The fog, the wild boar, and the wolf, infested the abandoned homes of the peasantry; children could not walk in safety in the neighbourhood even of the larger cities; wolves littered their young in the deserted farm-houses; two hundred persons, in the winter of 1586-7, were devoured by wild beasts in the outskirts of Ghent.  Such of the remaining labourers and artizans as had not been converted into soldiers, found their most profitable employment as brigands, so that the portion of the population spared by war and emigration was assisting the enemy in preying upon their native country.  Brandschatzung, burglary, highway-robbery, and murder, had become the chief branches of industry among the working classes.  Nobles and wealthy burghers had been changed to paupers and mendicants.  Many a family of ancient lineage, and once of large possessions, could be seen begging their bread, at the dusk of evening, in the streets of great cities, where they had once exercised luxurious hospitality; and they often begged in vain.

For while such was the forlorn aspect of the country—­and the portrait, faithfully sketched from many contemporary pictures, has not been exaggerated in any of its dark details—­a great famine smote the land with its additional scourge.  The whole population, soldiers and brigands, Spaniards and Flemings, beggars and workmen, were in danger of perishing together.  Where the want of employment had been so great as to cause a rapid depopulation, where the demand for labour had almost entirely ceased, it was a necessary result, that during the process, prices should be low, even in the presence of foreign soldiery, and despite the inflamed’ profits, which such capitalists as remained required, by way not only of profit but insurance, in such troublous times.  Accordingly, for the last year or two, the price of rye at Antwerp and Brussels had been one florin for the veertel (three bushels) of one hundred and twenty pounds; that of wheat, about one-third of a florin more.  Five pounds of rye, therefore, were worth, one penny sterling, reckoning, as was then usual, two shillings to the florin.  A pound weight of wheat was worth about one farthing.  Yet this was forty-one years after the discovery of the mines of Potosi (A.D. 1545), and full sixteen years after the epoch; from which is dated that rapid fall in the value of silver, which in the course of seventy years, caused the average price of corn and of all other commodities, to be tripled or even quadrupled.  At that very moment the average cost of wheat in England was sixty-four shillings the quarter, or about seven and sixpence sterling the bushel, and in the markets of Holland, which in truth regulated all others, the same prices prevailed.  A bushel of wheat in England was equal therefore to eight bushels in Brussels.