Thus reasoned the envoys from the states-general and from Brussels, but even while they were reasoning, a fresh tumult occurred at Ghent.  The people had been inflamed by demagogues, and by the insane howlings of Peter Dathenus, the unfrocked monk of Poperingen, who had been the servant and minister both of the Pope and of Orange, and who now hated each with equal fervor.  The populace, under these influences, rose in its wrath upon the Catholics, smote all their images into fragments, destroyed all their altar pictures, robbed them of much valuable property, and turned all the Papists themselves out of the city.  The riot was so furious that it seemed, says a chronicler, as if all the inhabitants had gone raving mad.  The drums beat the alarm, the magistrates went forth to expostulate, but no commands were heeded till the work of destruction had been accomplished, when the tumult expired at last by its own limitation.

Affairs seemed more threatening than ever.  Nothing more excited the indignation of the Prince of Orange than such senseless iconomachy.  In fact, he had at one time procured an enactment by the Ghent authorities, making it a crime punishable with death.  He was of Luther’s opinion, that idol-worship was to be eradicated from the heart, and that then the idols in the churches would fall of themselves.  He felt too with Landgrave William, that “the destruction of such worthless idols was ever avenged by torrents of good human blood.”  Therefore it may be well supposed that this fresh act of senseless violence, in the very teeth of his remonstrances, in the very presence of his envoys, met with his stern disapprobation.  He was on the point of publishing his defence against the calumnies which his toleration had drawn upon him from both Catholic and Calvinist.  He was deeply revolving the question, whether it were not better to turn his back at once upon a country which seemed so incapable of comprehending his high purposes, or seconding his virtuous efforts.  From both projects he was dissuaded; and although bitterly wronged by both friend and foe, although, feeling that even in his own Holland, there were whispers against his purity, since his favorable inclinations towards Anjou had become the general topic, yet he still preserved his majestic tranquillity, and smiled at the arrows which fell harmless at his feet.  “I admire his wisdom, daily more and more,” cried Hubert Languet; “I see those who profess themselves his friends causing him more annoyance than his foes; while, nevertheless, he ever remains true to himself, is driven by no tempests from his equanimity, nor provoked by repeated injuries to immoderate action.”