Such was the man who now began that terrible reign which menaced utter ruin to the national prosperity of the Netherlands.  His father had already sapped its foundations, by encouraging foreign manners and ideas among the nobility, and dazzling them with the hope of the honors and wealth which he had at his disposal abroad.  His severe edicts against heresy had also begun to accustom the nation to religious discords and hatred.  Philip soon enlarged on what Charles had commenced, and he unmercifully sacrificed the well-being of a people to the worst objects of his selfish ambition.

Philip had only once visited the Netherlands before his accession to sovereign power.  Being at that time twenty-two years of age, his opinions were formed and his prejudices deeply rooted.  Everything that he observed on this visit was calculated to revolt both.  The frank cordiality of the people appeared too familiar.  The expression of popular rights sounded like the voice of rebellion.  Even the magnificence displayed in his honor offended his jealous vanity.  From that moment he seems to have conceived an implacable aversion to the country, in which alone, of all his vast possessions, he could not display the power or inspire the terror of despotism.

The sovereign’s dislike was fully equalled by the disgust of his subjects.  His haughty severity and vexatious etiquette revolted their pride as well as their plain dealing; and the moral qualities of their new sovereign were considered with loathing.  The commercial and political connection between the Netherlands and Spain had given the two people ample opportunities for mutual acquaintance.  The dark, vindictive dispositions of the latter inspired a deep antipathy in those whom civilization had softened and liberty rendered frank and generous; and the new sovereign seemed to embody all that was repulsive and odious in the nation of which he was the type.  Yet Philip did not at first act in a way to make himself more particularly hated.  He rather, by an apparent consideration for a few points of political interest and individual privilege, and particularly by the revocation of some of the edicts against heretics, removed the suspicions his earlier conduct had excited; and his intended victims did not perceive that the despot sought to lull them to sleep, in the hopes of making them an easier prey.

Philip knew well that force alone was insufficient to reduce such a people to slavery.  He succeeded in persuading the states to grant him considerable subsidies, some of which were to be paid by instalments during a period of nine years.  That was gaining a great step toward his designs, as it superseded the necessity of a yearly application to the three orders, the guardians of the public liberty.  At the same time he sent secret agents to Rome, to obtain the approbation of the pope to his insidious but most effective plan for placing the whole of the clergy in dependence upon the crown.  He also kept up the army of Spaniards and Germans which his father had formed on the frontiers of France; and although he did not remove from their employments the functionaries already in place, he took care to make no new appointments to office among the natives of the Netherlands.