populace were wont to rise upon the privileged classes, to deprive them of office and liberty, and to set up in their place commanders of their own election.  A governor-in-chief, a sergeant-major, a board of councillors and various other functionaries, were chosen by acclamation and universal suffrage.  The Eletto, or chief officer thus appointed, was clothed with supreme power, but forbidden to exercise it.  He was surrounded by councillors, who watched his every motion, read all his correspondence, and assisted at all his conferences, while the councillors were themselves narrowly watched by the commonalty.  These movements were, however, in general, marked by the most exemplary order.  Anarchy became a system of government; rebellion enacted and enforced the strictest rules of discipline; theft, drunkenness, violence to women, were severely punished.  As soon as the mutiny broke forth, the first object was to take possession of the nearest city, where the Eletto was usually established in the town-house, and the soldiery quartered upon the citizens.  Nothing in the shape of food or lodging was too good for these marauders.  Men who had lived for years on camp rations—­coarse knaves who had held the plough till compelled to handle the musket, now slept in fine linen, and demanded from the trembling burghers the daintiest viands.  They ate the land bare, like a swarm of locusts.  “Chickens and partridges,” says the thrifty chronicler of Antwerp, “capons and pheasants, hares and rabbits, two kinds of wines;—­for sauces, capers and olives, citrons and oranges, spices and sweetmeats; wheaten bread for their dogs, and even wine, to wash the feet of their horses;”—­such was the entertainment demanded and obtained by the mutinous troops.  They were very willing both to enjoy the luxury of this forage, and to induce the citizens, from weariness of affording compelled hospitality, to submit to a taxation by which the military claims might be liquidated.

A city thus occupied was at the mercy of a foreign soldiery, which had renounced all authority but that of self-imposed laws.  The King’s officers were degraded, perhaps murdered; while those chosen to supply their places had only a nominal control.  The Eletto, day by day, proclaimed from the balcony of the town-house the latest rules and regulations.  If satisfactory, there was a clamor of applause; if objectionable, they were rejected with a tempest of hisses, with discharges of musketry; The Eletto did not govern:  he was a dictator who could not dictate, but could only register decrees.  If too honest, too firm, or too dull for his place, he was deprived of his office and sometimes of his life.  Another was chosen in his room, often to be succeeded by a series of others, destined to the same fate.  Such were the main characteristics of those formidable mutinies, the result of the unthriftiness and dishonesty by which the soldiery engaged in these interminable hostilities were deprived of their dearly earned wages.  The expense of the war was bad enough at best, but when it is remembered that of three or four dollars sent from Spain, or contributed by the provinces for the support of the army, hardly one reached the pockets of the soldier, the frightful expenditure which took place may be imagined.  It was not surprising that so much peculation should engender revolt.