The king’s first care on, receiving this advice was to order, in all the principal towns of Spain and the Netherlands, prayer and processions to implore the divine approbation on the resolutions which he had formed.  He appeared then in person at the council of state, and issued a decree, by which he refused his consent to the convocation of the states-general, and bound himself to take several German regiments into his pay.  He ordered the duchess of Parma, by a private letter, to immediately cause to be raised three thousand cavalry and ten thousand foot, and he remitted to her for this purpose three hundred thousand florins in gold.  He next wrote with his own hand to several of his partisans in the various towns, encouraging them in their fidelity to his purpose, and promising them his support.  He rejected the adoption of the moderation recommended to him; but he consented to the abolition of the inquisition in its most odious sense, re-establishing that modified species of ecclesiastical tyranny which had been introduced into the Netherlands by Charles V. The people of that devoted country were thus successful in obtaining one important concession from the king, and in meeting unexpected consideration from this Spanish council.  Whether these measures had been calculated with a view to their failure, it is not now easy to determine; at all events they came too late.  When Philip’s letters reached Brussels, the iconoclasts or image-breakers were abroad.

It requires no profound research to comprehend the impulse which leads a horde of fanatics to the most monstrous excesses.  That the deeds of the iconoclasts arose from the spontaneous outburst of mere vulgar fury, admits of no doubt.  The aspersion which would trace those deeds to the meeting of St. Trond, and fix the infamy on the body of nobility there assembled, is scarcely worthy of refutation.  The very lowest of the people were the actors as well as the authors of the outrages, which were at once shocking to every friend of liberty, and injurious to that sacred cause.  Artois and western Flanders were the scenes of the first exploits of the iconoclasts.  A band of peasants, intermixed with beggars and various other vagabonds, to the amount of about three hundred, urged by fanaticism and those baser passions which animate every lawless body of men, armed with hatchets, clubs, and hammers, forced open the doors of some of the village churches in the neighborhood of St. Omer, and tore down and destroyed not only the images and relics of saints, but those very ornaments which Christians of all sects hold sacred, and essential to the most simple rites of religion.