Upon the fate of Valenciennes had depended, as if by common agreement, the whole destiny of the anti-Catholic party.  “People had learned at last,” says another Walloon, “that the King had long arms, and that he had not been enlisting soldiers to string beads.  So they drew in their horns and their evil tempers, meaning to put them forth again, should the government not succeed at the siege of Valenciennes.”  The government had succeeded, however, and the consternation was extreme, the general submission immediate and even abject.  “The capture of Valenciennes,” wrote Noircarmes to Granvelle, “has worked a miracle.  The other cities all come forth to meet me, putting the rope around their own necks.”  No opposition was offered any where.  Tournay had been crushed; Valenciennes, Bois le Duc, and all other important places, accepted their garrisons without a murmur.  Even Antwerp had made its last struggle, and as soon as the back of Orange was turned, knelt down in the dust to receive its bridle.  The Prince had been able, by his courage and wisdom, to avert a sanguinary conflict within its walls, but his personal presence alone could guarantee any thing like religious liberty for the inhabitants, now that the rest of the country was subdued.  On the 26th April, sixteen companies of infantry, under Count Mansfeld, entered the gates.  On the 28th the Duchess made a visit to the city, where she was received with respect, but where her eyes were shocked by that which she termed the “abominable, sad, and hideous spectacle of the desolated churches.”

To the eyes of all who loved their fatherland and their race, the sight of a desolate country, with its ancient charters superseded by brute force, its industrious population swarming from the land in droves, as if the pestilence were raging, with gibbets and scaffolds erected in every village, and with a Sickening and universal apprehension of still darker disasters to follow, was a spectacle still more sad, hideous, and abominable.

For it was now decided that the Duke of Alva, at the head of a Spanish army, should forthwith take his departure for the Netherlands.  A land already subjugated was to be crushed, and every vestige of its ancient liberties destroyed.  The conquered provinces, once the abode of municipal liberty, of science, art, and literature, and blessed with an unexampled mercantile and manufacturing prosperity, were to be placed in absolute subjection to the cabinet council at Madrid.  A dull and malignant bigot, assisted by a few Spanish grandees, and residing at the other extremity of Europe, was thenceforth to exercise despotic authority over countries which for centuries had enjoyed a local administration, and a system nearly approaching to complete self-government.  Such was the policy devised by Granvelle and Spinosa, which the Duke of Alva, upon the 15th April, had left Madrid to enforce.