The essence of the compact agreed to upon the 23d August between the confederates and the Regent, was that the preaching of the reformed religion should be tolerated in places where it had previously to that date been established.  Upon this basis Egmont, Horn, Orange, Hoogstraaten, and others, were directed once more to attempt the pacification of the different provinces.

Egmont departed for his government of Flanders, and from that moment vanished all his pretensions, which at best had been, slender enough, to the character of a national chieftain.  During the whole of the year his course had been changeful.  He had felt the influence of Orange; he had generous instincts; he had much vanity; he had the pride of high rank; which did not easily brook the domination of strangers, in a land which he considered himself and his compeers entitled by their birth to rule.  At this juncture, however, particularly when in the company of Noircarmes, Berlaymont, and Viglius, he expressed, notwithstanding their calumnious misstatements, the deepest detestation of the heretics.  He was a fervent Catholic, and he regarded the image-breaking as an unpardon able crime.  “We must take up arms,” said he, “sooner or later, to bring these Reformers to reason, or they will end by laying down the law for us.”  On the other hand, his anger would be often appeased by the grave but gracious remonstrances of Orange.  During a part of the summer, the Reformers had been so strong in Flanders that upon a single day sixty thousand armed men had been assembled at the different field-preachings within that province.  “All they needed was a Jacquemart, or a Philip van Artevelde,” says a Catholic, contemporary, “but they would have scorned to march under the banner of a brewer; having dared to raise their eyes for a chief, to the most illustrious warrior of his ages.”  No doubt, had Egmont ever listened to these aspirations, he might have taken the field against the government with an invincible force, seized the capital, imprisoned the Regent, and mastered the whole country, which was entirely defenceless, before Philip would have had time to write more than ten despatches upon the subject.

These hopes of the Reformers, if hopes they could be called, were now destined to be most bitterly disappointed.  Egmont entered Flanders, not as a chief of rebels—­not as a wise pacificator, but as an unscrupulous partisan of government, disposed to take summary vengeance on all suspected persons who should fall in his way.  He ordered numerous executions of image-breakers and of other heretics.  The whole province was in a state of alarm; for, although he had not been furnished by the Regent with a strong body of troops, yet the name of the conqueror at Saint Quentin and Gravelines was worth many regiments.  His severity was excessive.  His sanguinary exertions were ably seconded also by his secretary Bakkerzeel, a man who exercised the greatest influence over his chief, and who was now fiercely atoning for having signed the Compromise by persecuting those whom that league had been formed to protect.  “Amid all the perplexities of the Duchess Regent,” Says a Walloon historian, “this virtuous princess was consoled by the exploits of Bakkerzeel, gentleman in Count Egmont’s service.  On one occasion he hanged twenty heretics, including a minister, at a single heat.”