On the other hand, in most of the other provinces, the Catholic religion had been regaining its ascendency.  Even in 1574, the estates assembled at Brussels declared to Requesens “that they would rather die the death than see any change in their religion.”  That feeling had rather increased than diminished.  Although there was a strong party attached to the new faith, there was perhaps a larger, certainly a more influential body, which regarded the ancient Church with absolute fidelity.  Owing partly to the persecution which had, in the course of years, banished so many thousands of families from the soil, partly to the coercion, which was more stringent in the immediate presence of the Crown’s representative, partly to the stronger infusion of the Celtic element, which from the earliest ages had always been so keenly alive to the more sensuous and splendid manifestations of the devotional principle—­owing to those and many other causes, the old religion, despite of all the outrages which had been committed in its name, still numbered a host of zealous adherents in the fifteen provinces.  Attempts against its sanctity were regarded with jealous eyes.  It was believed, and with reason, that there was a disposition on the part of the Reformers to destroy it root and branch.  It was suspected that the same enginery of persecution would be employed in its extirpation, should the opposite party gain the supremacy, which the Papists had so long employed against the converts to the new religion.

As to political convictions, the fifteen provinces differed much less from their two sisters.  There was a strong attachment to their old constitutions; a general inclination to make use of the present crisis to effect their restoration.  At the same time, it had not come to be the general conviction, as in Holland and Zealand, that the maintenance of those liberties was incompatible with the continuance of Philip’s authority.  There was, moreover, a strong aristocratic faction which was by no means disposed to take a liberal view of government in general, and regarded with apprehension the simultaneous advance of heretical notions both in church and, state.  Still there were, on the whole, the elements of a controlling constitutional party throughout the fifteen provinces The great bond of sympathy, however, between all the seventeen was their common hatred to the foreign soldiery.  Upon this deeply imbedded, immovable fulcrum of an ancient national hatred, the sudden mutiny of the whole Spanish army served as a lever of incalculable power.  The Prince seized it as from the hand of God.  Thus armed, he proposed to himself the task of upturning the mass of oppression under which the old liberties of the country had so long been crushed.  To effect this object, adroitness was as requisite as courage.  Expulsion of the foreign soldiery, union of the seventeen provinces, a representative constitution, according to the old charters, by the states-general, under an hereditary chief, a large religious toleration, suppression of all inquisition into men’s consciences—­these were the great objects to which the Prince now devoted himself with renewed energy.