty.  But Alva would not abandon his design till he had forced every province into resistance, and the king himself commanded him to desist.  The events of this and the following year, 1570, may be shortly summed up; none of any striking interest or eventual importance having occurred.  The sufferings of the country were increasing from day to day under the intolerable tyranny which bore it down.  The patriots attempted nothing on land; but their naval force began from this time to acquire that consistency and power which was so soon to render it the chief means of resistance and the great source of wealth.  The privateers or corsairs, which began to swarm from every port in Holland and Zealand, and which found refuge in all those of England, sullied many gallant exploits by instances of culpable excess; so much so that the Prince of Orange was forced to withdraw the command which he had delegated to the lord of Dolhain, and to replace him by Gislain de Fiennes:  for already several of the exiled nobles and ruined merchants of Antwerp and Amsterdam had joined these bold adventurers; and purchased or built, with the remnant of their fortunes, many vessels, in which they carried on a most productive warfare against Spanish commerce through the whole extent of the English Channel, from the mouth of the Embs to the harbor of La Rochelle.

One of those frightful inundations to which the northern provinces were so constantly exposed occurred this year, carrying away the dikes, and destroying lives and properly to a considerable amount.  In Friesland alone twenty thousand men were victims to this calamity.  But no suffering could affect the inflexible sternness of the duke of Alva; and to such excess did he carry his persecution that Philip himself began to be discontented, and thought his representative was overstepping the bounds of delegated tyranny.  He even reproached him sharply in some of his despatches.  The governor replied in the same strain; and such was the effect of this correspondence that Philip resolved to remove him from his command.  But the king’s marriage with Anne of Austria, daughter of the emperor Maximilian, obliged him to defer his intentions for a while; and he at length named John de la Cerda, duke of Medina-Celi, for Alva’s successor.  Upward of a year, however, elapsed before this new governor was finally appointed; and he made his appearance on the coast of Flanders with a considerable fleet, on the 11th of May, 1572.  He was afforded on this very day a specimen of the sort of people he came to contend with; for his fleet was suddenly attacked by that of the patriots, and many of his vessels burned and taken before his eyes, with their rich cargoes and considerable treasures intended for the service of the state.