The first care of the liberated nation was to demolish the various citadels rendered celebrated and odious by the excesses of the Spaniards.  This was done with an enthusiastic industry in which every age and sex bore a part, and which promised well for liberty.  Among the ruins of that of Antwerp the statue of the duke of Alva was discovered; dragged through the filthiest streets of the town; and, with all the indignity so well merited by the original, it was finally broken into a thousand pieces.

The country, in conferring such extensive powers on the Prince of Orange, had certainly gone too far, not for his desert, but for its own tranquillity.  It was impossible that such an elevation should not excite the discontent and awaken the enmity of the haughty aristocracy of Flanders and Brabant; and particularly of the House of Croi, the ancient rivals of that of Nassau.  The then representative of that family seemed the person most suited to counterbalance William’s excessive power.  The duke of Arschot was therefore named governor of Flanders; and he immediately put himself at the head of a confederacy of the Catholic party, which quickly decided to offer the chief government of the country, still in the name of Philip, to the archduke Mathias, brother of the emperor Rodolf II., and cousin-german to Philip of Spain, a youth but nineteen years of age.  A Flemish gentleman named Maelsted was intrusted with the proposal.  Mathias joyously consented; and, quitting Vienna with the greatest secrecy, he arrived at Maestricht, without any previous announcement, and expected only by the party that had invited him, at the end of October, 1577.

The Prince of Orange, instead of showing the least symptom of dissatisfaction at this underhand proceeding aimed at his personal authority, announced his perfect approval of the nomination, and was the foremost in recommending measures for the honor of the archduke and the security of the country.  He drew up the basis of a treaty for Mathias’s acceptance, on terms which guaranteed to the council of state and the states-general the virtual sovereignty, and left to the young prince little beyond the fine title which had dazzled his boyish vanity.  The Prince of Orange was appointed his lieutenant, in all the branches of the administration, civil, military, or financial; and the duke of Arschot, who had hoped to obtain an entire domination over the puppet he had brought upon the stage, saw himself totally foiled in his project, and left without a chance or a pretext for the least increase to his influence.

But a still greater disappointment attended this ambitious nobleman in the very stronghold of his power.  The Flemings, driven by persecution to a state of fury almost unnatural, had, in their antipathy to Spain, adopted a hatred against Catholicism, which had its source only in political frenzy, while the converts imagined it to arise from reason and conviction.  Two men had taken advantage of this state of the public